There Is No Wealth But Life

I am thankful 2/21/2010

By Rae February 21, 2010 Gratitude 7 Comments

For socks. Well-made socks are one of life’s best comforts.

For relatively pain-free days. It only takes a little pain to remind me of how very blessed I am most of the time.

For liturgical seasons. There is something incredibly helpful about joining in with others in prolonged times of penance, celebration, or simply living. This is especially true when it happens to be a time that does not correspond to my current state. “Weep, though you do not feel sorrowful” is just as solid advice as “smile, though your heart is breaking.”

For kind in-laws. I am quite confident that I am not the type of woman they would have picked for their son/brother. Yet they have responded not only with accommodation of my foibles, but generosity and love.

Motivation and Paper Clips

By Rae February 18, 2010 Good to Know 10 Comments

Erin’s Just One Week is my favorite blog for consistent practical nudges to build better habits. What I love most about it is the way that Erin approaches the topic: instead of stuffy self-help advice, Erin writes about her own goals and struggles. And that leaves me constantly thinking “oh, I should do that too!”

Last month Erin posted about her effort to post daily. She wrote that she posted every day because she did not want to break the chain of daily posts that she had completed. I did not care about that particular goal for myself, but then I read that Erin had “heard of people striving to lose weight who string together paperclips for each day they work out, and they have to start all over if they ‘break the chain’” and something clicked. I have been doing fairly well with getting enough exercise over the course of a week, but while there are days that I go for ten mile run/walks, there are also days that I do almost nothing physical. And when I say nothing, I mean that it is a good thing that my bedroom and the bathroom are upstairs from the kitchen and computer, or I would not move at all.

So I bought paper clips and asked my husband if he would like to join me. Of course we made certain to specify that there would be no sense of competition or gloating if the other broke his/her chain first. Or not.

Anyway, our rules are simple. Each day that we run, walk, or crawl three miles we get a paper clip to add to our chain. Additional paper clips may be added in increments of three miles as well as various numbers of repetitions of lifting weights etc. We must add at least one paper clip to the chain every day or else we have to start over.

And somehow, this works. In the past four weeks I have broken my chain three times. That may not sound too impressive, but it is a tremendous improvement over the frequency of entirely sedentary days in the past several months. I have asked Josh several times how it is that paper clips are suddenly so important to us. He says that it is simply the way humans work. And suddenly I find myself wondering what other simple tricks I need to make myself actually do the things that I must do to achieve my goals.

If you have any paper clip style suggestions, please share!

Ash Wednesday and Unfaithfulness

By Rae February 17, 2010 Holy Days 5 Comments

At today’s Mass, after hearing the Gospel, we all line up to do not what Jesus commands, but the opposite. Unlike Holy Thursday, when we act out the command of Christ as literally as we can, today we do just what Jesus says not to do. He tells us to wash our faces, and then we all scramble to have someone put dirt on our heads. It is a kind of ritualization of our failure to live the Gospel, a common confession that we have not done what the Lord commands, a plain and public admission of our unfaithfulness.

Please read the rest of Brother Charles’ thoughts on Ash Wednesday here.

Happy Mardi Gras!

By Rae February 16, 2010 Catholicism 10 Comments

I have to admit that I do not really “get” Mardi Gras. Is the idea to party so hard that you are asleep for all of Lent (or at least Ash Wednesday)? I used to think of Mardi Gras as Saint Patrick’s Day for French people. But businesses, libraries, and schools stay open in Boston on Saint Patrick’s Day, and I am not aware of people skipping Mass on the Sunday before Saint Patrick’s Day due to parties.

Hopefully I will understand Mardi Gras eventually, but in the meantime I am admitting that I am probably more English than French and going for more of a Shrove Tuesday approach. Does any else ever feel that “English” tends to mean understated and boring?

Also, I do not know anyone else who actually gives up dairy products for Lent, so how does the whole pancakes and doughnuts thing would work in reality? In any case, I think that I will be partying it up tonight with strawberries on our pancakes. Yum, right?

How are you celebrating this day before Ash Wednesday?

In Singing, The Affection Of One Loving

By Rae February 15, 2010 Prayer 6 Comments

While reading Pope Benedict’s “The Presence of the Lord in the Sacrament” in God is Near Us I was reminded of the importance of complete bodily worship, and ashamed to realize that I do not sing. Even when praying the liturgy of the hours I simply read the hymns. I “know” the importance of music, but somehow in the past few years I have lost my connection to it. I am not musically gifted, but singing is not about having a gift, it is about using all available methods to respond to God.

