The Jehovah's Witnesses keep coming over

"The Catholic Church is an institution that I am bound to hold divine --- but for unbelievers proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight." ~ Hillaire Belloc

A few years ago I suffered a setback in my enchantment with all things Catholic. I finally saw the impenetrable bureaucracy for what it was. A priest friend sat up late, listened and studied --- he said this was good, that getting pissed and not leaving was vital to developing a mature faith.

In the matter of Timothy Cardinal Dolan and every other source of ecclesial agitation, I'm marshaling hope that it's part of being sanctified. Living in an age of penance. Being thankful for every upright soul I can learn from. My duty is to serve Our Lord by loving my family. Life can be really simple. I have no reason to be ungrateful. And a grateful heart cannot be disturbed.



The cat is gagging super loudly in a corner of the kitchen and my 'free hour' during math and Sesame Street is coming to an end.

Do Whatever He Tells You: rinse & repeat, mea culpa, happy summer, grateful heart, contented mind

I just can't stop watching this ~ and on all other matters I must withhold comment.

"I have no reason to be ungrateful" ~ Chelsa P at the 9:30

 <3 <3 <3 (is that hip? no? I'm pressed for time.)



Oldies but Goodies

The photo on the bottom is part of my computer's picture drive that plays a slideshow, and I like seeing it occasionally. A great source of perspective with politicians comes when I hear my kids pray for a few by name. It reminds me that Jesus seeks the heart of the individual, not en masse, as well as the bracing paradoxes that draw us towards his love: surrender to win, least of these, those willing to lose their lives, and so on. Kids tend to see the humanity of a president, rather than the dazzle of an office, more clearly than adults. And I'm going to get some new pearls ASAP.

 

 

from the dedication of the GWB Prezzy Library, April 2013

 

disorienting moments, a compendium

Here are times when the world feels foreign:
*    When I hear anyone rag on the Aerosmith/Britney Spears SuperBowl  halftime show.
*    When my eyesight is continually affronted with neon colors in fashion accessories.
*    When my older daughters tell me they've never been to a wedding or seen a kitten. (lies! but they hold this belief steadfast and know it makes me verklempt)
*    When surrounded by people who schedule events 6-8 months in advance.
*    When I remember my first obstetrician blithely offering to abort my baby.
*    Much more recently, the day my father praised the Seattle Seahawks.
*   When Sesame Street is just screaming Common Core interdisciplinary mediocrity at me, first thing in the morning.


Do your thing and do it well!

Okay, maybe seven things isn't really a compendium. But that's a word with a lot of syllabic harmony, so it stays.

Happily, there are many more moments that life just clicks, on a level of unmistakable harmony. I guess the pagans call it synchronicity. All the sweeter is to witness that universal "fitting" and know it to mean a loving God directs the galaxy. Faith really is a gift. May it be used to the maximum service of those who suffer.

Get Back in the Closet, Christians

Like every self-aware mother of my generation, I'm prone to announce unprompted that our family doesn't subscribe to cable television. For years, my pop culture and current events were filtered through the custom aggregation of Facebook's news feed. There were all-caps screech posts about Duck Dynasty shared by my friends; I thought it must be a cartoon and snubbed it accordingly.

Then I saw the boxed DVDs for sale in our local gas station, displayed at eye level in a slick A&E cardboard diorama. Grizzled men, posing in front of some kind of towering manse, with a chick in a red evening gown? $12.99? Sold. To its target demographic, no less.

Reality television disclosure: Three years ago, I had a regrettable winter courtship with Real Housewives of New Jersey. Parked on the couch with a nursing newborn, I tried my hand at scheduled television devotions. I really loved that show. The husbands were these sort of bruiser man-child amalgams of Elmer Fudd and Keanu Reeves surfer characters, paired with wives depicted as glossy, treacherous overgrown girls. It was like all of my fantasies of adult life from tenth grade had come to fruition onscreen, and the results were horrific. Exercise clothing mixed with gaudy jewelry (worn by both sexes), in-home music studios, drunken brawling at baptisms, weekend retreats with a batch of lifelong friends, catty revelations in the kitchen about suffering souls in the next room --- it was all there. My husband would stroll past me and mumble things about my moral integrity becoming more fragile by the moment. In his tones it was more like, "You are so much better than this. Watching this is beneath you. You're not even embarrassed? I feel embarrassed enough for both of us." He sounded a lot like my mom during the decade she endured my teenage fixation with General Hospital ~ although she usually ended her clucking with approval of the Tracy Quartermaine's wardrobe. In a sense, me and soap operas go way back.

I delivered the DVDs to our nine-year-old daughter and hoped for the best. Our loyalty has been incrementally won over, and I've grown content to hear episodes of Duck Dynasty playing from the TV in the family room. Season Three will be under our Christmas tree. We muse about the appeal ~ has family life become so exotic?

This clan, from whom I expected the behavior of backwater clowns, now seems charming and relevant. The Uncle Si 'character' in particular made me realize that these people are very real, as well as coy enough to play to type without losing grit in pursuit of irony. Their story is sincere. Mrs. Robertson is everything I aspire to as a wife and mother: gracious & maternal, with enough sassy loyalty to keep her afloat as she serves God through her family. I may have chosen Anne Romney's cookbook over Miss Kay's for Christmas this year, but it's only because Cajun treatments of seafood run against my grain. The regal feeling of gathering my family around the dinner table each night for a meal is unmatched in this world. I trust women who make it their lifeblood.

