Milestones

Guess whose turning four on Saturday?

And speaking of growing up, guess who just lost his first tooth? "I can't quite get over it," he kept repeating all day. Funny how emotional Jared and I both were about one lost tooth. (One down, 79 to go.)

The Chair Without Distinction

I have few thoughts to share this week ("thank God!" you are probably thinking). My sweet husband spent the majority of our evening putting our upstairs bathroom toilet back in its allotted place. Now at least we don't look so trashy with a toilet sitting in our back yard, though perhaps it gave the neighbors something to talk about.  In case you are interested, a couple weeks back, the Dynamic Duo thought it really funny to flush not one, not two, but three Duplo Legos down. You do see the problem. I cannot even begin to share with you the antics that went into getting those blasted pieces of plastic out but I do believe there was some hoisting of the toilet on a tree limb, as well as threats of utilizing acid. Ultimately, our kind neighbor Tom was able to assist Jared in the retrieval of the final piece. It was a Duplo bee in case you were wondering.  Jared has a few stories and I am sure a few choice words about the whole matter. Personally I think he and Tom should have celebrated with at least a beer. But tonight, he and I did enjoy some Whitey's ice cream. The twins have been banned from the bathroom. Kidding. Kind of.

I found this poem weeks ago and immediately loved it because you do know of course that about every inanimate object that fills this house was more than likely bought at a garage sale, thrift store, church rummage sale, or given to us, though I cannot testify to either the usefulness or practicality of anything I drag home. But mostly I love the second stanza. It is my hope that I can become the the kind of person, and that our home can be the kind of home, which offers a bit of solace and comfort to all those around, friend or stranger, so that any burdens being carried might become a bit lighter. Peace and goodness on this Wednesday.  

The Chair Without Distinction
Luci Shaw

October 1, 2007

This, in praise of inanimate objects,
of the piece I brought home last year
from the church rummage sale.
A useful color in basic fabric,
a button missing among its worn tufts.
Sturdy, not graceful. Dependable,
not particularly easy. In a corner of
the room, out of the way, people sit on it
when the space gets crowded. They chat
with friends, coffee cups in hand,
then rise and move on without
noticing. Why should they notice.

Blessed are those who simply sit
and wait for people who need
to take the weight off their feet.

Poetry Wednesday

Ain't we lucky we got 'em

Good Times. (If you don't get the reference in the title, you are too young. My own husband said, "Webster?" Oh please.)

Ruthless with a hose.

Painting our papier-mache bee.

Russell loving on his baby. 

Enjoying a Thursday at Wildlife Prairie State Park with our dear friends the Nelsons.

Taking little brother Russell under his wing.

That's my girl. With her ever-expanding vocabulary, her most favorite words are: "Boys. Outside. Happy." And of course when she says, "Hi Mommy," it melts my heart.

Taking advantage of more summery weather at the park and playing a little baseball.

Good-natured and Untidy

"Metropolitan Anthony Bloom...was asked...how a person might be humble. 'It is too much to ask for,' he replied. 'Just try to be grateful.'"- from The Ladder of the Beatitudes by Jim Forest

I am a list maker, though not a very good one. Ages ago I would take time to pick up pen and paper and write things which I deemed important down. These days I usually, albeit unwisely, try my best at a mental check-list. If I am feeling overly energetic, I might squash my tendency toward procrastination and scrawl something down on the inside of a kitchen cabinet door hued brilliant green with peeling chalkboard paint now made jagged by little fingers who cannot resist tugging loose edges. A couple months ago, Leslie kindly lent me her copy of Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are. While embracing and cultivating a spirit of thanksgiving by creating a concrete list of those things for which I am grateful was not something unfamiliar to me per se, the notion of disciplining my mind to unearth things to be grateful for within the irritating events of my daily life, though seemingly obvious, was revolutionary. Suddenly it was clear to me that I was responsible for my joy, that my lack of thanksgiving in all things was extinguishing my joy; and not only mine but of all those precious, innocent ones around me. By potentially killing the joy and allowing anger, despair, impatience, and lack of self-control to reign freely within our home, I was in danger of leading my children astray by my sins. And yes, it would be better for me to have a millstone hung around my neck and be drowned in the depth of the sea than to cause my children to stumble. And so in addition to verbally offering thanks, I have launched a list. Inside an ordinary blue blank-paged notebook held together only by staples, I am endeavoring (ever so poorly) to veer away from my typical pattern of storing things in my head and to physically write down words which will serve as my memory; a list of specific things for which I am grateful. Things like the color orange, Winnie-the-Pooh, cookies received on May Day, bacon from the Geests' fried crisp, dandelions handpicked by my boys, a white kitchen sink, shade, picnics, coffee with my husband, friends. Simple reminders to give thanks. At all times. In everything.

From "The Leaf and The Cloud"
Mary Oliver
Poetry Wednesday

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before,

like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water-sparks from its wings.

