Seasons Are Changing

I never realized until this year how much the cycles of the Church have gotten into my blood and become the cycles of my life.

When at college, especially during the past two years, I immersed myself in CCM. As Liturgy coordinator and then as Spiritual Life coordinator, I followed the liturgical seasons closely. Feast days were exciting; Holy Days of Obligation a big deal. The changing of liturgical seasons had more significance on my life than the changing of spring to summer, fall to winter. But only this year, taken away from that world, am I far enough away to remember that this is not how the world works.

We are entering the shortest season of the Church year, the three day Triduum. Not only the shortest, but the highest, most holy time of the year. And I am used to the world standing still -- or being able to make my world stand still, creating my own retreat from the world into sacred time.

Instead, school lets out for three days. The atmosphere, rather than contemplative and anticipatory, penitent and prayerful, is celebratory -- we have freedom! Go on vacation! I understand it. We are out of school for only 3 extra days; there is no time to relax after Easter, and we are in need of a break. Still, I don't feel right unless I follow the cycles that are now a part of my blood -- which means the next three days are sacred time.

Simple Living

We don't make much money here. So we have simple fun. Take for example to entertainment of this evening.

After prayer this evening (we eat and pray together 3 times a week), the six of us were sitting out on the porch when someone asked, "How adventurous are you feeling tonight?" I hedged until I figured out why I was being asked this question. Apparently, I appear a convenient size to try an experiment : "Will you climb down the laundry chute?"

I stumbled out a few questions before we trooped inside to examine the chute. It goes from the second floor down to the basement, but Mee-Maw and Triss had already determined that I should drop from the first floor down. Which was a good idea; I have the feeling the second floor would have been dangerous.

I stuck my head into the metal passage and peered up and down at roommates at the top and bottom of the chute. The bottom seemed far away until Em opened up the bottom door. Then it appeared about a 7 or 8 foot drop. I determined that the distance was reasonable. Mee-Maw and Triss offered a bean-bag to cushion my fall, but it looked like it would block me in, so we used just a sheet.

Getting in was the hardest part. I (obviously) wanted to go in feet first. I wanted to be facing outside, but my knees had to bend for the angles to work to get my legs in -- the laundry chute is large enough for me to manipulate in a bit, but I don't have a whole lot of wiggle room. Eventually, I stuck my legs and hips in, then wiggled my way, leaning heavily on Triss and Ana, so that I had completely flipped upside down. At this point, I was half in the laundry chute with my torso sticking out, facing down. I scooted backwards in all the way -- I was in the laundry chute!

I braced myself against the four walls and shimmied down. Having worked out the angles of knees, hips, and laundry chutes up top, the getting out was a cinch!

Of course, that could not be the end of our adventures. Mee-Maw proceeded to climb up the chute, with the help of a sheet being dangled by Ana from the first floor.

On Brides, Prostitutes, and Chapel Veils

Recap : God wants to marry each of us! It is the command He gave to Hosea in the book that bears the prophet's name : to go marry the prostitute. We are prostitutes when we give ourselves to lovers other than God, to people, things, idols that will not bring us fulfillment. According to Hosea, God is a wild lover. We sin when we give ourselves to less wild lovers than our God.

The Song of Songs too shows the ardor with which God longs for us. Christopher West called the Annunciation the "New Song of Songs." It is "God's marriage proposal to humanity." It resulted in a "yes," from Mary and new life -- just as human marriage does. I love the implication this image has for the Rosary. Not only does it repeat an angel's words, honor Mary, and meditate on the Mysteries, but it repeats the manner and method of our salvation. It repeats God's proposal to us, His willingness to become man to marry us. We are like children, telling again and again the story of how our parents met, loving their love.

The Apostles experienced the same kind of union at Pentecost when they too were "overshadowed" by the Holy Spirit. We experience the marriage at the Eucharist.

Which means, incidentally, that we approach the altar for communion as a bride, prepared to conceive eternal life. As a bride! I don't want to spend too much blog space on the topic of women veiling themselves at church, but I love the relationship here. We come forward as brides... we are the bride of Christ. In modern times, the main place I find veils in Christianity is the head of a bride. In this way, wearing a veil can be a sign of my offering myself (as a layperson) as the spouse of Christ.

"Open Your Mouth and I Will Fill It"

As I continue with Christopher West's Theology of the Body talks (yeah, I know it's been a while), here's a summary of what I've written so far:

1) The human person is the inseparable union (marriage) of body and spirit.
2) The modern world teaches false focus on our sexuality, but agents of the Catholic Church often offer a false negative message about our sexuality.
3) The body has a sacramental meaning : it images the invisible God.

