St. Polycarp

When I started this blog, I had every intention of occasionally choosing a saint by his or her liturgical feast day and writing about them. I felt this important because, one, I find the saints fascinating. Their lives were often one trial after another, yet they persisted in their faith. And two, my own upswing in faith was only encouraged by reading Fr. James Martin's My Life With the Saints about a year ago.

(I think perhaps we should make a drinking game out of the number of times I mention Fr. Martin's name on this blog, because it's out of control.

See? I just did it again. Take a shot! Wait, don't take a shot. Say a prayer. That is most definitely way more appropriate.)

I have kind of squandered that opportunity, seeing as I haven't written about a single saint here. Even a few feast days for virgin martyrs have gone by, with not a peep out of me.

But as I was examining the calendar pre-Ash Wednesday, and counting down the remaining days I could prepare myself nachos as a late night snack, I noticed that Saint Polycarp's feast day was approaching (and is actually today, February 23).

My parents got me Robert Ellsberg's book All Saints for Christmas, and I read ahead a bit a few weeks ago about St. Polycarp. He was in his mid-eighties when martyred. He was widely considered a holy man and as the bishop of Smyrna, was a disciple of St. John the Evangelist. When taken into captivity, he asked only for an hour to pray. St. Polycarp also had a fairly witty exchange with the Roman proconsol. The proconsol, knowing both Polycarp's age and reputation, tried to encourage him to relent. But it was to no avail. And like St. Catherine of Alexandra and St. Cecilia and probably a host of other saints, the initial method his executioners chose to kill him didn't work.

Which I ALWAYS appreciate.

Because it's really cool. I mean, imagine it. Here you have some kind of authority figure attempting to put someone to death for not denouncing his or her beliefs. Trying to wield the ultimate power, they fail. It takes repeated attempts, despite the relative frailty of the human body, to kill that believer.

And even more so in the case of St. Polycarp, again, in his mid-eighties. He was entirely an old man.

Roman proconsol: Worship Caesar. Denounce Jesus.

St. Polycarp: Jesus saved me. Why would I turn my back on him?

Roman proconsol: Do you know I can have you burned? Fire is...hot.

St. Polycarp: Yeah, but how long will my fire burn? Maybe an hour or so. You'll be burning for eternity.

Ooooh, snap!

So the Roman proconsol had St. Polycarp burned. Or, he tried to. A written account of St. Polycarp's martyrdom by a witness describes how the fire surrounded his body but didn't engulf it. He remained alive, not burning, as if enclosed within a protective shell. Ultimately, he was killed when his heart was stabbed with a sword, and the witness describes such a torrent of blood that all the flames were extinguished.

I know the saints weren't perfect. Far from it. Some even felt abandoned by God, feeling darkness where they once felt the gift of faith.

But for someone like myself, whose faith can sometimes seem to waver with the blowing of the wind, reading accounts like this strengthen my belief that this life is merely our starting point.

Is This Not the Fast That I Choose

I want so bad to put up some eloquent and lovely post on the Lenten season. We celebrate the mystery of the death of Christ and his resurrection, with a special call for repentance, and if anything deserves thought and elucidation, it's that.

As I type, my children are fighting downstairs, and I really should log-off and address this, but they've been home for like a week now, and my patience has just about dried up, like a once-flowing stream that has turned into a trail of cracked dirt. That's where I am, folks.

I keep telling myself that I don't need to be more than what I am, but I do need to be better. Or instead of 'better,' perhaps more aware. Or open.

I was looking forward to Ash Wednesday services tomorrow, at 9:15am, but I have realized that my youngest might be home with me. Funny thing. Her preschool has scheduled a 'pajama day' party, and my children thoroughly dislike such events, with all the school kids gathered in the basement yelling and running and just being kids. They like order and relative quiet and calm behavior, except when I leave them alone at the breakfast table for the purpose of trying to compose a post on Lent.