The Lord gives himself to us in bodily form. That is why we must likewise respond to him bodily. That means above all that the Eucharist must reach out beyond the limits of the church itself in the manifold forms of service to men and to the world. But it also meas that our religion, our prayer, demands bodily expression. Because the Lord, the Risen one, gives himself in the Body, we have to respond in the soul and the body. All the spiritual possibilities of our body are necessarily included in celebrating the Eucharist: singing, speaking, keeping silence, sitting, standing, kneeling…

[O]nly all three together–singing, speaking, keeping silence–constitute the response in which the full capacity of our spiritual body opens up for the Lord.

Everyone knows about the issues with “Church music” but what about the role of music, and singing in particular, in our private worship? I am hardly in danger of being more moved by “the voice than the words sung” and sinning through overuse of music, so I really have no excuse for not cultivating sung prayer.

My first step has been to start singing with daily prayer. I would love suggestions for learning more of the hymns, but it really is not difficult to substitute an unknown hymn with an appropriate alternate that I can sing. It may be a while before I get around to chanting the Psalms though!

How do you incorporate music into your worship? Please share suggestions for someone with little talent who is trying to remember what it is like to sing daily.

I am thankful 2/14/2010

By Rae February 14, 2010 Gratitude 3 Comments

For washing machines. Having to wash cloths by hand is not my idea of winter fun, so I am quite happy that I do not have to.

For jeans. As long as one skips over the vanity of finding a perfectly fitting pair, jeans are the perfect marriage of simplicity and practicality.

For candles. And light in general.

For Saints Cyril and Methodius. Catholics tend to give them the non-existent end of the stick with a February 14th celebration, but I like Russian literature, and I doubt it would be the same without them.

Books

By Rae February 12, 2010 Life 16 Comments

I have loved books for years and accumulated hundreds by the time I was in my mid-teens. When I went to college I started trying to reduce my collection, but I only managed to hold steady a bit above 1,000. Then I started dating Josh. Josh did not have quite as many books as I did, but his collection was rapidly expanding. And, if possible, he was even more attached to his books than I was to mine.

Before we were engaged we had a conversation that went something like this:
Me: May I have your car?
Josh: Ha! Yes.
Me: Hmmm… may I have your new computer?
Josh: Yes.
Me: May I have your books?
Josh: If you marry me.
Me: What?! You love your books more than you love me?!!!

Apparently I really wanted Josh’s books, because we got married. Procuring bookshelves was our furniture priority, second only to the mattress to put on the floor for sleeping. Our three bookcases were not enough, even though we also had small built-in bookshelves. So while we stacked books in the fireplace for storage, I worked on convincing Josh to get rid of most of our duplicate books. He mostly agreed, but insisted that we needed to keep two of the three copies of John Paul II’s theology of the body. Considering the fact that Josh is the only person I know who has actually read both English translations I did not fight, but tried even harder to find less sacred books to eliminate.

Despite our pathetic best efforts, we still had far too many books by the time we really needed to simplify. So we sold some more books, and gave others to friends, and to the local adoration chapel, and to the library. We drove to my parents’ house and gave my youngest siblings many books that we thought they could enjoy. And we still ended up with four large boxes of books that could not fit in the car.

Four months later I find myself periodically running to the bookshelf to see whether I kept a certain book. I am happy to have gotten down to a reasonable amount of books, but I am sometimes slightly confused over what I chose to keep (or not). There were many books that I loved, but knew I would not reread for years while a friend might enjoy them soon. There were other books that I valued quite highly… but not more highly than their current resale value. As I often told Josh, we could always buy them again later. And then there is a stack of Latin books that I chose to keep. I have not spent more than an hour working on learning Latin so far this year, but seeing all of the books stacked together made me realize how much I must have wanted to learn it only a few months ago.

So, for the sake of tracking my rapidly changing values through books, here is a record of the books I¹ owned on October 15, 2009.

Later I will post about each of the books and why I chose to keep it. But I am really curious as to which books readers can identify by their covers in such a small picture, and any stories/thoughts you may have about them. Extra points if it is anything other than Vatican Council II.

1. This is the story of “my books” according to Rae. Josh might think that some of these books are “his” or that some of what I think are his are really mine. But I am right. And this is my blog. And we are not getting divorced any time soon, so you really do not need to worry about whether Josh insists that all John of the Cross belongs to him.

But Where is Jesus?

By Rae February 10, 2010 Catholicism 10 Comments

Over the past few months I have been given a great gift. By American standards I have been poor. It is not real poverty: there has been plenty of (really cheap) food, and I was not homeless. But money is tight. Very tight.

