Christmas is almost here, and with the last week of Advent comes the frantic rush to finish buying and making Christmas gifts. Despite my best efforts, it seems like there are always one or two people (at least) who still have me stumped right into the week before Christmas.

Usually, it’s not the kids who create the difficulty. Little boys in particular are good at rejoicing over all kinds of toys, and thankfully all my kids love books. And then there is something about the way a child receives a present. Sometimes I am a little disheartened by the expectation that my children exude at Christmas: “I can’t wait for my presents!” and especially, right in the middle of Christmas morning, “Are there more?”

I think (I hope, anyway!) that there is something else going on here besides sheer selfishness. I hope that our children, for the most part, know that their parents, grandparents, and other friends and family love them, and often show that love by giving them good things. So even if I’d rather they seem a little less eager, it makes sense that they would expect many good things from the hands of their loved ones – their experience (again, for the most part!) has taught them that this is how life, and especially Christmas, works.

I just finished reading Marilynne Robinson’s Home for the first time, and when I finished it, I had to re-read its sister novel, Gilead. (Which I highly recommend doing during your Christmas break – read them both, back to back, in the order of your choice. They are rich separately, but magnificent together.) Anyway, as I was reading Gilead right at the beginning of Advent, one line stopped me cold: “But I hope you will put yourself in the way of the gift.” (Page 114, in case anyone is counting.)

Put yourself in the way of the gift. Robinson’s character, Reverend Ames, writes these words to his son, specifically about his faith and his acceptance of their church. He hopes his son will allow God to speak into his life, so that he can receive the gift of faith.

I think about our kids at Christmas time hanging around the decorated tree and the presents waiting under it. When an adult walks by, their eyes are uplifted and eager. Their hands are open, ready to receive whatever is offered. They are ready: they have put themselves “in the way of the gift.”

This is the posture we need to assume in the spiritual life as well, as Reverend Ames recognizes. We can’t accept whatever God has to give us with our hands in fists and our faces turned away; rather we must open our eyes, hands, and hearts to the Holy Infant like children around a Christmas tree, ready and eager for the gifts we know He desires to give us.

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.

I just loved this thread from Summer Kinard recently, about how what our world needs right now are “sea-level” saints. She says it much better than I ever could, but the idea is that as great as “up on the mountain” saints are, they’re not the ones physically in the trenches with our broken world.

We are.

So while the mountain saint is praying for all she’s worth, and enriching the world in that way, those of us down here on the flat land are close enough to reach out and touch people who are hurting. We are close enough be the physical presence of God to those who come into our paths, and maybe especially those who are so tired spiritually that all they can see right now is the physical.

I really appreciated Summer’s note that sea-level saints have to “find peace without silence.” Because in our house, for example, there is rarely silence, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have peace. (Do I crave the silence? Yes, I do. All the more reason I depend on God for my peace.)

Also, the lack of silence doesn’t mean we can’t be saints.

“Coming down from the mountain” is one of those images our team used often back in the days when we led retreats. The assumption was that we were sort of just down here mucking along until we could go back up, trying to hold on to the high of spending a weekend focused completely on our spirituality. The question was always, “How can we keep the mountain-ness with us after the retreat?”

I’m grateful to Summer for expressing so beautifully that the mountain isn’t the goal – Jesus is the goal, and he is not found only on the mountain tops. He is here, with us, walking the shore, talking to the fishermen…and the cashier at the grocery store, the elderly neighbor, and the guy in the line at the post office.

He is wherever someone is in need; he is everywhere that we reach out to that person in his name.

I spent my snow-day laundry catch-up time watching this video of Malcom Guite’s book launch (if you haven’t experienced his beautiful poetry, check it out here), and I have some thoughts.

To give credit where credit is due, this video from Alastair Gordon and friends about art and faith (also laundry-folding entertainment in my house) started me thinking about some of these things. If you have time, both are worth watching.

Something that struck me about the artists (I’m lumping poets, writers, and other makers in to the group “artists” here) in both videos was their humble acceptance of the goodness of their work. I tend towards a shrug and a deflection on the odd occasion when someone complements my work. It still feels like an indulgence to take the time to “make” at all, and to think that my work is well done, or stranger yet, serves some greater purpose, feels arrogant.

So it was both jarring and illuminating to see artists discuss their methods, their motivations, and their finished work as if it were totally normal to spend a work-day sketching by the seashore or filling enormous canvases with paint or scribbling sonnets – and to do it intentionally for the glory of God.

At the same time, it was helpful for me to see people whose expertise is in different fields appreciating the art. Like maybe, just maybe, art isn’t some special language only accessible to people who have earned an MFA.

I love the idea of art being just another one of the many ways a person might be called to serve God and neighbor. I guess in my mind art has always been set apart – as if a special kind of people who lead a radical kind of life are the only ones who can make art. These chosen few have special studios and strange ideas and are often anti-social. (Although, by that standard, maybe I have two out of three – no room for a studio here!) They also have nearly unlimited time to work on their craft, perfect their style, and make lots of mistakes on the way to finished pieces.

