good for the soul

snapshots of my day…

* enjoyed my morning cup of coffee instead of the usual guzzling

* an amusing distraction courtesy of Silly Songs with Larry and a curious craving for cucumber salad

* a faithful prayer of thanksgiving for my dear dear friend and his battle with cancer … and a prayer for physical relief and creative focus for another

* the pretty lavender and eggplant lining in my black suit jacket makes me feel feminine on the inside and corporate on the outside — I like my secrets

* the fact that women reading this understand “eggplant”

* it’s cool enough for a sweater — mine is teal

* God’s house is big — where a door closes there’s usually another door open — I don’t need to go crawling through windows

* the oak outside my office window is still green and looks majestic against the bright blue sky

* in the continuing game of finding random Cubans everywhere, met a new student recently arrived from Havana

* a shot and a beer, albeit virtual, hit the spot when I found it around happy hour

* got home to a special delivery pizza, a glass (or two) of wine, and a quiet conversation on the porch. aaah.

Blessed John Newman

The Mission of My Life

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.

John Henry Newman

I love the smell of old books

One of the things that my closest friend and I share is a love of reading.  What we don’t necessarily share is a love of the same books. This resulted in a rather funny public mockery a few months ago when I took a picture of one of her bookcases with all the Twilight series books lined up neatly in the middle of shelf upon shelf of deep and esoteric theology books. (Really? You probably listen to Justin Bieber, too, don’t you?).

So last night I found myself caught up in one of her little schemes that has to do with her work and catechists and such. I am no Martha Stewart, but whatever, we had fun chatting and catching up while doing some simple repetitive work. It gave us a chance to unwind over a cup of coffee (decaf — seriously?) and eventually the talk turned to a book about the Church doctors that she just picked up. It looked amazingly readable to me, especially since I think holy cards are often over my head.

I liked the way the book is set up so that it’s not the same writer but a nice collection of shorter works. Kind of like a survey of the writers for a beginner.  Who knows, I may someday have the attention span to tackle St. Teresa of Avila.We’ve shared books before, introducing each other to texts we wouldn’t ordinarily pick up on our own. Still, I have standards. She can keep Twilight.

This morning when I went through my reading list, I found this article, “In Defense of Old Books, “ and knew I had to read it right away.  The title captured my attention immediately. All of the excitement over the ebook readers may make reading easier and more accessible, but as far as I am concerned, the tactile enjoyment is gone. While most of my books tend to be paperbacks, to hold an old book with its thick hardback cover, yellowing pages, and musty smell is to be in a sort of timeless communion with the work. My favorite bookstore, Tattersall’s, closed because it couldn’t compete with the sterile new superstores, and I miss the creaky floorboards, the overstuffed bookshelves, the secret little finds that had been long forgotten — ready for me to explore.

Naturally, I thought this blog post was going to celebrate that. Instead, it talks of the wisdom of old books and especially, that if we are going to engage in some important conversations today, that it’s best to go to the beginning of those conversations so that we can have the context. If you love books, love C.S. Lewis, even love St. Athanasius, you might want to read what Michael Hyatt has to say about old books.

pray for peace

One of my favorite painters, Picasso, has a series of lovely and simple line drawings that make me smile. Their beautiful simplicity speaks volumes — one stroke, one line can convey as much or more than the detailed paintings of other masters. I appreciate the others, as I appreciate some of Picasso’s more complex works as well.

But sometimes, less is more.

On this, the eve of another year gone by when we remember the events of September 11, 2001, I pray for peace.  We live in a complex world with complex relationships and far too much chaos. We grieve over the inhumanity of man against man, not just over the events that horrified us nine years ago, but over horrors committed daily.

We grieve at our capacity for evil. We grieve over injustice. We grieve because we feel.  And if we feel we can hope.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.    — Lamentations 3:21-22

GNSH doesn’t really stand for Get No Sympathy Here

On Wednesday night, God willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll be attending a special Mass of Thanksgiving for the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta. The timing of this event is Providential. I don’t go around looking for signs like Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle, but well…I don’t discount them either. That date coincides with a very important deadline regarding a major change that I am discerning. More on that another time, but as you can guess, it involves my career in education.

