This happened at our dinner table this week.

The twelve-year-old wandered off. (Usually not a cause for concern – usually she would be in search of more water, or a condiment, or the bathroom.)

After a few minutes I said, “Where’s Samantha?”

Not in the kitchen. No one was sure where she had gone.

Shortly after this, she came back in the front door and sat back down at the table.

“Where did you go?” (Unspoken but implied: In the middle of dinner? Without saying anything?)

“I thought I heard a noise outside.”

“And you went to check on it alone? Without telling anyone where you were going?”

Dad: “You haven’t watched enough horror movies. You should NEVER go check out the noise alone.”

At this point, I was playing for drama – haha, she made the classic horror movie mistake. Then she said:

“It sounded like a zombie scream.”

Me (now not so much playing): “AND YOU WENT TO CHECK ON IT ALONE???”

Samantha: [embarassed giggle] “Yes?”

“You heard a zombie scream, didn’t tell anyone, went OUTSIDE to check on it, and left the door unlocked for them to come get the rest of us?!”

You can see where this is going. This is very nearly the actual transcript of our conversation, edited for length, clarity, and face-palms.

Clearly we have failed, among many other things, to impress on our children the importance of always behaving as if you are staring in a horror movie. Just in case, you know, you actually are.

Because while investigating strange happenings on your own makes for an interesting story, my goal is to keep all my kids’ brains intact for as long as possible.

Which is why maybe I won’t be “rotting their brains” by showing them any horror movies any time soon. But maybe it is time they read Frankenstein and Dracula. Or maybe at least Coraline.

I heard a homily recently centered around the idea of the “next right thing,” or “one small change.” When I got home and turned to the reflection book I’ve been praying with at night, I found this:

“The solution proposed in the Gospels is that of voluntary poverty and the works of mercy. It is the little way. It is within the power of all. Everybody can begin here and now…. We have the greatest weapons in the world, greater than any hydrogen or atom bomb, and they are the weapons of poverty and prayer, fasting and alms, the reckless spending of ourselves in God’s service and for his poor. Without poverty we will not have learned love, and love, at the end, is the measure by which we shall be judged.”

Dorothy Day, quoted in The Reckless Way of Love

Ouch. As usual, Dorothy Day shows me just how much growing I still have to do. Poverty? Our fridge is always full, and we just bought a new couch. I consistently fail at fasting. We’re so-so at alms. Prayer? I can say that I make an effort, but not that it’s always a whole-hearted one.

And after a few days re-reading Dorothy Day’s diaries (in the name of research) all these points have been driven home even further: she complains of so many people who wish “to do big things but not little ones.” ^[1]Jan. 25, 1946

Which brings me back to the “one small change” idea. Dorothy’s diaries show her repeatedly planning small sacrifices she could make: fasting from meat,^[2]June 18, 1950 practicing “joyful silence,”^[3]Feb 1944 not complaining about the radio.^[4]Feb. 24, 1953

I started small, too. First, I signed up to bring a meal to a friend who had a baby. And as for fasting, maybe I can start skipping my post-putting-Jacob-to-nap snack. Small things.

My week’s reading/research has also reminded me of the impact of doing the small things. As they were moving out of the Mott Street Catholic Worker house, Dorothy added up how many meals they had served to the hungry and homeless during the 14 years they had lived there. She came up with 2,555,000. Conservatively. ^[5]Nov. 27, 1950

Every day they cooked what they had, opened the doors, and fed people. Many days they felt like failures – the need was just too great. Yet over time their work added up to more than they could have hoped for.

What does the sacrifice of my one snack, day after day, week after week, add up to? Fortunately, that’s not the part I have to worry about. The math is up to God. He feeds the 5,000 with a few loaves and fishes. He makes our poverty and prayer, fasting and alms, however small, more efficacious than any work we might do on our own.

Dorothy again:

“Do what comes to hand. Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with all thy might. After all, God is with us. It shows too much conceit to trust to ourselves, to be discouraged at what we ourselves can accomplish. It is lacking in faith in God to be discouraged. After all, we are going to proceed with his help. We offer him what we are going to do. If he wishes it to prosper, it will.”