From here Christopher West offered this question and answer : What does this image of God upon our bodies mean? It shows the "innermost secret of God: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange."

Our hearts long, ache, pine for love. Modern culture and our own experiences speak to this truth. Chick-flicks, love songs, college hook-ups, online dating services, the omnipresence of romance -- all these demonstrate our human longing for love. This longing comes from the fact that we were made for and from God's infinite love.

We have three ways in which we can respond to this longing:
1) Become an addict. We indulge in every way to fill this hole inside us, using the venues the world offers us, venues that will never quite satisfy us, but which we cannot let go.
2) Become a stoic. We ignore the longings, squash them, try to pretend there is no hole, because it is so hard to fill.
3) Become a mystic. We seek God to fill this hole. We know that it will never be completely filled in this life, but we wed ourselves as closely as possible to our Lord, because He is the only thing that can fill it.

Most of the time, we respond in a combination of these three ways at various points in our life. Sin enters in following path 1 or path 2, when we go to something finite to try to fill a desire for the infinite. We can be seeking something good when we sin; the sin comes from choosing something good over something holy.

When we choose the road of the mystic, we enter into relationship with God. And through Scripture, we can discover the shape of this relationship. God reveals His mystery to us through a spousal analogy -- through His marriage to each of us. The analogy of marriage is the most common analogy in the Bible, according to Christopher. Importantly, marriage bookends the Bible. "In the beginning," God created Adam and Eve, the first, archetypal marriage. In Revelation, He shows to John a new marriage, one of Christ and the Church. The new Adam and the New Eve. Because we are all part of the Church which is the Body of Christ, through the Cross and (for Catholics) through the Eucharist, we are all "called to nuptial union with God."

In other words, God wants to marry each of us. The Old Testament describes this longing -- have you ever read Hosea or the Song of Solomon? If not, please do. Both unfold God's urgent longing, his unceasing desire for each of us. And then, in the New Testament, God fulfills the Old Testament -- He fulfills His desire for us, but taking on flesh and coming to the world as a bridegroom in pursuit of His bride.

Ultimately, He gave Himself in every way possible to His bride, His Church, in the Eucharist and in the Cross. Christopher West gave an exegesis of the passage from Ephesians 5 :

'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This is a great mystery and I mean in reference to Christ and the church.

In reference to Christ and the Church, Christ (man) left first his Father (in heaven, during the incarnation) and his mother (Mary, on earth, first at his death, then at his Ascension) and was joined to his wife (the Church) and the two became one flesh (the Eucharist). Wow!

Madamoiselles

The Daughters of Charity were founded by a contemporary and colleague of St. Vincent de Paul, St. Louise de Marillac. Louise was the illegitimate daughter of a rich father. So while she possessed money, she did not possess the same social position that she could have. She never got the title of "Madame," but was "Mademoiselle," even after marriage. She funded many of the projects on which she and Vincent embarked and helped garner support from affluent communities. As a result, I refer to charitable wealthy people as "Mademoiselles."

I had the privilege of meeting some of them and hearing Archbishop Carlson address an audience earlier this week. A scholarship foundation had a gala, and when two of the guests our assistant principal was bringing cancelled at the last minute, Ana and I got invites. We hurried home from school Tuesday to change into pretty dresses and heels and rushed off like Cinderellas. Like Cinderella, the transformation was temporary and we had to be home early.

When we arrived as the crowd waiting in the receiving room, and the throng of people intimidated me at first... until we found our boss and her mother and a few other people we knew from school. Then we cycled upstairs into a dining room, where we ate delicious food and were serenaded by school children.

I've met more donors and financial backers this year than I had expected coming into the school. They have all sorts of personalities, kind of like the population in general. It can be hard dealing with the self-satisfied and self-righteous -- but then you end up with people like those we met Tuesday. They possess both material wealth and a desire to give. It overflows into charities such as this foundation; but it overflows into the children and parents from a desire to help the children and the parents. Every now and then, that's good to see.

On a more selfish note, I found it refreshing to hear people appreciate what we do. Ana and I got a lot of questions, since we were less than half the average age of guests. So we explained that we volunteer full-time as part of an organization, etc. etc. And people cared! They were impressed! The glam of the year has started to rub off, and it felt good to see it return, if only for an evening.

Dear Reader

Dear Reader(s),

If you read regularly, you may have noticed the layout and general appearance of the blog transforming. I've been working to find one that feels right... which apparently takes effort. Hopefully, this one will stay for a while, but if not, please be patient until I settle on one. Blogger just added more options for layout and background, so I might flit around a little more.