It’s been hard to see myself as part of this world, however much I might enjoy creating in my spare moments. I suffer from a distinct lack of studio, precious little time, and a dread of mistakes.

So it was good for me to watch these artists be normal people with families and big ideas, and to see that they simply have made the choice to make art their lives, to hone the gifts they were given, and to think deeply about how to best share those gifts with the world. Not to say that that’s easy, but it’s so helpful to see both that it can be done, and a glimpse of how a person actually goes about doing it.

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.

Check out my latest post at Mighty Is Her Call:

Any Patch of Green Will Do

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.

We were in Houston this weekend for the memorial honoring Craig’s Uncle Wade (which was lovely), and lo and behold, there was a Syro-Malabar rite Catholic Church about three miles from our hotel.  We had visited the Hindu temple and gone out for Indian food the day before, so we decided to make it a trifecta: the First Official Baker Family Cultural Awareness Weekend…or something like that.

Background:  the Syro-Malabar church traces its founding to the missions of St. Thomas the Apostle.  The story is that St. Thomas evangelized India, and that these communities have been Christian as long as anyone, anywhere.  Their church has a complicated history, but now is in full communion with Rome.

So we were prepared for a different sort of liturgy during the Mass (which they call a Qurbana, from the Aramaic word for sacrifice), and for being the only white people in the room, and for heavy accents that made understanding the homily difficult (Clare was convinced the priest was speaking another language until we told her afterward that no, it was just rapid, heavily accented English.)  We were prepared (and excited) to see the gloriously beautiful saris.  We were not disappointed in any of these things.

We were surprised to find ourselves in the midst of a youth Mass.

Surprised, but not disappointed.

I admit Craig and I exchanged glances when the liturgy began with “Bless the Lord Oh My Soul” – Matt Redman’s 10,000 Reasons.  And from where we were sitting, near the back on the left side, it looked like the whole building was filled almost exclusively with teenagers.  What on earth had we gotten ourselves into?

This is what we eventually figured out: there is a 9AM Mass, which is in Malayalam and (most of) the adults attend.  (Malayalam is the vernacular – the Mass was said in Syriac until the 1960s  when it was translated.  The English translation we experienced is from the 1990s, and was made for the diaspora church which less often spoke Malayalam in daily life.)  This service ends around 10:30, and at 10:45 another Mass begins for the young people.  When we arrived at 10:30, there were no parking spaces available.  At 10:40, when we made it inside, there were hardly any seats left.  All but the last few rows were filled with children and teenagers, seated by age, and essentially without adult chaperones.

Before the Mass (or possibly after, it wasn’t clear to me), was the Catechism class, which all these hundreds of children attended.  Our parish in Baton Rouge was at least the size of this one, and Lucy’s CCD classes averaged 15 students.  (Many others went to Catholic schools and got their religion classes there, but still.)  What was abundantly clear was that this community is focused on a goal: to pass on the faith to the next generation.

It’s not a perfect community, I’m sure.  Craig tried to ask the teenagers seated in front of us how to follow the service in the missal, and they said they didn’t know how either.  (Thankfully the young woman next to him took pity on us and helped us out!)  There were some of the same slouchy postures and wandering stares that I see often enough in “white church.”  And the priest did stop at the end of Mass to warn the First Communion class that if they didn’t think the Mass was important enough for them to be still and attentive during it, then maybe they should wait until they felt the proper reverence before approaching the sacrament.  He suggested he would be happy to give them their First Communion whenever they were ready, but that they would be better off to wait until that time.

As he pointed out, yes, Jesus is your friend, but He is also God.  And He ought to be treated with the respect due to God.  Which the liturgy itself, I have to say, makes abundantly clear.  Over and over the congregation is encouraged to “Listen attentively,” and there is an emphasis on the greatness, power, and mercy of God which shines through simple, straightforward language.

So there is all of that.  But what it really brought home to me was, as I said, the focus this community puts on its youth.  There have their traditions, ancient and beautiful traditions, but they are not so strict about them that they can’t accommodate the tastes of the youth and make them feel welcome.  The youth Mass is celebrated in English.  (Which is why we were at it instead of at the earlier one!)  They organize a massive CCD effort.  And, even though a good part of the Mass is chanted, the incense is there, the priest faces East with the people…the readers were youth.  The ushers were youth.  The praise and worship band was made entirely of youth.  Here was a place that both encouraged the parish’s young people to participate, and held their participation to a high standard.

The combination of old and new, Indian and American, was totally unexpected for us, which just goes to show how narrow our experience and imagination are.  On the other hand, it was a blessing that we (and our kids) were able to participate in the music confidently, even without hymnals or song sheets.

