She's totally wearing a brown scapular!
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Albrect Dürer: Portrait of a Young Furleger with Her Hair Done Up (1497)
She's totally wearing a brown scapular!
Letter from the past
When I was about thirteen I used to gather every week with a small group of girls from my church. We'd meet with two twenty-something women, counselors of the junior high youth group, in one of their homes. I can't really remember if we studied the Bible or what, but I do remember we would talk about anything we pleased, with our counselors contributing a bit of insight and maturity to the conversation.One night one of the counselors said that she'd been having a bit of a dilemma, a struggle to know God's will, and she had happened to read her old high school diary. There she found a letter to herself. "Dear Brandi," it began, "for the future..." There followed some things her high school self hadn't wanted her future self to forget. It turned out that the issues on her mind back then were the same ones she was dealing with now. Brandi found the advice of her younger self to be exactly what she needed.
I thought that was pretty neat and never forgot it. In fact when I was seventeen I shared the idea with my sister and a good friend of mine, and before long we were sitting down together at a table to write letters ten years into the future. My sister provided blank sheets of paper and pens in rainbow colors, and we got to it, silently scribbling away, switching colors for each new paragraph, saying nothing to each other of what we were writing. When I was done I folded my three pages into one of the origami shapes we girls always used for passing notes at school. On the front I wrote: "To Rachel: Do not open until 2005 (if you can wait that long.)"
Some months ago, as I was clearing out my old desk, I found the folded fourteen-year-old note. I immediately remembered writing it, but couldn't remember a thing I'd said. Eagerly I opened it, expecting to read something like, "Are you married yet?" followed by a list of the qualities expected of my future husband. I thought perhaps I'd have a laugh at my past self's girlishness.
To my surprise the letter was nothing of the kind. It was about something else entirely, a certain moral issue, which happened to be exactly the issue I was currently dealing with. I'd completely forgotten that I had pondered the same problem in high school, but reading what I'd written (and how I went wrong back then) helped me reinforce my intention to get it right this time. Talk about help from an unexpected quarter....
Now if any of that inspires you, check out this site for sending email to your future self. :)
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Funny story about Ted Kennedy
Fr. Robert Sirico has a good article in National Review on Kennedy's record as a Catholic, and he begins this way:
Later on Fr. Sirico gets serious:
I only met Edward Kennedy once.
I had been invited to visit then-senator Phil Gramm, who was contemplating a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996. Having read some of my musings on the topic, Senator Gramm wanted to brainstorm about some innovative welfare-reform policies that would simultaneously make economic sense and really help the poor.
After we had chatted for some time in his office, a bell rang and Senator Gramm rose. “I need to take a vote. Walk with me and let’s continue this conversation,” he said.
As we walked down the corridor, I could spy familiar names on the various Senate office doors. We came to an elevator that would take us down to an underground subway connecting the Senate offices to the Senate chamber. It was a small elevator, no more than a large closet. Senator Gramm, an aide, and I tucked ourselves in and the door began to slide shut.
Just before closing, an arm came through to stop the door’s close. As it reopened, I found myself standing face-to-face with the Lion of the Senate, arguably the most prominent Catholic layman in the country, scion of the most prominent Catholic family, perhaps, in U.S. history. Kennedy immediately looked me up and down, and then quizzically glanced over to Senator Gramm trying to figure out why his colleague was hanging out with a priest.
As Senator Kennedy stepped into the elevator, Senator Gramm welcomed him with his Southern tones, “Come on in, Teddy. We’ve called you here to pray for you.”
Without missing a beat, Senator Kennedy tossed a mischievous wink in my direction, nudging me with his elbow in Catholic camaraderie and replied in his Bostonian accent, “Uhh [there was that familiar pause of his], uhh, no Phil, Father and I have called you here to pray for you.”
There was laughter as the elevator door slid closed. It was my turn to speak so I decided to enter the spirit of the moment.
I stood erect, place my hand on Senator Kennedy’s broad shoulder and said, “Actually, senator, this is an exorcism.”
Later on Fr. Sirico gets serious:
Kennedy’s death also brings the Church face-to-face once again with the fact that there is a massive problem of basic Catholic education — catechesis — among the faithful. So many Catholics — even some clergy — make an absolute out of prudential issues such as economic policy, while relativizing absolutes, such as abortion, euthanasia, and marriage. This is done in the face of clear, binding teachings from John Paul the Great, who said that no other right is safe unless the right to life is protected, or, as Pope Benedict wrote recently in Caritas in Veritate, that life issues must be central to Catholic social teaching.H/T Fr. Z.
Stealth smarts
I wrote this in May of last year when I was helping with catechism. Found it just now while cleaning out my drafts archive, so here you go:
In fifth-grade catechism yesterday we had Mass for the all the classes. Those are my favorite catechism days. Though I can't prepare myself for Holy Communion prayerfully when I have to make sure my twenty kids are behaving, it does save me from teaching. Plus I enjoy the sermons the priest gives to the kids; they're instructive and inspiring. (I'm sure there are parishes in L.A. where the adults never hear sermons as solid as the children get at SPC.)