~Beth

How to Use a College Degree, Part III

Finally -- I had the chance to use my sociology degree in a manner that pursues my area of love. I got the use qualitative sociology this past week.

The administration had conducted a faculty survey, and my boss asked me to help compile the results. I read over them to get a feel for the answer, but I quickly realized that my own opinions would color my conclusions if I tried to generalize. Solution? Coding!

I quickly found this method as tedious as my professors had warned me, and as confusing as it had been the few times I attempted it in undergrad. Coding essentially means that you read through your field notes, interviews, etc. and categorize the patterns you see. For example, every time someone mentioned Christian values in the survey, I wrote a code in the margin next to it. Since this was for my own use and I don't have a coding program (yes, they make those), that code was a cross. Any time someone mentioned safety, I put a K in the margin. That way, not only could I see what answers came up repeatedly for one question, but I could also see what patterns repeated throughout the survey. I arranged survey responses by respondent's position at the school first, so I could observe differences between full-time and part-time staff, lower grade and middle school, contracted employees and volunteers.

I loved it! Apparently I didn't just fall into a sociology major because the classes were fun. I actually enjoy the field work as well. Since I will enter the Real World of jobs before too long (eek!), it's good to have some sort of an idea of what I might want to do -- not just the inescapable knowledge that God did not make me to be a teacher.

The Bullion Cube of Theology of the Body

Once establishing that the human body and spirit together make up a human being, Christopher West explain why we have bodies. God created the human person with a body in order to "make visible His invisible love." As a reflection or manifestation of the invisible God, our bodies are "sacraments." Christopher dubbed this point the "bullion cube" of Theology of the Body :

"The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible : the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it" (Theology of the Body, JPII, 19:4)

In conclusion at the first session, Christopher asked for a "thick-skinned, male volunteer." The feminist inside me wondered why male. I'll let you hear what happened, and I'll be interested in comments if the volunteer could have been female.

Guy stood up. Christopher summoned him to the front and instructed us to, "Look at Guy's body." The audience giggled. Of course, he called us out on it. Why, he asked, is it okay to say, "Look at Guy," but not "Look at Guy's body"? He said that Guy was beautiful; he imaged God. The shy, older man smiled a tiny, beautiful smile at this affirmation.

Christopher ended with the challenge : Why are we uncomfortable with our bodies? Our bodies are us.

What the Twisted Mystics Got Right

Sex is like fast food. This analogy was the main stream running through Christopher West's talks, that bound everything together. It cropped up in the middle of important points, alongside funny jokes, and within the first five minutes. It floated slowly alongside us until we forgot about it and then *bam!* he'd be talking about chicken nuggets.

Christopher explained that our world is hungry -- hungry for love. You hear this theme all over the place. You especially find it in the media. Consider how many songs there are about love. This point resonated with me; I'm occasionally annoyed because I would like some music other than love songs. Yet he called rock and roll artists the "twisted mystics" of our day. They know what our hearts seek. They just don't know where to look for it.

You see, all around us, we have a culture offering us a fast-food diet of sex. And the Catholic Church has had the "right words, [but the] wrong music." If you listen to the Catholic Church's message about sex, it seems to be "DON'T DO IT." As a part of the fast-food analogy, it seems to offer a message of starvation. "And I don't know about you," Christopher said, "but if the other choice is starvation, I'm going for the greasy nuggets!"

Here's the thing though (and the whole Theology of the Body is meant to demonstrate this) : The Catholic Church doesn't offer starvation. It offers a feast. We just haven't been saying that. We haven't been saying it to Catholics who grow up around the Church, let alone the world at large. No wonder our world is so confused.

This point came from the beginning of his talk, Sunday night. He spent the next three nights explaining this feast. Unfortunately, I will only be able to offer you two nights of the vision, but over the next few posts, I'll do my best to explain this feast of the Church.

"And You, By the Way, Are a Heretic!"

Christopher West spoke just outside of St. Louis earlier this week, and I am incapable of summarizing in a word, a sentence, or a post. So my three loyal readers and their compatriots will either have to put up with at least a few posts on the talks, or else ignore them pleasantly and wait until I get to other parts of life.

For those who don't know, Christopher West talks on Theology of the Body. He calls it a "revolutionary" teaching of John Paul II, but it really finds its base in the Catholic theology of centuries. (JPII presented it in 129 lectures during the beginning of his pontificate.) It presents a theology (or religious philosophy) about the meaning, purpose, and experience of our bodies and often focuses on sexuality, though the scope of Theology of the Body is much larger than sex.