Enter the crudeness of the comments highlighted in the GQ interview --- at their core, it was a heterosexual man expressing his preference for heterosexual sex.

If queried, I imagine all of his sons believe precisely as he does. We've entered a realm where a man asked to define sin gives a rough sketch of the Ten Commandments, and quasi-hysteria ensues. Even if clarity abounds in real life, it's obvious that idiocy too often reigns.

Loyalty to masculine men disclosure: I've got it. I see a double standard. Would Mister Duggar, the men of Real Housewives fame, or even the younger Robertson men be ushered off Stage Left, for ascribing publicly to this doctrine? I guess not. They're allowed to exist as a bucolic source of de-fanged entertainment. But one watches Phil Robertson and gets the sense that he means this shit. There's nothing he'd rather go down swinging for than God's laws. He wasn't goaded into saying it by a sly reporter, and it wasn't staged to spike ratings or allow him an exciting exit from the series (both scenarios I've seen offered by fans...) He accepts the grace of Christian redemption and won't parse the terms. I commend his sense of scale.

Like it or not, this is the Cosby family for a generation of Americans --- and the idea of a disposable father figure is absurd. The Powers That Be of A&E might be embarrassed by what Phil said, but without him there's likely no Duck Dynasty. As our six-year-old said when I broke the news in vague terms, "But he leads the prayer every single time. He can't be fired from his own family."

Before we begin crowning martyrs for the faith (I told my girls I'd buy a tabletop model of Mt. Rushmore with the Duck Dynasty guys' faces on it, at this point), it should be acknowledged that in practical terms this is almost entirely American theater. We can safely feign horror at a description of gay sex, because everyone is free to have it. I'd like to say the same for Christian faith. Actual Christian oppression and slaughter exists, committed largely by men whose faith calls for dealing with dissenters by violence and subjugation. We should try to follow that plot, with or without well-packaged gas station DVD display towers.

In the end, it's not so much noteworthy that Mr. Robertson was fired by A&E, but that he was ever hired at all.

pencil portrait of Phil Robertson by Rick Kills. "...he's not grouchy, he's just strong." Says Vivian, age 9.

When Evangelize Sounds More Like Scandalize

It's been observed that having a judicious temperament includes knowing when to simply be quiet. What's the opposite of judicious, then? That's the one I have. The temperament of a defendant, or maybe a plaintiff, but I wish to be no one's Judge. And thank God for His wisdom on that. We could take a moment of silence to observe it, even.

Blogging has served a thrilling mix of the accessible and the impossible for me, since jumping in with both feet two years ago, after an annual Christmas letter mailing just left me overflowing with more to say. A convert to Catholicism, I find endless study, joy and conversion in the tenets of our faith. Reading certain blogs has urged me along the journey. It's also been helpful to express these beliefs by writing them down, in the sense that I could refer to authoritative teachings and teachers while paddling alongside them in my own way. It's been cool.

None of this is to say that writing publicly in my limited scope has helped me to become a stronger Christian. It hasn't. With the exception of highlighting my own scholastic and spiritual weaknesses --- a focus I'm thankful for --- this has been mostly an exercise in networking. Still valid, still gratifying and productive. But not growth, for me. There are graceful women who can avoid being unfairly combative while elucidating Truth, and I commend them.

"I write to make sense of my life," is a sentiment I heard twenty years ago and loved immediately. It now sounds slightly vain and limited, but as far as it goes is still true for me. My faith makes sense to me now, and writing about it has been a small but vital part of that.

I am newly sensitive to the formulaic cheapening of our faith for cynical gain, after an exchange heralded by a popular Catholic blogger, in which "traditional" Catholics were prompted to decry the secret anti-Semitism amongst the people they worship with. Hardly a light charge. Stuttering denials and outrage ensued. Crazy anti-Semitic (the word crazy being descriptive, not a qualifier, for there's no other kind) things were typed to the blog author in response. However, all sane voices claiming to run in traditionally-minded circles but never hear such filth were ignored. A pattern emerged: either tacitly cheer the hip blogger and mock the square kids in skirts, or prepare to be shunned. Una Voce, people.

Sometimes I read the posts offered here and see a predictable pattern: "Orthodoxy (from the Greek, 'straight, upright', no?) rules! Believe me and St. Augustine --- and if you don't, allow me to shock you with a sordid, self-referential anecdote." Formulas are tiresome, and if there's one thing I learned from the smirking condescension lobbed my way this afternoon, it's that guilt by association has a formula all its own. When an accuser is intent on proving their point over discovering even a hint of new data, no defense is possible. I trust God alone to direct my soul, and have no doubt that the gift of reason will serve me in discerning the company I keep at mass or anywhere else. I don't need edicts from the internet or a Facebook pep rally about bravery to do so.

And so it follows that I now assess my associations. Let God find me in a Latin mass all day long before He sees me bowing down to self-appointed spiritual directors posing as bloggers, so hungry for plain old meanness and detraction. We must be careful that leaps to rashness and amusement at the expense of charity don't become idols in themselves. I'm comfortable saying 'we' because I mean 'me'. I must be careful of this.

Lox Populi, in its name, is a claim that the voice of the people is not, after all, the voice of God. (Plus my daffy nod to the superiority of Alaskan seafood.) I wonder if that's an irrelevant claim to stake online, where being loud and pithy too often passes for virtue and truth. Mob rule has no charity. It seeks evidence to fulfill a foregone conclusion, and ignores any contrary testimony. There's no judicious temperament required, only a grudge and a megaphone.

