Uncategorized – Page 95

Remember Syria on the feast of Stephen

Today is the feast of St. Stephen, first martyr of the Church. That’s what kind of faith it is: One day we celebrate the birth of the Savior, and the very next day, we celebrate the death of a man who died for that Savior’s sake. It’s an especially poignant feast to remember as we see the images of Syrian Christians celebrating Mass in a church half-filled with rubble, the roof blasted away.

Imagine if this were your church?

This is your Church.

This is the Catholic Church, and these are your brothers and sisters. After this footage was taken, the Catholics remaining celebrated Mass on Christmas eve, in a roofless, blasted structure that’s safer than it’s been for a long time. Christians have not been able to enter for years, but they came back to Christmas to find it still standing, still waiting for them to come and worship God. They brought in flowers and candles from God only knows where, and they assembled a nativity scene out of scraps of rubble, covering it with branches from the trees that are still putting out green leaves.

Do not forget Syria. Catholics suffering around the world don’t want to take away the joy of us Christians who enjoy peace and plenty on Christmas. But do not forget them. Do not forget what kind of faith this is. The Savior does not promise to keep our bodies safe; but He does promise that the Church will always prevail against evil.

The ornament featured above was painted by Erica Ploucha (more of her work is here). Her husband Nick sent me the photo, saying “I can’t see this ornament and not think of Syria.” God has not forgotten the people of Syria, and neither should we.

And in His hand, the golden ball

I’m not sure if you want to cry, or what; but if you do, you might consider reading Tomie dePaola’s The Clown of God. (If you don’t own the book, you can hear and see it read aloud in this video.)

Quick summary: In Renaissance Italy, a ragged street boy falls in with a travelling show troupe, and as he grows, he becomes an expert juggler. Eventually he strikes out on his own, and becomes a celebrated performer all over the country. He has a complicated routine, but always ends with a rainbow of balls and then “The Sun in the Heavens,” a single golden ball that he tosses impossibly high.

He enjoys his fame; but then times get hard, the clown gets old, and no one cares about his act anymore. He even drops “The Sun in the Heavens,” and the crowd jeers. Now a ragged beggar, he stumbles back to his old hometown, where he takes refuge in a dark church and falls asleep. He wakes up in the middle of the night to blazing lights and music, as a procession of villagers and religious present Christmas gifts before a statue of Mary and a somber Child Jesus.

When they are all gone, he gazes as the statue; and, remembering that he once made children smile, he suits up and goes into his old juggling routine one last time. He works his way through all his tricks, and finishes with the rainbow of colored balls. Finally he adds “The Sun in the Heavens.” He juggles it higher than ever before and cries out, “For you, sweet child, for you!”

And then his old heart gives out and he falls dead to the ground. A sacristan finds him and calls a priest, who blesses the old man’s body.

But the sacristan backs away in fear: The child Jesus is smiling, and in His hand, He holds the golden ball.

***
Among other things, it’s a story of when things are almost too late — when we almost miss Christmas, because of all the hustling and costume changes and juggling and fuss.

If you can, remember that phrase: “For you, sweet child!” — and toss Him one golden ball.

Apologize to someone if you were rude.
Put your phone down and read a book to your kid.
Let an insult pass without comment or retaliation.
If a street person asks for one dollar, give him ten.
Stop and pray for someone, or give a word of encouragement, before you go on with your juggling routine.

For you, sweet Child! He will catch that ball, and smile.

The tree of life, the Skeptical OB, and the idol of outrage

Skeptical OB Amy Tuteur, own-foot-shooter extraordinaire, continues to blur the really quite bright line between living one’s life and cheering for the death of others.

She took her post down after a well-deserved angry backlash, but here’s the image she posted this morning on her Facebook page:

Need a little background? I’ll try, but hold onto your butts. It’s stupid.

A bunch of breastfeeding moms have been using some art app to add a “tree of life” overlay to photos of themselves feeding their babies.

It doesn’t quite, quite make sense to me as an image, in part because I don’t like to think of things growing inside my baby’s head. Too many “a spider crawled into her ear when she was sleeping” stories in my youth, maybe. Also, the root part on the breast reminds me of varicose veins, which are completely non-heartwarming.

Anyway, whatever, whatever, breastfeeding is good and beautiful, overall, and when we show pretty pictures of it, it helps moms and others feel less weird about doing it and living alongside it; and that’s a good thing, especially since breastfeeding is still seen in some quarters as weird or sexually perverted or immodest or gross or backward or too much of a hassle to stick with.