Dorothy Day, House of Hospitality

“If he wishes it to prosper, it will.” One afternoon-snack-sized sacrifice at a time.

Here, for your laughter and enjoyment, is my Completely Unreasonable Summer Reading List. I really do want to read all these books, not necessarily in this order. Preferably soon.

• Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky) (the second half)
• The Iliad (Homer)
• The Making of a Poem (Mark Strand, Eavan Boland)
• Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinaire (Susan Tan)
• When You Trap a Tiger (Tae Keller)
• This Our Exile (Joshua Hren)
• Freeing Jesus (Diana Butler Bass)
• Monet’s Palate Cookbook (Aileen Bordman and Derek Fell)
• The Five Wounds (Kirstin Valdez Quade)
• Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale (Adam Minter)
• One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
• Unsheltered (Barbara Kingsolver)
• The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (Sebastian Barry)
• Lost in Thought (Zena Hitz)
• The Westing Game (Ellen Raskin)
• Poems New and Collected (Wisława Szymborska)
• Wingfeather Series (Andrew Peterson)
• Plus back issues of Image, Evangelization and Culture, and Plough

It’s possible I need to be less ambitious and more focused. It’s highly unlikely I’ll finish anywhere near all of these by the end of July.

But a girl can dream, can’t she?

We did a silly thing. We went to a violin rehearsal, despite the flash flood warnings, with the thought that if the weather was really that bad, surely it would have been canceled.

Trying to get home, and circling helplessly with all the other soggy cars on the south-west side of Lafayette, I was at a bit of a loss. Kaliste Saloom Road was flooded. Ambassador Caffery was flooded. Broadmoor was flooded. I didn’t dare try Verot School Road. For all the hurricanes and flash floods we’ve lived through down here, I’ve never actually been in a situation where I couldn’t get home because of the water on the road, and it was nearing 8pm, so I wasn’t sure what we should do.

Fortunately, a good friend of ours lives very close to where we were stuck. The kind of friend one can call at eight o’clock at night and ask to drop in. I called her, and we spent an hour and a half on her couch, waiting for the water to go down and drinking lavender chamomile tea.

When it seemed reasonable to try again, we set out, with the assurance that we could come back and sleep on the couches if we still couldn’t get through.

Needless to say, I prayed all the way home.

And we made it – the road already looked like we had just had any normal rain shower, not a near crisis.

So it was late when I went to bed, but I had been slack about my prayer time during the last few days, so I picked up the little devotional I’ve been using (The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus, which is a collection of excerpts from Dorothy Day’s writings) and this was the reading up next:

Pouring rain today. I stayed in, resting – feeling exhausted. Sorrow, grief, exhaust one. Then tonight the prayers, the rosaries I’ve been saying were answered. And the feeling that prayers are indeed answered when we cry out for help was a comfort in itself. I had the assurance that they were answered, though it might not be now.

Dorothy Day, from The Duty of Delight, quoted in The Reckless Way of Love

Well. First of all, “stayed in, resting” sounded like what we should have done.

But we didn’t, and during the course of the evening I’d been getting these little nudges – “only do the necessary shopping so you can be back sooner.” Lucy finished early, and would have waited a half hour in the rain for me if I had done my usual Monday night rounds. “Turn around…” repeatedly. “Just call Danielle, already!”

When I read the next half of the devotional entry, I had no doubt that my guardian angel had been working overtime:

I would not perhaps see the results. “Praised be God, the God of consolation. He comforts us in all our afflictions and enables us to comfort those who are in trouble, with the same consolation we have had from him” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). Suffering draws us to prayer and we are comforted. Or at least strengthened to continue in faith, and hope, and love.

Dorothy Day, from The Duty of Delight, quoted in The Reckless Way of Love

Our friends were the consolation we needed – literally safe harbor in a storm. What could have been an evening sitting in our car in the Books-A-Million parking lot waiting for the rain to stop ended up instead being an evening of comfort and conversation. My panic was soothed: we had a place to sleep if needed. My friends’ superior knowledge of the roads in the area strengthened me to continue.

