Moping on Candlemas and Struggling to be a Light Bearer

Today is the Feast of Candlemas, which marks 40 days since Christmas. If you have not taken down your Christmas tree, as my family has not, today is really the last possible day you can claim it is still the Christmas season.

Starting tomorrow, you can just say you are well prepared for December 25 of this year.

On New Year's Eve and That Holy Day Tomorrow

When I was a young adult, I was annoyed by the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, a Holy Day of Obligation that falls on New Year's Day. It felt to me as if the Church were acting like a scolding mother, insisting we show up bright and early New Year's Day for Mass. It felt as if the underlying strategy was to make sure we didn't drink too much the night before. Is this holy day really necessary?

Ringing Out 2014: A Photo Montage

In a break with a long family tradition, I did not send out a Christmas letter or a Christmas card this year. I do not think I sent them out last year either. It has not been a priority. I blogged intermittently: too much real life happening here. 

When I spied this link up,  however, I figured I would do that.This was the year our older son graduated from high school and we launched him into college, and the year our younger son switched high schools. 

We all traveled a lot this year; my husband went as far west as Portland, Oregon  and our older son spent two weeks in Valencia, Spain. I spent time this year in Virginia, Vermont, Indiana, Florida, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Texas and New York. 

Midway through the year, I lost a treasured spiritual guide. 

I joined Weight Watchers, our parish choir (with our younger son) and finished a half marathon, (with my husband). When I was culling through photos to mark our year, I realized most of my fondest memories come  from right here in central New Jersey. 

Happy new year to my friends old and new. 

 "Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light.

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die."

Feast of the Holy Family: Preaching To This Mother's Heart

On the Feast of the Holy Family, our perfectly imperfect family found ourselves at the church where Greg and I were married 21 autumns ago - the  Sacred Heart Cathedral in downtown Raleigh, NC.

We did not plan to be there on that day in particular. Nor did the celebrant, Father Justin Kerber, C.P. write his homily with me in mind.

Christmas Musing: Preti's "The Visitiation" and Our Search for the Infinite

When we rounded the corner to the left and into the Baroque room at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts this morning, my eyes welled with tears. There it was; the painting I had visited the museum for, a painting called "The Visitation" by 17th century Baroque master Mattia Preti, a Calabrian and a protege of Caravaggian naturalism.

How fitting the painting first went on display here on Christmas Eve.

Accepting Mercy On the Supermarket Line

I am watching the cashier at the local supermarket ring up my purchase.  $25.72. I pass over my singles, one at a time, then the two five dollar bills, then the four dollars worth of quarters I found in various nooks in my car. And I realize I am 72 cents short.

I am buying tonight's dinner - a full chicken for roasting, a bag of carrots and four sweet potatoes.

I am also buying a half gallon of soy milk, a dozen eggs, and a jar of applesauce because I plan to bake oatmeal raisin cookies on this rainy November night. I glance over my purchase. What don't we need tonight?

"Oh, let me put two of those sweet potatoes back," I tell the cashier.

The woman behind me in line smiles. She offers the cashier three quarters. "This happens to me all the time, " she says to me

For a split second, I feel embarrassed. I want to explain to her that my husband's paycheck clears at midnight tonight, that we are solidly middle class family with two jobs, a mortgage that is paid on time. Truly, I could have found those quarters on the floor of my sedan, I want to say.

But she's smiling and I realize none of that matters: whether I am temporarily without three quarters, or whether this is a daily occurrence.

She wants me to buy those two extra sweet potatoes and she was put in front of me so I could be humble and accept her gesture.

How often our pride gets in the way of seeing the hand of Our Creator. I like to think of myself as the giver, not the receiver: I'd spent part of my afternoon at the wake of a friend's father, a man who had had an often difficult life. I had actually been trying to list the  seven - is it seven? - corporal works of mercy on my drive home, patting myself on the back (figuratively of course) for driving to the wake and comforting this friend and never considering that I might be in need of mercy, too.

A world so free and profligate reveals your loving hand, O Lord. With dawn and all the gifts of day we praise you, Abba, breath and word.  
– Lauds and Vespers, Camaldolese Monks, OSB

Thoughts As Our Son Leaves Home

I developed a new habit for a week or so this summer: I would scan google news for reports of missing people. I even would type "missing" into its search bar and read the stories: missing tourists, missing Amish girls, missing man, missing teen and on and on.

How To Make Iced Latte Without Ice

I was inspired this afternoon to make an iced latte, following the directions of Danielle Walker, on her wonderful blog, Against All Grain. 

This, my friends, is not what my iced latte looked like:

Summer Moments: Toddlers and Cats

I was heading out of the car from a dinner date with my husband just now and a family with toddler twins was on the sidewalk in front of our house, intrigued by our cats.