Anyway, the Grey Nuns. These wonderful sisters impacted generations of folks in Atlanta and made all kinds of amazing contributions for which they will be recognized on Wednesday, and they will probably be all humble and stuff like you’d expect them to be. Sweeping statements about their profound impact on education are just that, sweeping and generalized. The truth is, these women impacted lives. Individuals. I know, because I am one of them.

I attended Christ the King Elementary School in the seventies. I have many fond memories of the place … the playground, recess in the parking lot, sneaking across the street to the Baptist church to buy Cokes, basketball games and assemblies and class Masses. Those were good times, but there are other memories, of the teachers, that are much more than just nostalgic remnants of childhood. Many of those women (and men) had a profound impact on my formation as a human being. A few, in particular, are directly to blame (yes, I blame them, it would have been easier to be an accountant) for planting certain seeds that led to my becoming a teacher.

I am looking forward to seeing some of these women after thirty-something years. I’d like to thank them, personally, for the impact that that they had on me – and tell them that their legacy lives on in me. It is both humbling and daunting to recognize that.  You see, unlike other professions, education is really on-the-job training from the moment a child enters kindergarten. By the time that child graduates high school, he or she has been shaped by a multitude of teachers – some good and some bad. I can state with absolute certainty that under the guidance of Sister Mary Margaret and then, Sister Jean, I never encountered a bad teacher at CKS. They weren’t even scary principals, and you were supposed to be scared of The Principal. Instead, these two women modeled a leadership that I hope to emulate one day as I seek administration.

Sister Mary Margaret was a pretty good basketball player. One of the highlights of my years at Christ the King was the annual faculty vs. student basketball game. The boys played against the fathers, but let’s be honest, the real draw was watching the sisters give the 8th grade girls a run for their money. Proof that experience is often a better tool than youth. Also, nobody was going to body check a nun, and I’ll bet they used that knowledge to their advantage. Sister Mary Margaret had skillz. So did some others. When I heard she was leaving at the end of my 7th grade year, my disappointment in not getting to play against her was profound.

When she left she did something that I thought was amazing. She sent each one of us, every student, a little card where she wrote a personal goodbye. I know this because we all checked to see if it was just a generic statement. It wasn’t. She took an amazing amount of time to leave each of us with an acknowledgement that she knew us. Maybe she did; maybe she asked our teachers to give her some insight. It doesn’t matter. I kept that little blue card for decades. I’m sure it got lost in a move somewhere, but I still remember the kind words she had for me, and how they have not only shaped my character, but taught me that every student under my charge, directly or indirectly, is a human being, not a statistic. I try to acknowledge that daily, especially when it would be easier not to do so.

Those were some big shoes to fill, and Sister Jean came along, and I’ll admit we were bitter at not having our beloved Sister Mary Margaret.  I imagine it was a tough act to follow, and she stepped in gracefully and did something that surprised us. She won our hearts with her smile. Really, I’ve never seen a principal smile that much. Isn’t there some rule about that?  I expect that she stepped into a difficult transition with the faculty, too.  Still, what we saw was her smile, and it was contagious.

On the 8th grade trip we broke tradition and traded a trip to Washington, DC for a much more exciting trip to Disney World. Sister Jean sat with me for part of the bus ride and she managed not to make that awkward (who wants to sit with the principal for 500 miles?).  Among other things, she shared with me her vocation story. It was an intimate moment that I treasured because it wasn’t a teacher/student thing, or an adult/child thing, but a heart-to-heart, one woman to another [young] woman. It changed the way I saw her, and all religious after that. It also started a long process of discernment for me, although I certainly didn’t have that label for it. My vocation, as it happens, turned out to be education, and while I chose the initials MRS instead of GNSH, I can assure you that in the classroom, my students are getting the full force of the Grey Nuns’ formation. Ha! Sometimes I’m a little sorry for my students.

