a link for you

Abby Johnson: Only Modern Pro-Life Women’s Centers Can Beat Planned Parenthood

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/abby-johnson-only-modern-pro-life-womens-centers-can-beat-planned-parenthoo/#ixzz2toAmMIRc

(great thoughts here: how can the pro-life movement encounter and transform the culture? I'd say pray for willing benefactors, #1. The eugenics assault has Bill & Melinda Gates, and we need similar muscle. God knows who they are...)

Heavy sigh.

Oh, Alaska.

What a skank!

I tried to think of some Christian nomenclature with which to describe Mz Davis, but time is tight and I'm all out of charity for this plot.

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.

Shoe Leather Evangelization, as God Intends

The shoes always made me slightly uncomfortable. Yes, I'm talking about the red papal shoes, a bit of flair on which I tried not to pin too much symbolism. "He's the Pope, he can wear whatever he likes," was my ultimate response. A flash of color, a spark of life, these are no bad things, right? Isn't it true, though, that in our world of blips and sound bites, it was enough for those who find comfort in rejecting the Catholic faith to see the symbol of custom Italian shoes as a harbinger of excess and disconnect, a dismissal of our wounded world?

Perhaps the only thing that makes some among us more uncomfortable than the appearance of excess, is the appearance of material wanting. We read that Cardinal Bergoglio's friends bought him some new shoes just as he departed Buenos Aires for Rome, since the pair he was wearing were pretty shabby.

Spiritual truths are, by their nature, simple. I've always found conviction and inspiration in the question, "What if we spent at least as much time working on our 'insides' and we did on our 'outsides'? Francis' Argentine life seems to overflow with this possibility. Even the charming description of his sister's reaction shows us we are not witnessing a fluke of Catholic religious life. He's doing it right. It's been reported that as a priest he spent most of his time offering masses and hearing confession. He's spent over four decades among our wounded world, gaze fixed, heart entwined, hard at work and prayer. We must now pray for every priest, bishop and Cardinal who lives similarly. And ask God to show us how to do it too.

We can check 'yes' in the box for both camps' requests, from radical stewardship to unwavering fidelity to Magisterial teachings. These camps of Catholics need not be disparate. And here's the crux, if you will: it's not so much that our new Holy Father has fulfilled each of our criteria. He does --  yet he adds more. God is adding more to the dimensions of our hearts and lives, by having less and doing more. For one camp this means a braver, more visible evangelization. As then Cardinal, Pope Francis spoke of our church needing "to spill onto the streets, for Jesus is the King of the Streets." For still others it will mean an equally brave interior quest which results in assenting (or not) to the teachings of the Catholic faith in order to call themselves Catholic (or not).

Pope Francis has said 'yes' to God, humbly giving himself to our world, in this age and beyond.
Just like Mary.

Who was/is Pope Emeritus Benedict? Deeply dignified, a man of resplendent faith, insistent on sharing the transformative power of God's love.

Francis appears to be this and delicately, more --- by showing us less. Less of himself, more of God.
Just like Jesus.

It seems each person who clamored, even casually, for the Church or the papacy to change is getting their way. What's more, we're being newly invited on The Way.

Hail, Summer!

On a day which has the most vivid readings in honor of Mary's Queenship, we are frying dandelions and awaiting dinner guests. I'm embracing a new season of motherhood --- one with children who are old enough for conversation,  projects and giggling over secret birthday gifts for their sister. It's like a gift, these girls with ease and independence where once squalling babies resided. As if I've been driving a battered Dodge Dart for years, who needed constant oil changes and anxious maintenance with unknown results --- now my tiring steed has morphed into some sleek new model with automatic windows and shiny paint. They can go to tea! We can paint, and plant flowers, and pluck eyebrows! (Don't ask.)

But the most gripping and beautiful part, which I rightly attribute to the clear teachings of the Catholic faith, is that I have more babies coming up behind them. ("I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for the fresh supply of two-year-olds", my husband once toasted me during dinner.) I'm frank about my general discomfort with babies, and it will probably never change. It doesn't matter. My 34-year old self is essentially the same as my 26-year old self who greeted her newborn with unwarranted confidence and utter bliss. I fully expected to have two children, no more. I never considered full-time motherhood a choice that appealed to me. I had my own Visitation moment, great with child, as I confessed not wanting to deposit my baby anywhere but home once he or she arrived. My husband, quotable as ever (he never remembers these swoon-worthy moments) answered my fairly sheepish admission with characteristic verve. "That's what makes this nation great." His words surprised me, since I'd heard that sort of platitude about plenty of pursuits, but nothing so common and accessible as raising children.