The whole experience reminded us how wide and welcoming the Church can be, if we let go of our preconceptions and personal preferences long enough to let her.

Lucy has a theory.  She thinks that all we need to do to make the world a better place starts with a little Holy Water.  You take some of this “magical” stuff in a cup, and go find a bad person.  You have two weeks to do this, as she assured us this evening that the water stays good for two weeks.  When you find the bad person, you have them drink the Holy Water.  Then they won’t want to be bad any more.

I want to live in her world.

Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?  Nearly a month, actually.  If you’re still checking, I’m impressed.  There has been a lot going on, including my going offline for weeks at a time and some serious writer’s block.  But here’s the update.

School ended, thank God.  Everyone survived.  Summer is hot, hot, hot.  There will be not trips to the zoo any time soon, membership or no.  The goal is for everyone to survive the summer.

We’ve been keeping busy.  I can’t actually remember what happened right after school got out, but we spent some time at Craig’s parents’ house (mostly in the pool) and then came back to spend a day canoeing with Theresa and her friend Paul, and then a day of rapid laundry and packing, and off to Bunkie.  For nine days.  If you don’t know where Bunkie is, it’s in central Louisiana, near Alexandria.  It does not have its own Wal-Mart.  That tells you how small it is.

So we were on the outskirts of Bunkie, LA, helping to facilitate a leadership retreat for some of the finest Catholic youth of the Baton Rouge and Lafayette Dioceses.  It was really good (I think there are some pictures attached in some way I don’t understand to Craig’s Facebook page…or maybe he can see them but not share them…I don’t know) and we had a lot of fun and great prayer experiences and spent time with wonderful people.  The down side was the ridiculous number of chiggers and mosquitoes (which I am still scratching) and the two poor baby sitters who were left with my attached baby most of the day.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  There’s only one danger with attachment parenting – they might actually become attached.  And Samantha definitely is.  So that was hard on Samantha, me, and the two patient young ladies who volunteered to spend their week watching the facilitators’ kids.

Also, the camp is run by the Department of Education, so we had school lunches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week.  On the last night, vegetables were brought out as snacks.  I have never seen teenagers attack bell peppers and carrots, watermelon and cucumbers like that before.  The cookies were abandoned.  The granola bars, abandoned.  The Big Cheez-its were not abandoned, as they apparently complimented the vegetables.  This should tell you something about the nutritional content of school lunches.

[I have been told that the nutrition in school lunches “balances out” over the course of a week – sure, sometimes it’s pizza, but sometimes it’s meatloaf.  That only worked for our week if all the students were pregnant and needed 80 or so grams of protein a day, but only needed one serving of vegetables per day.  Over the course of the week we had corn twice and carrots (overcooked and drowned in sugar) once, plus the lettuce for hamburgers and tacos, which I don’t count.  I do not call eating French fries at least one meal a day balanced.  But I digress.]

So we were happy, after another two days at Craig’s parents’ house (for meetings and a youth group softball game – which we won!), to return to our garden and our kitchen.  We had pizza with chocolate bell peppers, a tomato, and basil and parsley all from the garden for dinner tonight.  We’ve also had two yellow squash now, a couple of other tomatoes (including a beautiful Cherokee), and delicious purple beans which have all been eaten raw.  There weren’t really enough of them to cook, anyway.  I have battled slugs in the squash/melon patch, and finally have plants large enough to survive their onslaught.  There are now beautiful yellow, black, and white caterpillars eating my dill plant, but the thing was taking over the garden, so I’m letting them go to it.  They don’t seem to be bothering anything else, and Stephen Locke says they make pretty butterflies, although he couldn’t remember which kind in particular.

Meanwhile, Lucy has taken to singing made-up songs with repetitive words, which is pretty funny, and she is writing beautiful letter “L”s and upside-down letter “U”s.  Samantha continues to learn new words to say, and to mimic whatever Lucy may be doing.  They both swim fearlessly with floaties now, which is great except we have to make sure Samantha doesn’t get near the pool without them, because she will jump in and expect to float.

In case you were wondering, the pooping on the potty seems to have been a fluke on all accounts.  There have been no repeat attempts.  Two steps forward, one step back.  Or something.

I have tried to update my reading list, but the plug-in is on the fritz, so that will have to wait.  I’m busy with several sewing, framing, and card-making projects, which will hopefully be posted when they are done and/or delivered.  There are pictures, I just have to sit down and put them up.  I should really get Craig to work on that part I guess…

So for the rest of the summer we have a week planned with my mom’s family in Florida, and a week in North Dakota (actually, a weekend in North Dakota and the rest of the week driving there and back), and another weekend in Bunkie for Taylor’s wedding.  After last week’s experiences, I, for one, will be wearing eau de bugspray with my bridesmaid dress.  I’m still scratching.  And then the rat race starts again.  If, of course, you consider it ever to have stopped.