So those initials are a pretty powerful little tool in my classes, especially when I taught high school. I don’t supposed the Grey Nuns are a widely known order, but there are people all over South Florida that know of them since I would often put the initials on the board. I can attribute this to Sister Dawn, who clarified on the first day of class that GNSH stands for Get No Sympathy Here.  That’s right. Tell me that wouldn’t scare you if you were a sixth-grader with a propensity for getting in trouble. I never did get any sympathy from her, just the expectation to do right. I still screwed up royally, but she had some crazy radar that honed in on me and set me straight again. Once, she figured out that I had some questionable reading material in my desk and called me out on it (M*A*S*H). Then she sent me home to read the offending book in front of my parents. That was slick. No phone call – making me face the music on my own. I learned about accountability from her, and if I didn’t learn it well enough in 6th grade, she beat it into me in 8th. Unquestionably, Sister Dawn was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

And finally, I have a soft spot in my heart for Sister Eileen, another one of those basketball playing nuns. Oh, Sister Eileen, if you only knew how often I have thought of you and prayed for you over the years.  Sister Eileen led me to God. She did it in a multitude of quirky ways that at the time were unknown to me, but that in retrospect stand out as seminal moments. I witnessed her stand on the beach for the first time. I know she had a profound moment with God, and right before I thought that maybe I should leave her alone and not ruin the moment, I wished for the same.

Sister Eileen was a scary broad. She was an old-school disciplinarian, but somehow, I managed to avoid her wrath (thank God for that small harbor—I seemed to piss off a lot of other teachers…Miss Salome? I apologize to you, too). Instead of scaring me, though, she gave me some responsibilities that really built me up. One day in science she was going to show a filmstrip about the natural world. It was accompanied by Cat Stevens’ song, Morning Has Broken. I was hesitant to do it since I was going to have to interpret the song in order to move the slides. That was my first experience with her stealth catechesis. “You’ll figure it out,” she said, and walked away. When I finished, she thanked me for doing a good job.

Later, Sister Eileen found out that I was taking guitar lessons, and immediately assigned me to play the guitar at class Masses. I loved playing the guitar – I still don’t like to sing in front of people. She would hear none of that. I played at all the Masses.  Yes, Sister. Right before graduation, she invited me to the convent to pick up something she had for me. I was flabbergasted when she gave me a beautiful gift – Sister Mary Margaret’s ukulele. Sister Eileen said she didn’t play any instruments, and thought I would like it. Like it? I’ve treasured it for over 30 years. I still have that ukulele, and it has been a source of joy for me. She singled me out for such a gift, not realizing that she had given me a greater one.

Each of these women live in me. I learned much more than science or Language Arts from them. I learned how to be a student. I learned how to be a teacher. I learned how to be a woman. And I learned that I am a valued child of God, with my own unique gifts, with my own unique place in His plan.

little joys

  • fresh coffee
  • fluffy towels
  • a well-timed text message
  • loud music
  • my blue uni-ball gel pen
  • my pillow
  • air-conditioning
  • tacos!
  • a well-placed carress
  • hummingbirds
  • freshly sharpened pencils
  • soft music
  • XXL-sized kid crawling into bed for some TLC
  • Coke with lots of ice
  • playing footsies in bed

I wanna hold your hand

I like to people watch. I don’t know when this habit developed, but I can say for sure that by the time I was in high school it was a pretty honed skill. I wish I could say that it has always been used for good, but…well…it includes (still) countless hours of entertainment for purely selfish reasons and less-than-honorable voyeuristic mockery. Shame on me. I’d go to confession over it, but don’t you know I’d rather follow St. Augustine’s example and wait just a little more before I have a conversion about it.

On my way back from lunch I saw a pretty sketchy-looking couple, walking in a pretty sketchy area, and they were holding hands. My typical reaction is to spout off some awful comment, but  I’m a sucker for hand-holding. Any kind. Lovers. Children. Parents and their children. It’s a beautifully intimate act. To place one’s hand in another’s is a joining of so many things: solidarity, companionship, strength, and trust.

That’s why when we give up control, we say that “things are out of our hands.”