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or not.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves.

A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life.

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

In the glare of your mind, be modest.
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

Live with the beetle, and the wind.

I received the preceding selection from Mary Oliver's larger work "The Leaf and The Cloud" in an email today. I consider this a gift (thank you, Sarah). And if you have a moment, you can read an article published in the May edition of a local magazine here about the Trappist monks who crafted my father's casket. Sarah wrote the article and related that if she would have had more space, she would have concluded her piece with this selection. Peace and Goodness.

Catch

 

If you knew my father at all, you knew that he LOVED sports, specifically baseball, more specifically that seemingly forsaken team on Chicago's North side. While playing catch with my father as a child (a request he never denied me), dad would toss pop flys high into the air and yell out that a catch, which he would refer to as "a can of corn," would certainly guarantee a Cubs' win in the World Series that year. I would race forward, backward, sideways, eyes never diverting from that white, scuffed ball sailing high above the trees. And I will assure there were plenty of catches and shouts of "Cubs Win! Cubs Win! Holy Cow!" But of course, you know the rest of the story. 

A day after we buried my father, I crawled into a blanket and hid myself in my basement, closing my eyes, and hoping to erase, at least temporarily, any memory of the last several weeks, wishing that my dad was at home, comfortable in his favorite blue recliner, eyes fixated on a game at the Friendly Confines, emphatically stating, "It isn't over until the Fat Lady sings," rather than lying underneath the ground in a wood box across the river from me.  But I couldn't. So instead I did what was really more appropriate, more honoring to my father's memory (though he also really enjoyed a good nap). While the three other children slept, I grabbed my eldest son and got out the ball and glove for a game of catch. With each thump of the ball into the leather glove, tears began to quietly trickle down my face and I began to tell my son again the story of how when I was a little girl, Grandpa and I would play catch. 

Lilacs

Our lilac tree finally unveiled herself this week, bursting a brilliant purple, and oh the joy. And while I typically attempt not to hasten the demise of the flowers in our yard, I simply could not resist applying the pruning shears to this jewel of creation and bringing them in. Why own milk glass vases if not to put fresh cut lilacs in them? Russell thinks they smell like marshmallows. Hmm.

The poem is lengthy but was exactly what I wanted for this week's post. And while I am not a New Englander like Ms. Lowell, her sentiments ring true for this Midwestern girl. A peaceful rest of the week to you. And if you get a chance, drink in some lilacs; they are intoxicating and will bring joy to a weary soul.

Lilacs
Amy Lowell

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;
Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom
Above a cellar dug into a hill.
You are everywhere.
You were everywhere.
You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,
And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.
You stood by the pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,
You persuaded the housewife that her dishpan was of silver.
And her husband an image of pure gold.
You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms
Through the wide doors of Custom Houses—
You, and sandal-wood, and tea,
Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks
When a ship was in from China.
You called to them: “Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,
May is a month for flitting.”
Until they writhed on their high stools
And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers.
Paradoxical New England clerks,
Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the “Song of Solomon”
So many verses before bed-time,
Because it was the Bible.
The dead fed you
Amid the slant stones of graveyards.
Pale ghosts who planted you
Came in the nighttime
And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.
You are of the green sea,
And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.
You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell kites and marbles,
You are of great parks where every one walks and nobody is at home.
You cover the blind sides of greenhouses
And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass
To your friends, the grapes, inside.

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
You have forgotten your Eastern origin,
The veiled women with eyes like panthers,
The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled pashas.
Now you are a very decent flower,
A reticent flower,
A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,
Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight
And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.
Maine knows you,
Has for years and years;
New Hampshire knows you,
And Massachusetts
And Vermont.
Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island;
Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea.
You are brighter than apples,
Sweeter than tulips,
You are the great flood of our souls
Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts,
You are the smell of all Summers,
The love of wives and children,
The recollection of gardens of little children,
You are State Houses and Charters
And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.
May is lilac here in New England,
May is a thrush singing “Sun up!” on a tip-top ash tree,
May is white clouds behind pine-trees
Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.
May is a green as no other,
May is much sun through small leaves,
May is soft earth,
And apple-blossoms,
And windows open to a South Wind.
May is full light wind of lilac
From Canada to Narragansett Bay.

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac.
Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,
Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,
Lilac in me because I am New England,
Because my roots are in it,
Because my leaves are of it,
Because my flowers are for it,
Because it is my country
And I speak to it of itself
And sing of it with my own voice
Since certainly it is mine.

Poetry Wednesday

Everything to someone

"Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness." G.K. Chesteron

Thank you Sue for sharing this with me.