So, in response to this photo trend, a bunch of bottle-feeding mothers decided to share images of a tree growing in their babies’ heads, too, with the message “FED IS BEST.” This message is also fine and good, because in some quarters, women say in so many words that formula is poison, and that there is no excuse for not breastfeeding; or they say that there is sometimes an excuse, but it’s something that should only be resorted to once you’ve basically come within five inches of dying through your pathetically failed efforts to breastfeed. Which is all repulsive, dangerous nonsense. I’ve spoken before about what a wretched, miserable thing this is to do, especially when it’s presented by as a moral issue by Catholics who claim some authority.

(And of course some smartasses have been making images of their babies drinking Pepsi and eating Cheetos, because that’s their tree of life. As someone whose very first blog post from eleven years ago featured my toddler eating out of the kitchen garbage can, I must recuse myself from commenting further on this trend.)

Now, I am quite sure that some women have been sharing images of of their baby’s milk-tree-heads with the overt intention of shaming bottle-feeders. Lots of women really allow themselves to tell other women: This, and this alone, is beautiful. I am doing the one and only right thing, and anyone who does otherwise should have the title “mother” forcibly removed from her, since she is a calorie-provider at best, like one of those auto-feeders you leave with your hamster when you go on vacation.

But there are plenty of other breastfeeding women who are just . . . showing pictures of their babies nursing because they love their babies, love nursing, and have discovered that when you sit down to breastfeed, you still have one hand free, and can do things like take pictures and apply overlays to them. And that’s it.

Sometimes people are just living their lives. They’re not always living their lives at you. It’s not “shaming” to simply do what you do in public, even if what you do is different from what other people do.

When we see “shaming” and aggression when there is no such intent, it makes it all the harder for everyone to simply live, because sensible people throw up their hands in frustration and refuse to waste any more time sending rational discourse into a howling whirlwind of outrage. Dr. Amy has made a nice living pushing back against the nonsense that goes sloshing around the world of women’s medicine; but all too often, she and her more strident followers make an idol of their outrage, and end up discrediting themselves and their cause.

Perpetual victim status quickly becomes an idol, and it makes us cruel and self-centered. Idol worship is wrong for many reasons, not least of all because it blinds us to the things and people that really do deserve our time, energy, devotion — or, in some cases, our outrage.

And that’s why Dr. Amy wins the Super Not Helping award for the day! Pbbbbbt. Here’s the real deal: If you’ve suffered some kind of injustice at the hands of others, it should make you more sensitive to the suffering of others, and not less.

Just so we don’t end on an growly note, I have to tell you this: Yesterday, Corrie was nursing, and then popped off, smiled at me, put her ear up to my nipple, and said, “Heddo?”

No response yet from the nipple, but I expect it to have its own Facebook page soon.

***
FYI, you can buy your own horse’s ass trophy, and personalize it if you like, here.

What fresh hell is this? It’s Pinterest Christmas 2016!

Feeling a dearth of burlap, foxes, chevrons, fairy lights, and mason jar lids in my life, I went on Pinterest to see what was happenin’.

I always start out with wholesome intentions, sincerely searching for neat DIY ideas. I even bought a set of plain glass balls, and I intend to spray paint them, using tiny paper snowflakes as stencils. As stencils! It is going to be pretty. Tell me it’s going to be pretty!

I start out, I say, with good intentions, looking for ideas that we will enjoy trying out; but I always end up calling my husband over for backup to help me mock stuff more thoroughly.

Because son, there is some stupid shit out there.

For your convenience, I’ve organized my thoughts into some basic rules to help you identify when you’ve slipped past DIY and landed smack in the middle of WTF, by which I obviously mean Where’s the Fphrenologist to feel your lumpy head and figure out what would impel you to follow through with some of these hideously inexcusable projects?

Things that would bring shame to hobos. Okay, so we all have failed crafts and stupid crafts and crafts that don’t turn out so great. That is fine. I have a number of them displayed around my house, because I have low standards.

But when I do come up with something lousy, I do not then use an expensive camera to take luxe photos of it and offer tutorials for how to recreate it in your own home. And not only because it didn’t occur to me! It’s because when you take a sweater and cut it up into heart shapes and then stick a paper clip through it, that’s not a cozy winter ornament. That’s garbage.