Often our greatest  and most difficult act is to relinquish our poor hold on control and place our sorrows and our desires in God’s hands.  I don’t know why that’s so tough…we lead our children by the hand; we hold each other up by the hand; we place our hearts in our lovers’ hands…why the reticence with God?

“See, upon the palms of my hands I have written your name” Isaiah 49:16

Is there a safer place to be? I’d like to give the quick, obvious answer to that, but I am weak and my head doesn’t always do what my heart says. Or maybe it’s the other way around – my heart doesn’t seem to respond to what my head says.

Perhaps my fascination with hand-holding is an unconscious response to this truth – that if I can so easily slip my hand into someone else’s, how much more comforting and accessible is God’s own hand.

Whose hand do you like to hold?

where the boys are …

I asked these goobers to pose for me, and this is what they did.

I’ll tell you where the boys are…behind the scenes doing their thing. I admit that I don’t know what that thing is, but I’m going to give a little tour of what was happening behind the scenes at the CNMC, and maybe we’ll be able to figure it out together. It involved beer, after all, so I tried to creep a little into their world.

First, I have to publicly proclaim my love for the SQPN boys – all of them. You won’t find a better collection of guys anywhere. They are strong  but gentle…funny and serious … solicitous and needy (ha, they are men after all), and they love their mothers, girlfriends, wives, and daughters. And I love every one of them for that.

Too often, today’s culture wants to take away their manliness, those things that give them the strength to lead, protect, and provide for their families in that uniquely masculine way that complements us. The feminists would tell us that men need to listen more, communicate more, show their softer side.

Um, that’s a lot of bunk. I need my men big and strong because I wasn’t going to carry around all those boxes. C’mon. I’m not helpless, but I am a sucker for a man on a white steed. I’m not so blind that I can’t see the tarnished edges on the armor, but hey, my tiara is on lopsided most of the time anyway. It’s about acceptance – we tend to call it unconditional love in our circles, don’t we? Our guys have a lot of it.

So this is what I saw, in no particular order, just snippets of some unsung heroes doing what they do best – being real men:

For every box I tried to move, lift, or shift, there were two men jumping forward to take over the task. Dom Bettinelli had work to do at the Pastoral Center, but he and George were a big part of the set-up. They didn’t have to do it; they were there to do techie things. On Sunday, Dom was excited to tell me he was on a date with his lovely wife, and they laughed as he put his arm around her and proclaimed that they’d take a romantic walk around the parking garage and go home after the tweet-up.

Captain Jeff cracked me up when he handed me his phone to give Linda directions to the hotel because, as he said, “Here. You speak woman.” Like it’s a foreign language. What don’t men get about landmarks, anyway?

I saw Rachel Balducci’s husband, Paul, holding their youngest son in his lap. Later, I saw a picture of Paul, by himself, coloring a beautiful little Thomas the Tank. Made me smile.

I hadn’t exchanged more than a couple of words of greeting with Bob Gohn before I ordered him to distribute chocolates in a room when his wife needed me. He was gracious – and I didn’t process my rudeness until I saw that picture, of a bemused-looking Bob, holding up Jeff Young’s coffee as a prize in the blogging track.

I giggled every time I got a text from my husband, who couldn’t travel with me to the CNMC but very much wanted me to go guilt-free, so he devised a virtual, scandalous vacation at the beach in Brazil. His texts were usually timed shortly after a picture of me surfaced in the live streams, a deliciously silly way to connect and let me know he was okay.

I saw instances of strong men doing all those things that men do well. They do listen: lovingly. They do communicate: clearly. They do have a softer side, and I witnessed that in so many ways I sometimes felt like I was intruding on private moments.

One of my favorite pictures shows an element of manhood that we often forget to celebrate. Men need other men to be role models, mentor them, and guide them, not just in the boardroom but in the world.

And I witnessed the intimacy of lots of hand-holding – a connection, a soft touch to say “I’m here. This is us.”  