God knows that, despite his long history of faithfulness to me, sometimes I need a reminder that he will provide for me. This week, it came in the form of good friends and chamomile tea.

Now that Lent is over and the Easter season is in full swing, I thought it would be a good time (!) to share two Lenten reflection books that I really enjoyed this year. Probably I should save this post for right around the beginning of February next year…but there is little chance I’ll remember at that point.

The first is No Unlikely Saints by Cameron Bellm. For each week of Lent, this book considers a different (mostly modern) saint or blessed who speaks to our current moment. I learned a lot about some holy people I knew as well as some I hadn’t met before from the reflections, and the prayer suggestions were really challenging and beautiful. I’m considering using it again next year because I know I still have plenty of growing left to do in many of the areas it addresses.

Second, my older girls and I read Letters for Pilgrimage by Sarah Lenora Gingrich and A. N. Tallent. This one is directed at Orthodox Christian young ladies, but as a Roman Catholic adult I still found the reflections helpful. (I also learned what Clean Monday is, and felt slightly guilty at how easy Roman Catholic Lent is compared to Orthodox Lent!) Again, beautiful, hopeful, challenging, and encouraging writing from women “who have survived the wilderness of life,” as their publisher puts it.

I especially love that both of these books are written by what Julian of Norwich calls our “even Christians” – women just like the rest of us, just living our lives and trying our best to follow Jesus. That means their words are both challenging and possible – exactly what my Lent needed this year.

I have to admit that I was reluctant to begin reading Darkness is as Light…even though some of my own reflections are in it. It’s intended to be emotionally heavy (and it is) and I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted in my life at the moment.

On the other hand, I also felt guilty for not reading it. After all, here were other women like me who were willing to share their stories. I had already received emails from some of the other writers expressing how much they were enjoying the book (in general, not my contributions specifically.)

So I prepared myself to have my heart broken, and started reading. My reaction to these reflections really surprised me. Many of the stories come from places of deep pain, yet I found myself turning to God in prayer after many of the reflections not with sadness or anger, but with gratitude.

I felt I had to thank God for creating these women; for walking with them through their trials; for protecting them when they were in danger; for leading them to help when they needed it; for giving them the courage to share their stories. I found myself asking God to continue to bless these women I had never met, to guard them in their faith, to help them through their continued struggles.

The witness in these pages isn’t so much about pain as about faithfulness: our faithfulness when we turn to God in our in our joy as well as in our need, and His great faithfulness to us at all times. If there is one thing these stories brought home to me, it is that God is richly present in our lives.

So I just want to thank Summer Kinard and all the contributors for making this book happen. It has been a great blessing to me, drawing me deeper into prayer and reminding me of God’s unending care for each of us. It turns out it was exactly what I needed in my life right now.

“There is a very good possibility that you will not believe a word I say. Alas, it is the risk all historians take. The truest things are often the most unbelievable.”

Thus begins one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton, and illustrated by Brett Helquist (whose work you’ll recognize if you are familiar with A Series of Unfortunate Events), is a romp. The language alone is magical, not to mention the flute, the pots, the Leaf-eaters’ tears…

Why, for example, has no one before thought of a “Lyre-That-Never-Lies”? Brilliant. And the whole book is full to the brim and overflowing with this kind of word play.

“And so I invite you to take off your cloak of doubt, empty your pockets of all suspicions and jests, sit down before the roaring fire of my tale, and believe.”

Trafton weaves a tale of mythic proportions. Giants? Check. Rumblebumps? Check. Poison-tongued jumping tortoises? Check.

Tell me you’re not intrigued.

Mount Majestic is one of the few novels I can remember my kids asking to read again…the morning after we finished it. That probably has something to do with all the laughing out loud we did while reading it. (Full disclosure: it is best if someone reads it aloud, especially if the someone uses different voices for the characters, and if several of the voices sound suspiciously like disgruntled Irish washer women.)

Mount Majestic gets 5+ stars from our family. That includes the parents, the 12-year-old, the 10-year-old, the 8-year-old, and the 5-year-old. They are all now in full quoting-during-mundane-conversations mode.