When kids make things that turn out a little rough and wobbly, that’s cute. When disabled people make things that are kind of naive and clunky, your heart is allowed to melt. But functioning adults are not allowed to just churn out crap and call it “adorable” just because it looks bad! Bad is bad! It’s not twee or offbeat or funky! It’s just bad! Bad bad bad!

(If you want to live a little, browse around in this chick’s site. Do not miss the confetti updo, which, the tutorial will instruct you, can be achieved by braiding your hair and then using your head to clean under the couch. In another spot, she instructs you to roast a turkey, cram some pom poms up its ass, and call it “festive feast.” I BET IT IS.)

Craft projects that require you spend $18 on a hobby store fake version of something people used to throw out back once the hogs were done with them. You know it must be within ten days of a major American holiday when local message boards are full of frantic pleas: Does anyone know where I can find wooden pallets? No, honey, nobody knows, because they have all been painted like terrible flags for the fourth of July, hung on the walls of pretentious condos for terrible wine racks, transformed into terrible herb planters in the front yards of people who wouldn’t know what to do with basil if grew with instructions right on the leaves, or tacked together by someone’s gloomy husband who would be perfectly willing to shell out cash for an actual, real, non-wobbly coffee table that doesn’t give you splinters, but now we have to spend all Thursday night sanding, and the Raiders are playing, too.

Leave pallets alone. Also milk bottles, mason jars, pre-weathered planks, and fruit crates. Gosh.

When you have a display, rather than decorations. Stores put up holiday displays. Businesses put up holiday displays. School children get together and work on a nice display together. But why are we doing this as individuals living in our homes? Why do we buy three shrink-wrapped bales of disinfected hay upon which to prop up some easily-identifiable symbols of the current holiday season in a studiously asymmetrical fashion, and set it up just to the left of the entrance to your home, and then forbid the children to play in the front yard because you’re trying to make it look homey with all those corn stalks you bought for eleven bucks a bunch? It’s your house, and you’re supposed to be living in it, not marketing it.

A small-scale rendition of this trend is when you take perfectly good stand-alone ornaments and tag them with keywords designed to snag maximum pageviews. You know what I mean: You have five glass balls in tasteful blue and silver, and that’s fine, but then you have to buy a special glass-writing marker and label each one with a Certified Holiday Word (without upper case letters or punctuation, of course, because we are having fun!). “Jingle” says one. “Merry,” explains another. “Star,” posits a third.

What? What? What is this for? This is stupid. If you like jingling so much, maybe use a bell, eh, smartacus? This is one of those things that people only do because other people are doing it, so it seems normal and cute and pretty, but it’s not. It’s stupid and it’s making the word stupider.

Subset: those astronomically smug, oversized wall decals that literally spell out exactly what kind of family you are. “WE DO LOVE! WE DO MESSY! WE DO OOPSIE WOOPSIE DOO ON THE REGULAR! WE SHINE FULL TIME! LOOK AT MY WHITE TEETH! I DEMAND A GOLD MEDAL FOR NOT FLIPPING OUT WHEN CARTER DROPS A CRACKER ON THE CARPET! CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE YOU GET TO BE FRIENDS WITH US!” No, I can’t. Please give me my coat back; I really must be going. I think I left my humidifier running, and the cats are going to get all waterlogged.

Yeah, yeah, I know, they’re not there for guests. They’re there for the actual family, to remind them of their own ideals. Except they’re not. They’re totally there to impress people, along the lines of those “Another family for peace” bumper stickers. I’m going to start my own auto insurance company just to design a rider specifically to cover people who deliberately rear-end another family for peace.

Inedible food ornaments. This may just be a hangover from some stinging childhood disappointment, but I feel like it’s bad form to fill the house with marvellous scents and then not get to chew on anything. Gingerbread cookies? Those are for eating. Applesauce is also for eating, and not for compressing into little weird brick stars and hearts that only look like non-poop if you tell people, “Those are made of applesauce, you know!” I’ll make an exception for clove oranges, because they really are pretty, and they have a venerable past. But no more dried applesauce poop. It doesn’t make me mad, it just makes me sad. I like applesauce.

Complete non-ornaments that just stare baldly at you, daring you to wonder if this is, like, the lost and found shelf, or what. Skis, ice skates, sleds, bicycles, wagons, whatever. You are not TGIFridays, nor were meant to be. Just because you manage to hang it on your wall, that doesn’t magically transform them into decor. This offends my thrifty heart, and it also violates the whole “decoration vs. display” rule.

