Me and My friend Seth

Gangs of New York, 2002

My friend Seth is forty years old and has outlived at least half of the 9 lives allotted to even the feistiest cat. We now live a thousand miles apart, as we have for most of our adult lives. He has remained in our hometown, built a family and a life there around the seasons, while my husband and I came north fifteen winters ago. Our connection is sporadic but always warm and fraternal, like a big brother who has seen anything I'm about to show him but endures my antics anyway.

Seth's mother braided my hair and baked apple pies for all of our childhood. When his cat gave birth to kittens in his bed -- a handbuilt lofted bed perfect for forts and scary stories -- his stock rose exponentially in my five-year-old mind and has stayed there since. We played hide and go seek among the spruce trees and trailer parks of our densely forested, working-class Alaskan island. The snuggly rhythms of early memory gave way to some chaos in our respective homes, and we've also shared the messier milestones of adolescence and adulthood.  

Our parents are probably more surprised to see us raising ten children between us and baptizing them into a faith neither of us were raised in, than they were to pick us up from the police station together off and on in the early 1990s. Seth taught me about weed, subversive music and the delicate balance of supply and demand. We played F*ck the Police at top volume and did our best imitations of the bravado presented on MTV. His father was my only visitor when I was shipped to a nearby island for residential drug treatment. 


I will note here Seth's physical presence: he is massive. Foreboding, even. An uncle of mine who employed him as a commercial fisherman remarked that Seth is the quintessential gentle giant. He was a wrestler in high school and has always kept his strength in check; never bullying and even using his imposing physicality to defend would-be victims from teasing or worse. There's one particular story about the school bus that brings me near tears each time I tell it -- and the irony seems to be that the boy being bullied was of correct breeding and political class but wispy and nerdy, while Seth was the scrappy hero. That boy from the bus went on to some really prestigious East Coast college I can never remember the name of and now works for a Fortune 500 in the art dept (last I knew), while Seth put down roots in the same neighborhood from which the school bus shuttled him to & fro. When I watch the (glorious) movie Overboard I still see Seth in the oldest son. Noble and quiet but certainly not without spine. Perhaps his power lies in the suggestion of violence without having to deploy it. 


I thought of Seth in a special way after reading this piece. I emailed it to him, along with a half dozen other men and women, childhood friends all, with whom I often share banter about current events. We don't agree on every issue nor seek to convert each other -- we just like to stay in touch and rap about lifestyle and philosophy between diapers, work and errands. We're able to learn from one another without resentment or bitterness, pride or retribution. I see now that our unity may be a threat to those without agency in the present White House. Seth shared the piece on social media only to be accused of racism and effectively silenced. I would laugh if it weren't so sad and entirely missing (or proving) the point of the post.

Today, taking stock as if I were a raven perched in the treetops, listening to the foment of human pettiness in the wake of President No Good Really Bad, reading scribes from all corners, ruffling my feathers -- I see that the erudite leftist minds neatly bunch us all together. We are White. We are to be aggregated and educated, or at least ignored. Our varied opinions and experiences do not matter, for we share the embarrassing ethnicity of being Anglo-Saxon. Our immigrant stories are irrelevant, for we must absorb fresh wisdom, prostrate ourselves to the latest arrival. We're descended from countries that lack the exotic pedigree to grab the audience of National Public Radio with tales of victimhood. 
 
Never mind that Seth's children aren't even white, or that my husband is only second generation American, with grandparents who came as illiterate teenagers hoping to earn enough money to return to Portugal and buy a horse. If that hints at a certain pride, it's simply pride in the achievements and perseverance of someone else. It would never occur to me to ascribe pride to my race. I don't need census bureau stats to validate my existence, and I have 2,000 years of cultural heroism in Christ and His Bride to "fall back on" for identity. My kids attend a school with just seventy students. Laotians, Alaskan Natives, African Americans, Hispanic children from pockets of Central and South America, Caucasians. No one notices. We have families with foster children, families of truckers, clerks, engineers, physicians, pilots, families built by adoption and those with transient children. Our stated goal is to make saints. We look to martyrs, soldiers and scholars with equal fervor. We are not divided and we are not afraid.

As I said in the email scribbled to friends when I shared Dreher's post this morning, the weird alt-right thing gets no traction with me -- but the objective point being made by his commenter is quite illuminating.  Foreboding? We'll see. I do know this: the guidance of a nuanced gentleman who takes no guff is an invaluable force for children. Come what may, both Seth's children and mine have that in their fathers. 

If the American Left insists on fragmentation along lines of race, the carnage is predictable and its genesis rests squarely on them. They play with fire. Although the USA is unique, and this experiment of unity is worthwhile, we are all still human beings. I grieve the idea that men like Seth (who I use here without permission and not as a mythic hero; he's just a dude I know) are being trashed. Again to repeat myself --- white men are allowed to be anything except victorious. I would submit that the creepy racism of America was exposed, burst like a boil on Satan's ass, not with the election of a black man to the Presidency, but of a white one. Why is that?

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.

two links ~ no, three!

Obamacare credited with complete feeling after sex change operation (ahem -- gender re-assignment)

The rising, dangerous influence of transgender ideology

fleshing out any conversation on sexuality, with the fearlessness of Simcha's Brother

so you live in a mission diocese...

"...then, as now, degenerate sinners are offended by the inflexible intolerance of Catholic morality..."


Here's a wealth of teaching worth sharing:
http://www.audiosancto.org/

What the Mahoneys Mean to Me

It's Father's Day. The guys are a few paces ahead of me on the homestead, as the languid sunshine propels us toward another family's story. I'm following an informal pilgrimage at the speed of happy toddlers and aging dogs, having momentarily left behind the annual Mahoney Grotto picnic. Our kids moseyed up to the barbeque buffet a few hours before, adding bananas, cookies and tea to the homemade sausage, roasted chickens, varied casual food and salads.