I can savor my 12-month old son all the more because I can see around the corners. I know what precious milestones are coming. It also minimizes the angst over seeing the older ones grow, since their development aids the family. We bloom together. These children belong to God, who in His infinite wisdom has plopped them down with us. As long as they're entrusted to us, may the wind continue to change direction once in awhile and remind us of the joys surrounding us in the fullness of time. That our Lord and Creator sought a human mother for Himself never ceases to humble me.

My soul shall be filled as with a banquet. Indeed.

Shooting Ourselves With Blanks: The Lost Ammunition of Hormonal and Surgical Sterilization

American Catholics long ago lost their rhetorical firepower regarding the sanctity of marriage, an online friend posited recently. It's easy to nod in agreement on this, for both opponents and proponents of gay "marriage". I sense a more superficial assent to pithy, insipid e-posters than a sense of conviction or duty to truth gone wrong. We can all shrug at the mess of this once-esteemed institution, thereby nullifying deeper reflection.

But let's not let ourselves off the hook too easily.

And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold:
and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband who did eat.   Genesis 3:6, Douay Rheims

Five decades ago, with the wholesale removal of the life-giving power of straight sex, we neutered our own voices against the clamoring din of voices defining gay sex as equal. How can the collective call for honoring marriage vows as unique among all other agreements be audible or even credible, compared to those who insist on a legal mandate to follow their particular emotional star?

Political games abound in recent domestic events, and they serve as a robust distraction. Our President was compelled to announce his fairly dithering support of same-sex "marriage" hours after North Carolina became the 31st state to confidently come out otherwise. This came on the heels of Vice President Joe Biden's more passioned assertion against the teachings of his professed faith, and in favor of follow-your-star morality. Cynical reasoning offered synchronization with a Hollywood fundraiser, flat reports from the labor market, and the Democratic tradition of reliable voter blocs secured according to 'gimmes' from DC as the impetus for his flash of clarity. All are plausible, but the background is more compelling and has little to do with Barack Obama himself. Should he retire today, or perhaps on November 7, the matter of sterility as a sexual freedom remains.

It's an open-ended post, as much for your voice as mine. I'm in full agreement with Catholics who allege that our masses led the way, and that these events are both the culmination and a symptom of our long-wounded culture. I'm eager for practical and evangelical solutions for Christians of all vocations. Not everyone is called to marriage or parenthood, but I know there are endless sources of inspiration for restoring the dignified treatment of life in its inception. Share yours in the comments, if you're so inclined. How can we illustrate the true beauty of marriage in a way that re-shapes the social ideal?

NFP: Not For Pansies

My habit of representing myself and my husband as adherents to Natural Family Planning is entirely incorrect. It's become my shortcut, a kind of lazy jargon I toss into written and spoken exchanges to signify how joyfully we welcome news of a pregnancy. I've never read an NFP text, and have minimal experience with charting my ovulation, even when we longed for children and were diagnosed as infertile. Every once in awhile I read something about those wacky Providentialists, and realize that our response to the gift of fertility is more aligned with theirs than careful NFP in any form.

I can't overstate the imprint on my psyche and my soul those barren years produced. For a young woman who gave casual assent to damaging sexual ideals, it was fairly shocking not to have children right away in married life. In hindsight, I am grateful for every necessary step, especially praying together and the painful conclusion that we may not ever physically bear children. At that conclusion, the only thing we had to overcome was our own egos, in order to consider adoption. Birth mothers (fathers too) who entrust their babies to another family have self-knowledge and courage of a caliber I can only ponder. God love them.

Our kids are healthy, my husband earns a strong income, and life is stable by most measures. None of these are factors in our openness to the gift of new life. I don't even like babies, generally! (Love my kids, love your kids, I'm just bothered and intimidated by the delicate, dependent and darling responsibility of it all. It's overwhelming.) I exhale around the seventh month, when my anxieties are replaced by a sturdy little pal who is eager to see around every corner, meet every stranger, and wield their own amusements for just a moment while I stare slack-jawed at the coffee pot and dream of library visits that bypass the children's floor entirely.

Real life began when we became parents, and I still find equal parts encouragement and panic in Peter De Vries idea that “the value of marriage is not that adults produce children. but that children produce adults.”  The day may come when our circumstances merit actually learning the NFP method, and I don't moralize over other couples' decisions or struggles in this private matter. In the meantime -- limit this? No thank you. I'm called to limit everything else: material excess, leisure time, heady solo pursuits and even predictable sleep patterns. But another eternal soul may be called forth, and my family is at the service of a God whose generosity I know to include grace. Children are the visible sign of marital love fulfilled, which makes them a sacramental of sorts.  It's also the way we all started out, so let's not get too big for our britches. If you're raising kids or at a stage when this makes sense to you -- just for today, envision your home with one more child, whether biological or adopted. Ask God to make the way clear. I offer my free advice with a handy money-back guarantee, as usual.

"The greatest gift you can give your child is another sibling."

Bl. John Paul II

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.