Thursday, December 25, 2008

Ripples of Generosity








This Christmas season it was my son, Andrew, who reminded me that one of the truly beautiful gifts of Christmas is the gift of generosity. But to truly understand the depth of his simple gift, you must come to understand that it started with the gift of a perfect stranger, a gift that was given nearly seventy years ago, at the height of the Great Depression.

In the summer of 1985, my parents and I went to visit their respective families near East Chicago, Indiana. During that time, Daddy and I, along with his brother Hallie, drove out to the area around Cedar Lake, where they had lived for a time in the late 1930s. “I want you to promise me that you will never forget where you come from,” Daddy told me as we started our walking tour of their old neighborhood.

They showed me the rundown, two-room house that was home to their mother and her thirteen children. They told me how their father had left her alone in the middle of the Depression after moving the whole family to Indiana from Kentucky in search of work. Left alone with a large family to support, my grandmother and her oldest daughter went to work, leaving the older children to mind the younger ones. Daddy and Hallie missed a year of grammar school because they were offered work hauling coal for one of local men which allowed them to earn extra money to buy food. Their family subsisted on navy bean soup and if they were lucky enough to have a little extra money, they could usually buy a hambone with some scraps of meat still on it to add a little flavor to it.

As they reminisced, Daddy told me the story of the year his family could not afford anything at all for Christmas. There was just no money to spare, even for a little meat for dinner. On Christmas Day, there came a knock on the door and there on the stoop was a man from the Salvation Army, with a ham, some vegetables, and a huge bag of gumdrops for the children to share. They feasted like kings that Christmas, because of the kindness of strangers. Daddy never forgot that kindness. He grew up, married his childhood sweetheart, had a large family of his own and retold that story again and again. He gave every year to help those who found themselves in the same dire straights that he himself remembered so vividly.


I was only twelve that summer in 1985, but seeing that tiny house and knowing how frigid Chicago area winters can be, Daddy’s family history lesson left a deep and lasting impression. As soon as I started working at fifteen, I often sought out the Salvation Army kettles for myself. I never forgot the kindness of those strangers from my father’s childhood and so their generosity rippled on into a second generation. I grew up, married and have my own children now. I have often told them the story of my father’s family, so that they will also understand their own family history. Even though Andrew is only nine and Eugene, who is named after Daddy, is only five, they too can now tell the story of that Christmas feast, which to them seems like so very long ago.

This past weekend, I had to take my boys to buy new boots for the winter. In the midst of a divorce and only working part-time which allows me to be home for them when they come home from school, I was being very careful about what I was spending in the shoe store. Andrew, well aware of the fact that I was pinching pennies, opened his own wallet and offered me the money he still had from his birthday back in June. I gave him a hug and told him that no, that money was his to spend on himself however he wanted, and that I would take of things such as boots. I found myself with new appreciation for my grandmother, as we are a long way from the harsh times that she faced.

As we left the store, I stopped to pull out some money to put in the Salvation Army kettle outside and only having one dollar, I gave it to Eugene to put in and told Andrew he could do it next time. He smiled and pulled out his wallet, saying, “No, Mom it’s okay, I’ve got my own money.” He rifled though his wallet and pulled out a twenty. I gently pointed out that he had pulled out a twenty and not just a dollar and he said, “Yeah, I know Mom, but if I’ve had this twenty dollars this long and forgot about it, I don’t really need it that much. They can use it to help somebody who really needs it.” I was speechless and I finally managed to say, “Okay, that’s up to you. It’s your money so you get to do what you want to do with it.”

As we walked outside, they ran up to the kettle and I saw that Andrew had carefully folded the bill so that the denomination did not show. He waited while Eugene put in the dollar I had given him and then flashed me a huge smile and with his eyes dancing with joy much the way Daddy’s used to, he put that twenty dollar bill in the kettle, wished the bell-ringer a Merry Christmas and came running back to me. “Maybe some kid will get something nice for Christmas, like Grandpa did,” he told me as he skipped back to the car.


And so the kindness of strangers ripples on into a third generation and most likely beyond. Andrew and Eugene will grow up telling and retelling the story of a grandfather they know only through old pictures, my childhood memories, and some old cassette tapes of poems that Daddy made for me when I was Andrew’s age. The kindness of strangers ripples on through my siblings, their children, and their grandchildren and through my father’s siblings, only ten of who lived to adulthood, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Some seventy years ago, someone gave just a little bit, at a time when the entire nation was in the grip of financial strife and worried about war. That little bit has rippled outward exponentially ever since. I have often wondered, how many other families did that man from the Salvation Army visit that Christmas so long ago? How many of those other families tell and retell their stories of kindness and generosity in the same ways that my father did, carrying that generosity down through the generations?

These past few months, as I have struggled to come to terms with moving back into my parents’ home, bringing with me my sons and our dog, I find myself surrounded by memories of my father. Daddy passed away twenty years ago this past March and yet at times it is as though these walls are whispering to me, calling up all the old stories he used to tell. Even now as I write this, I am sitting at his old roll-top desk with his photograph looking back at me, smiling broadly, with a playful gleam that I had seen so many times in his hazel colored eyes, especially at this time of year.

This Christmas, as I carefully weigh the things my children want against the things I know they need, it was my child who reminded me that the greatest gifts in life are the not the ones that you receive, but the ones that you give away. You see, even if they seem so very small at the time, the ripples of generosity continue outward, well beyond the reaches of time, changing the lives of those not yet born and making this world a better place, if not in our time than, perhaps, in our grandchildren’s time.

For more information on the Salvation Army see their website: http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf











Tuesday, December 2, 2008

On Coming Home

Photo taken at an A.A. meeting at the childhood home of Bill W – founder of A.A.
John and I are bottom left and center.