If I began writing in this space with at least the clarity of knowing I have much more to learn than I do to teach, that clarity remains. And I want to write about motherhood now, with many of the same intentions (mostly justifying the suspicious amount of reading I like to do). My motivation is growth as a writer --- with opinions and observations about modern culture through the prism of Catholicism coming naturally. Joyfully swimming upstream towards the shared aim of sainthood, and challenging myself to excellence, these all still matter very much to me.

This blog will stay active, but I envision a season of learning and sharing more on the personal topic of vocation: if you'll join me, please find newer posts at The Reasonably Redneck Childhood.

You Don't Have To Stay Home, But You Can't Come Here

Worthy conversations abound about the role of Catholic singles among our parish life and beyond. We're all enriched by having friends or relatives who don't have kids, for the perspective and levity they can bring to kid situations. (Not to mention the hope of recruiting a babysitter from time to time.) Among my fellow mommy friends, I can predict pretty accurately their individual reaction to queries or stories about family life. They are wise, introspective and filled with experience. That said, it's often refreshing to hear my bachelor Uncle or childhood friends' responses instead.

I remember once describing a harried morning with toddlers and a twenty-pound sack of dried pinto beans as "White Trash Montessori", a description met by the guttural laughter of a lifelong pal who was pregnant with her first baby at the time. Since the climax of the tale was less about the gleeful, malicious pouring of the beans in our tiled entryway, and more about how it took me three solid days to entirely clean up the mess, it helped to have a friend laugh at the story. It was funny. It was over. It didn't need further discourse.

People without kids who are content to be amused by kids are a treasure. I sense they're becoming a minority, and wonder if the root of 'brat bans' is the self-congratulatory stance of the larger child-free movement. As our society has relegated sex to a weekend adventure, and embraced contraception and abortion, the necessary lie becomes that little kids are the realm of the clueless and the careless.

Before I'm nailed as laissez-faire or unrealistic, I should clarify: many places are intended exclusively for adults. For the sake of sanity and unity, it's great to know those boundaries exist. A business owner can and ought to create the environment he believes has maximum market attraction. A party host(ess) has every right to request their celebration be without children. I wish them well. Conversely, I'm not lobbying for any one 'parenting style' over another. I realize the Europeans do it differently, often to mixed reviews.

After witnessing two women in particular who captured the essence of Matthew 19:14 ("But Jesus said to them: Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for the kingdom of heaven is for such." (Douay-Rheims 1899)), it's obvious that living this requires patience and willful abandonment to Love. In social invitations and leading Children's Eucharistic Adoration, theirs is an influence I've been grateful to receive. I'm really sloppy at imitating their gravitas, but nonetheless thankful for the examples. Likewise the gregarious priests whose comfort level or conviction allows them to encourage motherhood in the devotional and public sphere.

I'd love to highlight some realm outside of the insular Catholic homeschooling world as doing it correctly: accepting childhood as a valid state of being, using high expectations to instill pride and excellence in behavior, letting kids be kids without projecting hostility towards their parents. I try to venture out regularly. But go beyond the gates and we sound pretty clueless. No one wants to raise sullen jerks who stare into iPod screens, but the risky business of ushering kids from littleness to bigness has become a liability we'd rather not confront.

We're just not sure where kids fit anymore. We have the United Nations' Rights of the Child, but in daily life such global poetry is proving to be tough competition for actual children who make noise and eat food and learn manners and mess up.

Our family attended a performance art festival earlier this winter, which featured a few storytellers. They offered artful renditions of the Snow Queen and other classics; our oldest daughters, ages 5 and 8, were rapt. The younger kids were happily seated until I had the grand idea to usher them down to the dancing area, which only made them aware of the wide staircase, which made them antsy to climb the stairs. As a mom who refuses to let her little kids disrupt gatherings but operates under the human limitations of time and space, I've grown nerves of steel for the forty seconds required to swoop up the toddlers and duck out the door at the first sign of mutiny. The big girls and I have our pantomimed exchanges nearly perfected for any venue --- they're either given permission to find me in the foyer afterwards, or they're begged to grab coats and bolt at the next polite break. This January day found me circumspect, and before my escape I noticed the pinched faces of old white men with silver ponytails, visibly peeved that Storytime was being ruffled by the presence of children. Really?

I recently watched a Facebook comment stream about leaving children in a parked car while using an indoor restroom with particular interest. On its face, the attitude of those who disagreed with this practice was purely one of concern. But something more complex is at work, in many cases. Like the reflexive brother of the Prodigal Son, much of our culture wants the 'rightness' of their choices confirmed by maximizing the discomfort, even to the point of humiliation, of the 'wrongheaded' people. The confidence and serenity (also expressed as "benign neglect" by the ones with a sense of humor) that typifies the experienced mother or father is anathema to those who have convinced themselves that babies ruin everything. This mindset not only violates charity, it removes the chance to be of service to others, which destroys our sanctification. The devil himself would have set it up just so.

Nowhere is this schizophrenia more starkly presented than at church. Today I called a local parish to inquire about the plausibility of (me) offering childcare if parents wanted to attend a Saturday brown bag luncheon talk being offered there. I was either cordially rebuffed or given reluctant permission --- I still can't figure out which. The idea was met with a despairing sigh after mentioning that I'd like to attend with my five children. This is sad. I profess a Faith which upholds the dignity of welcoming a new baby each year if God so deigns. Pro-life posters in the stairwell are nice, but showing up to casual events with babies in tow? Poorly conceived, it seems.