Now, if you’re trying to sell me on the idea that industrial design can be beautiful, that is one thing. I will actually go to a museum and look carefully at a very good toilet or a telephone or a circuit board, because I like design. But that is not what is going on here. What is going on here is that some deranged housewife gets it into her head that anything that is no longer for sale at full price at Bed, Bath and So Forth must be automatically nostalgic, and therefore decorative. My only comfort is that deranged people are bad at hanging stuff, so it will probably fall down at some point and hit somebody. Kapow! Where’s your nostalgia now?

Things made out of books. Okay, so if the book was going to be destroyed anyway, that’s fine. But the thing that gets me is “She loves books so much, she made a whole chair out of them!” Hey, that’s great. I’m entirely blown away with your thorough grasp of the purpose of the written word! Or maybe you love books so much that you cut them up into bits and torture them into a gluey diorama depicting a scene from that book, that’s how much you love books!

Super duper. Remind me not to let you babysit my kids. Yes, I know you said you love kids. I heard you.

***

In closing: Yes, I write things like this because I am a bitter, unhappy person who finds fulfillment in criticizing others, even though their behavior in no way impacts my life. Please pray for me.

Yes, mason jars are still a thing, still. I checked.

Your friendly last-minute Advent reminder!

Somehow, even though Advent is as long as it can possibly be this year, I didn’t make it to confession. I don’t absolutely have to go, having (thanks be to God) no mortal sins on my soul. But it’s such a basic way to prepare for Christmas. I’ve said it myself several times: If I manage to have an advent wreath in the house and get to confession, I’ll call it a good advent. Well, we do have a wreath, anyway.

When I realized that I was missing my last reasonable chance (and no, it doesn’t seem reasonable to call up our unbelievably overworked priests and make a special appointment, when it’s not a spiritual emergency), I started casting around in my mind for something else I could do, something that would be almost as good as going to confession.

I had a chat with God about my sins, of course, and that was pretty good. I thought about some penitential things I could do. I even briefly considered cleaning the kitchen without complaining. And I remembered one more time: There is no substitute for the sacraments.

Of course there isn’t. I mean, we can make do in an emergency. If I were in an airplane that was spiraling toward the ground, I could make an act of perfect contrition, and I would be all set. If I were someone who had never heard of Jesus, I could regret the things that even a pagan knows are wrong, and I would be welcomed into my unknown father’s kingdom, right alongside the elderly priest who had the seven precepts of the Church memorized before he was weaned.

But those aren’t substitutions, so much as accommodations. There’s nothing better than the real thing, which is why Jesus gave the sacraments to the Church to give to us. I felt so stupid for missing my shot, but feeling stupid made me feel so grateful that there will be a next time. No need to invent anything, or figure out on my own how to wallow my way back to God.

So, don’t be stupid, be a smarty! If you still have a chance to get to confession, why not take a load off and be really ready for Christmas? And if you’re in a state of grace right now, don’t squander it! You’ve got an open line set up right to the Father, so talk talk talk. And put in a good word for me while you’re at it.

Wow! So talent! Much teenage daughter!

Today I feature MY FAVORITE CATHOLIC ARTIST IN THE WORLD, MY OLDEST DAUGHTER LENA.

Lena’s just opened a Redbubble store, and would like you to know that you can order today and still get your stuff before Christmas. Lots of quirky and oddly elegant stuff here, mainly geeky, including fan art featuring Naruto, Big Hero 6, Psychopass, Metroid, Teen Titans, Gorillaz, Star Wars, X-Men, Ruroni Kenshin, and some other stuff that just fell out of her fevered brain.

Because I’m a big, elderly poop, I’m encouraging her to add some of her lovely outdoor watercolor scenes. She is uploading more art as I write. Here’s a few more images than I’m partial to. Far and away my favorite:

Wandering Swordsman:

Song of the Sheikah:

The Enforcer:

An image from the side altar at church:

And this obliging Wolverine with Baby Jubilee:

Do stop by her Redbubble store! You can buy these images printed on T-shirts, stickers, and mugs.

or you can check out much more of the artwork she’s posted online on Tumblr, The Otaku, and Paigeeworld.

Guys. IT IS FUN HAVING TEENAGERS. They are always surprising you!