This is my favorite time of year. I feel most at home and most grounded during the crush of the holidays. Now, you’re probably thinking that I need to double up on my therapy appointments because I have completely lost touch with reality. You’re probably saying to yourself, “Who feels grounded when there’s all that running around to do and stuff to get done?”

For starters, there’s Shopping Day, that Monday or Tuesday before Thanksgiving when I get to go fighting through the overcrowded food store. As I make my way through the throngs, I wonder why in the hell all these people can’t shop in some other damn store. I search for the right Butterball turkey - frozen not fresh, the right stuffing bread, the walnuts, the Jell-O, and the right pie fillings. Of course, by the time I get to Aisle 10, they are out of the pie crust mix that I like, so I can either try another one and pray that it browns nicely or resort to the frozen crust with the funny aftertaste. After the sticker shock at the register, it’s home to fit all this food into the refrigerator.

Next comes my favorite, Baking Day, that Wednesday before Thanksgiving when it’s time to make all the pies, the cookies, and the Jell-O molds. Mom and I spend about a half an hour digging out the faded, flour encrusted recipe cards and the bits and pieces of crumbling newsprint that contains the apple pie recipe. It’s okay that a chunk is missing because Mom remembers what that part said, I hope. There’s a flurry of chopping nuts, slicing apples, rolling out the piecrusts, and then mixing the pumpkin pie filling while the apple pie bakes. The smells of chocolate chip cookies, apples, cinnamon, pumpkin, cloves, and nutmeg fill the house as dishes fill the sink. All the while the songs of the Rolling Stones fill the air singing that Time Is On My Side, although I seriously doubt that Mick Jagger and friends ever had to pull off three pies, four batches of cookies, and two Jell-O molds in one day, if ever.

But somehow, in the midst of all that frenzied cooking, I find a deep peace. I breathe in all those smells of home and history as I watch Mom teach my sons how to roll out the scraps of pie dough with sugar, cinnamon, and butter. I remember the thrill when I was first old enough to use the rolling pin and the sharp silver paring knife to cut the dough into little cinnamon rolls. I’d take those homemade cinnamon rolls over Cinnabon any day. Through all of the craziness, I have the sense of doing it all out of love and remember that for over fifty years Mom has also done this all out of love and she did it for more people than I’ve ever fed.

After all the work of Baking Day comes the rigidly choreographed Thanksgiving Ballet. That carefully orchestrated dance of stuffing, turkey, vegetables, biscuits, and the sweet potatoes with the little marshmallows on top that we only make once a year. We count on our fingers, “One to two, two to three, three to – no wait, one to two…” marking the time to see what goes in the oven or on the stove when. By some miracle, it all gets done at the same time and makes it on the table hot. The three days of preparation were worth all the aggravation. We sit down to a fabulous feast and within an hour we’re all swearing that we’ll never eat again, at least until its time for pie.

For two days the house is full of warm smells and warmer memories and yet before we’ve even polished off the last of the leftovers, it’s time to start Christmas shopping. The malls have been transformed into wintry wonderlands of brightly decked, non-religious, politically correct corridors of retail hell. It’s time again to battle the parking lots and crowded stores. Time to navigate the hoards of stressed out, soul starved, penny-pinching zombies all with the same mantra of, “Gotta find it. Gotta get it. Gotta wrap it. Gotta get it all done.” The fabled Christmas spirit is nowhere to be found, unless it’s the Ghost Of Sale Ended Yesterday, or worse yet, the Ghost Of Limit One when you just have to have two. It’s no wonder that we put brandy in the eggnog or in some cases, eggnog in the brandy.

But what the retailers have forgotten is the season of Advent. This is the time set aside to quietly prepare for the birth of our Savior. This was a season my parents never overlooked. After the Thanksgiving china was safely in pantry and the linens were washed and put away, Mom would pull out a little round table. She would iron the red tablecloth to put on it and her favorite statue of Mary would come down off the fireplace mantle to take her place in the center of our Advent wreath with it’s purple and pink candles. Over the years, poor Mary has been knocked over, dropped, and broken a few times. She has been lovingly glued back together but she is a little scarred, a little cracked and a little chipped, kind of like me.

On the first night of Advent, we would gather in the dining room, lined up oldest to youngest. Dad would bless the wreath with holy water and light the first candle. He would read from his worn green bible, then lead us through the Angelus, the Our Father, and the Doxology. The readings from the prophet Isaiah and the Gospel of Luke became the golden threads of our Christmas tapestries. The smell of candle wax and paper matches still brings me back to those quiet gatherings of a big and busy family. Every night for four weeks, we gathered and stood shoulder to shoulder in prayer. We set aside everything we were doing for just a short time. After all these years, I can still hear Dad’s big booming voice, “The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary…” and Mom’s softer echo leading us in response, “And she conceived of the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee…” And the Lord was there with all of us.

No family is perfect and if the picture I’m painting sounds too good to be real, it’s only because this was our family at it’s best. We argued and fought like every other family. There were personality clashes and temper tantrums and drama too. We didn’t all grow up to be saints either. What I did grow up with was a solid grasp of my parents’ faith, not the just the religious practices, but the underlying faith. When I was in my twenties, I walked away from coming to church and yet every year I returned to my religious roots, at least for Christmas Eve. Little by little, I rediscovered the vital role that my faith plays in my life. Religion gave me the words when I found that I no longer knew what to say to God. It provided me with the road map for the long, long road back home to His table.

These past few years have been a roller coaster ride of doubt, fear, illness – first my son’s and then my own, and even my divorce. What brought me through it all wasn’t a Thanksgiving feast or even the love that went into preparing it. It wasn’t a pretty sweater or even the kind thoughts that went into buying it. What brought me through it all was the gift of Advent. It was remembering what it meant to set aside everything else and spend time in quiet, stillness, and prayer. It was remembering what it meant to come home.