Overheard in a Retirement Community Dining Room

Some moments lodge deep inside one's heart. That happened to me today, as I ate lunch with my parents at a retirement community they wanted to check out.

My Silly Search for the "Real" Vermont

Tomorrow is our last full day in Vermont on our family summer vacation.  The Vermont Country Store in Rockingham is about four miles from the riverside cabin we are renting. I had the sense today that I must visit before I leave Vermont.  Why? I keep thinking I need to have a quintessential Vermont experience. In reality, I have been having "Vermont experiences" all week - from the stench of cow manure that wafts over to our cabin from the dairy farm next door to spending time with friends and relatives and having them share the challenges they face in their workplaces and in their families. This is what's real.

My Misbegotten Hike Down Mount Killington

After a breath-taking gondola ride up,  I managed a few pictures during our three-hour trek down 4,241 foot Mount Killington in Vermont because I wanted to get something, anything, from this physically and emotionally painful experience. I keep trying to think of some kind of metaphoric meaning to this ill-conceived afternoon. I cannot. Can you? At this point, standing up is my personal challenge. 

A Blessing for All the Gadflies

I've written before about how our local board of education hired a woefully unprepared man with a slim resume to run our public schools in a borough with a high poverty rate and plenty of economic disparity. This has been a rough school year in town. I am grateful to live in a place where scores of people care so much about what is going on in the public schools and understand the principles of democracy so well that they are willing to spend evenings attending board meetings and speaking up. Most do not relish this role. 

A New School, A Walk in the Dark

We journey with our children. We walk with them as they face whatever it is God places in front of them.  This morning will be another step in the journey.

On the Eve of High School Graduation: Some Lessons from Our Son's Encounter with a Bus

At work Thursday the school secretary called my name on the public address system, telling me to come to the main office right away. I was packing up my classroom for the school year and left the door open and walked down the stairs and they were calling my name again. 

Instinctively, I made a sign of the cross when I was on the phone with my husband in the main office and he was telling me how our older son, Gabe, had been hit by an NJ Transit bus while riding his bike and was in the pediatric trauma unit and that he was alive and alert.

The sign of the cross was a sign of thanks for his being alive, and my plea for strength to get through whatever it was we were facing.

One Last Enchanting Friday Night

Tonight marks the end to the lovely ends of my work weeks.

Every Friday night during the past five school years I have driven our son Gabriel to Princeton, New Jersey --  sharing more than an hour through rush hour traffic so he could attend his chamber-music orchestra rehearsals.  Recently, with his learners' permit, he's been driving me. For two of those years I have spent the two hours of Friday night rehearsals with one of my dearest friends, whose daughter is also in the orchestra. Jane, who is raising four daughters about an hour from us,  and I have gone on long walks or headed to the local Panera to "solve world problems" as we like to put it.

Rusted Pipes and Homemade Chocolate Sauce: Making Do

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” 
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Right now I'm smack in the middle of my three-day weekend, All of us - my husband and our two sons - are home from school and work. Tomorrow, we will host friends for  ice cream on our front porch. Our home is never really ready for guests but we invite them anyway. I'm making chocolate sauce. This photograph is from Susan Branch's blog; my counters are stained and I don't have a pretty copper pot. I'm making the chocolate sauce anyway, and later, I will make caramel sauce.

This Week, the Future Showed Up

When the gearshift pulled up and into his hand, my husband realized it was time to junk our 21-year-old car. The Saturn we bought as newlyweds had about 232,000 miles on the speedometer - six years ago when the speedometer broke. It has no horn, no ceiling upholstery, no working gas gauge and so on.  Since New Jersey only checks emissions on cars now, it did pass inspection recently.

After a long winter that felt as if everything was stalled, life is moving at a fast pace.

In Which I Try to Stop Comparing and Start Embracing the Lives in Front of Me

One of my bad habits is comparing myself to other women. Lately, I have been reading a lot of blogs by women I consider similar to myself, thoughtful literate mothers who are raising their families in the Catholic Church. I learn so much from them about how they manage their time and responsibilities while nurturing their faith.

I gotta say, though, I allow myself to feel "left out," when I consider their large families and the time they spend homeschooling their children and creating home and nurturing friendships with like-minded women living similar lives. My life looks nothing like this. I start to feel inadequate, as if my life is less than theirs. This is, in the end, a kind of idolatry and a disregard for the One who called me by name into being.

From Barnard, Vermont: Rebuilding After a Home Fire

My husband's Aunt Dagney lost her Vermont home of many years in mid-March in a fast-moving fire. Fortunately, noone was hurt and her only child, an adult daughter who lives nearby, is raising funds to help her out. The link is here.