Things I Don’t Appreciate: A Christmas List

My younger son used to keep a running list. “THINGS I DON’T APPRECIATE” was a masterwork of comprehensive soreheadedness. He didn’t expect anyone to do anything about it, and it wasn’t categorized or ranked or put into context. He just needed to write it down. I wish I had saved it. I do remember that Nazis and tuna noodle casserole both turned up.

In that spirit, and in the spirit of it’s only Wednesday, here is my Christmas List of Things I Don’t Appreciate:

Pentatonix. That’s not a music group for adults, that’s a gimmick in boots. Come on.

Bing Bloody Crosby. The only good thing about his singing is that now he’s dead and there won’t be no more. I’m still waiting for someone to apologize for his face.

Cookie swaps. Every time I open my email, there’s another “invitation” to contribute cookies. First of all, that is not how you use the word “invitation.” Second of all, I happen to know that cookies don’t count as volunteer hours, which I am approximately 9,000 hours behind on. Cookie invitations are just a massive masochistic holiday scam where we all stay up late crying into our KitchenAids, saying stupid things like, “Is this does this look light and fluffy to you? Why isn’t it light and fluffy?” and then we show up after school instead of going home to have a nice drink, and we sell them to each other. Oh, no, sorry, we only take cash. Because people have cash with them, all the time. That is a thing that happens. Cookie cash! Cash and cookies, and it’s not time to go have a drink yet! I’ll show you light and fluffy.

Speaking of scams, can I tell you something? One gift does not turn into thirty-six gifts. Not if it’s books, not if it’s $10 trinkets, not if it’s homemade ornaments, not if it’s bottles of wine. The reason for this is that one is one and thirty-six is thirty six, and the only way that things magically multiply in a glorious cascade of pressies for you is if you’re committing mail fraud. If you don’t understand this, then at least stop bitching about how nobody needs Common Core.

Pressies. It has two syllables. It is not any easier to say than “presents,” which also has two syllables. And it refers to something which is already, by definition, fun and nice. Let’s save the cutesy nicknames for words that need the help, like “chlamydia” or “ostracized.” Hey, guys, I just got ostied again because I got the chlam-chlams! Now, there is a missive from a world with some order to it. The rest of you need to shut up.

I actually really like the dresses they are showing these days. So that’s not on the list. Although that cut-out shoulder thing is fairly intrinsically slutty. I remember when my grandmother took me shopping, when I was in about second grade, and I wanted a sweater with a tiny little keyhole in the neckline. She said that it would make boys say, “What’s in there, eh?” So now we have kids parading around and they’re flat-out showing us what’s in there. Shoulders! Gawd. You’re killing my dead grandmother, so Merry Christmas, I guess.

What else? My stupid kids all have jobs, which really messes up my schedule. I need them home to babysit so I can go lie down. What kind of system is that.

(Hang on, let me check Facebook for more stuff.)

OH YEAH, “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” The only thing worse than everyone swooning over the consentified update is being put in the position of having to defend a smarmy, irritating duet (I DON’T LIKE DUETS. WHO IS SINGING? PICK ONE, AND THE REST OF YOU WAIT YOUR TURN. WE LEARN THIS IN KINDERGARTEN, FOLKS), unless it’s being agreed with by guys who think that all you have to do is get married and then it is categorically impossible to do anything that your wife doesn’t want/need/deserve. See, see, what I need at the moment is to have love, sex, and marriage explained to me by a 53-year old neckbeard who has gotten kicked out of three seminaries mainly because of his homemade haircuts. Thanks! Awesome! I’m so glad we’re all on the same page.

Christmas songs with all the rum pa pum pum patapan ding dong ding dong rooty toot toot dibble dibble dopp. USE YOUR WORDS. Or I will use them for you.

Singalongs. Singalongs. Look, I stayed awake until nine o’clock. I got dinner on the table so we could all get to your stupid auditorium in time. I took the kid to the bathroom repeatedly, braving the ravages of the special Low Self Esteem View High School Girl’s Room Mirror (MY HIPS LOOK LIKE THAT, AND I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF). I sat through eleventy four thready, wobbly renditions of Generic Holidays Around the World, including way too many vocal jazz pieces, all entitled “We Bit Off More Than We Could Chew, Dooby Dweetin Yes We Did,” including, and I am not making this up, “Mary Did You Know” WITH BEATBOXING. I almost bit through my own hand, trying not to scream. I clapped every single time, and I did not (as one member of the audience did) groan out loud when we all realized that last song wasn’t actually over yet. BUT I DO NOT WANT TO SIT UP STRAIGHT AND SING FUCKING FROSTY THE SNOWMAN AFTERWARD. Even when I was seven and they wanted me to sing along, I knew this song sucked ass, and it hasn’t lost any of its embouchure since then.