During all the upheaval, I had a constant longing to be home, which led me back into the church. At the time, I couldn’t really have explained why I came back but there was a deep need to be there. I came back to Sunday Mass and eventually started coming almost every day. Daily Mass was so quiet and so peaceful. I was there with my two little boys, who were neither quiet nor peaceful. There were many days when I was saying, “Okay Lord, You know I must be completely out of my mind. Why am I even here? To torture myself or to torture them? I didn’t hear a word of the Mass!”

Without fail, every time I had one of those days, someone would come up to me, often a total stranger, and say to me, “We’re so glad you’re here. Keep coming and keep bringing the boys. We love seeing a mom bring her kids. It’s not easy but you’re doing the right thing.”

My family has always loved me and supported me. Now I had added a second family, a spiritual one. One that told me over and over that is was okay if I was struggling just to be there. They reminded me over and over that they were there for me and I gradually learned to rely on them for prayers and support.

My dearest friend John and I have had many conversations over the years about our faith struggles and our individual arguments with God. Most recently, as he has worked through the Twelve Steps of A.A., we have been talking about accepting help from the people God places around us. We have also spent hours discussing God’s will versus our own will and what it means to surrender oneself to God’s will. That kind of surrender requires a great deal of faith and trust. Faith I’m working on but I’m not so good with trust.

“I just wish I knew what He wanted from me. What am I supposed to do now? God isn’t speaking to me. There’s no text messages, no email, no nothing. I want a three-foot flashing neon sign. I want my burning bush,” I complain while John listens patiently and then explains to me yet again that I just have to trust in God’s care for me. Again with this trust thing!

John came to visit me a few months ago and we attended an A.A. meeting together, my first. We walked into a crowded church basement that very quickly was standing room only. The keynote speaker described her experiences of first coming to a meeting.

“I didn’t know why I kept coming back. I just did,” she said in an emotion-choked voice. “I needed to come and the people around me kept telling me to keep coming. ‘Just keep coming back. It’s okay, you’ll get it eventually.’ And I learned to let those people love me until I could learn to love myself.”

I was sitting there in that packed church basement crying and nodding with every word she said. Afterwards, over dinner, I told John how deeply she had touched me and I told him about all those people at daily Mass telling me to keep coming back and that I was doing the right thing by bringing the boys.

“Now Sweetie,” he said in that ‘I-love-you-Honey-but…’ tone of voice, “I thought you said God wasn’t speaking to you. Maybe you just aren’t listening. You know, like when one of your kids puts his hands over his ears and singsongs ‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU!’ and you know damn good and well that he heard you but he just doesn’t like what you said…”
While my initial response to that wonderful insight was something like, “Oh shut up!” I have to admit that my experiences that evening led me to look at my entire faith journey with different eyes. Everything has taken on a new significance for me: from those long-ago nights around the Advent wreath to the newly formed bonds of faith, friendship, and community. Learning to love myself “as is” is proving to be an extremely difficult lesson in acceptance and surrender. But I’m learning to trust that God has surrounded me with the people who will love me until I learn to love myself. There have been times over the past year when I have seen the face of God in someone I barely know and then I know, without a doubt, that I have finally found my way home.

So this holiday season, I don’t just wish you a Merry Christmas. I wish you a quiet and blessed Advent full of the peace, hope, joy, and love of a depth that only God can give. I pray that you never forget the way home. I hope you remember me this Christmas when the church is packed full of those people who don’t show up the rest of the year. When they get the closer parking spaces while you’re parked two blocks away in sub-zero wind chills and they have seats while you’re standing in the back, have patience. Remember that we are all His family and every journey home happens one baby step at a time.


Luke 15:20 – The Prodigal Son – Welcome Home!

“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.”

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

“God created you to create me.”





One day on the way to pre-school with my son Eugene, who was four at the time, he started asking me if God created the houses. I explained that God created people and that people created the houses. He asked if God created trees, then asked about roads, birds, and finally, of all things, poodles. I explained with amusement which things were God’s creations and which were men’s creations. I was thoroughly enjoying his intensity and intelligence this particular morning. Eugene is an exceptionally bright child who has been through his own hell already. He then asked me if God had made him. I explained that God made him up in heaven and then he was in my tummy until it was time to be born. Without missing a beat, he said to me “So then God created you to create me.” I had no better answer than, “Yeah, Buddy, I guess you’re right. He did.”

After all that my Eugene and I have been through, it is always his insightful little soul that catches me so off guard. That one matter-of-fact statement about God’s creation from a child of four who had just had his feeding tube removed had somehow summed up years of soul-searching, intellectualizing, rationalizing, and agonizing over why God had put me on this earth. I always told myself that to have created me as one crazy, screwed up, self-deluded, self-hating individual, He must have also created bourbon and had a few on the day He made me. Then I had kids.

Kids are God’s way of telling you to lighten up. Kids teach you that rain is good, mud is better, and puddles are the best. Watching them, you learn that dogs make great therapists since they listen, look interested, and yet you still have to figure out your own solutions. Kids also get you to look at your faith. Really, really look at your faith and no, not that religion that you have practiced for years without giving it much thought. They ask hard questions about what you actually believe about God, life, death, creation, prayer, and heaven. I think I missed a couple chapters in the parenting books I read when I was pregnant, because I was totally unprepared for those questions. And yet, I think maybe kids are also God’s way of telling you to quit fooling around with just doing religion and get on with exploring and expanding your faith.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Just Let Go

Matthew 14:22-32

Over time I have found that of all the people in the Bible, with the exception of Jesus of course, Peter is my favorite. He screws up way more often than he gets it right but Jesus loved him and more importantly believed in him anyway. I look at it this way: If I was going to trust my church on earth to anybody, would I really pick the guy who betrayed me three times, cut off a guy's ear, and babbled at all the important teaching moments throughout our entire friendship? That Peter guy? Not my first choice.