Kids are a handful. They'll spill the beans everywhere, on purpose, and you'll be surprised how stealthily a single pinto can poke underfoot, days later. It's fair to be frank about their messy joys and surprise graces. Moreover, kids are the way we get new people, for better or worse. May we heed the words of PJ O'Rourke --- who said in endorsing Jonathan Last's book, "the only thing worse than having children is not having them."

Dances With Devastation: A Personal Reflection

The police dispatcher was waiting. I was stalling. Her question was simple. "Native," I answered after two or three beats, equally peeved at her for asking as I was at myself for balking at the descriptor. "Maybe in his early fifties, with long grey hair and a ballcap, wearing a backpack. He has a cane. He's teetering in the highway with a half-gallon vodka bottle and the cars are swerving around him."

Inupiat dancer

Driving home from an elegant celebration of Alaska Native culture, our minivan nearly intersected with a man who wasn't taking very good care of himself. "He needs to live indoors and take better care of himself," has long been my go-to simplification when answering my children about some of the Indians they see. As 'urban' Alaskans, my kids know the drumbeat as an ornamental attraction, and it will not likely represent much more to them. Even if we returned to the island of my childhood, the dances and regalia would be an occasional treat -- yet it'd be complemented by a life peppered with plenty of Native Alaskans sharing their daily pursuits and lifestyle. My early life in Petersburg, Alaska was infused by founders Tlingit, Filipino and Norwegian. I've been in the city for exactly ten years --- two or three of those years had passed before I grasped that the landscape of Anchorage contained a hostility to Native people which is foreign to me.

It was subsequent to this, and the birth of our first child that I vowed to seek as many healthy and beautiful examples of Native culture as possible for our kids. I want to foster layers of understanding about our state and her first people; I wasn't necessarily prepared for the emotions that would stir in myself.

My husband had an inverse perspective, coming from Southern California directly to an Interior village of under a thousand people in the mid-1990s. He took a service job where he was literally spit on by Native residents. Vulgarities and racial epithets were hissed at him while he worked for minimum wage. Forging ahead, his Alaskan adventure and American dream were nonplussed. He would later assert that "Natives in Southeast (where I grew up and where he eventually moved) are particularly civilized." I dismissed this commentary as my decidedly un-PC husband trying to roil his NPR-listening wife. How dare anyone describe a wide swath of humanity with such paternalistic kudos? The more he and I have travelled together, the more I see his candor on the topic as simply that. His formative years were spent in a vibrant ethnic tapestry, and he recognizes racial harmony on sight. By no means a social utopia, there is a certain lack of friction in Southeast Alaska, worthy of appreciation and study. His provocative description was probably intentional, but his frank apprisal has often been a gift to me.

A few years later, it was my husband who pointed out the innocence of a scene which I initially absorbed as shocking. Strolling with our daughters, we were caught off guard by a half dozen men bathing in our small neighborhood lake. They were splashing and laughing in the sunshine in their bright white cotton briefs. Soap and shampoo were scattered along the shore, and there were no signs of alcohol or inebriation. It was just some Native guys swimming in their underwear. My response was to quicken my step and shake my head, not quite sure whether to vocalize at all. Anthony recognized their ease in the natural world as an amusing inspiration. Except for the detergent raining into the duckpond, I guess it was hardly different than any group in swimsuits enjoying the sun.

Kids at Culture Camp

That same summer, we briefly met a young grad student who bought furniture we had advertised on Craigslist. His chiseled Yup'ik features and wire-rimmed eyeglasses matched his understated politeness. He shared his relief over finding enough seats to accommodate an influx of family members visiting from Bush Alaska as he loaded the dining set. As the beefy pickup truck pulled out of our driveway, my husband beamed towards no one in particular, "He's gonna make it, you can just tell." That a lone person doing such an ordinary task was noteworthy, even exhilarating, and is still memorable gives a hint at its uniqueness. Living in Anchorage, we so rarely encounter Natives who are not in crisis.

As spectators to these rarities and my admittedly museum-style field trips on holidays, my children are otherwise growing up with only glossy, low-rise corporate real estate and street drunks as their imagery of modern Natives. I counter it where I can, and I maximize on their oblivion to racial stereotypes. They would not consciously draw the conclusion that most of the wandering alcoholics they see are Native, but it will take root over time. For now, I manipulate discussions to include race ("Your dad has Portuguese blood, mine is Scottish, Irish and German, Grandma Sue's is German, Grandpa Bob's blood is African and Chinese, your cousins' is Mexican," etc.) solely for the purpose of skewing the data their brains might otherwise absorb. I selectively mention some of their favorite adults as having "Indian blood." I habitually say 'their blood is...' rather than 'they are Irish/German/Black/Native," because I want to transmit that our earthly origins describe us, but they don't define us. (I'm not quite this persnickety in adult conversation --- I just want to imprint the literal truth where possible in my children.)

Loretta Marvin, a Petersburg elder
(and unnamed kiddo) both in traditional garb

I feel a pull to share this particular culture as being noble and strong. My defenses rise when people of any stripe condemn rural Alaskans who are floundering in the city. This must be what members of a race feel like when their compatriots are the troublesome immigrants of the moment: "I know my people to be different than you are all seeing." I'm sensitive to the call not to teach that Native ways are antiquated, yet I purposely refer to displays of art, habitats and subsistence as describing "old-fashioned Indians", to subtly re-assert to my children that Indian lineage is shared by people who live and strive just like we do. My casual tone belies the pride and admiration I feel towards my girlfriends --- teachers, nurses, businesswomen and activists, who are also devoted wives and mothers.