What does this have to do with new media? Perhaps nothing at all. Or maybe, everything. Real people are involved in new media, affecting other real people. The internet is not a wasteland, although it could be. In celebrating the community, the humanity behind the technology, the CNMC brought us together as the Body of Christ.

what I loved about the CNMC

Got home close to midnight and turned around to teach the first class Monday morning. To say I’ve been busy is an understatement — it’s 5 pm, just got home from work and realized that my last meal was yesterday afternoon with Pat Gohn and Lisa Hendey. I didn’t have coffee this morning, meant to get some, worked through lunch, and just realized that I never did have that cup of coffee I was whining about this morning. At least my last meal was an amazingly delicious grilled tuna paired with a very light pinot grigio. Lisa insisted on a decadent chocolate cake for dessert. Of course. Because when women get together we eat chocolate. It’s in the rule book.

That’s what I loved about the CNMC. I’m vested in the new media thing. I get it. I don’t necessarily do it right or well (and many days not at all) but I get it. So for me, the weekend was about the relationships. And to my surprise, a lot of it was with the girls. Yes, that’s right — I played with the girls.

I feel like I should buy something pink.

I roomed with two amazing women, Pat Gohn, and then Sarah Reinhard, both very hardworking and humble, fun and fabulous. Oh, and talented, but I suppose you get that.  Anyway, that’s what I really loved about the weekend. There’s something comfortable (and something more) about doing some hard work together, and then winding down with conversation into the night because we’re chatty Cathies. I wish we could solve the world’s ills over girl talk. There’s a particular wisdom expressed in the dark. Maybe because our guards are down, or it’s anonymously dark, or maybe it’s just the comfort of relaxing physically and then emotionally. Anyway, it seems to happen with me when I am away with my women friends, and it’s a sweet intimacy that strengthens and restores me in places I didn’t know were needy. Until the next time 🙂

I enjoyed dinner with Denyse Leger and Deborah Schaben, women who have become very real friends in this crazy new media that seems to surmount the insurmountable problem of distance in a world that was once so large and is now so small. The borders today are not geographical — they are something else, something I’m not ready to write about, but probably has more to do with the inhumanity of man towards man than just a line drawn in the sand.

I jumped up and down with Barb Gilman when I saw her in the hotel lobby, and must disappoint her by crowning Zina Gomez-Liss the Queen of Podcast Giddyness.  I got to see Stephanie Weak, and we all suffered through Inge Loots travel travails, when in a collective sigh of relief we discovered she had finally boarded a flight!

I spoke with Naomi Young, and Jenna from France! Reconnected with some fine sisters, Shelly and Lisa (and missed their Mom, Marilyn –happy birthday). And a host of other interesting women whose names I know and don’t know.

I talked about shoes with Katherine Barron and lamented not being able to shop. And discovered she plays the piano!

I hugged Allyson Sweeney because it’s been forever since I saw her.

I chatted and laughed with the Daughters of St. Paul and wonder if they ever get on each others’ nerves. And had Sr. Anne Flanagan sign my copy of Stella Maris which I’ve already played to death.

Danielle Bean and Rachel Balducci looked like they had more fun not selling their books and laughing (although…you should buy their books, I did).

I watched other women reconnect and share and giggle, and I shared their moments from afar, knowing exactly what they were feeling.

And I marveled at the collection of our daughters becoming women. I have to catch my breath for that one.

I made Lisa Hendey blush, which, if you know her, probably isn’t all that difficult, but that’s not even the reason why it’s funny. It’s funny, because she spoke a big ole truth that came straight from the heart — those are the truthiest truths, aren’t they?

I thought, too, of our Blessed Mother. What kind of girl was she? What kind of woman did she become? How did she bear the responsibility of her charge, the joys and the profound sorrows? It came to me that she bore them like we all do … like the women in the room who were smiling and laughing and each carrying her own great sorrows and fears. She remains my greatest inspiration and model for trusting in God’s plan.

But undeniably, the best moment of the entire CNMC I attribute to my dear friend Linda Nielsen, quiet as a lamb, demur, almost shy, sweet Linda Nielsen. Well folks, she’s not. She’s conniving and calculating and exceedingly patient because she stalked me until she found me in the depths of my distraction and irritability and struck like a viper. Bam! She pranked me, and she pranked me well.

Wait’ll next year.