Here is something I do appreciate:

Now you know something.

Another Holy Day of (pant, pant) Obligation

Behold, our traditional observation of this wonderful solemnity:

Husband wakes up early, brings two of three high school kids to school A in town B, where they can’t come in late because they have a morning concert in school D and the bus leaving School A won’t wait. He comes home, calls schools A, B, and C about lateness of Kids 1, 5, 6,7, and takes them to early Mass at Church 1 in town B. Also takes baby, because he is superman. Comes home, drops off kids, goes to work in town D. I pack up Kids 1, 9, and 10 and bring them to town B to drop off Kid 1 at work, then take the other two to lunch at Wendy’s because it is Kid 9’s birthday, and then we go to Mass at Church 2 in town B, and then go home. We all go to the bathroom. Then we pack up Kids 9 and 10 and go to School C in Town C, where we pick up Kids 6, 7, and 8, then swing by the library in Town B to pick up Kid 5 who goes to School B, and then pick up Kid 2 who has walked from the bus stop to her doctor appointment in Town B. Then we go back home (Town A), wolf down some hot dogs (leaving kid 4 at home since he already went to Mass and doesn’t sing), scramble into our pretty dresses, hoping kids 2 and 3 have made it home on the bus, and swing by Kid 1’s work in Town B (hoping she has eaten at some point) and bring her with us (not forgetting the cookies which Kid 3 baked last night!) to the Unitarian Church where Kids 5, 6, 7, and 8 have their concert and bake sale; and drop off Kids 2 and 3 so they can walk across town in the dark and the cold to late Mass at Catholic Church 1. After the concert, we drive home, drop off Kids 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 in town A and pick up Kids 2 and 3 in Town B. AND THEN WE ALL GO HOME. And then my husband comes home from Town 4, and we open birthday presents for Kid 9, assuming we’re still able to make our muscles function enough to sit up.

(And no, there was no way of just prudently planning ahead to make things simpler. This was planning ahead. We couldn’t go to a Vigil Mass yesterday, because yesterday looked a lot like today, except with a different kid going to work, my husband having to travel to Town E for work, and one kid going to Roller Derby.)

So when someone asks how we are observing this important feast day, I give a little shudder and say, “Oh, we’re just going to get to Mass.”

And that is pretty good.

When we were figuring out the logistics, I honestly considered skipping Mass. It’s a war of obligations, and the kids truly couldn’t back out of their concerts or be late; but since we’re all healthy and able-bodied and no one is pregnant and the van is running, and my husband was ready and willing to make it happen, I realized that we could do it, and so we should.

We may not be wearing Marian colors or lighting special candles at our charming home altar, or making flower crowns or crafting special crafts; but we are putting forth a huge effort to get to Mass. And this tells our kids (and ourselves!), “THIS IS IMPORTANT.”

So if you had a hard time getting to Mass but you did it anyway, you honored Our Lady. If it was a tight squeeze and maybe you stumbled in late and breathless, with hungry, overtired, confused kids, you showed them, “THIS IS IMPORTANT. This is worth doing. This is The Thing You Make Time For.” And you honored Our Lady! Mass is where Mary wants you to be. Anything else is just icing on the cake.

Never mind the baby, here’s Advent?

(Because it’s totally appropriate to riff on a Sex Pistols song title when meditating on the Christ Child. Moving along!)

It has come to my attention that I’ve now put up two posts (here and here) encouraging Christians to place themselves in the presence of Baby Jesus while we’re still waiting for Him to be born. Why would I do such a thing?

I can see how it might be irritating. Advent is the season of anticipation and preparation. It just is. We have a perfectly good liturgical year, and there’s no need to go rearranging it on a whim. It’s like the weather in New Hampshire: If you don’t like it, just wait a minute. Christmas (or Lent, or whatever) will be here before you know it, so let it be what it is.