So I was thinking of just keeping her home, or going with her. Which would mean I'd miss Ash Wednesday services, which also makes me want to cry. Because how can I be better if the one thing that helps to ground me stays elusive? That thing, of course, is time. I know my call right now isn't towards contemplation, for this very reason, but I desire it. At least a bit of it.

I suppose I could keep her home and take her with me, but I'm still working on that selfish part of me that wants to leave everyone else at home and take Mass all for myself. Because I'm still and silent and listening and not worrying that someone is scooting around too much on the bench or bending the hymnals or playing with/tripping over the kneelers or asking for a snack. It's a process.

I've been reading about other options for Lent, other than your typical sacrifices. Since I'm such a novice at my faith (even being a cradle Catholic), last year was my first foray back into Lenten sacrifice, and I gave up gossip sites. I confess to having read them daily, and knew what my clicks were contributing to, so I figured it was something worthy to do. And I haven't been back. So I consider that sacrifice worthwhile. It's one nasty thing I'm free of.

But I do understand the writings about vowing to be more loving, kinder, more generous this Lent, instead of opting for a requisite 'giving up.' Sacrifice, when you think about it, can be pretty meaningless. What's the point of giving something up for spiritual reasons, really, if you don't follow through on the need to give out? The reading for Ash Wednesday, from Isaiah 58: 1-12, which I quote from below, highlights just that.

"Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wicked-
ness,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with
the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into
your house;
when you see the naked, to cover
him,
and not to hide yourself from
your own flesh?"

Yeah. Sometimes you just need to let someone else say it.

I'm pretty new, though, to this resurge in faith, so I am still going old school and will give something up. This year, I am abstaining from eating after dinner, which, if you know me, you also know this isn't something that will be easy. I do appreciate some nachos at 10:00pm. And I pretty much have some kind of snack (sometimes two) after dinner, and tend to see this late night food as a reward, so this will certainly be a nightly struggle.

Perhaps I can take this move away from gluttony and run with it. I'm hoping I can feed myself -- because, Lord knows, my cup, plate and everything else runneth over -- with something else.

Isaiah's encouragement is sound. We do not fast solely for our own benefit. Because I know I can feed others too, for these 40 days, and beyond.

Incubus

I'm taking a cue from Fran, and posting a video. I feel fairly absent of words right now.

I heard this song in the car the day after a rather epic fight with my husband, and like any good weep-prone woman would do, I cried in the garage while it wrapped up. (Look, I don't get that melodramatic that often, okay?)

Still, while I read Becoming Who You Are again (I know, enough about that book already, right?), it struck me last night as I was jogging that this song ties in a bit.

I'm not sure how Incubus would feel about me making a link between a book by a Jesuit priest and them, but really it's the lyrics that sing about the true and false self, which is the central theme of the book I'm so obsessed with.

"We all have a weakness; some of ours are easy to identify..."

"When weakness turns my ego up, I know you'll count on the me from yesterday..."

"If I turn into another, dig me out from under what is covering, the better part of me..."

Yeah, pretty much.

Hope you enjoy it.

A Rut

I can't seem to get out of this mud.

I can't contemplate. It's a task rooted in poor soil. Nothing comes out of it. Nothing grows.

I can't seem to remember my charge, that the ordinary can contain vast amounts of grace.

I live in my daydreams: escapism for the ungrounded soul. I am someone else, elsewhere, unknown.

I am the Patron Saint of the Eyeroll, Our Lady of Annoyance.

I am both melodramatic and understated. I am aiming for the middle.

I am all good intentions. And I know what road to where is paved with them.

And I know this is temporary. It always is. Something always comes to jolt me from my stupor and my slumber. Still, I can't help but worry that I am missing something. I think it's all elusive when it's not. It's the opposite of elusive. It's everywhere, waiting for me to grasp it and hold it and I see my palm waving around, fingers outstretched and unable to curl, unable to latch on.

