Since my dad starts his chemo tomorrow, I thought it would be a good time to start a novena for him. I picked St. Joseph, since Dad used to teach industrial arts and enjoyed carpentry until he got sick. Maybe in a few months he will be able to get back to his shop!

Here is the novena I’m doing, but I found several others, so if you want to pray any of them along with me I would love the company!

To you, blessed Joseph, 
we come with confidence in this our hour of need, 
trusting in your powerful protection. 
Your loving service to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God 
and your fatherly affection for the Child Jesus 
inspire us with faith 
in the power of your intercession before the throne of God.

We pray, first of all, for the Church: 
that it may be free from error and corruption, 
and be a shining light of universal love and justice.

We ask your intercession for our loved ones 
in their trials and adversities, 
that they may be inspired by the love, 
obedience, and affection of the Holy Family, 
and be to each other a mutual source 
of consolation and Christian fidelity.

We ask your intercession, also, 
for our special need(s)... 

(Mention your intention here...),

and to keep us all under your protection 
so that strengthened by your example and assistance, 
we may lead a holy life, 
die a happy death, 
and come to the possession of everlasting happiness in heaven.

Amen.

I had been wondering where the burst of cleaning and ordering energy that I’ve had for the last couple of weeks had come from, and I now have a couple of theories.  (For two pregnancies I looked forward to the “nesting” phase when I would actually want to clean – it never came.  Maybe this is what it feels like!)  Freedom from the requirements of a job has certainly helped, since I have hours back in my days with no commute, no papers to grade or lessons to plan, not to mention the time I actually spent teaching.

But I have also been doing some “mommy” reading, some of which has dealt with home schooling, and some of which has been more in the homemaking-without-losing-your-mind-or-your-soul mold.  The later has been most edifying.

Essentially, I have bought into the idea that if God is calling me to be at home and raise my children (which hopefully I believe, since that is what I plan to do with myself for the foreseeable future), then He must expect my experiences in this realm of life to be my ticket to sanctification.  And as Holly Pierlot argues, and I think rightly, it is up to us to take our vocations by the horns, so to speak, and direct our efforts at doing our very best at our calling.  If this means homemaking, then I am called to be sanctified by doing the dishes, laundry, diapers, and more generally creating an environment in which my family can live as God calls us.  That means (I think) an environment without excess clutter and dirt, with order and calm, and with beauty, for starters.  So boxes are making their way to St. Vincent de Paul, shelves are getting dusted and reordered, and the real trick is going to be making the habits I’m trying to form – for prayer and housekeeping – stick.  And doing it joyfully, because it is what God wants me to do.  (Lots on this in Merton – also worth checking out.)  Pierlot talks about offering up each little task, and about following some sort of prayer rule, to help all this happen.  So far, this change in mindset has really, really helped.

In the midst of all this reflecting and reordering, I read the first reading for today:

“Brothers and sisters: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.  Each must do as already determined, without sadness or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.  Moreover, God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things, always having all you need, you may have an abundance for every good work.  As it is written:

‘He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever.’

The one who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed and increase the harvest of your righteousness.  You are being enriched in every way for all generosity, which through us produces thanksgiving to God.”

-2 Cor. 9:6-11

Some friends and I were discussing the heated discussions that tend to happen on the Catholic blogosphere (how do you spell that??), and today I came across this reading, which I thought worth noting.

“False sencerity has much to say, because it is afraid.  True candor can afford to be silent.  It does not need to face an anticipated attack.  Anything it may have to defend can be defended with perfect simplicity.

“The arguments of religious men are so often insincere, and their insincerity is proportionate to their anger.  Why do we get angry about what we believe?  Because we do not really believe it.  Or else what we pretend to be defending as the “truth” is really our own self-esteem.  A man of sincerity is less interested in defending the truth than in stating it clearly, for he thinks that if the truth be clearly seen it can very well take care of itself. …

“In the end, the problem of sincerity is a problem of love.  A sincere man is not so much one who sees the truth and manifests it as he sees it, but one who loves the truth with a pure love.  But truth is more than an abstraction.  It lives and is embodied in men and things that are real. And  the secret of sincerity is, therefore, not to be sought in a philosophical love for abstract truth but in a love for real people and real things – a love for God apprehended in the reality around us.

“The saint must see the truth as something to serve, not as something to own and manipulate according to his own good pleasure.  The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.  An age like ours cannot be sincere.”

-Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, excerpted in A Thomas Merton Reader, pp. 123-125

Wow, that is harsh.  And hard.  Merton does not mince words.  I have certainly found much in his writing (thus far) that is inspiring, and even more that is challenging.

“Those who love God should attempt to preserve or create an atmosphere in which He can be found.  Christians should have quiet homes.  Throw out television, if necessary — not everybody, but those who take this sort of thing seriously.  Radios useless.  Stay away from the movies — I was going to say ‘as a penance’ but it would seem to me to be rather a pleasure than a penance, to stay away from the movies.  Maybe even form small agrarian communities in the country where there would be no radios, etc.