Too many of the men are drunk, dead or in jail. I don't have a pat approach to that one. My tears during Native cultural celebrations are for these gentle souls turned violent, predatory and self-destructive. On Mother's Day we again took in the powerful sounds and sights of Native traditions --- the playful, creative spark in the dancers' eyes was as familiar as my first teenage love, youthful partners in crime, and eventually the children in my charge as a tutor and counselor. Those connections have been lost; morphed into hometown graveyard visits in the rain, prison letters exchanged over years, and tender memories of human potential. These are not case studies to me.

I reject the term "privilege awareness" as little more than a polysyllabic version of White Guilt, but living as a visible ethnic minority and having my actions -- for better or worse -- chronicled as a token of my race are not burdens I bear. For this I do wrestle with guilt, however irrationally. My response is to consider my conscience pricked, and see my duty to any suffering soul as one of prayer and action. At times, both seem like a futile wimper compared to the endemic winds of pain which swallow generations.

My classmates who have found peace and professional success didn't do it because they are Tlingit or Haida, nor in spite of it. They set goals and worked hard. Bloodline is not an achievement. Ancient tribal dances offer a most stirring, primal beauty, yet they are irrelevant to modern commerce and academia. No one is telling Irish American children that Celtic dance is paramount to their worth --- we're all just invited to enjoy a nostalgic form of entertainment. The wounds have largely healed. I hold the same hope for the epic sadness that dominates the public face of Alaskan Native people in this city. I pray for better days ahead.

Elizabeth Peratrovich, tireless fighter

Our most recent visit to the Heritage Center included the discovery that the concession stand was gone, replaced by a welcoming indoor play area for toddlers. Hanging on the wall above the toys was a banner titled, "Never Forget Who You Are". A grid of six Alaskan tribes was printed neatly, with a cartoonish graphic and a positive trait listed for each tribe. For example, one tribe was "Loving" and another was "Caring". Recognizing this as an attempt to distill complex and storied history of milennia to the Pre-K level, it still strikes me as vapid and erroneous if used as anything more than ancestral storytelling. There is no long-term viability in the formal promotion of cultural stereotypes, and they cannot provide tangible direction for children who might seek it. The communal aspect of tribal life has rendered competition --- at least in its simplest form, that of self-glorification --- useless in their circles. Boasting is anathema to the Natives I know, and yet the systemic approach in "Native Pride" programs seem to foster a swagger in young adults that has no root in their reality.

The risks facing a population may vary, but the solutions are the same no matter our ethnic heritage --- meaningful work and stable relationships. I would add the recognition of our self-worth being placed firmly in a Christian foundation; in this realm, that brings its own history of pain and exploitation.

Some guy in Ketchikan

Should Native kids be unequivocally warned about the toxicity of booze and their DNA? Sure, but so should mine. Should they be relegated to well-intentioned Home Ec classes rather than challenged to develop marketable skills? Not unless we want to add considerable insult to injury. The vigilant mothers and hard-working fathers of my Native friends did more to promulgate their success than self-esteem maxims or public education dollars.

There's a similar grace, and a similar despair, in the indigenous faces of Australia. Their gaze seems fixed on a horizon I cannot see, with an enviable stoicism. Enter alcohol or trauma, usually in tandem, and it gets more complicated. When we visited the Northern Territory a few years ago, I listened to stories of parliament-mandated homes built on tribal land at no or low-cost to Aboriginal families, only to be raided and left vacant. The men dismantled the cupboards, windowsills, and doors of their own brand new kitchens --- to provide fuel for outdoor cooking fires. They wanted to live outside. The irony of my sentiment towards beggars on the corner ("go live inside and take better care of yourself") is that it mirrors the intrusive arrogance of federal governments. The nomadic mystique of indigenous people was obliterated as a matter of course, and the reverberations are all around us. When I approach the guys on the street, I speak only of God's love for them individually. My tone is more urgent and firm than my children are used to hearing, and certainly more familiar than seems proper when addressing a stranger at a traffic intersection.

In that solitary flash during a Sunday drive, I face my own deep-seated conflict. When asked about the physical appearance of a brother in peril, I hesitate. My heart sees a resemblance to countless kindred faces, and my mind clicks through the statistics that damn him. The simple protection of his person from oncoming traffic I hope to provide by sending the cops will probably not do much to interrupt his life's trajectory. I want the guy to get out of the road, but I'm no more sure than he is about where he's supposed to go next.

Rage Against the Machine: Pieces of Andrew

I need my intellectual icons dashed with an irreverent streak, or I will wander away. Andrew Breitbart captivated me with his intricate expositions on radical Islam as much as his gleeful threat to catapult horse feces onto OWS protesters. He kept it interesting.

Breitbart continues to be roundly dismissed as a provocateur (a charge leveled most often by failed provocateurs), but this guy illuminated the capabilities of an energized media like no other. Just as important as the style he jangled our nerves with were his targets. Irreverence only works when it's aimed at hypocrisy and malfeasance parading as authority. Utopian government is the enemy of a thinking people, and this fact resonated through every syllable Andrew sneered and sputtered for the masses.

He gave us the obstinate grit of Pat Buchanan, the cocksure antagonism of Bill Buckley, but above all, he was an original. Unafraid. I'll fondly remember his rough hewn prep school uniform, the ice in his eyes and the steady joy he effused when delineating his goals.