I want to start with the idea that fascinates me the most. Christopher West spent the first night convincing us of the embodiedness of the human person. You see, human beings are not spiritual beings in temporary physical bodies, or physical beings with a spiritual nature. We are physical and spiritual intertwined. The two together make up what it means to be human. He gave the example of a swirly ice cream cone : it is not chocolate, it is not vanilla, it is both together, and they cannot be separated if it will remain a swirly cone.

We call the separation of the two death. Christopher pointed out that in the Creed we state, "We believe in the... resurrection of the body..." Death, the severed state of body and soul, won't last forever. Heaven exists in a physical state as well as a spiritual one. Why else do we have the shining example of Christ's glorified body after the Resurrection?

His presentation of Theology of the Body hinges on this truth. If we are body and spirit, we live out our calling by living with both the body and the spirit. The Church, and Christians in general, can focus too much on the spiritual and forget that we live out our divine calling by living as embodied persons, men and women who are created in the image and likeness of God.

Christopher also explained that our existence as embodied spirits distinguishes us from the angels. "Next time someone calls you an angel," he said, "say, 'I am not! I am an embodied spirit, and you, by the way, are a heretic!'"

Turn, Turn, Turn

When explaining that we would host a spring break trip from Creighton, our director repeated the line, "I want you to be one community." For the week, we weren't to have two groups occupying one space; we were to become one group. The way that VSC groups live Sister's request differs as widely as communities differ each year. This year, we were happy to get to know and love the 8 of them for the 7 days we shared.

And then, yesterday, the Creighton group pulled out at 9:15 and left. We have clean house, a folder of evaluations, and a sprinkling of Omaha dirt by Mary's home in the backyard, and that's all that remains of the week. Except they also left the questions which I had to answer every week the summer of YouthWorks and regularly through my senior year at college, the questions I am beginning to ask about my year here.

We only had a week with them. YouthWorks happened the same way : we only had a week with each group of kids. Two and a half months as staff. New friends senior year, only for a few months. With VSC, a year, now scant months for anyone new. I am constantly meeting people for a day, an afternoon, an hour.

Two questions arise : What is the point? and How much do we give?

I had a professor who explained during the first class that he wasn't going to do much that day, because he didn't want to invest in us if we hadn't committed to the whole class and we would only be together for that one hour. He compared it to plane rides, where he never spoke to people, because the relationship never continued after the plane landed. Why bother to invest in what has no long term return?

This attitude presents a problem. It leaves open the question of how long is long enough to invest in someone. A plane ride is not. What about a day? A week? A month? A year? At what point do you reach out of yourself? Lines are arbitrary.

My reply and my answer comes from the simple premise that people are ends unto themselves. So each moment we spend with another person matters. It is hard to live this way, but it makes sense. And it means that when someone stays at your house for a week, you invest in them, knowing that you might never see them again.

Building off that premise, God uses us for each other. He certainly used the Creighton students, here one week, to reveal a little more of Himself to me. I hope I imaged Him as well. He uses us for a time, for a season, and then we move on to new adventures, but not without leaving His fingerprints, so that even if we forget each other, we carry something of the Other with us. That something might just look like God instead of the human person we met. And that is more valuable than anything else.

Out and About

The 8th grade teacher took the middle school on an epic field trip Thursday. The itinerary : the Old Courthouse, the City Hall, a black history wax museum, and the Scott Joplin House. We also had a McDonald's stop for lunch. We brought fifty-six students, three teachers, two TAs, and one volunteer from Creighton.

I found the Old Courthouse, now a historic landmark, fascinating. The Dred Scott case started at that courthouse. When the tour guide told us this, I got goosebumps : over the summer, I went to the federal Supreme Court, where the case ended. Full circles -- that have an infinite importance to the children with whom I now work. A women's suffrage case, Virginia Minor, started there as well. We got to walk into a courtroom and poke through the rotunda, but left fairly quickly after our tour.

Next we arrived at the City Hall. Our guide, an assistant to the mayor, took us to the meeting room of the Board of Aldermen. The students got to sit at the desks of the Alderpersons. The floor of the city was momentarily filled with a unique demographic and the question flitted through my head : what if these were the people running the city? Here the students, especially the 8th graders, asked a bunch of intelligent questions. After we ran out of Q&A time, we went into the Mayor's reception room, where the guide told us about the office of the mayor, the seal of St. Louis, and the St. Louis flag.