In front of the picturesque log home, I watch a guy whose name I'm unsure of pet a horse and smile shyly towards the camera. Another newly sober friend takes his picture with an iPhone. My heart is pierced by the simplicity of what's going on and the profundity I know it to be --- peace of mind, freedom of movement. Walking down a road among friends, without heroin or its effects as part of today's journey. I may not know his name, but I've heard this young guy impart Christian mercy towards his still-drunk mother on a candlelit Mother's Day. He has memorably intimated a Bush Alaska childhood with every abject sadness that can entail --- followed by the despair of aging out of foster care and directly into the dope house. The loneliness of belonging nowhere.

But not today. Today he's with the Mahoney family. And what a fold to be welcomed into, under the crisp blue mantle of Our Blessed Mother and the Alaskan sky, in a space built to honor their earthly mother.

Car after car parks across the outer reaches of Wasilla's Schrock Road, depositing more smiling faces, absorbed into still more giddy embraces.

Two and a half generations of men play football through rain and shine, with a mix of manhood and gentility that comes from staying close to the earth and each other. At one point, there were haphazard games of Frisbee being played through the middle of the football scramble, and our three-year-old son became fixated on possession of the yellow Frisbee. They humor him for awhile, but then a big boy crouches to explain the rules. "You have to throw the yellow circle, you can't keep it for yourself. You can play with us, but you gotta do the game." The shock of being asked to uphold any standards is immediate. He wails for his mother, allows me to hug him and cluck over the injustice. Then he grows quiet and rips straight back into the action. My role fulfilled, I return to the assembled brothers, sisters and cousins who have invited us for the day.

Back at the towering pod of birch splashed near the grotto, lighthearted Jungian psychology ensues, followed by a dissection of comedian Chris Rock's brilliance, then trading of recent travel stories, updates on work and worship, and an absolute fireside contentment with the human condition. Siblings and nephews check in on family business and health affairs, with tears and triumphs quietly exchanged. Babies wander to greet their grandfathers from perches against tree trunks, low-slung chairs and truck tailgates.

Throughout the afternoon, at least seven pots of coffee are brewed and shared. During this particular party I'd come without diapers for my toddlers, not a mishap new to me, and apparently not one they've never seen before either. In fact, I've never met so many grown men with Pull-ups and baby wipes stashed in the cabs of their beefy pickups. Ten-year-old boys stand stick straight and acknowledge children who are new to the fold with uncanny verve --- grilled hot dog in one hand, the other extended to greet friends with a handshake. Children ride past on the golden bare backs of horses, and a four wheeler crawls by with a dozen bouncing faces laughing from its trailer. My kids are in there somewhere. I overhear James, a local cabbie, asking what a grotto is, and Barney explaining it's Latin for crypt and means a place to pray. James asks permission to add his own rosary beads, from an ACTS retreat in Juneau years before, to the offerings inside. A few times I usher my kids away from the votives and statues, but I eventually give in to the friendly, insistent tones of Mahoney mothers young and old: they are perfectly welcome in there. Please.

I can now include myself in the tender rank of moms-in-need for whom Barney Mahoney has been known to produce dry clothing, diapers and a hot meal. A guy who knows the ropes once confided that it's Mahoney policy to stop for all hitchhikers, regardless of circumstances or disruption to his own schedule. Barney accepts no money for rides, often towing and fixing the stranded vehicles himself. Sometimes a tank of gas is the solution. Sometimes, single mothers are given the bad news that their cars are broken beyond repair, followed by the gift of a used car that runs just fine. I knew a lady who said his treatment of her was the first noble exchange from any man she'd known in forty years.

The Mahoneys don't fit into any prescribed camp: they're at once sincerely humble and born orators. A five-minute chat reveals them to be philosophically airtight, but with cowboy swagger and grammar to match. They are both wild-eyed and utterly serene. Their devotion, workmanship and credentials make heads swivel. I've seen them diffuse borderline psychotic, volatile characters with a reprimand and a hug. There would seem to be little place for saccharine piety among them -- considering the unflinching duty to truth and mercy they personify -- yet their poetry rings 100% sentimental Irishman. They are trappers, miners, steel workers, storytellers, musicians, entrepreneurs, hunters, fishermen, blacksmiths, woodworkers, bikers, builders, and farmers. (And those are just the six or seven of them that I know...) They are here to honor their mother and their father. They all know how to cook. On this day, they're willing to roast marshmallows for a continual stream of children, provided each one have dinner first and mom's permission.

Photo by Bill Hess

The two brothers I'm closest to share the story of their father's final days, including over six years spent building the grotto by hand, with random stones and statues being deposited by unknown people from all over the world, in hopes of helping the project. The mysterious Canadian squatter who came out of the woods long enough to roll a hulking, man-sized boulder (which became the grotto's roof, after being split lengthwise a few times) down their mountainside in order to contribute. The force of their father's passion for the Eucharist. The quiet heroism of their mother's twenty years of successive pregnancies in the wildnerness. Her fidelity to the establishment of a Catholic church in Wasilla --- a dream dismissed by many, considering there were parishes already built in Palmer and Eagle River. The patronage of Saint Jude.

I spend a lot of time with a lot of people who talk a lot of shit about faith, hope and charity. If the greatest of these virtues is love, why does this day look so different from most stuff I read or hear? The Mahoneys make it look easy. Joyous. Immediately possible. Their sacrifice and toil on each others' behalf is borne without calculation, shrill preaching, or pecking order. They just love. This family overflows with love, heaped on with human frailty, God's strength, and more love. Even though this isn't my first visit to the grotto, and I've logged hundreds of hours with Patrick, Paulie, and Barney, I'm thrown off kilter by the whole experience. Their rough-hewn setting and elegant hearts are healing people, through the grace of God. This is the grit that social workers, municipal food banks, SWAT teams and prisons cannot touch. I feel silly for ever wanting to buy a tapestry with the corporal works of mercy woven into it.

Since becoming a wife and mother, I've been increasingly drawn in by chatter about the Benedict Option, and set out with a hunger for it, visited often by the idea as life unfolds ~ for a fleeting sunny day in June, we were immersed in the fruits of precisely what Alisdair McIntyre describes in the final paragraph of After Virtue. My favorite depiction is contained in John T. Goerke's recent analysis: "The Benedict Option then is not a retreat into a cave, but an advance down the barrel of a shotgun."

Paul and Iona's descendants are indeed preserving their traditional culture, yet standing at the ready to receive the walking dead of modern culture, with a greased wrench in one hand and a rosary in the other. Their good-natured, fearless proclamation of God's Kingdom is magnetic. I felt like a fellow traveler, even among the dozen-plus Mahoneys previously unmet. Supernatural forces were unmistakably present. Part of me wanted to stay forever.

Another part of me knows that I witnessed nothing more than a hardworking bunch of people, hard at play on their family ranch. Let their welcome not be wasted on me, I pray. The good life is within reach --- of anyone who's willing to reach out to the guy next to him.

Surely I'm flattering myself, but I'd like to think the Mahoneys are my kind of people.

Photo by Bill Hess, 2012

"The most extraordinary thing in the world

is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman

and their ordinary children." ~ G.K. Chesterton

Will return in May

Catherina of Siena

I'm not blogging during Lent (it's been pointed out that I should share that information. I'm of two minds on that idea, but there ya go ... ) We're traveling soon, my heart is filled with awe and gratitude at the way God pulls us toward His graces.

The Catholic Church is the best "thing" that ever happened to me. This much I know.

Dear Larry

On Thursday a friendship of twenty-plus years came to an end when my mom called with the difficult news of death. My first pen pal (besides Lil and the foreign kids from the back of Archie comics), my first professional boss, and the first gift sobriety gave me: Larry King.

Do you ever picture a certain friend or relative, and just sense they'll never be an ailing 97 year old in a nursing home? This friend was like that, and I'm relieved he is no longer constrained by his earthly body. Larry was somehow ageless: eternally 55 or so, but in many ways a carefree 17-year old guy. He personified the gratitude a recovering addict carries with them --- to be aware of a generous universe, our rightful place in it, and the immutable hand of a loving Creator. And he was a good counselor. Maybe that's why he stayed in the chemical dependency field when he could've chosen a half dozen careers with relative ease and acclaim: music, activism, educational guru, and so on. But he remained a counselor, walking with lost souls trudging towards clarity --- witnessing all the pain and madness without being swallowed by it. He was a real shit disturber where it mattered, and a voice of perfect trust in God when life seemed too much.

Among the things he illuminated for me was an absolute riddance of self-pity and fear. As a clinical director he was patient, meticulous, and funny. As a friend he was endlessly comforting without losing his own serenity. He let me bring my dog to the office every day, wryly declaring her a therapeutic presence. He spoke highly of both of my parents, and had great stories from the 1970s and 80s about many people in our town. I think now about his monk-like existence, the confidences he took to his grave ~ he instilled in me the sacred trust (not to mention a near-holy fear of federal privacy mandates) of receiving another's pain or joy, which is especially vital in an isolated community.

Larry intentionally lived by the ocean, nesting and creating stability wherever he roamed. He was somewhat itinerant in his mission -- knowing when to move on, but fully immersed while he lived in a place. He really was the kind of personality that helps knit a small town together. His physical presence was fixed, immovable: keys jangling, quips exchanged, tie dye and denim blazing through. Spiritually, things settled a bit when he asked questions. The world slowed to a pace of wonder and hope.

He was alternately known as Easy Eddie and the Frog King, both nods to personas and passions. On any topic, he had a joke you saw coming but didn't hurry along to its conclusion, since conversation was an art in which he delighted and excelled. The currency he traded in was profound, sincere, and exacting of truth in himself and others. There was no pretension in Larry. To say he "looked for the best" in people would be trite, since I think his skill was a deliberate routing of the best in a person, inviting them to live better and do better in a most unselfish way.

While I reflect on the magnitude of his service, the tenderness of our bond, and the role he played in so many lives, I trust that my grief will subside while his impact will remain. My life has been fortified by a thousand tiny points of light that Larry delivered, always allowing me to claim the discovery as my own. It's sobering to learn of the hundreds of people who felt precisely the same way about him. May God grant eternal peace and majesty to his soul.

And if you prefer the erudite gent

(making much the same case as Savage, here you go)

As Simcha says, on a totally different topic ---  "Our main job isn’t to apply “censor” bar across everything that doesn’t come straight from the Baltimore Catechism.  We take what is good. We’re supposed to be experts at identifying what is good.  We’re not supposed to be screaming meemies who bite our lips and blush every time someone dips into a minor key.  We’re supposed to use sifters, not dump trucks, when sorting through culture."

no punctuation

Tonight marks sixteen years since my last drink, which seems a little tacky or crazy to announce on a blog, but my gratitude engulfs too far & wide to care right now.

My last drunk was super dull, and I got clean on Super Bowl Sunday. Which, next to New Year's Eve, is the apex of secular holidays, no?

I have no words, even though I've been giddy all day and looked forward to a celebration. I have no words for the kind of hearts-knit-together bond that comes after the abyss of addiction.

The work of the most sophisticated philosophers I've been exposed to --- the best stuff around, I'm telling you --- it can be distilled down to echo something I've heard in a meeting from a bearded logger or a knitting grandma. 'Healing' was such an embarrassing word to me, at 19, filled with bravado and nonsense and fear, but healing is precisely what God has delivered through the fellowship of other people whenever I'm willing. Any practical spiritual growth I've been granted has come from the Twelve Steps, and limitless healing is what I've found in meetings. I absolutely love my people and am especially thankful to the friends who made me a fidgety wreck with all the unwarranted props tonight. Soli Deo Gloria.

my husband has a phrase for this

I think he says "Satanica Pandemonia". Lord, have mercy. And but for the grace of God, there go I. Too much. Violent topless mob attack men defending Cathedral.

And, lest we rest  in the hope that our shores prevent such incivilities ~ here are some American teens.

Order, Wonder and the Historical Trauma of last-minute Christmas Shopping

So, a few weeks ago I was ogling Advent wreaths online, wondering if I could swing across the modernist divide and embrace something like this:

*****
NEVERMIND, the picture won't load and my friend in Texas wrote something better than my planned drivel about overconceptualized (crappy) religious art.

Even better than blogs about schedules (my subtopic), which are admittedly my favorite kind of blog posts to read.

In any case, please heed her warning at the top, because it's sincere. She has a certain vantage point --- it may not be for everyone. But I would ask anyone who wants to bristle at her style to consider the potential audience. I've been thinking lately about how much of the dysfunction we seem to mourn can be traced back to the cultural expectation of living in a state of unending gratification --- sexual, consumerist or otherwise. "If it feels good, Do it" is quite the mantra. We pay.

Much like Peter Hitchens being unfazed by Dan Savage's juvenile attempts at antagonism, the world needs women who can talk like this to girls out there. And priests who can talk to both. We all have that God-shaped hole in our heart, and those who minister to us do well to accept the ways habitual sin has made us blind. And to carry on, with a burning love of souls. God bless you, Mrs. Stacey Adams.

From Ho to Housewife, How Jesus Changed Everything

{insert here Diego Rivera, Woman at a Well. If photos would load to Blogger today.}

I Have Too Many Kids

I have too many kids to buy perky cylinders of just about anything. If our family goes on a jag of enjoying certain treats, it's time to consult kitchen-savvy friends, drag out the five-gallon buckets, and start hustling ingredients. Once in awhile I get rebellious, standing bleary-eyed in the grocery near midnight, and just toss that slim dose of French jam into my basket with optimism. "Maybe I'll hide it," I think to myself. This time will be different. More refined.

A week goes by and I'm shaking my head at my silly use of seven dollars. Not because the blueberry preserves were practically chugged straight from the jar by nude, bellowing toddlers --- but because of my own short-sightedness. My fixation on this image of a delicacy, and its prudent dispensation, having some power over my mood. Ain't nobody got time for that. As R.R. Reno observes, "we must be careful of living our theories rather than our lives", a line from this bright yellow volume that recently had me fist-pumping in the midnight sun.

I find myself conditioned to desire the fruits of shiny marketing in place of substance. And I just turned 35, so I'm supposed to know better. Be seasoned and practical in my decision-making, no? Plus I dread passing on such a superficial angst to my daughters. "Enjoy Your Toast. Don't Overthink The Jam." --- maybe put that on my grave.

This revelation goes for so many other jumbo-sized tub o' products, from the hair salon to the car dealers' lot itself. We who claim the quiver's arrow more than twice are banished from the line of polite cars with a simple front seat and back seat. Not for us! The motorcar's features turn from gleaming lifestyle imprimaturs like Bluetooth or sunroofs to purely utilitarian gain: "Washable floor mats? Pish posh. How about a 100% rubber floor in your fifteen-passenger van? Get a power washer and hose this bad boy down." Our cars are so big they have aisles. More to the point, I contend there's nothing quite as cool as barreling down the highway in a motorcade rivaling a presidential lineup, with m'bes'grlfrenz at the helm of every rig. We will mess you up.

I suddenly have too many kids to last very long in public playgrounds, where parents micro-organize every tot within striking distance. Let them play. Visit with your adult friends.

I have too many kids to hitch my calendar to most of the lovely organizations that I'm drawn to. Whether it's ballet for one or a concert for many of us, I'm still learning to consider the "rest of the family" and their limitations when discerning our schedule. For real.

I finally have too many kids to move around spontaneously or hang out at the bus station in Mexico City in lieu of pre-natal care. "...Bloom where you're planted" is the most wretched, promising and elusive of clichés for someone like me. We soldier on.

Perhaps a more astute soul can figure this stuff out with the prescribed 1.7 American children in their midst, but I've always been a late bloomer. As the story often goes, there was more to be revealed.

We have too many children to view our parenting impact as sacrosanct. God imbues each person with a dignity their own. By His grace, our children may live to see decades of opportunity. They could spend much of their adult lives around people we'll never meet. Our time with them is truly just a season, and they are not ours to contain.

We have too many children to believe we can craft them in our image. Should their character be revealed in ways that stir our tears, whether of pride or despair, we know it's their character being forged. Not ours. The journey is theirs. We can shepherd them, and their formation is our duty --- but having 4 or 5 different personalities blossoming together goes a long way to expose the futility of control over another's destiny.

We have too many children to spend time driving all over tarnation for things we can reasonably (re)produce at home. This applies to meals, much of modern entertainment, and certain forms of fellowship. Heroic exceptions are made for exposure to arts and letters, tacky parades, and church stuff.

We have too many children to revel much in professional goals, whether realized or still being pursued. Kids want to feed the ducks and ride bikes and chase pigs. They want to go swimming and pick up hitchhikers and count the stars. They want truth. My husband will never ask for his (numerous) (just bragging) service plaques and production awards at his deathbed. We hope only to join their struggles and achievements in a sane and sober way --- not eclipse their young lives with misplaced ambition and easy accolades. Kids know.

We have too many children to believe in fake activism. Seriously. Let's take a risk and love someone. May God pierce our crazy, selfish egos with His peace.

We have too many children to believe that "born healthy" is the ultimate gift. Life hurts. We cry out loud and drive in circles with death metal blaring, yelling at God. And He's there.

We have too many children to labor under the illusion that sex is meaningless. It makes new people, and those people deserve a family. The heaving, aching, fussing mound of issues and persnicketies that all families are, at times, but a family. With seven years of infertility at the front half of our marriage, Anthony and I are acutely aware of the life-giving power of sex, gone inexplicably dormant. Babies aren't merely a milestone, or a delay of real milestones, they're whole new people. Life is never diminished by the addition of a baby.

We have too many children to be scared (for long) by the notion of another pregnancy. They're our only lasting gift to each other and to their siblings.

A Life Without Sin

When I met my husband, he posed this question very early: "What is Satan's greatest lie?" (To certain girls, it doesn't get much more romantic than that. I know. I was eighteen. You hush.)  That the answer --- "Satan's greatest lie is that he doesn't exist" --- came from Anthony, not French poetry or even a Kevin Spacey movie, was the beginning of my fascination with and attraction to him. My husband seems like a bombastic personality to many people, but how quickly he deflects my swooning over these moments now. ("Honey, I probably got it from a movie. I was just trying to sound deep.")

We were married one year later. We lived together for the entirety of our engagement. The doors of Christ were thrown widely open for us, sinners seeking an anchor without much knowing we were drowning. We've needed a life raft more than once in our travels together, including being civilly divorced and remarried, and relapsing on a host of favorite vices, all the while clinging to the virtue of Love itself and our unquenchable thirst. That 'God-shaped hole' I first heard about as a teenager, and visited in adulthood by finding the heartfelt vocabulary of Saint Augustine, has never left us. We are grateful.

And yes, we immediately began having sex when we met ---- that's how people express an interest in getting to know each other, in the world we came from. I don't make these admissions out of pride or even shame --- just an attempt to be clear about my moral formation. I also mean to draw a larger conclusion about the arrogance of chronic sin, and how it blinds us to our own brokenness. This is well-illustrated by a Western priest's report on the number of people standing in line for confession vs. those in line for communion on Sunday, comparing the ratio now to that of forty years ago. Hint: one is shrinking while the other is growing. I described this to my husband and he replied sardonically, "See, it's working, Father! People are living lives without sin." Our sadness isn't smugness.


If you didn't know grandstanding has found new heights
via cartoon imagery, you should check out social media!

No Guts, No Glory
In the wearying discussions about same-sex 'marriage', both online and offline, the conclusion is clear. Either align yourself publicly with the crushing tide of nihilism, or prepare to opt out of cultured society. The prevailing argument ("Don't H8! ForniK8!") has revealed a dirth of contemporary authority so vast, I find myself shocked.

I don't hold a shred of ill will towards people who have gay sex, but I'm also not that impressed by it. Christians know the ground to be level at the foot of the Cross. Letting sexual sin be defined as sexual sin is enough for us --- please work it out privately. For reaching this unglamorous conclusion, we're termed "nothing but hateful, ignorant bigots". Ignoring the effects of overturning the expressed will of voters, or the implications of further eroding states' rights, these simplistic dismissals are met by applause in the name of tolerance. Short-sighted, heartless and frankly moronic comparisons to interracial marriage are made.

Dialogue either stops or turns lukewarm when a person announces they have a gay relative. I remember when my affection for the gay people in our life was enough to satisfy my hope that I was making the right decision by saying nothing on this subject. I considered hearing no resistance as evidence that I was on the winning 'side'. Is there a notion that our individual lives and peers are sufficient for the wisdom we need? Must I seek a deposit of faith and wisdom from anywhere broader than my family reunion or the university? What a plebeian bore I am, then. I'm watching a parade of souls begging to be redeemed by United States Supreme Court Justices. When we refuse to conform our hearts to the authority of Christ, isn't it curious that we'll force conformity on the people around us? We long so deeply for approval, all the while yelling about rebelling against the patriarchy.

I know some really nice drug dealers --- hardworking men who donate to charities and support their families. Should that remove any objections I have to the trade? Moreover, does it free me from the responsibility to think? God's greatest earthly gift is our sense of reason --- we must employ it fearlessly if we believe the state of our souls depends on accepting His ultimate gift of salvation.

So why can't I just 'shut up'?
My duty to my Creator includes sharing what He has done for me. God's truth sets us free from a host of suicidal tendencies, most of which fall under the umbrella of selfishness dressed up as license. (My rights!) My friends have written more personally. In the short time I've been maintaining this glorified Pinterest page I call a blog, I've felt called to write on topics outside of polite conversation, mostly because those are the topics I think about and find most relevant.

It's not about me, or some climactic reveal when it comes to my views. Nobody cares or is surprised, on the whole. I'm sad to be called a bigot, but eager to form my witness in a way that welcomes private dialogue with my "Questioning" friends. (Let's use the word for questioning politically correct trends, not methods of getting off sexually. Only one of these requires secrecy in our society.)

My alternative is silence, or a sort of counterfeit truce. Notice this truce requires silence only from those who uphold a heterosexual ideal for marriage. I'd rather have honest and respectful conversations than pretend. 

The Catholic Church is the sole purveyor of a consistent pro-life ethic, and her teachings on abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, birth control, and sexuality don't deviate a whit. Yet our silence, confusion and disobedience has contributed massively to the desecration of marriage. Possessing the truth isn't enough, we have to share in an honest and love-affirming way. We can ask those whose faith we admire to help us in discussing this freely. If it's all so noble, why the insistence on euphemisms?

We rightly want to be affiliated with noble causes, and when a Facebook friend tosses out a vague cliché about injustice or civil rights, the temptation to join in can be strong. This is where silence is better than a forgery. Not everyone is an activist. Ask questions in real time and in real life of people whose spirituality you admire. Listen for authentic love. Be careful of who you consult. Nothing sends me running in the opposite direction faster than attempts at faux sisterhood, and life is filled with sources of bad theology dispensed by people with Good Hair. I'll take my moral waxing from someone who wouldn't think of waxing anywhere else, if you don't mind. I'm not making attention to fashion trends a litmus test which must be failed in order to have intellectual credibility, but --- oh wait, yes I am. Great thinkers necessarily seem to opt out of the parade of vanity. People who neglect hygiene in order to socialize (or not) are often fantastic. The day my eyebrows are finally just growing in concentric circles, you'll know I've reached scholastic nirvana.

The bare truth is, marriage was redefined fifty years ago with the introduction of no-fault divorce and artificial contraception. This is detail. Gird your loins: if sex is merely the joining of two people (without the possibility of creating a third), then so is marriage. The unexamined life Socrates warned against has won. Ironically, it can't stop preening in front of the mirror.

Controlled Burn, for the Win

Two of my favorite pastimes on this Earth are both events that I've given up trying to capture in photos: fireworks and parades. I vividly remember our oldest daughter's first parade almost eight years ago: on Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, which we took in from a hot sidewalk near the jazziest pharmacy I've seen, in downtown Las Vegas. (The store's logo is bedazzled in perpetually chasing neon. Even the foam beer cozies on sale within have a holographic sheen.) Occasionally looking through family scrapbooks, these are pictures of silent strangers, reducing the extended sensory pleasure to a flat, two-dimensional memento. All photographs necessarily compress our memories, but this desire to capture the momentous and celebratory rings especially hollow when it fails so starkly. My images of the teenaged drill team members are blurry, the fire trucks are muted and dull without their attendant sound effects, and the only photo I treasure among the forty or so taken is of baby Vivian's profile, ensconced in a rainbow feather boa. I've read tip sheets from professional parade photographers, shown up early in order to get a good angle, and shot with perspective in mind. I've turned the pictures black and white. It doesn't work.

In this way, the process unfolding before us, and the resulting sensation within us, are the attraction. We'd do better to acknowledge its fleeting nature and value it accordingly. Wanting to possess, contain and control it --- even for the sake of art and posterity --- reveals an underdeveloped sensual nature and fear of vulnerability.

Just like premarital sex and the San Diego fireworks mishap. Stay with me. All of the anticipation and physical pizzazz was there, but released in a brilliant and fizzling burst. The brilliance and the fizzle are so thoroughly enmeshed, it almost equals security. No wondering if each combustion is the finale, no time to worry about this experience being one of consequence or mutual value. In fact, in the sexual sense, the utter lack of trust between two parties becomes its own reductionist bond: we are simply animals.

I had another photo-based catharsis after effectively missing an epic fireworks show in Singapore, because I was distracted by the task of capturing it. Picking up my little camera, then putting it away and trying to re-focus and drink in the revelry, only to grab it again at hopefully the right millisecond. (Incidentally, who is interested in amateur photos of fireworks? Not even my best shots stir anything in me, years later.)

This, kids, is courtship:  a burst of light flashes and recedes before we realize its strength. Was that eye contact? Others build, with crescendoes that physically rock us: we held hands! I asked him his last name! I like his last name! The staccato sadness of an unreturned phone call is where the depth of feelings can get scary, and thereby meaningful. Likewise, the dark spaces between fireworks contain much of the show's dignity and power.

It strengthens us to exist, in the early stages of love, between high marks, with breath held and hopes pinned --- my fate resting in the Conductor's baton. Please God, let this be authentic. The accents of courtship are made meaningful because of their rarity. He kissed me!

We are not built to sustain the razzle dazzle. The ferocity and uncertainty of human love has a place so precious within us that to hold the note cheapens the tune considerably. Take the near-constant barrage of text messages which I presume to be a part of many adolescent and perhaps even adult dating rituals. The poignancy of contact is all but gone, with a need for increasing stimulation dooming us to cynicism. What, as the radio anchor posited this morning when reporting on the half million spectators assembled for the 4th of July in San Diego, was left to do "for the remaining nineteen and a half minutes?"

We are wired to experience ever-new dimensions of trust, disillusionment and thrill. It will not break us. The courage to see what's around the corner is the essence of life. Nothing is to be gained by treating virginity as a simple milestone to be overcome. Sexual life has an eternal weight that we can't diminish, regardless of our opinions on the veracity of natural law. Breaking a window and running away might change our view, but the universe, including our space in it, has been impacted.

And for every girl like me who tossed it away, may the right soul stick around and dedicate his life to your private jubilee.

Weeping in my Pajamas: How To Teach Your Kids

This is for you who want to be convinced to keep homeschooling your children.

This morning, not unusually, I spent two hours in front of the computer. But this was different. I rose earlier to accommodate a time difference, and my children had been prepped with warnings to head directly to the buffet of supplies set out for them. Cereal, milk, Playdough and elaborate Playdough accessories. Our curriculum comes from a school in Ojai, California and was founded by Laura Berquist. Mrs. Berquist regularly offers these virtual training sessions, this series being specific to the stages of formation. Today she spoke about the Grammatical stage, roughly grades 3-5. 

We are a Classical school, meaning that we educate with the following principle aims:

The Habits of Mind:
-- Knowing how to think
-- Knowing how to approach a subject
-- Preparing us for Heaven
-- Leading us to the highest object of truth: God.

And we do so according to a specific structure, namely the seven liberal arts, divided into the trivium and the quadrivium. The Trivuum includes the Grammatical, Rhetorical and Logical stages of formation. The key is to capture the natural talents, interests and abilities of each stage in a child's development. Mine are little, meaning they practically exist to memorize. Observing, sequencing, and recalling are gently emphasized with every subject during the Grammatical stage. We formally enter this stage next year with our seven-year old, since the Primary stage has been our focus this year.

The Quadrivium is comprised of the four higher divisions --- Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and Astronomy.

Another testament to the beauty of classical education is the natural attraction of the child to each stage. What do teenagers love to do? Argue. Mother of Divine Grace's curriculum trains students to use rhetoric in the service of the truly noble. When asked if I'll homeschool our children "all the way through", it's with bemusement that I say, "I have no idea." But far from being overwhelming or tiring, thoughts of the high school curriculum come with a sense of payoff, the coalescing of so many lively conversations constructed around the good, the true and the beautiful. It's my hope that the privilege will still be mine, when we have high school students, to be their tutor.

The value of this conversational aspect is not to be discounted, as our foundress emphasized today. In the Primary stage, this is accomplished by asking our kids the Who, What, Where, When and Why of their reading adventures. In the later years, this becomes complex and is the basis for their ability to write cohesively. They build their vocabulary by making arguments political, forensic and ceremonial. Anyone who took a class from Les Snyder or Carrie Enge at Petersburg High School will recall why they were so beloved ~ they talked to us about life. I relished the days no instruments were assembled during Band, or textbooks cracked during English. It wasn't a dismissal of learning, but pieces of their hearts freely offered to their students in the form of imparting stories and personal philosophy.

I regularly need a kick in the pants and a reminder of the macro view, if you will. The family training sessions, while useful with specific challenges and addressing each text with some detail, fulfill this more general need simultaneously. Again, Laura Berquist's candor was gripping and inspring. Two well-focused hours, with talk of math facts, Aristotle, Plato and original justice --- ending with another specific truth.

"At the end --- God is going to say to me," Laura offered, "How did you do, with your primary vocation, with the children I gave you? (she then names each of her six children). We want to answer that we did our best." She broke up a bit tearfully when speaking of this today, and if we measure according to the response of the two dozen women in attendance, it resonated quite poignantly with many.

Go Tell It On A Mountain: Medias Bias Is Everything (HT Breitbart)

From the Archbishop's blog on the Archdiocese of New York's website, we read that "The following article was submitted in a slightly shorter form to the New York Times as an op-ed article. The Times declined to publish it. I thought you might be interested in reading it."

FOUL BALL!

By Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan
Archbishop of New York

October is the month we relish the highpoint of our national pastime, especially when one of our own New York teams is in the World Series!

Sadly, America has another national pastime, this one not pleasant at all: anti-catholicism.

It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime. Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as “the deepest bias in the history of the American people,” while John Higham described it as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” “The anti-semitism of the left,” is how Paul Viereck reads it, and Professor Philip Jenkins sub-titles his book on the topic “the last acceptable prejudice.”

If you want recent evidence of this unfairness against the Catholic Church, look no further than a few of these following examples of occurrences over the last couple weeks:

* On October 14, in the pages of the New York Times, reporter Paul Vitello exposed the sad extent of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. According to the article, there were forty cases of such abuse in this tiny community last year alone. Yet the Times did not demand what it has called for incessantly when addressing the same kind of abuse by a tiny minority of priests: release of names of abusers, rollback of statute of limitations, external investigations, release of all records, and total transparency. Instead, an attorney is quoted urging law enforcement officials to recognize “religious sensitivities,” and no criticism was offered of the DA’s office for allowing Orthodox rabbis to settle these cases “internally.” Given the Catholic Church’s own recent horrible experience, I am hardly in any position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors, and have no wish to do so . . . but I can criticize this kind of “selective outrage.”
Of course, this selective outrage probably should not surprise us at all, as we have seen many other examples of the phenomenon in recent years when it comes to the issue of sexual abuse. To cite but two: In 2004, Professor Carol Shakeshaft documented the wide-spread problem of sexual abuse of minors in our nation’s public schools (the study can be found here). In 2007, the Associated Press issued a series of investigative reports that also showed the numerous examples of sexual abuse by educators against public school students. Both the Shakeshaft study and the AP reports were essentially ignored, as papers such as theNew York Times only seem to have priests in their crosshairs.

* On October 16, Laurie Goodstein of the Times offered a front page, above-the-fold story on the sad episode of a Franciscan priest who had fathered a child. Even taking into account that the relationship with the mother was consensual and between two adults, and that the Franciscans have attempted to deal justly with the errant priest’s responsibilities to his son, this action is still sinful, scandalous, and indefensible. However, one still has to wonder why a quarter-century old story of a sin by a priest is now suddenly more pressing and newsworthy than the war in Afghanistan, health care, and starvation–genocide in Sudan. No other cleric from religions other than Catholic ever seems to merit such attention.

* Five days later, October 21, theTimes gave its major headline to the decision by the Vatican to welcome Anglicans who had requested union with Rome. Fair enough. Unfair, though, was the article’s observation that the Holy See lured and bid for the Anglicans. Of course, the reality is simply that for years thousands of Anglicans have been asking Rome to be accepted into the Catholic Church with a special sensitivity for their own tradition. As Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, observed, “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond.” Not enough for the Times; for them, this was another case of the conniving Vatican luring and bidding unsuspecting, good people, greedily capitalizing on the current internal tensions in Anglicanism.

* Finally, the most combustible example of all came Sunday with an intemperate and scurrilous piece by Maureen Dowd on the opinion pages of the Times. In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription -- along with every other German teenage boy -- into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans.
True enough, the matter that triggered her spasm -- the current visitation of women religious by Vatican representatives -- is well-worth discussing, and hardly exempt from legitimate questioning. But her prejudice, while maybe appropriate for the Know-Nothing newspaper of the 1850’s, the Menace, has no place in a major publication today.

I do not mean to suggest that anti-catholicism is confined to the pages New York Times. Unfortunately, abundant examples can be found in many different venues. I will not even begin to try and list the many cases of anti-catholicism in the so-called entertainment media, as they are so prevalent they sometimes seem almost routine and obligatory. Elsewhere, last week, Representative Patrick Kennedy made some incredibly inaccurate and uncalled-for remarks concerning the Catholic bishops, as mentioned in this blog on Monday.
Also, the New York State Legislature has levied a special payroll tax to help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority fund its deficit. This legislation calls for the public schools to be reimbursed the cost of the tax; Catholic schools, and other private schools, will notreceive the reimbursement, costing each of the schools thousands – in some cases tens of thousands – of dollars, money that the parents and schools can hardly afford. (Nor can the archdiocese, which already underwrites the schools by $30 million annually.) Is it not an issue of basic fairness for ALLschool-children and their parents to be treated equally?

The Catholic Church is not above criticism. We Catholics do a fair amount of it ourselves. We welcome and expect it. All we ask is that such critique be fair, rational, and accurate, what we would expect for anybody. The suspicion and bias against the Church is a national pastime that should be “rained out” for good.

I guess my own background in American history should caution me not to hold my breath.

Then again, yesterday was the Feast of Saint Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes.

The Protected Sex

Fourteen year old girls are built for love. Well, everyone is, but the allegiance of this creature takes on an intensity that often lasts a lifetime. If we are fortunate, forces around us will direct this intensity towards matters eternal. The rest of us flit from social circles to cloying musical groups to PETA-like causes that are tepid and pointless compared to the fire inside of us. We should be invited to broader horizons. This, for instance. 

The Indefatigable Fr. Michael Shields

Father Michael Shields gave a retreat four years ago which he opened with the promise to share the definitive single thing a woman wants from a man. I was immediately rapt, and spent the day in shades of mild anxiety as I kept ducking in and out of the church to tend my newborn's fussing, worried I'd miss his mini-revelation. I didn't miss it. I still think of it when I'm frustrated by the disappointments my sisters on this planet suffer from the misused brawn and brains of our brothers. Fr. Shields posited that women want to be protected by men.

I won't spend long caressing any feminist hackles raised by this assertion, because they're obvious and irrelevant. The role of women is not diminished by the role of men, when both are rightly fulfilled. There are as many ways this protective role is made manifest as there are different human temperaments. Plenty of women live without a care for the willful protection of a man. That doesn't change the decorum with which men should behave towards women.

Father Shields' adroitly stated promise of Christ comes to mind again, cited from his work approaching homeless pregnant women in Russia, to offer them freedom and shelter: "Jesus doesn't want to take anything from you. He only wants to give."

Some examples of the protection a man offers a woman are clear cut and tangible. Earning money for a family's material needs and using physical strength to ensure another's safety, for instance. Others are nuanced and most evident when they're not met: sexual assault, abandonment and emotional cowardice. The effects of such dereliction are massive, capable of wounding generations and bleeding through society's fabric with little to trace back to its source. We have a beloved family member who, as a child during confession, confided to a priest ongoing incestuous attempts by her father. The priest casually responded that "some families do that."  Try telling my brave relative that she was wrong to look elsewhere for guidance from that day forward.

A bunch of Allison's men and one of mine,
tending the home fires.

Likewise, young men especially have the ability to heal these wounds before they're formed. Heroic virtue in boys begins with adults allowing it to blossom. Our power must not be threatened by their delicate formation, and I see hopeful sprouts of it in the simplest tasks. We have friends with a cadre of bouncing boys, some of whom I've already been privileged to watch grow through adolescence. The first dozen times we arrived at their driveway for parties, I counted it coincidental that their sons would beeline to my car and offer to carry babies and potluck dishes into their house. 

It was at least a year before it crystallized, and I was floored by my own oblivion and the careful instruction of my friends towards their sons --- they were sending them out! Of course I can carry a casserole, a toddler, a diaper bag and an infant carseat, I'm actually quite practiced at it. But I don't have to, in certain settings. More important than my own acrobatics are the characters of young men which I would trample on by dismissing their offer of help. Chivalry rocks. What are we here for in this life, if not to lighten the loads of those around us? No one soul reaches salvation --- or its opposite --- alone. Certain friends inspire us through their steady assistance more than others.

Upon reflection, I have such a friend. Rather ironically (he's an atheist), his friendship also foreshadowed Christian charity to me: no decision of mine, smart or foolish, seems to raise or lower my status in his eyes. My flaws have been received in grace at every turn for twenty years.


He has tempered my mania with his grounding sense of humor, objective wisdom, and a refusal to define me by life's worst moments. It's hard to be a seventeen year old drunk without seeking the company of lowly men (who's going to buy the beer, after all?). I have both witnessed and endured some extreme displays of this absence of good character. I also behaved badly, maliciously and without morals. He loved me anyway. Too many times, my behavior created imminent physical and emotional peril, which he would providentially appear and solve, usually by tossing my carcass over his shoulder and into a waiting pickup truck. He protected me.

Thank you, Jeremy.

Later in life, my histrionics were met with bored common sense, even on life-changing matters like leaving college, entering treatment for alcoholism and divorcing my husband. ("I don't think you're so bad off, but do what you gotta do." And years later, "So now you're going to trash your marriage; just don't do it in my living room.") 

My friend always comes to mind when I read various horrific reports of lively teenaged girls who meet their final match in the presence of so-called friends. It sounds like a pathetic endorsement of the human bond --- "I trust that you would help me if we overdosed on illicit drugs" --- but taken in layers of context and innate virtue, love is evident. I'm not painting him as a Boy Scout, and we probably wouldn't have spoken a second time if he had been. But if you have a daughter for whom you do everything right and she still goes wayward, pray that she is granted the profound blessing of a friend like mine for the journey. It's a wild world. It's hard to get by just upon a smile.

Staid, Boring NFP Catholic Couples

"Remember when we were having sex in that park in Australia, but it turned out to be a cemetery, and the grave steward showed up with his dog and we had to run away?"

"Honey, that was just a homeless guy.  It's time to be quiet now."

H a p p y 

V a l e n t i n e ' s
D a y !