Breitbart's gusto was summarily backed up with factual decimation of morons, usually by their words alone.

Since I'm barely online during Lent, I will long have the memory of my husband finding me amongst the morning chores yesterday to give me the news of Andrew's death. He heard it on the radio. It reminds me of the day he found me among the same shuffle of dishes and hair dryers four years ago with the stunner (also gleaned from our trusty kitchen radio) that Sarah Palin had been chosen by John McCain as his vice presidential candidate. I joined the Republican party because my governor was running, and I wanted to vote for her in the primary and beyond. I'm not ashamed of that (and it's hardly material --- I've been a Green Party member, officially Undeclared, and most recently, a Libertarian. For reasons of misdirected teenage passions, rugged Alaskan whim, and a scruffy boy with a clipboard in a sunny mall skybridge, respectively.)

This newest incarnation of my single vote had similarly shallow roots. In fact, I arrogantly recoiled at hitching my wagon to the stars presented me by the mainstream GOP. The last thing I wanted was to align myself with the unfair caricature of the country club set or backwoods misogynists which prevail through most thirtysomethings' lexicon as defining the Republican party.

In Andrew --- not to mention Sarah --- I reveled at the depth of their patriotism, their love of life's earthly gifts, and the quixotically sharp elbows which marginalized them, propelled them and defined them. More than their quirks, their flaws or even their talents, it was their insistence that America is special and unique that hooked me. I can't say I'd ever been taught that, except in the most inoffensive platitudes. In this assertion I found a conservative party ideal that met logical and emotional standards. We are a grand experiment, the USA.

In the wake of Sarah Palin's public ascendancy, I came to terms with just how reviled a Christian mother who adores her husband, knows her place, and speaks her mind is by the self-appointed philosopher kings in our country. They hate her, and they hate me. Within a few months, by the late Spring of 2009 I understood that this nod by John McCain had threatened to dismantle the well-crafted narrative of Gloria Steinem and her coven of confusion. Men and babies will ruin your life, doncha know? Lots of talk about rights, nary a mention of corresponding responsibilities. (Better to beg for estrogen-laden scraps from the federal government, apparently.) Rather than acknowledge individualism as the currency of the American dream, Palin was vivisected as a fluke and a fool.

In the hours since Andrew Breitbart's death, the same smug chorus likely sings. His bravery is foreign to them. They have only this clown, capsizing his way between obscurity and Havana, interspersed with red carpet forays and shows of Occupy solidarity, of course.

A man briefly opined yesterday that he sagely warned Andrew Breitbart about the forces he so vocally opposed; they could swallow him whole. He had implored him to find journalistic success without all the personal baggage. Surely both Andrew Breitbart and Sarah Palin had simpler career paths available ... if only they'd be a little quieter. I thank them both for turning up the volume instead.

Here is where my tea party loyalty, and indeed, latent Republican affection, rises to full staff. Let's get together and make some noise. Not that effete, wannabe Eurotrash kind, either. Rev your engines and join the chili cookoff. We are loud and spicy, and our duty to keep yelling was won by mostly nameless heroes we must not forget. The Tea Party is America. No frills, no stagecraft, more Larry the Cable Guy than Larry David, and accepting of any person's path of liberty. The tri-corner hats (often with sweatpants and workboots!) are plentiful. I close my eyes to them and listen to the stories of a crowd so diverse it humbles this writer every time. Diversity, too, is of little lasting value without unity.

Each of us must double down and recommit to our role in preserving this unity. Whether you're called to be noisy cog or not, you sew a vital thread into our flag: raising a family, working for peace and justice, dogged fidelity to the tenets of freedom, protecting those without a voice, and praying for the future before us.

Andrew's work revealed the nobility of the American way of life just as squarely as it invited the craven sadness of extreme liberalism to show its face. He raged in the wimpy countenace of No, We Can't dressed up as Yes We Can. The machine is gunning for you too, if you're one of us. Mount up.

Godspeed, dear Breitbart. I promise to name my next Rottweiler after you.

March 1, 2012

He mattered. Requiescat in pace. Prayers for his soul and his family.

The Mystery of Mercy

My husband, who is an actual badass (not to be confused with the girl mouthing off online while ensconced in the comforts he provides by laboring twelve hours a day in the snow), first rolled out the concept of mercy to our then-six-year old daughter after I dispatched him to discipline her one evening. I stood at the kitchen sink, thankful he'd come through the door in time to do my dirty work. Instead of enduring the fallout from a well-earned swat, they both emerged from the next room in somber unity and began setting the table for dinner. Her sentence had been commuted.

Alaska has mild consequences for minors caught consuming and possessing controlled substances, or at least that was the case in the mid-nineties, during which whiskey and weed were my primary vocation. As I wrapped up a particularly busy summer of cannery work, beach bonfires and camping, I recall starting the school year with a tidy twenty hours of community service.



St. Monica and St. Augustine, Mother and Son

As fate and the magistrate would have it, I served part of this sentence at our local police station on an early Saturday morning.  Attempting meekness out of embarrassment more than manners, I arrived and asked the dispatcher for my duty. I expected to be mopping jail cells or scrubbing bathrooms, but instead was ushered up a narrow staircase to a small room and seated at a large, round table. There was a milk crate filled with cassette tapes at my feet, and on the faux woodgrain tabletop, an industrial strength magnet and a tape player. My task was simple and demonstrated by the gruff old lady who had booked me many times. "Put each tape on the magnet, both sides, to erase it. Make sure it worked by listening to them here." With that, I was left alone and began working.