After a pit stop as McDonalds (pronounced MAC-don-alds by my kids) for a high-class lunch, we carried on to the wax museum. Wax museums creep me out in general, but I thought I could get through this one. Well, it was a house converted into a museum, which weirded me out, and as we approached the front counter, I had a gut reaction against the single wax figure there watching us. Luckily for me, though unfortunate for her, one student was not feeling well, so I sat in the hallway with her and avoided the displays. The kids seemed to enjoy it though, and this part of the trip brought them in touch with their heritage.

Finally, we stopped at the Scott Joplin house. The kids had told the Creighton volunteer with us that he "wrote the ice cream truck song." We walked through his apartment then listened to some of his music ("The Maple Leaf Rag") on a pump piano, that played for you as you plied the pedals. A couple of the kids really enjoyed playing it, although at least one show-off had trouble and was good-naturedly brought down a few notches. Sadly, we didn't get to watch their video on Joplin, because we had to get back to school.

My warm-fuzzy of the field trip came at the very end. The out-of-the-box student of Math Monster fame was chatting through his speech impediment with the ladies who ran the house. He came out with a job offer for as soon as he gets old enough to work -- in a year. He came out so excited and chatty and was still talking about it today.

Another warm-fuzzy came from having an outsider, our Creighton volunteer, there with me. She jumped right in, a natural at relationships and at people-herding. Also, she provided social analysis that is affirming to what I've seen this year, boosting my confidence in my judgement.

House Guests

This week we have had (and will have until tomorrow morning) house guests from Creighton University. They have come to St. Louis for several years now for their spring break. We have 8 students staying with us; they have been rotating through our service sites so that they get a tiny taste of everything we do.

Having an extra 8 people makes a household of 6 considerably larger, and there's been less alone and quiet, but the Creighton students are fantastic. They come into our sites with eyes more similar to ours at the beginning of the year than ours now, putting certain things into perspective again.

They also have been cooking for us, which is a nice relief.

Another Poem

I recall writing that I'd put school related poems up here...

1-800-392-3738

Make my arms your red:

please –

color yours the way they were before.

I’ll shelter you from every blow

as much as love can –

As much as love can from the classroom and the playground

mine will stand between you

and the nighttime specters that redden your arms and eyes and

narrate your stories. With red arms

I’ll hold at bay

all the drumsticks, belts, and bats

that enter this school in silhouette form

traced on twelve-year-old skin.

How We Celebrate Birthdays, Part VI

[Some of Parts I-V made it into this blog, but under different names.]

This past weekend, Byrd celebrated her birthday. Simple living makes us excited to celebrate the occasions we have in style and with enthusiasm, along with some creativity. Byrd is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fan, so we had a TMNT themed surprise game, in which Mee-Maw, Ana, and Triss had colored masks, Em was Master Splinter, and I had an evil pink brain. We gave Em a mask, a turtle shell, and a plethora of fake weapons. She played "Pin the Mask on the Turtle." We proceeded to take a bunch of ridiculous pictures and decide it was time for dessert. (We'd had pizza for dinner earlier.) Much to Ana's discomfort, we decided to go out in costume.

We went to Ben and Jerry's on a busy stretch of road. The walk from the parking lot to the ice cream was a ton of fun. In Triss's words, "We just got the best double-take ever!" Most of the time, I don't admit it when people might be staring at me -- this time, heads were turning even from inside shop windows. When we got to Ben and Jerry's, the woman behind the counter was thrilled with our costumes. The man working with her didn't say anything, but I'll wager that was why my small cone had more than one scoop on it.

Special Blessings

Last Friday, I was having a specially difficult time with 7th grade. Most of the time, when people don't like me, I find it easy enough to deal with : they are not worth my time or emotional energy. About ready to write seventh grade off, I asked myself, "Can I do that? Can I give on twelve and thirteen year olds?" I answered the question several ways at several points in time throughout the day in an inner dialogue that went on all day.

That afternoon, the older grades (4-8) gathered in the church for the Stations of the Cross. As the principal followed the Stations for the kids, I began to think on them myself. The Stations focus on the Lenten theme of penitence, so the meditations center around where we are going wrong, so that we can work on going right. I considered what the Passion and death mean in my life -- that as many times as I mess up, God doesn't give up on me. I put him through a lot, and he already gave everything. Still, he keeps taking me back, when I'm dumb, frustrating, failing, falling, insufferable, disappointing... He doesn't give up.

Well. How do I give up on 7th grade (or any kid) after that?