Obviously, Jesus knew all of Peter's failings. So what did He see in Peter? Pure faith and pure love. Peter would do anything for Jesus. When the disciples saw Jesus walking toward them on the water, they were afraid. Peter was the one who had the faith to say "If it's you Lord, tell me to come to you." He had the faith to get out of a boat, in a storm nonetheless, and walk across the water. There is no way I would be getting out of that boat! I'd be cowering with the rest of them and thinking Peter's finally flipped his lid. After a few steps, Peter faltered. The wind was so strong and the waves so large that the "real world" around him distracted him from his focus on Jesus. As soon as he started to doubt the wisdom of walking out of a boat at sea in a storm, he started to sink. But still Peter believed in Him, even when he doubted and started to sink. He still believed, calling on the Lord to save him. Peter was a fisherman so I'm willing to bet he knew how to swim. He didn't try to swim back to the boat on his own. He trusted Jesus to pull him up out of the waves. That is faith: trusting that Jesus isn't going to lead him into a stormy sea and then let him drown.

Can I doubt and believe at the same time? Sure, I do it all the time. It's called faith. If I believe in something I can see there is no room for doubt or faith, only fact. To believe in the power of Jesus Christ takes faith in something I cannot see, or even truly comprehend, which leaves room for doubt. Doubt is merely the fire that refines faith.

I describe myself as a cradle Catholic but more precisely I am a clumsy Catholic. I grew up in the religion. That does not guarantee faith however. I have staggered and stumbled along my whole life and every time I think I might almost have a clue, I find out I don't. I go to Mass several times a week and on the holy days. I receive the sacraments and, being a Vatican II baby, I read scripture. None of it is a sure ticket to true faith, only to religion.

But I know what that kind of faith looks like. I saw it in my father's eyes right before he died.
He was dying of lung cancer at the age of fifty-four. I was only fourteen then and the last time I saw him, he couldn't say more than a few words at time. He was suffocating slowly and I knew it. It was unthinkable to me that this big, loud, boisterous Irishman, who was always singing or telling some tall tale was about to be silenced forever. I was staring out the window with my mind racing. This was not the way life was supposed to work. He was supposed to see me grow up. He was supposed to walk me down the aisle at my wedding. He was supposed to hold my children and read them the same poems he'd read to me. But in God's plan, he was supposed to leave me at fourteen with an unforgettable image of trust and faith. I had received the sacrament of Confirmation ten days earlier but this moment was truly the confirmation of my faith.

Daddy called me away from the window to sit on his bed. He struggled to sit up straighter so he could look me in the eyes. He was so gray, so haggard looking, and yet there was a light and a peace in his eyes unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was a struggle for him to breathe, much less talk. He had to keep stopping every few words to catch his breath.

Taking both my hands, he said to me, “Well Nudnik, I think you and I both know that I’m not going to be here much longer. You know how much I love you and how proud I am of you. You've been so strong and so brave through all this, but now I want you to stay home. I don’t want you to come up anymore. I don’t want you to remember me like this. We had a lot of really good times and that’s what I want you to remember. And a day is going to come when you are going to get angry, really, really angry and when that day comes, you don’t get to be angry with God. You get angry with me because God never bought me the cigarettes and God never passed me a lighter. I did this to myself. God gave me a gift and I abused it. I just didn’t know back then and even when I found out how dangerous smoking was and I quit, it was just too late. The damage was already done. I’m so sorry that I have to leave you like this but I promise you I will see you again someday. Do you believe me?”

I had tears streaming down my face and I couldn't do any more than nod. But that wasn't enough for Daddy. He took off the oxygen mask and leaned into my face saying, "Tell me what you believe." How I managed to say anything at all when it felt like my throat closing I will never know. But I did tell him that I believed him. I told him I would see him again and he would be whole again. In that moment, we let go of each other, trusting that God would sustain us both, I in this life and he in the next. In that last moment we had together, I could see Jesus in Daddy's eyes and He called me out of the boat into the storm and for just a moment I walked on the waves. In that moment, I understood what faith really was about. It isn't about what you hang on to, it's about what you let go of and trust that God will be there to pull you up when you start to falter, when it's all just too much to take.

My father was right of course. I did get angry but even at the worst of my anger with God, I could hear not my dad's words echoing, but my own. I believe that God will bring us together again, that He will heal my wounds no matter how deep and how awful they seem to me. I believe that I will still have times when I doubt that power but those are the times when He will stretch out His hand to me before I sink beneath the waves. He will never let me drown. And every time I doubt, every time I start to sink, every time He pulls me back up, my faith gets stronger and purer. If I learn nothing else from this life, I will learn to trust Him, eventually anyway.

Thanks Daddy.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Be Bold!




The Story Behind The Tattoo

In an earlier post, I mentioned being described as bold, brash, and brazen for having a tattoo of a cross and stars on my right forearm. My tattoo was meant to be a reminder to myself of all that I believe in and am called to be. It serves as an antidote for that nasty little gremlin voice in my head that is constantly reminding me what a screw-up I am and how God couldn't possibly accept me "as is". I remind myself often that Jesus was not a nice quiet Jewish boy. He was a radical in every sense of the world. He challenged the status quo. He asked the hard questions no one wanted to face. He proclaimed boldly that the Kingdom of God was at hand. He was not mainstream by any stretch of the imagination. He calls his disciples to boldness in their proclamation of the Good News. I didn't set out to be bold. I sort of stumbled into boldness and landed in grace. Every time someone asks about my tattoo, I am given the opportunity to proclaim my faith.



Disclaimer: I am not recommending that anyone go out and get a tattoo.



Okay, now that I have that out of the way, let me tell you the "why" behind the tattoo and then I can explain the tattoo itself. From the time I was seventeen, I wanted a tattoo. To me it was something so deeply personal and even spiritual. No, I don't think skulls, demons, or Betty Boop are personal or spiritual. I am talking about a tattoo that I would design myself. I knew I wanted a white rose. To me a white rose signifies perfection. Just as white light is made up of all colors, a white rose can represent all the meanings that colored roses carry: love, affection,passion, friendship, loyalty, gentleness, grace, joy, harmony, calm and delight. My first sketches were all of long stemmed white roses.



At nineteen, after having survived an abusive boyfriend and the months afterwards when he stalked me everywhere I went, the rose sketches now also featured thorns and drops of blood. At twenty, when I met my husband, I considered two roses intertwined. He wasn't a big fan of tattoos and when we got engaged, he suggested I wait until after the wedding so I wasn't trying to find a dress that would hide it. I wasn't so sure I wanted to hide it but a wedding wasn't exactly the proper place to be flaunting a new tattoo in front of both families, neither of whom were likely to be thrilled at the idea.

After the wedding, there was never enough money and then there was the question of whether or not I could take the pain. After having my first child, who weighed in at eight pounds and eleven ounces, without an epidural or drugs, I knew pain was not going to be an issue, but now I was a mom. Moms don't have tattoos. Or do they? I still sketched, always with the rose in there somewhere. After twelve years, as the marriage was falling apart, I sketched one of a stained glass window with the rose in the center and the word "Nevermore" at the bottom as a tribute to The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe. The character says his soul is trapped by the shadow of the raven. I was in despair and felt completely trapped in my own home.

At thirty-four, I filed for divorce. Six weeks later, I had created the final sketch of my tattoo and made an appointment to have my tattoo done. I had to wait three weeks to get the artist that I wanted. I went to a Healing Mass with my friend Patti on the night before my appointment. She tried desperately to change my mind. She offered to give me back my deposit money. She offered to buy me a cross necklace, ring, bracelet, anything I wanted if I please, please, please wouldn't do this. I was not about to be swayed. I had waited seventeen years and that was long enough.

I wanted a mark of my faith. God had saved me from myself and had given me the strength to take myself and my children out of a bad situation. I wanted a reminder to myself of who I am and what I am called to be. I was not thinking that this would be such a powerful symbol to the people I encounter. That never even entered into the equation for me. For the first time in my life, I did something that I wanted and in my mind it benefited no one but me. Little did I know how many conversations about faith would stem from this particular white rose.

It was ironic to me that it took three hours to have it done - the same amount of time that Jesus hung on the cross. I had to face my fear of needles and even though I hate the sight of blood, I watched her work. People always ask me if it hurt. In a word -YES! The pain was like a really bad cat scratch, except it didn't stop for hours. The needle literally colored on my arm, one small section at a time for nearly three hours. Was it worth it? Again - YES! I have not regretted it for a moment. I do not try to hide it. I am not ashamed of it. I love when I run into someone who will ask me what it means as opposed to the usual "Where did you have it done?" or "Did it hurt?" or my least favorite, "Did you do it out of spite?" which I get because of the timing of it.

So what does it mean? I am an avid reader and writer. I thrive on symbolism. So here is the symbolism behind the tattoo.


My Tattoo Defined

Placement

My right forearm, where it is a constant reminder of all that I am and all I extend to people as I extend my hand in greeting


Pelfrey
A tribute to my true self – the woman my father wanted me to become


The Gold Cross
A reminder that Christ is risen and I am saved – if He can rise from the dead, He can heal and forgive anything I endure in this life


The White Rose
The perfection that I seek, which can only be found through Christ


The Pink Starburst
The love and mercy of Christ flowing freely from His sacrifice


The Ten Spiked Stars
The Ten Commandments and the crowning with thorns


The Eight Green Jewels
The Eight Beatitudes


The Twelve Purple Bars
The Twelve Points of the Apostles Creed


The Colors Used
Black, White, Green, Red, Purple,– the Liturgical Colors along with Blue and Yellow (Gold, which is often used with White) - the addition of Blue represents the water of Baptism, when I was reborn as a daughter of God


Further Explanation:
(taken from the Catholic Encylopedia - see links)

LITURGICAL COLORS - SYMBOLISM

Outside of Rome uniformity of observance was affected in the second quarter of the nineteenth century by the abrogation of other uses. In the Western Church only the Ambrosian Rite retains its peculiar colors. Most of the Oriental rites have no prescribed liturgical colors. The Greek Rite alone has a fixed usage but even among them it is not of strict obligation. The Ruthenians follow the Roman regulation since 1891. The variety of liturgical colors in the Church arose from the mystical meaning attached to them. Thus white, the symbol of light, typifies innocence and purity, joy and glory; red, the language of fire and blood, indicates burning charity and the martyr's generous sacrifice; green, the hue of plants and trees, bespeaks the hope of life eternal; violet, the gloomy cast of the mortified, denotes affliction and melancholy; while black, the universal emblem of mourning, signifies the sorrow of death and the somberness of the tomb
.