The magnet hummed against the silence of the room, soon giving way to a stilted rhythm of plastic and metal: I'd grab a tape, flip it against the flat surface of the magnet and then into the tape deck, where its blank status was announced with an even louder hum. The ominous boredom droned on for less than a half hour before I reversed the order of these steps. And skipped the last two. Now, rather than erasing tapes, I listened to hours of police evidence and shoved a dozen of the best ones into the waistband of my (no-doubt high waisted, 1990s) jeans. I then set off like Miss America, waving goodbye to the policemen as I sought out my equally delinquent friends to bask in the awe of such ill-gotten treasures.

The tapes languished in storage for a year or two and were next used by a live-in boyfriend to scare a former boyfriend during a drug sale. Actual hilarity ensued (and was caught on tape) as Mr. Seller entertained himself by playing Mr. Buyer's old DUI interview tapes, implying that he had connections beyond the bucolic biker gang he trafficked for. Seller would not know for many months that Buyer himself had been arrested, worked a deal with the police and was undercover in exchange for leniency. At that moment. In true Keystone Kriminals style, we had unwittingly broadcast to the police that we possessed classified tapes --- through their own wired informant.

At least two years later, my desk phone rang and the chief of police asked for an appointment. My life had taken some  turns, and he was by then a professional contact of sorts. No instinct alerted me to the personal nature of the call until it was too late. He calmly asked about 'the issue of some tapes'. My bravado and dishonesty had been left in my teenage years, and I did not pretend an interest in recreating the juvenile standoffs I had once enjoyed in that building. I also had more to lose and sensed the possibility of mercy. After I admitted my brazen theft, he explained his reticence in pursuing the matter. Since it was unlikely the evidence could be recovered from my long estranged lover who now faced a moderate prison sentence for our activities, the matter of the tapes was let go. 

Why was I spared? The only answer is love. This love fosters mutual humility, which trumps the power imbalance between two parties. We can experience a spontaneous desire to insist on the good, the potential, and overlook grave faults in another. Not to be ignored are reasons of efficiency, a more philos application than the Chief's agape acceptance of my offense  --- as in the case of correcting children, we can exhaust ourselves with scrupulosity if we don't occasionally make use of mercy to our own benefit. Much like the exercise of charity, both souls are enriched and invited to grow.

Criminals and children are both opportunists, and this mysterious gift of mercy has to be selectively granted. If our kids never receive due punishment, our words lose weight and their character suffers. Had I not sat in the police chief's office ready for sentencing, the force of his unnecessary kindness would have been diminished. The more grandiose the offense, the deeper the gratitude when forgiven with ease.

Just as important as mercy's cause are her effects. Immediately following the spanking which never materialized, our daughter was helpful and cheerful, besides being grateful. At least twenty minutes of productivity was gained, and the bond between father and daughter was visibly strengthened. As for my meeting in the police station, it cemented my identity as a clean and sober adult and made good use of my progress so far. My debt had been paid by another.

Nowhere in my Christian travels have I found a sentiment broader than "the ground is level at the foot of the cross" (except maybe Peter Kreeft's "if we believe in a loving God, we must also believe in the possibility that Hell is empty"). Of this we can be sure, and of His mercy we can never be worthy.



The Pill: No Big Whoop?

Your moon cycle is your friend.

Confronting a lie is tough, but confronting the behemoth pharmaceutical industry begins with squeaky, questioning wheels. I invite you to become one of them.

President Obama is currently at the helm of an unprecedented assault on religious freedom, fundamental liberty and conscientious objection. I will leave the legal and historical arguments to minds better trained than mine. Barack Obama and his cohorts are but a symptom of what ails us. I want to talk about The Pill.

Hormonal contraception is the cultural norm for American women and teens, with 2010 marking fifty years of rapidly increasing use. We have been fed a host of well-crafted lies about our bodies, our destinies, and the role we should expect to play in controlling both. Creepy scientific findings are rejected without much logic, as if platitudes about liberation are as far as our reasoning abilities have been extended. 

Catholics have embraced the pill at a rate equal to everyone else, so the tentacles of this artificial intrusion aren't unique to any group. Entrenched mass acceptance doesn't make it the best choice for women. Liberation from fear is simpler, healthier and enhances a relationship.

As a married woman who happily fumbles her way through NFP, my own point of view may seem overly pristine. Let me assure you that I couldn't have treated sex more cavalierly for a portion of my life, and we endured infertility for the first half of our marriage. The former is just biography, and making bad decisions doesn't increase my credibility. The latter gave a piercing clarity to our grasp of the full purpose of sex itself. When a trusted process doesn't work to our demands, its function often takes on a heightened importance.

Not to trivialize the subject at hand, but is this ever more stark than with computers? If I there's an infinitessimal delay in retrieving data, I'm peeved. If something actually breaks, I experience an interior defrag process, the depth of which is embarrassing to admit. I like to read. But back to my womb, your womb, and the wombs you love...

To suggest that women reconsider use of artificial birth control is a strike at the heart of postmodern feminism, to which I owe a certain gratitude. So be it. Hear me roar, suffragettes.

Or rather, hear the Boston Women's Health Collective do their own roaring. Compared to their magnum opus, Our Bodies, Ourselves (1970), Pope Paul VI's landmark Encyclical, Humane Vitae (1968) is a breeze. Let's examine both. The italicized passages are the words of the Catholic Church, followed by a corresponding section from Our Bodies, Ourselves unless otherwise noted.

First, on the origins of life:

"The question of human procreation, like every other question which touches human life,
involves more than the limited aspects specific to such disciplines as biology, psychology, demography or sociology. It is the whole man and the whole mission to which he is called that must be considered: both its natural, earthly aspects and its supernatural, eternal aspects." 

"By the end of the second month the growing embryo, by this time called a fetus, is a very fragile one-inch long mass of differentiated tissue acting as a parasite within the mother's body."

+++

On the holistic ingredients of Natural Family Planning:

"The right and lawful ordering of birth demands, first of all, that spouses fully recognize and value the true blessings of family life and that they acquire complete mastery over themselves and their emotions.

Self-discipline of this kind is a shining witness to the chastity of husband and wife and, far from being a hindrance to their love of one another, transforms it by giving it a more truly human character."

  

"The method requires a lot of self-control

and cooperation between partners."

+++

On contraception effectively
reducing women to  sexual objects:

"Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection." 

  

"The pill can bring increased pressure on a woman to have intercourse with any man who wants it, or to do it with her husband or long-term lover any time he wants to whether she wants to or not."

+++

On Discerning Family Size: 

"With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time."

"Lots of experts have lots of expert opinions on the number of children in the "ideal" family and the spacing of those children, but it is up to each of us to make our own decision about how many children to have and when to have them." Ourselves and Our Children, 1978

+++

Women's Roles:

"Also noteworthy is a new understanding of the dignity of woman and her place in society, of the value of conjugal love in marriage and the relationship of conjugal acts to this love." 

"We and what we did were as valuable as men and what they did. ...It still surprises me that I can create something other than a child." 

+++

On the necessity and value of chaste periods:

"With regard to man's innate drives and emotions, responsible parenthood means that man's reason and will must exert control over them." 

"Anxiety diminishes because being alone is a very positive experience. It has given us back our integrity, our privacy, our pride." (on celibacy)

++++

It appears we have some points to agree on, such as the general aim of human dignity. There are sympathetic themes, but we know the documents to be diametrically opposed. Our Bodies Ourselves was a manifesto against reproductive enslavement, filled with more militant emotion than science or direction. Humanae Vitae, in its compactness, addresses so much of life's difficulty and beauty. It opens with the strength of the arguments of the day for using scientific gains to rationally space births. The reader is then swept into a broader realm, away from temptation and self-centeredness.  Especially when contrasted to the cynicism of OBOS, the good Pope is a romantic poet.

"It is sad not to see the good in goodness."
Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol



To describe their work as cynical is not discounting their passion or humanity. Firstwave feminists are real women, who poured their lives into this work --- often neglecting their own children to champion the power of another mother (or not). But they were pioneers, not settlers. I have inherited the dystopian realm they envisioned, and it's gross.

It is immoral men who benefit most from artificial birth control, giving them dominion over women in a way so delicate and difficult to explain after it has been granted for decades. This is no accident, if some study is given to the forces behind this movement. (Hint: It didn't start in 1970) So much sexual mystery is destroyed when men and women's complementary desires are fragmented into opposing forces. Men are harmed, too.

A girl who has never been wholly accepted barely counts it as a loss. To young men, specifically, I would ask: How dare you look into the eyes of a girl you profess to love, while hiding from her life-giving force that you can't possess or understand? Fear of this power tells you to treat her like a pretty vending machine, perhaps extracting offspring at some later date. As humans, we are much more than machines. 

I contain multitudes, as the poet implores.

So do you.

I parcel myself out for no man.

Being Smart Is Not A Virtue

My favorite radio guru (yes, I'm this juvenile) and Jewish thinker Dennis Prager gives an enlightened diatribe against "My Child Is An Honor Student..." bumper stickers. Of all things! Being raised in the feelings-laden 1980s, I was at first puzzled why something so fluffy and happy woud grate on his nerves. Then I listened and found his logic worthwhile.

His argument is threefold: first, bragging is in poor form. Next, to emphasize academic accomplishments so exclusively is to elevate certain children over their peers, and even their own siblings. This creates resentment and sadness more than incentive. Third, Prager bluntly summarizes, "I don't care if your kid makes a 4.0 in school. I care if he's nice to the fat kid." I would add that much academic boasting has more to do with parents displaying their own achievements --- and schools promoting their name, or as a friend once put it, "kids as pets".

By this power of the Spirit,

God's children can bear much fruit.

He who has grafted us onto the true vine will make us bear

"the fruit of the Spirit: . . . love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."

"We live by the Spirit"; the more we renounce ourselves,

the more we "walk by the Spirit."

(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 736)

I'm no anti-intellectual, but I can't manage the full Tiger Mother, either. This isn't to promote a bunch of mental slouching. It promotes an ideal moral standard which every child can meet. Let's be real: as Catholics, we rely on the intercession of too many illiterate Saints to pretend otherwise. God meets His aims through our willing hearts, and Jesus never wrote a single line (at least that we can cite).

If you are a parent, think of the kids with whom you prefer your child(ren) to spend time. Do you most look forward to gatherings with the very smart or the very kind? We cultivate what we value, and while God's gift of human intelligence is unique and vital --- it's unevenly distributed.

Today my gratitude is for a Faith which challenges me by being unafraid to list exact virtues as well as sins, compared to a culture which treats both as punchlines.

Oh Very Young, what will you leave us this time?