Well, a couple of things. First, we may be a little too impressed with our current understanding of what is liturgically proper and essential, especially within the domestic church. What we consider essential and incontrovertible warn’t always necessarily so. For instance,

In England, especially in the northern counties, there was a custom (now extinct) for poor women to carry around the “Advent images”, two dolls dressed to represent Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary. A halfpenny coin was expected from every one to whom these were exhibited and bad luck was thought to menace the household not visited by the doll-bearers before Christmas Eve at the latest.

I wonder what Facebook would think about that! Sadface Angryface, at very least.

The truth is, the no one really knows when Catholics started to observe Advent as a season of solemn penitence. These things aren’t carved in stone, and they’re not moral issues, especially when you’re talking about issues like which hymn to play and whether or not to take a statue out of storage a month earlier than usual. So there’s certainly nothing immoral, or dangerous, or illicit, about putting the baby front and center before Christmas Day actually arrives, either in the physical church or in your spiritual life.

Second, I probably would have been irritated, myself, if I had heard all this premature “baby, baby, it’s about the baby!” stuff many Advents ago.

What changed my attitude? I had a premature baby myself, eight years ago.

She was only just barely premature, at 36 weeks, and she had only transient health problems, thank God. But I thought I had a whole other month to prepare! I wasn’t ready, at all. No baby clothes washed and sorted, no hospital bag packed, no babysitting lined up, cradle still in storage. I hadn’t even done much nesting yet, and we were still working on names.

But there she was, small and sleepy but very much arrived. She came home wearing clothes and a blanket the hospital had donated, because I had no idea I’d be leaving with a baby that day. Did she care? No, she did not. She cared about her empty belly and her wet diaper, and her need to be held. The due date circled on the calendar meant precisely nothing.

And that was when I learned that being ready is great, but it is by no means required.

What is required is rising to the task at hand, ready or not — or, as I keep harping on, tending to the person at hand, ready or not. It would have been no good to protest that I couldn’t possibly take care of a baby for at least another two weeks, according to the plan. She was here, and she needed to be fed and cared for without delay. And that was how I worked out my salvation that particular year — with excruciating visits to the lactation consultant with six other kids in tow; with painful, round-the-clock pumping and a bewildering assortment of silicone tubing and bitsy little membranes that needed to be sterilized and not lost track of. It was hard, physically and emotionally. But I learned so much more about myself and about love and sacrifice than I would have if I had had that extra month to “prepare.”

So, yes, DO THE LOVE THING NOW is a big part of my spirituality in general, at least for now. For me, “Oh, hang on, I’m still preparing” is just an excuse, and I’m really just goofing off and hoping I look busy. All too often, I’ll try to put my responsibilities off indefinitely, calling it “preparation,” but halfway hoping I’ll get let off the hook, and, when the acceptable hour arrives, I won’t have to do it at all.

Or else, if I do throw myself into preparations, I feel so obnoxiously proud of myself that I become completely insufferable, and give myself way more credit than I deserve. Well, bringing home that dark-haired little baby without even a bag of diapers to our name, I felt God poke me and say, “Hey. If this works out, you’ll know it wasn’t because of you.” Got it!

But that’s just me and my issues. If approaching Advent this way doesn’t work for you, that’s fine. Everyone has a different lesson to learn, different bad habits to correct for, different defects to fill out — and different kinds of encouragement and sustenance that God wants to give you, too. Whatever it is that you need, Advent can help. Or if not, the next liturgical part of the year can. Cycles are great that way.

Now where’s my ha’penny? I was promised a ha’penny.

***
Photo by Sanjasy via Pixabay

Let’s resist kneejerkifying history

Every few weeks, a group of enlightened teenagers, who have been raised since birth to believe such-and-such is wrong, will get together and demand that a long-dead man should be punished for not having been raised since his birth two hundred years ago to believe that such-and-such is wrong.

Sometimes, they’re onto something. I wouldn’t want to spend my afternoons bathed in the hues of a stained glass black man kneeling before John Calhoun. (I wouldn’t smash a window depicting slavery, but I would put up a fuss.) There’s a fine line between acknowledging the past and condoning its errors.

But it sure does get old to hear that Abraham Lincoln was “not the great emancipator” because his stated main goal was to preserve the union, and because he was against interracial marriage. No: Lincoln was a white man was born in 1809, and he thought like a white man born in 1809; and he was a great and good man.