THE EIGHT BEATITUDES

The solemn blessings (beatitudines, benedictiones) which mark the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, the very first of Our Lord's sermons in the Gospel of St. Matthew (5:3-10)
.
Four of them occur again in a slightly different form in the
Gospel of St. Luke (6:22), likewise at the beginning of a sermon, and running parallel to Matthew 5-7, if not another version of the same. And here they are illustrated by the opposition of the four curses (24-26
).
The fuller account and the more prominent place given the Beatitudes in
St. Matthew are quite in accordance with the scope and the tendency of the First Gospel, in which the spiritual character of the Messianic kingdom -- the paramount idea of the Beatitudes -- is consistently put forward, in sharp contrast with Jewish prejudices. The very peculiar form in which Our Lord proposed His blessings make them, perhaps, the only example of His sayings that may be styled poetical -- the parallelism of thought and expression, which is the most striking feature of Biblical poetry
, being unmistakably clear.

The text of St. Matthew runs as follows:

Blessed are the
poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Verse 3)



Blessed are the meek: for they shall posses the land. (Verse 4)


Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted. (Verse 5
)

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill. (Verse 6
)

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. (Verse 7
)

Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. (Verse 8
)

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. (Verse 9
)

Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Verse 10
)



The Ten Commandments

1 - I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt not have any strange gods before me.

2 - Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

3 - Remember to keep holy the Lord's Day.

4 - Honor thy Father and Mother.

5 - Thou shalt not kill.

6 - Thou shalt not commit adultery.

7 - Thou shalt not steal.

8 - Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

9 - Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.

10 - Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.



The Twelve Points of Faith found in the Apostles Creed


1) I
believe in God the Father Almighty Creator of Heaven
and earth
2) And in
Jesus Christ
, His only Son, our Lord;
3) Who was conceived by the
Holy Ghost
, born of the Virgin Mary,
4) Suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried
;
5) He descended into
hell
; the third day He rose again from the dead;
6) He
ascended into Heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God
the Father Almighty;
7) From thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
8) I
believe in the Holy Ghost
,
9) The Holy Catholic
Church, the communion of saints
10) The forgiveness of sins
,
11) The
resurrection of the body
, and
12) life everlasting.


Can I get an Amen?

Monday, July 28, 2008

Hey Lord - Speak Up!


"Make time for quiet moments as God whispers and the world is loud."
- Author Unknown

God's wonderful sense of humor: I sat down to write this, set the Ipod to Benedictine Chant, typed the quote above and my cell phone rang. First, my best friend in Savannah and then my estranged husband called me in rapid succession. Thanks to both of them for proving my point.

I struggle to find silence in this busy world. I am the mother of two young boys and live with my mother and older sister. I am rarely home alone and when I do get time alone I have laundry to do at the laundromat; errands to run; phone calls and emails to return; and then there's the radio in the car. That is all the external noise I deal with on a day-to-day basis. Then even more deafening is the constant internal racket. There is this nasty little gremlin voice in my head constantly harping on every move I make.


"Oh you are NOT wearing THAT are you? You do NOT have the figure for THAT and you know it!"

"Wonderful! You're yelling at the boys again. Way to scream like a banshee! Trying out for the Mother-of-the-Year awards are you?"

"Do you even read what you write? With that many typos, its barely literate never mind readable!"

"You aren't going to call back so-and-so? You know this is why you suck at keeping friends. You're a total flake."

I could go on for pages but I'll skip the diatribe tonight. I know God is in there somewhere aching to get through to me that He loves me, flaky banshee that I am. I wish He would just shout down the gremlin in my head instead of waiting for me to choose to silence it and choose to try to hear Him. I wish He would just text me sometime - "C U @ Mass K? Luv ya! ;) God".

In this world of constant noise and constant communication, silence and stillness are becoming rare commodities. My spiritual director has often tried to convince me to spend more time in the adoration chapel at my parish of St. James. I can't do it. It is not for lack of desire but lack of patience. I walk into the chapel and want nothing more than to kneel before the Blessed Sacrament. Then the noise starts. Someone has to read and turn pages in a book. Someone else needs to dig out a tissue from a plastic pack. Another has forgotten to silence the cell phone. And the keys - like somehow it is of utmost importance to locate one's keys BEFORE exiting the chapel, even if the key chain is eight inches long and buried at the bottom of a seemingly bottomless purse. I do realize this is my issue and no one else's. Patience is a virtue, unfortunately it is not one of mine. Okay, so the chapel is not the place for me. Then where?

I go to the beach often in the winter. I love it at that time of year, so wild, deserted, seemingly so desolate, yet there is always some shore bird feasting on crabs or a hawk hunting mice along the bluffs. I can be alone and occasionally I manage to silence the gremlin long enough to hear whispers in the waves. But it's July now and the beach is crowded most of the time. How do I carve out that silence for myself when I am lucky to be alone for the twenty minutes it takes to drive to and from my weekly therapy appointments?

Maybe it isn't so much the silence that I am seeking, but the stillness. There is an inner quiet that comes when I stop listening to all the noise around me and especially stop listening to the gremlin in my head. Little by little, I am finding ways to find silence and to use those moments of silence to find stillness, even if it is only in small doses.

I take the long way home from therapy. I shut off the radio and roll down the windows. I silence the cell phone at night and don't turn it on in the morning until I am ready to deal with the world's intrusions. I lay awake in my bed for at least ten minutes in the morning and just breathe. At night, I draw on the image St. Therese of Lisieux often used in her autobiography. I try to picture myself as a child, curled on the lap of God, my father.

For me, I was always on my father's lap as a child. He read to me every night and he hated Dr. Seuss and The Bernstein Bears. He read me poetry by Longfellow, Frost, Dickenson, Poe, Tennyson, Blake, and many others. It was more than my little child's mind could fathom at the time, but I loved the rhythm and the flow of the words. I loved the intonation and inflection of his voice. There was a passion and a love in the words he read to me that went beyond the words on the page.
This was his gift to me, not only as a little girl, but even now as a grown woman.