And besides being hilarious and wickedly clever, Persimmony Smudge, our heroine, realizes in the end that as wonderful as adventures may be, there is something wonderful about plain-old, everyday existence, too.

After all,

“Life is a mess and a miracle. So pick up a broom and dance.”

I’m so happy to share this beautiful book about a new baby joining the family! Nine Months: Before a Baby Is Born, by Miranda Paul and illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Jason Chin uses lively, rhyming text and colorful, touching illustrations to show both the baby’s growth before birth and the joy of her family as they prepare for her arrival.

There is so much to love about this book…where to start?? On the left page of every spread is a month-by-month depiction of the baby’s growth in utero. The images are realistic, but also touchingly beautiful. On the right side we see the baby’s family – mom, dad, and big sister – going about their lives: planting a garden, constructing a crib, leaving for the hospital. Excitement about this new life shines on all their faces. (My favorite illustration might actually be the one where the big sister meets her new sibling – she has the most perfect serious, pondering face.)

Miranda Paul’s text is lyrical and simple. It gives just enough detail to be exciting and intriguing, and yet is short enough that my 18-month-old will happily sit through it. I call that a win.

The “month six” spread, for example, shows mother and big sister sitting and talking to a bulging belly, with this precious text:

“Glasp.

Clasp.

Ears that can hear.

Sing as she listens.

Tell her you’re near.”

Beautiful.

After the story are four more pages of information, not counting the bibliography. The first two explain the hints Miranda Paul’s sweet text give about the wonders of this tiny person, lines like “Arms, legs..tail, too?” The next two pages include fun baby facts, baby animals, and a “What if…?” section which deals with twins, premies, and miscarriages, all with gentle grace.

Paul and Chin have treated this subject with such compassion and love. Honestly, this is a book I wish had been around for me to share with my kids as they became big brothers and sisters.

I am totally smitten with this book.

First, I have to tell the story of how I came to read it. The book and its author, Francisco X. Stork, were in no way on my radar, until someone suggested I read Cheryl Klein’s The Magic Words, which is a how-to on writing middle grade and young adult novels. (It is infuriatingly detailed – if there is a problem in your text, there is probably a solution in The Magic Words. It’s very helpful, and completely exhausting.)

Anyway, Cheryl edited Marcelo, and uses it repeatedly in the examples in her book. I enjoyed the excerpts, learned from her description of its revision process, and was generally interested in reading the book.

Two years later, I finally did. And I am so glad I did.

First, the disclaimer: this is a YA novel. As in many YA novels these days (though this one is already 10 years old), there is foul language, and some pretty crude descriptions of various male-female interactions. Consider yourself warned.

Marcelo in the Real World is about a young man entering his last summer of high school. He is on the Autism Spectrum, though he doesn’t fit into any of the more specific diagnoses, and he hears “internal music” in his mind. He has always gone to a special school, and plans to spend his summer helping train some of the horses that the school uses for therapy. His father, however, has other plans.

Marcelo’s father is a powerful lawyer, and wants his son to be able to function in the “real world,” not just the protected world his school creates for its students. He offers Marcelo a deal: if Marcelo can work in the “real world” – at his father’s law firm – for the summer, he can go back to his beloved school. If not, he will transfer to the local public high school for his senior year. Marcelo gives up his summer plans and takes the deal.

At the law firm, Marcelo encounters a whole new realm of challenges. He works in the mail room, and his supervisor, Jasmine, has to find ways to help him do his job as well as he is able. Marcelo is faced with questions he has never faced before – how does he know who is his friend? How can he choose one friend over another? One good over another? How can he know what is the right thing to do?

Marcelo finds a picture of a girl whose face has been scarred by a shattering windshield – a windshield made by a company represented by his father – and this raises the most desperate questions of all.

As Marcelo puts it, “How do we go about living when there is so much suffering?”

Will Marcelo try to find a way to help the girl in the picture, even if it means hurting his own family?

No spoilers here. You’ll have to read it and find out.

Now, as to why I loved this book. It’s the first one in a very long time that I’ve stayed up at night to finish. There really is a lot to love.