“Let those who can stand a little silence find other people who like silence, and create silence and peace for one another.  Bring up their kids not to yell so much.  Children are naturally quiet — if they are left alone and not given the needle from the cradle upward, in order that they may develop into citizens of a state in which everybody yells and is yelled at.  (pp. 301-302)

“…When you gain this interior silence you can carry it around with you in the world, and pray everywhere.  But just as interior asceticism cannot be acquired without concrete and exterior mortification, so it is absurd to talk about interior silence where there is no exterior silence. (p. 302)”

-Thomas Merton The Sign of Jonas, excerpted in Henri Nouwen’s Pray to Live, pp. 118-119.

Quiet children.  Now there’s an idea…   Not just shut up, but naturally peaceful and quiet.   But how to go about it?

On that note, Samantha is now crawling!  It’s not perfect crawling, she uses on knee and one foot, but it gets her across the room, and she can now crawl up to me and pull herself up a little on my pant leg and express that she wants something.  Along with crawling has come a banshee baby sound, which tends to mean, “Lucy took my toy from me again!”  But for the moment they are actually sleeping, and I can think about silence.

I have officially declared June the “Month of Merton” for the sake of my spiritual reading.  I was looking for something new to start on when Craig showed up with a pile of free spirituality books, including Pray to Live, which is Henri Nouwen explaining the life and thought of Thomas Merton.  I’ve tried a couple of Merton’s works unsuccessfully, so this struck me as a perfect starting place.  If this goes well, the Month of Merton may become the Summer of Merton.  : )  Quotes and reflections should be forth coming soon, provided I am able to make my way to the computer for any extended period of time.  Anyone more experienced with his work, feel free to suggest which book I should pick up next!

As for other prayer plans, I am working through A Mother’s Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot and trying to add a little more structure to my day.  The FlyLady thing has been a good start, but I’m more drawn to Pierlot’s overhaul method (although I realize I will still have to take it somewhat slowly) and focus on prayer.  She suggests planning your prayer into your day, so I am starting with morning and evening prayer from Liturgy of the Hours with Craig, and reading the daily readings while the girls nap.  This is way more than I had been doing, but the first two days have gone well.  My goal for this week is just to keep up with the schedule, revise it so it works well, and start making these routines of praying, cleaning, and creating a way of life.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

My mom will be having both knees replaced this Friday (5/29) at 7:30 AM.  Please pray for a sucessful surgery and a speedy recovery!  (If you want to leave her a message here, that would be cool.  I know it would make her feel better to know there are lots of prayers being offered for her on Friday morning!)

…to this story.  If there seems to be a lot of Elizabeth Foss on this blog all of a sudden, it is because I think she’s really cool.  And this story is hilarious.  Two-year-olds most definitely bring adventures, wherever they are!

Just in case anyone was unsure.

Sometimes NPR makes me sad.  These two stories ran back to back on Monday, and I’m trying to decide which part to focus my angry/disappointed/how can people really think this way?! letter on.  (The text on the page is not the same as the story that you’ll hear if you click the “Listen Now” button at the top – they cut whole paragraphs, but actually come out as two significantly different stories.)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103211630

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103270766

And by the way, the Guttmacher Institute who did the study at the beginning of the first article (50% of US pregnancies are unplanned) is basically Planned Parenthood.  Who funds NPR, and is funded by several of the same huge endowments/foundations which keep NPR running.  (In case you were curious, as I was, about any potential bias here.)  When/if the angry letter gets written, I’ll post a copy here.  We have a wedding in Houston this weekend and I have a long day at school tomorrow, so it may be a while.

So I just finished The Long Loneliness which is a kind of autobiography Dorthy Day wrote back in the fifties.  I highly recommend it, first of all.  The first section about her early life is fascinating, the section about the birth of her daughter is moving (and should be required reading for mothers), and her depiction of Peter Maurin, who practically drove her to start the Catholic Worker movement, left me wondering why he hasn’t been canonized yet.  There will be much, much more on The Long Loneliness as I re-read it in the coming months, but we started looking again at Maurin’s Easy Essays, and here is one for a taste.  I suspect a similar feeling of unconnectedness to my experience in the world is what has caused me to drift away from my interest in formalized theology.  (No offence intended, studiers of formalized theology, it’s just that I have found God more easily in my garden than in Aquinas lately.)

BLOWING THE DYNAMITE

This great post was on Veronica’s blog about their baby (which could be here any day now!) ? It’s the second one up at the moment, called “Vulnerability: open self to suffering and to joy.”? ? I thought it was beautiful, and applies amazingly well to two-year-olds. : ) ? The link is below. ? Enjoy!

http://tomandveronica.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=4