That is such a powerful image for me, I can place myself on God's lap and listen for His words, which I may not fathom yet, but someday, in the stillness, I will understand the passion and the love in His voice. Someday, when I can shut up long enough and shut out the world long enough. For now, I take comfort in knowing that He loves me enough to keep talking to me, even if I fidget and squirm.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Soul Food

Matthew 13: 24-29 Parable Of The Weeds

Jesus describes the sower as sowing good seed and his enemy coming in the night to sow weeds amongst the wheat. I have often heard this explained this way: the good people of the world, those who follow God's commands, are the wheat, while the bad people of the world are the weeds.

I have a hard time with that. It just seems so black and white, so harsh. Where's the love, the mercy, the forgiveness? God did not create me to be perfect in this life, ask anyone who knows me. Certainly, He could have made me completely perfect, without sin or weakness, if He had chosen to do so. But perhaps in His great wisdom, He recognized that by allowing my shortcomings, I would have a greater appreciation of His mercy because I actually needed it. I would know what it was to be separated from His love, not entirely, but in part. And in the emptiness of that separation would grow a great desire to be in His love always.

For me, the field is my soul. The sower is Jesus. The good seeds are all the gifts of the Father: hope, peace, joy, love, trust, faith, charity, and all the virtues and gifts of the Spirit. The weeds are sown by Satan himself. They are doubt, fear, anxiety, anger, pride, lust, sloth, envy, gluttony, avarice, and all the other lesser sins that harden my heart, choking out the goodness.

Thankfully, Jesus is a watchful gardener. He tends my soul most gently. Through the waters of Baptism, He first waters the seeds He has planted. He adds the warm sunlight of Reconciliation provide light to allow the seeds to grow. Confirmation adds mulch to protect the young plants taking root. He supports the soil with the Miracle-Grow of the Eucharist. The constant food provides much needed nourishment to the tender plants.

Yes, there are many weeds in the garden of my soul and like the slaves, I would like very much to pull up every last one of them. However, the sower says to leave them until the harvest, lest any of the wheat be pulled up with the weeds. What is faith if I have never doubted? What is hope if I do not know fear? How can I forgive if I have never been hurt?

For now, I can accept His gentle tending, knowing that day will come when these weeds that sometimes seem to be overwhelming me and choking me, will be pulled up. I can bask in the sunlight of His mercy and forgiveness. I can drink in the nourishment of His love. By accepting His careful attention, I can soften my soul to be a place where wheat will grow in great abundance. In my last moments, the weeds will be harvested along with the wheat. Then, Jesus the sower, will remove the weeds from my soul, leaving only the wheat. I will be perfect in His love and I will remain there always. And after the harvest will be the everlasting feast of love.








Saturday, July 12, 2008

Prodigal Daughter Part 3

Luke 15: 11-32 Father of the Prodigal


I've already spent days, if not weeks, with both the prodigal son and his elder brother. Until now, I really skipped over the father in this parable. Why? I guess I didn't want to be so bold as to place myself in the father's role since by most interpretations the father represents God. But as a number of people have pointed out to me, anyone with a four inch tattoo of a cross and stars tattooed on her right forearm is bold, brash, and brazen with her faith. I'll get to the tattoo is a later post. For now let's stick with bold and look at Dad.


So Dad has two sons. The older son does all that his father asks of him, patiently learning the family business, knowing that the day will come when he will take over his share of the land. The younger son is not so patient. He doesn't want to learn. He wants to go out into the world and make his own way. He can do it all on his own and he is eager to prove it. Dad loves them both. He sees their uniqueness and they are very dear to him. He wants to see them grow into fine, strong, good men. He knows they each need to follow their own paths to get there.


One day, his younger son comes to him and asks for his share of the inheritance now. What did Dad do when presented with that request? Did he just pull out a sack of gold coins and send the impetuous young man on his way? Or did he try to reason with his son? Did he ask his elder son to try to talk sense to his kid brother? Given what I do know about the father's loving response later on, I would be willing to bet my own inheritance that he sat the younger son down and explained that he would give him everything he was asking for, but that it might be more than he was ready to handle. This amount of resources comes with a great deal of responsibility. In the end, Dad allowed his son the freedom to choose for himself. The version of that lecture in my house was, "You have a choice to make. You can choose to do right or you can choose to do wrong. If you choose to do wrong, you have to suffer the consequences."


I know the rest - kid one takes off, blows through everything, returns broke but alive and repentant while kid two stays on, working hard, and resents the living hell of the welcome home party for this idiot brother of his. But what about Dad? What was he doing while the younger one was gone? I am sure he worried constantly. He knows his sons and he knows the younger one was not ready to accept so much responsibility. I wonder if he heard stories from the caravans of traders about his son's fast and loose lifestyle. I wonder if he heard of the famine that struck the country where his son was living. I wonder if he feared that his son would starve to death in a far off land and he would never again be able to sit with his child to share a meal.


I know he caught sight of the prodigal while he was still a long way off. Had he left word with the servants and field hands that he was to be told immediately if anyone happened to catch sight of the young man on the road to the estate? Did he look off down the road day in and day out, praying for the safe return of his son? In my home that prayer goes like this, "Please, Lord, let this kid be OK. Let him come home safely. And please, Lord, don't let me kill him when he gets here."


Dad's moment of joy was short-lived because no sooner had the celebration started then the other kid goes off the deep end. The older brother starts in on his father saying that after all these years and all this hard work he never got a party like this. Dad tries to reason with the stubborn elder brother. He pleads with him to see it as the miracle that it is. This younger brother was dead for all they knew and now has been restored to them, a lot thinner and a lot wiser.


I wonder how Dad finally brought the two back together again. They are brothers after all and he wants them to have a good working relationship again. Dad could see them each as individuals. They each had strengths and weaknesses and if they could work together, they would do great things with all that he was giving them.