First, Marcelo is wonderful. His voice is totally unique. It’s a little jarring at first, because his speech, and even his thoughts, are so formal. But I found I got over the awkwardness very quickly, and was delighted to hear his frank descriptions of life. For example,

“You said that if I follow the rules of the real world this summer, I will get to decide where I go next year. Who will decide whether I followed the rules? I am not aware of all the rules of the real world. They are innumerable, as far as I have been able to determine.”

I feel that way all the time. Marcelo offers a different perspective on the “real world,” and I am grateful for it.

Second, there are some wonderful supporting characters. The scene where Marcelo meets Jasmine’s dad in his barn would be laugh-out-loud funny, if not for the fact that it is Alzheimer’s which makes her dad so ornery and foul-mouthed. With that knowledge, it comes off as bittersweet. Marcelo’s friend and confidant Rabbi Heschel is also larger-than-life. I’d want to sit and discuss the great questions of the universe with her, too.

Finally, the thing I liked best about this book was that it attacks heavy questions head-on. Marcelo’s “special interest” is in religion. His family background is Catholic, and he talks about praying the Rosary with his grandmother and the picture of the Sacred Heart that hung in her room. He is interested in other religions as well. His dog is named Namu, after the beginning of a Buddhist prayer. He often visits Rabbi Heschel for long talks about God and about life.

These talks are some of the gems of the text. In one, Marcelo tries to understand a co-worker’s desire to go to bed with Jasmine. The rabbi’s explanation, going back to the Garden of Eden, encompassing how everything, including sex, was created good, and how the Fall disrupted the goodness, is thoughtful, insightful, and beautiful.

Marcelo cares deeply about good and evil. His time in the “real world” forces him to decide how much he is willing to sacrifice for what is right. In a bookscape (is that a word?) where 90% of protagonists show no sign of faith or religion whatsoever,* a book that discusses faith, goodness, and conscience so eloquently is a treat indeed.

My inclination is to add this book to my list of “Great Catholic Novels.” Despite the fact that the author may or may not be Catholic (he doesn’t mention his own religion anywhere that I could find), and despite the fact that Marcelo himself has a crisis of faith by the end of the novel, and seems to subscribe to bits of various religions all along…the spirit of the story fits what I would want to see in a “Catholic” novel. (And we can discuss if Catholic Novels must be written by Catholics, or about Catholics, or doctrinally sound, and all the rest of it, another time.)

However you might decide to label it, to my ears, Marcelo in the Real World sounds all the right notes.

*A necessary footnote: Angie Thomas’ best-selling The Hate You Give falls in the other 10%. Starr’s family is Christian, and they pray together at the beginning of the day. It’s simple and real, and was one of my favorite parts of that wonderful book.
In Middle Grade, The Inquisitor’s Tale also takes kids and their faith seriously, and is highly recommended.

I guess that title could also refer to our renewed search for a permanent dwelling place (prayers for that, please!)…

but this poem hit close to home, considering what we’ve been through during the last six months.  So I thought I’d share it.  Thanks to poets.org and their poem-a-day project for bringing it to my attention.

The Things That Count

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Now, dear, it isn’t the bold things,
Great deeds of valour and might,
That count the most in the summing up of life at the end of the day.
But it is the doing of old things,
Small acts that are just and right;
And doing them over and over again, no matter what others say;
In smiling at fate, when you want to cry, and in keeping at work when

          you want to play—
Dear, those are the things that count.

And, dear, it isn’t the new ways
Where the wonder-seekers crowd
That lead us into the land of content, or help us to find our own.
But it is keeping to true ways,
Though the music is not so loud,
And there may be many a shadowed spot where we journey along

          alone;
In flinging a prayer at the face of fear, and in changing into a song a

          groan—
Dear, these are the things that count.

My dear, it isn’t the loud part
Of creeds that are pleasing to God,
Not the chant of a prayer, or the hum of a hymn, or a jubilant shout or

          song.
But it is the beautiful proud part
Of walking with feet faith-shod;
And in loving, loving, loving through all, no matter how things go

          wrong;
In trusting ever, though dark the day, and in keeping your hope when

          the way seems long—

Dear, these are the things that count.