Batter my heart

Holy Sonnets XIV

John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Abba Joseph came to Abba Lot and said to him: "Father, according to my strength I keep a moderate rule of prayer and fasting, quiet and meditation, and as far as I can control my imagination; what more must I do?" And the old man rose and held his hands toward the sky so that his fingers became like flames of fire and he said, "If you will, you shall become all flame." - The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

If the Mississippi River had not been so engorged, her currents straying from their regular confinement into the streets of downtown Davenport, I never would have seen the crowd of people on that Pascha day. We were hung over from the lack of sleep but still intoxicated by the triumphant singing of "Christ is Risen!" dancing children, and clanging bells; we were heading to another celebration which would be abundant with meats, cheeses, eggs, and rich sweets.

The parking lot outside the mission was jammed full of men, women, and children sitting and eating and drinking and laughing around stark metal tables. I caught a glimpse of several individuals, rabbit ears precariously plopped on their heads, serving the guests before them. Perhaps if we were better people with bigger hearts, we would have stopped and accepted the invitation to the banquet before our eyes; we would have chosen to delay our scheduled feast for a few minutes more and broken bread with these strangers confident that the resurrected Christ who we were celebrating on this day was most assuredly in our midst. "How do we get the poor into the Church?" I queried out loud. Without pause my husband answered my question: "We become poor."

"Blessed are the poor in spirit," my young son recites each day for school. I have become so familiar with the words that I don't even blink an eye, but I should. Every time. Poverty: Material, physical, spiritual, intellectual. "If you want to save your life, you must lose it." It is foolish to truly follow the path which Christ taught, isn't it? To willingly pick up your cross and deny your self. And who really wants to look silly and be judged ridiculous, or worse inconsequential, by friends, neighbors, co-workers, or even by the unknown man or woman walking down the street? Who wants to be poor? But Jesus takes everything we assume to be good and true and right and turns it upside down and then dares us to follow His way, the way of the cross, the way of humiliation and suffering. In His kingdom it is not the comfortable, the healthy, the smiling, happy people with their homes, cars, and not just their daily bread but luxuries and vacations who are blessed, who inherit the kingdom, who are called the children of God. (In other words, it is not me.) Rather it is the poor, the meek, the persecuted, the grief-stricken, the broken, the weak, the ill, the ones with dirty fingernails, crazy stories, alcohol breath, and body odor; it is the ones we would rather cast aside to be dealt with by the professionals with degrees; it is the least of us that Christ says are blessed.

"Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death," my family will sing before every meal and at every time of prayer throughout this Paschal season. And more than anything, I desire to live the resurrected life; I want the elements of heaven and life to triumph over the forces of hell and death; I want to be all flame. I saw His face in those nameless individuals huddled around a free meal on that Pascha Day; I heard Him whisper "Blessed are the poor" through the voice of my husband. A wise priest once advised me, "Don't think too highly of yourself." While I have a guess where the next decades may lead me and my family, only through God's grace am I able to recognize the muck in my own heart that needs to be purified. How can I even consider conveying love to others when daily I do not reflect Christ's love to my current guests, my husband and children, instead wounding them with the harsh words of a tongue unrestrained? How can I attempt to be a peacemaker when there is so much anger, so much lack of self control entrenched in and rotting out my own heart? How can I become poor when there are so many shoes and coats and shirts and pants and possessions cluttering up my closets and my home?  But thanks be to God who "batters my heart" and "seeks to mend...to break, blow, burn, and make me new." Christ is Risen!

Poetry Wednesday

Nothing we can do but love

What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend. - Dorothy Day 

The Mystery of the Poor

 Dorothy Day

It is most surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow and the joy of our vocation assures us we are on the right path.

On Easter Day, on awakening late after the long midnight services in our parish church, I read over the last chapter of the four Gospels and felt that I received great light and understanding with the reading of them. "They have taken the Lord out of His tomb and we do not know where they have laid Him," Mary Magdalene said, and we can say this with her in times of doubt and questioning. How do we know we believe? How do we know we indeed have faith? Because we have seen His hands and His feet in the poor around us. He has shown Himself to us in them. We start by loving them for Him, and we soon love them for themselves, each one a unique person, most special!

In that last glorious chapter of St. Luke, Jesus told his followers, "Why are you so perturbed? Why do questions arise in your minds? Look at My hands and My feet. It is I Myself. Touch Me and see. No ghost has flesh and bones as you can see I have." They were still unconvinced, for it seemed too good to be true. "So He asked them, 'Have you anything to eat?' They offered Him a piece of fish they had cooked which He took and ate before their eyes."

How can I help but think of these things every time I sit down at Chrystie Street or Peter Maurin Farm and look around at the tables filled with the unutterably poor who are going through their long-continuing crucifixion. It is most surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow and the joy of our vocation assures us we are on the right path.

Most certainly, it is easier to believe now that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the sycamore trees in the wasteland across from the Catholic Worker office, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park across the way. There are wars and rumors of war, poverty and plague, hunger and pain. Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, God's continuing promise to us that He is with us always, with His comfort and joy, if we only ask.

The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.

Originally printed in the April 1964 Catholic Worker.

A blessed May Day and St. Thomas Sunday to you all. Christ is Risen!