For me, I have to stop and realize that God isn't going to give me everything I want, need, and bug Him about all at once. I couldn't handle it all if He did. I can barely handle what responsibility He does trust me with and even then I manage to screw up more than I get it right. But then, in His great mercy, He forgives me. I can come to Reconciliation and start over anew with His grace. And because He knows me as I truly am, He can smile on me when my Act of Contrition comes out like this:


"Oh my God, I am heartily sorry that I never remember the rest of this prayer that Sr. Mary Lynch tried so hard to drill into my brain. Have mercy on me because You know I am sinner. Grant me the grace to go forward from here and try to avoid these sins."


And we both know I'll be back before too long. Bold, brash, and brazen? Yes I am. Better add broken to that list as well.



Thursday, July 3, 2008

Psalmist vs. Tennyson





From: Psalm 23



"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff They comfort me"



From: The Charge of The Light Brigade
by Alfred Lord Tennyson



"Theirs not to make reply. Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred."




So I guess the question of my soul is this: which is my reality? Do I trust in the comfort and guidance promised to me by my Lord? Do I trust Him to lead me THROUGH the valley of the shadow of death? Or do I see myself sent INTO the valley of death? Do I see myself in the position to engage the Lord in conversation about my life? Or do I see myself as ordered forward with no recourse but to follow blindly, unquestioning into seeming oblivion?

The Light Brigade followed their orders boldly and bravely, unquestioning despite a grievous error in their commander's judgment. It seems he misinterpreted the orders given to him. As a result, two-thirds of the soldiers under his command were slaughtered by the Russian guns around them. I'm not real keen on those odds.

In sharp contrast, Jesus, in His prayer for his disciples, says "As long as I was with them, I guarded them with Your name which You gave me. I kept careful watch and not one of them was lost, none but him who was destined to be lost - in fulfillment of the Scripture." (John 17:12) In addition to that, Jesus dwells within me and I am His through the power of my Baptism. He will keep careful watch over me and I will not be lost.

How did I come to this comparison in the first place? I am reminded at times that the church here on earth is made up of human beings. And to be clear I do not mean only the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, but the church as the community of believers in Christ the Lord. I see shortcomings and failings splashed across newspapers and the Internet as though I should be shocked that human beings make mistakes, saying or doing things that are hurtful to others. The media would like me to believe that being a Christian means being perfect when what it really means is to be broken but forgiven anyway. As to the Church as an institution, I have the free will to follow orders blindly or to question what I see as possible misinterpretations of God's commands. God did not give me a mind and the ability to reason so that I could set them aside.

So I need to remind myself, daily and even many times throughout my day, that it is THROUGH the valley that I travel. I do not go blindly INTO it to meet my doom. And I will encounter doom, but not every doom is a "big doom". There is a little battle against doom everyday. In every encounter with another, I can be facing "little doom" in fear of rejection, scorn, anger, or judgment. I was given free will and the commandment to love the Lord with all my MIND, which uses reason, logic, and questions to learn, all my HEART, which uses love and yet can be broken so very easily, and all my SOUL, where my strength drawn from my faith truly lies hidden like a deep well of solace. To love my Lord is to follow Him wherever He may lead me and yet I can speak to my Lord, question His judgment, argue, fight and rail against what I may see as unreasonable or impossible. I can question why and how. He may answer me and He may not. But when I have exhausted all my human reasoning and excuses, I ultimately have to trust that my Lord did not save me only to lead me to slaughter. No matter what evil, big or small, befalls me in this world; my journey will be THROUGH the valley to dwell in the house of my Lord forever.














Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Serve Your Dragons Tea

"Serve Your Dragons Tea"

There is nothing like a bit of Buddhist poetry to remind me that we Christians are not the only ones searching for wisdom and understanding. So what does it mean?

The dragon represents fear while the tea ceremony is a ceremony of great dignity and respect. It is not about surrendering to fear at all, but about understanding fear, respecting it, and being able to move about with dignity in the presence of that fear.

So what does this have to do with being Christian? Allow me to present another quote, perhaps a bit more familiar.

"Be not afraid."

This phrase appears 365 times in Scripture. That is once for every day in a year. So I have to ask myself this question: "Why am I so often held prisoner to my fears?"

Perhaps because my faith is weaker than I would like to admit. Perhaps I forget to place myself in the presence of my Lord and Savior and to trust in His power.

Does fear have power?

Power is defined as "the ability to act or produce an effect". Fear is an emotion. It has no power in its own right. I give it power when I allow fear to control my actions. For example; fear did not keep me in two abusive relationships. I did that because I allowed myself to use fear as an excuse to not act, to not use my power to change my surroundings.

It has taken me years to come to any understanding of my fears. God allows me to experience fear because there is so much I can learn from fear. I learn that I have to place my trust in Him. I learn that with His power and guidance, I can trust myself to navigate the stormy waters of life. I learn that fear can teach me to avoid situations that are dangerous or unhealthy. Without experiencing fear, how would I learn to trust? How would I know safety? How would I know security?

So what am I so afraid of? Silly things scare me like bees, needles, tight spaces, and thunderstorms. But then there is cold hard fear. Fear of being abandoned, alone, unloved, unwanted and forgotten. Fear of not living life but surviving it. Fear of fear controlling me. Do you see the vicious cycles I set up for myself? I lock myself into the clutches of a monstrous dragon called FEAR. Now what?

Now, I stop and try to understand. Why am I afraid? What power do I have? How can I use my ability to act to control fear instead of allowing fear to control me? As I journal, I can lock my fears to the page and now I have a respect for what my fears are trying to teach me. I can serve tea.

Okay, so not always. I have some dragons that smash the china and devour the table. But then every day I can look to the Bible and remember not to be afraid because I am precious in His sight. I have the power of God within me and fear has nothing on that.