Everyday Sacraments

"A sacrament is an outward sign of God's love, they taught me when I was a boy, and in the Catholic Church there are seven. But, no, I say, for the Church is catholic, the world is catholic, and there are seven times seventy sacraments, to infinity." Andre Dubus, Making Sandwiches for My Daughters

One of my struggles involves my general disdain of all things domestic. Whether it's getting four loads of laundry cleaned, folded and put away, or preparing lunches in the morning, or figuring out meals for the week, or going grocery shopping and putting everything in some kind of order at home, or washing dishes after being at school for three hours.

It's not like I walk around with a huge sour puss all the time or something. I'm not swearing as I transfer the cool, wet and dark clothing from washer to dryer, or slamming pieces of bread together as I make my 10,000th peanut butter sandwich. But I usually don't see them as joyful things, either. I see them as to-do items to slog through so I can get to the better parts of my day.

I mentioned in an older post that I got the chance to read Becoming Who You Are over Christmas. It's really a stunning book, and because it's so slim (about 90 pages), it's the kind of text that's easy to return to again and again. There were several times while reading it that I had to stop and digest a particular page or paragraph, not because it was difficult to consume, but because it contained so much wisdom I had to pause and linger a bit.

One such page quoted the late author Andre Dubus. Dubus was paralyzed after he was hit by a car. He had stopped to help another driver who was having car trouble when another car struck him. James Martin, SJ, the author of Becoming Who You Are, quotes from an essay that Dubus wrote:

"In his essay, Dubus, a devout Catholic, describes the laborious process of making sandwiches for his young daughters to carry with them to school. As he maneuvers his large, bulky wheelchair around his cramped kitchen, he reaches for the utensils, as he tries to open cabinet doors from his awkward position, and as he cuts the sandwiches, he realizes what he is doing for his children:

Each moment is a sacrament, this holding of plastic bags, of knives, of bread, of cutting board, this pushing of the chair, this spreading of mustard, this trimming of liverwurst, of ham. All sacraments...if I remember, then I feel it, too."

A sacrament is defined as a ritual in which God is uniquely active, or as a visible form of grace. I know it's ridiculously hard for me to see the grace in the monotonous tasks that create the backdrop of a life. But, I can tell myself, because I can, because I have, it's a sacrament. If I give thanks, it's a sacrament. Thanks for the towels and the sheets; thanks for the place to wash them; thanks for the food and the money with which to buy it; thanks for children to prepare meals for, and the body that is able to do it all.

I think of Andre Dubus, whose short stories I have read many times in college, trying to do something that is so easy for me, and being so grateful to do it. He writes, "...I can do this all with one turn of the chair. This is a first-world problem; I ought only to be grateful." Sure, he had to remind himself from time to time, as he writes in the part Fr. Martin quoted. Because how can we not forget? When we're tired, frustrated, angry.

But I suppose it's our charge to remember. Or to at least attempt to remind ourselves every now and then. Fr. Martin says that such a realization "can imbue even the quietest moments of one's life with a special grace."

Amazing, right?

(I'm linking to Dubus's entire essay, which can be found in an anthology called God Is Love: Essays From Portland Magazine. It's a quick read. And a wonderfully beautiful one. And more complex and lovely than I could do justice describing.)

I Have Some Reading To Do

Christmas was quite lovely. We were all in relatively good health (which was a huge departure from last year) and could celebrate without the depression that accompanies the flu combined with pink eye.

We even made it to 8am Mass Christmas morning. Next year, I think we'll brave the crowds and do a Christmas Eve Mass, as there is music and instruments and loud singing, and I kind of crave that this time of year. 8am Mass was understated and peaceful, though, and the girls were sweet in their dresses.

I was excited to receive many of the book I asked for this year: a paperback copy of Fr. James Martin's My Life With the Saints, Robert Ellsberg's All Saints, and Father Louie's The Seven Storey Mountain and New Seeds of Contemplation. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

My Life With the Saints was one of the first books I read as my faith started growing, and I've leafed through my FIL's copy of All Saints, which is a daily mediation featuring 365 figures, from Dorothy Day to Gandhi to MLK Jr. to St. Ignatius of Loyola. Some of the figures are central to the Catholic Church and and some are not, though each has brought great things to the world through their philosophies, faith and vocations.

At my in-laws' this past vacation, I was able to read Fr. Martin's Becoming Who You Are, which, for a slim volume (it is just under 90 pages), I cannot speak more highly of. Imagine my surprise, when, at the end of the book, Fr. Martin proposes a hypothetical featuring a working mother who has two children, ages 4 and 6. That mother, he says, laments her busy schedule and how little time or energy she feels she can devote to prayer and contemplation. She wishes she could be a bit more like the saints she admires, like St. Teresa of Calcutta. But she is no more meant to be St. Teresa than St. Teresa was meant to be a busy mother. I needed that reality check.

The book is about discovering your true self, the person God created you to be, and it's really another I have to add to my bookshelf. With lengthy meditations on Jesus, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day and Henry Nouwen, the underlying theme was that the path to holiness rests in being ourselves. I hope that I am on the right path concerning school, and becoming a nurse. I hope that my desire to become one is equal to the competency I will hopefully have in that vocation. My self-confidence, as ever, ebbs and flows. Hopefully my spiritual guides and some prayer will make my path a bit more steady and a lot less wobbly.

Happy New Year!

Long lay the world,
in sin and error pining,
til He appeared and the soul felt its worth...

One of my favorite Christmas songs is O Holy Night. I prefer the version by Perry Como more than any other I've heard, mostly because I think the depth of his voice best conveys the message of the song.

His singing brings weight to both the sorrow of sin and the great uplifting of hope that comes with the birth of Christ, and it never fails to center me. Forget the candies to make and the cookies too, forget the presents and cards and to-do list that seems to span a mile in length. I can stop for a moment and breathe, with a helpful reminder of what we seek to celebrate.

The girls want to hear Frosty the Snowman and Jingle Bells. They want to hear the songs with some giddy-up, something they can spin and twirl to. I oblige them, and watch, admonishing them to dance carefully, to watch out for the coffee table and book shelves, while they spin into dizziness. But then I get my turn, and put on O Holy Night, or Christ is Born or Ave Maria.

I love the lights Dave worked so hard to wrap around the bushes in front of our house. I love the ceramic Santa that my mom made so long ago. I love the wreath over our mantel, with its ring of bright apples and hint of Colonial days gone by. I love the childish decorations, snowmen and bears wearing scarves and characters from Winnie the Pooh dressed in their winter clothes.

I love these secular aspects of Christmas too. I just love the other more important part more.

I don't get all the hub-bub over the War Against Christmas. It smacks of something else to me, when people get all up in arms about the greetings we give one another, whether one says Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas. (I appreciate, however, Fr. James Martin's essay on some companies trying to have it both ways, trying to skirt the line between the secular and faith-filled, with laughable results.) I do understand that occasionally we have instances of political correctness run amok. But I also understand that as a Catholic, Christmas is what I make it for my family. It's the example we set for our children. It's the fact that we celebrate the birth of Jesus, and how we conduct our lives to celebrate His love for us. Just like Perry sings in O Holy Night. How someone addresses me, or a how a store decorates for the holidays, has no bearing on my own feelings, and what I hope to teach my children about the meaning of Christmas.

So far, they're still all about the presents, and so far, I'm still feeding into that far too much. It's an ongoing process. But on our mantel, we have a creche from Haiti. It was the girls' idea to put baby Jesus in a gift box, and set Him between Joseph and Mary. On Christmas morning, we'll open the box. The best present is saved for last.

However you celebrate, I hope it's lovely. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Here's wishing you a 2010 filled with peace, happiness and faith.