I can write about this now because I am finally convinced that we really are quite well. If I could have planned out our marriage I would have chosen that we would have a time of significant financial struggle, and I would have chosen for it to come fairly soon into our marriage. So I am just getting my way, and it is good.

It really is Good.

I have known for years that I needed to experience poverty¹ and while this is a pretty tame introduction, it is already working. I know that it is working because I am learning to see Jesus, and as I learn to see Jesus I am terrified to see where he is not.

Last week I looked up the local meeting schedule for a Catholic women’s organization² which runs small group studies for women. I had stayed away from them a few years ago over their connection with another Catholic organization, but I softened almost completely last summer when I learned that they are affiliated with Helen Alvaré, a woman whom I greatly admire. For the first time they had an upcoming class at a time and place that worked for me, so I looked to see what was involved in signing up.

It cost $60.00. There was no question that I could not afford it, and I started to get mad. I did not care that I could not join a group now. I fully expect that I will have money within a few months. But I could not escape how obvious it was that this is a group for women who have. If you are not privileged, then you are not welcome. Do they realize what $60 is in this region of the country? People live in two-bedroom trailers that rent for $350 a month. People work for minimum wage. Do you even know what that is? Try $7.25/hour. I do not know what percentage they³ pay in taxes, but I am guessing that it is at least a full day’s work to cover the class.

Then I read a bit more about the scholarship policy which included an incredibly condescending note that every woman must pay something, even if it is a “small amount.” Yes, they have officially defined $30.00 as a small amount. Because in a group of privileged women, $30 is a small amount. I was not really outraged though, until I read their last word on the topic of scholarships. They noted that all of their materials are copyrighted and said: “Not only is it against the law to copy these materials, it is diametrically opposite of what [our] program teaches. In order to maintain the integrity of [our] program, we respectfully ask all facilitators and participants to honor this policy.”

Ah yes, there is no need to mention copyright unless one is addressing underprivileged women, right? Because it is always the poor who steal?! And copying materials is “diametrically opposite” of their program’s teaching? I ran to my husband in horror, spewing something about whether this group must be centered on something other than Catholicism for copyright to be such a central issue. He calmly replied that the Catholic Church is, at best, ambivalent about the issue of copyright.

I sputtered on about the rest of my issues with the group and asked whether Jesus would really support this organization. All that came to mind was the fact that while parts of the gospels (Luke) talk about the importance of the poor, there are other places (Matthew) that modify the message by specifying that the issue is poverty of spirit. I am quite confident that many women in this organization of great poverty of spirit (just not the copywriters/editors for the website!) so why did I have such a strong feeling that this was not a place I would find my Savior?

I went to sleep with thoughts of bishops in solidarity with the poor being murdered by men supported by privileged Catholics dancing in my head. And I woke up with thoughts of Schönborn. This was not a case of “edgy” liberation spirituality. It was simply fact. To the extent that a group fails to include the poor, they fail to include Jesus.

What if it really is true that while white women with college degrees and high-earning husbands sit around talking about suffering, Jesus walks down the road to work in the form of a single mother who dropped out of high school during her first pregnancy?

1. While I grew up in a family which went through many years solidly under the poverty line, it is different going through it as an adult.
2. It does not matter what the organization is, because they are simply one of many with the same issues. And this post is not really about this particular organisation, it is about one of the first parts of me waking up to where my life should, and should not, be headed. If you suspect that you know the organization to which I refer, please refrain from using their name in the comments. And please, please change them from within.
3. Yes, I say “they” because even if I got a minimum wage job I would still see myself as a person who belonged in a higher pay grade and would get it eventually. I may not have money, but I have a sense of privilege, and that is a hard thing to kill.

Nontraditional Lullabies

By Rae February 8, 2010 Funny Thing Is 7 Comments

My husband has said for years that he thinks that Tantum Ergo would make a great lullaby. I never disagreed with him (all eye-rolling to the contrary) but now I have a few more ideas.

Enter Rockabye Baby!

I grew up in a home that was rather loud and did not include much in the way of lullabies or rock. I would not actually buy this for any child in my care, but I still find it rather hilarious.

What do you think of nontraditional lullabies and baby soothing?

I am thankful 1/7/2010

By Rae February 7, 2010 Gratitude 1 Comment

For the many options available for daily mass and communion services, and the fact that the different parishes provide a continual reminder that the only thing that really matters is the Body of Christ: in the Eucharist, and the people who gather for the celebration. It is hard to get caught up in a building or ideas about how liturgy should be run when one is surrounded by reminders of how blessed we are to have such access to God.

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