Same thing for great thinkers of the Catholic Church. You refuse to employ your super-fine mind in the same room as Thomas Aquinas just because he had some dumb or hinky ideas about the ladies? Your loss. The rest of us don’t have much time to be offended; we’re too busy trying to keep up.

Just as irritating as the knee-jerk judgment of the past? The wholly unearned smugness that often goes along with that judgment. Let’s be fair: If I can’t blame Lincoln for thinking like everyone thought when he was alive, then why should I laud you for thinking like everyone thinks now? You’re not a courageous free-thinker for wearing an anti-racist T-shirt in 2016. You’re just someone who noticed that “NOH8” or “BLM” or whatever is trending right now.

Even worse than wagging our fingers at history is when we try to protect our paper-thin skins by blotting out the past altogether. What a horrible, self-defeating error. If our country is guilty of crimes, then there is one foolproof way to ensure that we repeat them, and that is to erase all evidence of them, to cleanse our living space of any exposure to them. Your body won’t fight back against a disease if you spend each day bathing in Purell, and the same is true for our collective soul as a country. You must endure some exposure.

Well, here’s an encouraging spot of sanity: Yale announces new procedure for renaming of university buildings. They’re not going to refuse to hear any argument against honoring a historical figure who held troubling views; but neither are they going to knuckle under to the mob and despise greatness when it comes dressed in historical clothing that clashes with current political fashion.

In an interview with NPR yesterday, Yale dean Jonathan Holloway said:

The fact is as human actors we’re all flawed. So I really wonder if you are going to be using the Oregon test [which applies strict, inflexible criteria] against historic figures who are operating in a world in which you – people did not even know or worry about the experiences or views of women or immigrants or minorities, you’re going to fail the test pretty quickly. And so I think any renaming test has to be mindful of the present and the past and also the future in trying to sort out what its litmus tests are going to be.

To my mind, when we wonder if we should honor someone who held views that most people now despise, there are four issues to be considered:

Were these views widespread and unchallenged at the time? Would the person in question have to be an outrageously original and insightful thinker to even consider holding a different point of view?
Are the unpleasant views he held even relevant to why he is being honored today? Are we honoring him for all aspects of his entire life, or can we say, “Even though he was terribly wrong about this issue, his achievements in that other field are immense and indisputable”?
If he did do great things, were the bad things he did so bad (even if they were in an entirely different field from the great things) that they overshadow what was great?
Have we done our research, really? Or have we just read a line or two off some Buzzfeed compilation of the Daily Snit?

Yale is apparently taking a measured approach to challenges from people laboring under what Halloway calls the “arrogance of your contemporary moment,”and is trying to slow down that locomotive of self-congratulatory outrage. He wants, if you can imagine such a thing in an institute of higher learning, for complainants to thoughtfully and dispassionately contextualize history, rather than just reflexively scratching whatever the current mob considers itchiest.

It’s especially admirable that Yale is choosing to do this now, in post election 2016. With Trump as president, and the alt right ascending, we’re likely to see more and more re-legitimization of historical figures who truly ought to be intolerable to everyone today — not because of current, changeable sensibilities, but because their views were intolerable to decent people even while they were alive.

I expect that a president who reportedly kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside (just for the articles, you understand. He doesn’t even notice the pictures) will breathe new life and vigor into old, deservedly condemned causes. We’ve already seen some efforts, from a population indispensable to Trump’s victory, to reanimate fetid corpses of egregious racism, anti-semitism, denial of Bosnian genocide, and more. Confederate flag sales skyrocketed in 2015. Trump himself praised the “strength” of China’s response to Tianamen Square; and Trump openly admired Saddam Hussein’s efficiency in dealing with his enemies.

This man is now our president, our representative to the rest of the world.

Anticipating the battles to come, we might be tempted to suit up with an extra, protective layer of righteous indignation. If we’re going to be led by a man who dabbles in horrors, we might decide ahead of time that we’ll have a prophylactic zero tolerance policy against anything and anyone that smacks of his ugly ideals.

But let’s not. Let’s not respond to kneejerk politics by jerking the knee in the other direction. This country isn’t over yet. We’re still writing our history, still making adjustments, still figuring out who we are. Let’s take a clue from Yale, and slow down, do our research, think things through — and above all, not respond to unthinking rhetoric with more unthinking rhetoric.

In an absurdly awful election, where there could be no winning for the American people, we lost. Yes, we did. But that doesn’t mean we need to surrender. We still have time.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: