Humor, family, religion

Sister told me today I have a dry sense of humor.  I hope that means I don't offend her!  If so, I will undoubtedly have many penances to perform in the future, because my sense of humor gets the better of me regularly.  At least I have learned how to hold my tongue in public.

I do hope the Sisters appreciate the same things that make me laugh. They seem like very nice people, and I would like to grow close to them because I love the spirituality they bring to their work. I have worked with many different personalities over the years, and can get along with almost anyone in the workplace. But I keep in contact with very few of my former coworkers, and even fewer of my former classmates, and the ones I still connect with are those who share my sense of humor.

Even within my family there are those who just shake their head at me.  Fortunately my husband and children are in the same boat, and we keep each other chuckling. I know I am home and the world is right when the one daughter sitting on the sofa tells the other daughter who is sitting at the table about something she has found online, and both my husband and I join the laughter.

I don't use "sense of humor" as a selection criteria for close relationships. Rather, the mutual amusement is a sign, an attribute of less-tangible things that we have in common: shared standards of value, shared principles, shared interests.  We laugh together at jokes about religious orders because we share an interest in and therefore have studied Catholicism and the most visible representatives of our faith, namely those religious who still still wear the "uniform" of their traditions, showing the secular world they move through that there is something beyond the pursuits of money, power, fame.

Such jokes depend on knowledge of religious traditions, the particular spiritualities and even the stereotypes of different orders.  When someone laughs with me, I know they share my knowledge of these things.  When they respond with another joke of a similar format, I know we may become closer friends than before.

Of course, most people do not share my sense of humor, and I can live with that.  The few I have already found are a treasure already.

And so, here's some fun for the family:

During a Eucharistic Congress, a number of priests from different orders are gathered in a church for Vespers. While they are praying, a fuse blows and all the lights go out.

The Benedictines continue praying from memory, without missing a beat.

The Jesuits begin to discuss whether the blown fuse means they are dispensed from the obligation to pray Vespers.

The Franciscans compose a song of praise for God’s gift of darkness.

The Dominicans revisit their ongoing debate on light as a signification of the transmission of divine knowledge.

The Carmelites fall into silence and slow, steady breathing.

The parish priest, who is hosting the others, goes to the basement and replaces the fuse.

Discernment

Sister Serra is a late vocation, and yesterday she described her discernment process.  Sister Roberta called it shopping:  "When she arrived, we said, 'Here comes a shopper!' "

Sister Serra spent a long time visiting different orders.  She felt certain she had a vocation to the religious life, but couldn't find an order that matched her spirituality.  In my words, some were too modern, without a clear structure and tradition, and others were too traditional, using their traditions to avoid a confrontation with the modern world.  She said eventually she made a list of the things she was looking for, and she recognized the order that fit once she encountered it.

I too had to make a list, but I didn't realize it was part of discernment.  Mine listed the attributes of the man I wanted to marry. I spent my late teens and early twenties in one relationship after another, until in my last summer of college I was emotionally exhausted and in despair.  Only then did I seriously consider what I wanted, and realized that yes, I did want a permanent relationship, I did want to get married. And I thought out carefully what I wanted in my future husband.

Only after listening to Sr. Serra's story have I recognized that I had actually discerned a vocation to the married life before I made my list.  I never had any doubts that I wanted, needed, to be in a relationship to be complete. For a long time I simply assumed that everyone felt this way as part of the human condition.  Recently I have begun to think I had basic emotional damage and flaws that caused me to experience the sense of incompleteness I felt when alone.

Suddenly, only now after spending twenty-five years in the married state, I see that this is indeed part of God's plan for me, that even in my blind struggle to become an adult He moved my life in the direction He had mapped out for me.  I think the pain and loneliness would still be part of the process, but I probably would have found comfort in the midst of it had I had an understanding of and trust in His providence.  Yet here I am, in the same place.

A voice said, "Look me in the stars,
O men of earth,
And say if all the mind and body scars
Were not too high a price to pay for birth."
--Robert Frost

Sweet Jesus, grant them rest

Here here is a link to the inspiration for this post, which itself originates from a video here here of a beautiful rendition of "Pie Jesu," which is sung at funerals (the singing starts about a minute in). In his post, Father Allen mentions the translation of the Latin phrase "donna eis requiem" which is "grant them rest." The translation provided in our modern liturgy is "peace," which is technically incorrect since the Latin for "peace" is "pacem."  Now on to my thoughts:

I am struck by the words "rest" and "peace."  The Pie Jesu is a funeral song, an intrinsic part of a liturgy focused on death, judgement, and our hope for Heaven. In this context the Church asks that the deceased be granted eternal rest.

The full richness and depth of rest can only be known by those who have labored long, and hard. To the truly weary, the bone-tired, rest is more than just an end to work. It fills all the senses, like water soaking down into dry soil. It has flavor, fragrance, texture, color. It has silence that is more than the absence of noise, it has silence like music.*

Peace is also a desirable state, and has complexity similar to rest. But peace is a contrast ultimately to conflict, and thus its deeper qualities are most appreciated by those who have experienced violence: victims and warriors. In a sense peace is the correction of an erroneous reality. If the world were in its right order, we would all experience peace.

But even in the most peaceful world, work still needs to be done. "The good man and his good wife with their good beasts on their good farm," to quote C.S. Lewis, will still need to labor for their sustenance. When we have no enemies to overcome, we still have nature, and the work may be even more laborious. We all are called to work, in ways as different from and similar to each other as stars are from suns. Yet even in the midst of work we have moments in which we can put down our work for a time, we can rest.

Thus we can know the reward of rest, its sweetness and its fullness. It cannot be achieved when sought for, yet it is not a mere by-product of the cessation of labor. True rest, deep rest, is given as a grace to the laborer. In this life, we rest, and once rested we can begin again. At the end, we may rest eternally. What richness that will seem!

*borrowed from Mary Stewart in "Madame, Will You Talk?"

Dis-syncronicity

Summer downtime has ended.  The great quiet between school years has terminated, rather corruptly. Last week we had sixty Sisters at a silent retreat, and my family was at home engaged in leisure activities.  Today a Catholic high school has a leadership retreat here, and the students are shouting and laughing in the library next to my desk.  My husband and oldest daughter are at school registering for her senior year of high school, and tomorrow the twins register for their freshman year.

I feel tired and cranky and unmotivated.  And I have a headache.  Why can't I get excited about the coming year? I don't have even a vague sense of enthusiasm.

Days like this require discipline. I don't need feelings, enthusiasm or excitement or even happiness, to get the job done, I just need to go through the list and do what needs to be done.  And as I work, eventually, my mood will change and I will begin to see some brightness in life.  If not today, perhaps tomorrow, or the next.  Meanwhile, work will have been done: guests will be registered, greeted, seen to their rooms.  The world will continue to move forward and someone else somewhere will be spared from crankiness and tiredness, because I didn't get in their way.

Sometimes the only good I can contribute to the world is to not spoil it for someone else.  That itself is an accomplishment I am willing to achieve.

Have a good day, you!

Ministry

A newly assigned Benedictine priest asked my help today with some bills, just to make sure the amounts paid matched the amounts due.  Apparently "back home" in the monastery such things were handled by a central office, which until recently would have been staffed by monks.  I've never considered it, but it makes sense that such things are most efficiently handled in one office, or in a community house, by one person or group.  I thought for a moment of one person handling the individual bills for a community of religious, giving each monk an extra hour or more a month to spend in prayer or work.

"So, I suppose in that case managing the expenses and paying the bills is a ministry of sorts?"

"Absolutely," Father confirmed.

It's nice to know that even the mundane work I do is in some way supporting a more glamorous vocation.

A Year

A year ago, August 2012, I got motivated, inspired, what-have-you, and took over the corner computer desk in the living room.  I got rid of the children's desktop computer and the clutter of an unused study space, dusted and scrubbed, set up my laptop with the external monitor/keyboard/mouse, arranged my theology and liturgy textbooks on one side and important reference books (Lord of the Rings, Strunk and White, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Canticle for Liebowitz) on the other, and declared myself ready to unleash my creativity.

My creativity, however, is too used to a lifetime of captivity, and it just raised one eyelid, thumped its tail at my enthusiasm, and settled back into the warm comfort of daily life.  While I sat chirping at it encouragingly, Life snuck up behind me and smacked me up one side and down another, completely distracting me for the next ten months.

I'm looking ahead to the end of the month, when school starts and everyone gets up and leaves by six in the morning. Last year I planned to record myself reading the Daily Office, or at least Morning Prayer. Now I think I will try Dawn prayer - which is actually the last of the "little hours" of night time: the hours of midnight, the nightwatch, and dawn.

I've just ordered a webcam, we'll see if I can muster the discipline to make this happen.  More to come, with hope.

Militarized Clerics

I'm watching Dr. Who, the renewed program, specifically the 11th Doctor.  The episode at the moment is The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. In it the Doctor is working against the Weeping Angels with soldiers who are members of the Church in the future.  The platoon leader is a bishop, the soldiers are clerics.

Somehow this appeals to me.  The combination of strong faith fighting against spiritual evil, and strong men fighting against physical evil, makes me feel calm, secure, hopeful. In our real world there are both types of men, and both give me courage.  I don't mean to ignore women, I'll get to them in another post. Right now I'm thinking through the idea of men, religious and military: trained in combat, dedicated to something bigger than themselves, outside of themselves.  I don't need them, right at this moment, sitting here in the midst of a peaceful time.  Though perhaps the peace is thanks to the prayers of the religious men, and by the efforts of the military men in the past.

So, I thank them both and all, for the safety in which I can sit here and watch a fictional show about religious warriors who are fighting monsters, and be entertained instead of frightened.

More on the garden

The seeds I planted in my tiny (four feet square) garden are sprouting.  I have parsley and beets, and pansies and nasturtiums and white morning glories.  I already had rosemary and oregano and basil in pots, and I added thyme, sweet marjoram and winter savory.  In researching medieval monastery garden plants, I discovered that many things I planted years ago for decorative purposes were cultivated by monks for medicinal or culinary purposes: violets, irises, and roses, and even the grasses that sprout from spilled birdseed.  The Internet has proven a rich source of knowledge and I am absorbing more information than I would have ever been able to before.

In a sense, this research itself is a "monastic activity." Much of the information about these plants was recorded in the Middle Ages by European monks, who gathered and tended them for use in the monastery kitchens, sick rooms, sacristies. They collected those plants that grew naturally around their monasteries and cultivated others to fill the gaps. They traded with other monasteries, sharing both plants and information about their uses.  In this way many herbs native to the Mediterranean were spread north and west, as far as the British Isles.

I love the connections to the past, and to religious communities. Though I don't expect to make my own medicines, I can at least use my herbs in cooking. And though I have used store-bought herbs for years and have plenty on my shelf, the fresh ones will surely taste better!