My class was squeezed into two pews and I was next to a kid I'll call Michael. Michael's one of the rambunctious students. He's not malicious but he disturbs the class a lot and constantly needs to be hushed. He rarely seems to know what I'm talking about in class; certainly he never volunteers to answer any questions (in this he's no different from most of the students), and when called upon he usually responds with an embarrassed grin and silence. I had him pegged as a little troublemaker destined for an inauspicious school career. He did, however, refrain from squirming at this Mass when he found himself seated next to Teacher.
Father kicked off the homily by noting that it was the feast day of St. Athanasius, who suffered a great deal to uphold the orthodox Christian faith. "Do you kids know anyone else who suffered for teaching the faith?" he asked us. "Paul?" murmured Michael at once. How about that, I thought-- he knows something.
"The disciples said, 'Lord, we don't know where you're going, so how can we know the way?'" said Father later on. "And what did Jesus reply?" "'I am the way,'" Michael whispered to me, and I about fell out of the pew-- the kid really knows something! He must have practically memorized that passage.
"St. Athanasius was at a council where they wrote the Creed we say every Sunday," Father went on, and Michael whispered "The Nicene Creed?"
And it was like that for the rest of the sermon-- whenever Father asked a question, Michael would either whisper the right answer to me or at least give it a good guess. He was into it; each question was a challenge he wanted to meet.
It wasn't till I thought about it later that I felt a little sad. I'm sure Michael will do fine; he probably has good parents teaching him at home. He clearly enjoys learning things and knowing things and sharing his knowledge, and he's smart. But I would never have known that if I hadn't happened to sit next to him at Mass. I taught him for a year and thought he was a dumb bunny almost that whole time. Now, I'm an inexperienced catechist with no claim to be good with kids. But Michael wanted to look dumb in class. He preferred to be seen misbehaving than getting an answer right.
I went to some very good public schools where most of the kids were Asian and we all tried to outdo each other in academics. How blessed we were to have such positive peer pressure. I wish I were a heck of a lot more experienced and knew how to change the culture of my own classroom, to make my kids want to look smart instead of rebellious.
In fifth-grade catechism yesterday we had Mass for the all the classes. Those are my favorite catechism days. Though I can't prepare myself for Holy Communion prayerfully when I have to make sure my twenty kids are behaving, it does save me from teaching. Plus I enjoy the sermons the priest gives to the kids; they're instructive and inspiring. (I'm sure there are parishes in L.A. where the adults never hear sermons as solid as the children get at SPC.)
My class was squeezed into two pews and I was next to a kid I'll call Michael. Michael's one of the rambunctious students. He's not malicious but he disturbs the class a lot and constantly needs to be hushed. He rarely seems to know what I'm talking about in class; certainly he never volunteers to answer any questions (in this he's no different from most of the students), and when called upon he usually responds with an embarrassed grin and silence. I had him pegged as a little troublemaker destined for an inauspicious school career. He did, however, refrain from squirming at this Mass when he found himself seated next to Teacher.
Father kicked off the homily by noting that it was the feast day of St. Athanasius, who suffered a great deal to uphold the orthodox Christian faith. "Do you kids know anyone else who suffered for teaching the faith?" he asked us. "Paul?" murmured Michael at once. How about that, I thought-- he knows something.
"The disciples said, 'Lord, we don't know where you're going, so how can we know the way?'" said Father later on. "And what did Jesus reply?" "'I am the way,'" Michael whispered to me, and I about fell out of the pew-- the kid really knows something! He must have practically memorized that passage.
"St. Athanasius was at a council where they wrote the Creed we say every Sunday," Father went on, and Michael whispered "The Nicene Creed?"
And it was like that for the rest of the sermon-- whenever Father asked a question, Michael would either whisper the right answer to me or at least give it a good guess. He was into it; each question was a challenge he wanted to meet.
It wasn't till I thought about it later that I felt a little sad. I'm sure Michael will do fine; he probably has good parents teaching him at home. He clearly enjoys learning things and knowing things and sharing his knowledge, and he's smart. But I would never have known that if I hadn't happened to sit next to him at Mass. I taught him for a year and thought he was a dumb bunny almost that whole time. Now, I'm an inexperienced catechist with no claim to be good with kids. But Michael wanted to look dumb in class. He preferred to be seen misbehaving than getting an answer right.
I went to some very good public schools where most of the kids were Asian and we all tried to outdo each other in academics. How blessed we were to have such positive peer pressure. I wish I were a heck of a lot more experienced and knew how to change the culture of my own classroom, to make my kids want to look smart instead of rebellious.
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