I had intentions of writing a grand four week Advent series…but Thanksgiving got the better of me last week, and this has been the week of the Stomach Bug. By the time the clothes, sheets, comforters, floors, and dog were all washed, there wasn’t much time left for writing. So that carefully planned, well-researched series will have to wait. Maybe until Lent.

My writing wasn’t the only one of our plans up-ended by this very annoying little virus. Our oldest turned fifteen this week, but festivities were muted, to say the least. Dance classes, violin lessons, school (home- and otherwise) all had to take a back seat to laundry and naps. I couldn’t even manage the little Jesse Tree ornaments and readings I had planned for this Advent. We’ll be playing catch-up with those for a while.

We all had many opportunities this week to practice patience. Practice being the key word – we failed again and again, and just had to keep trying. And the girls spent a good bit of time delirious (from exhaustion and empty stomachs) which they seemed to enjoy and will probably remember fondly for years to come.

It was not exactly how I had hoped to start our Advent. I didn’t have big, outrageous plans to begin with…but I had hoped to be a little bit focused and intentional. The challenges of Week One have forced us to streamline – Advent wreath at supper, special night prayer. A pile of Advent and Christmas books available. Advent Calendar up and running. And that’s it.

Obviously there is still plenty of time to add decorations and get the Jesse Tree back on track. Still, our week doesn’t look terribly “successful” compared to many of the beautiful, complicated Advent decorations and homeschool schemes I like to read about online. But I know one thing: I probably prayed more and harder during the first week of Advent 2021 than any other I can remember. So despite the demise of my well-laid plans, I’ll call that one part a success, and be thankful for the chance to try again next week.

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.

Last week was recital week. Two of our daughters performed: one danced as a butterfly and a swan, the other portrayed water on the aerial silks. (“On the what?” you ask. It was something like this.)

It was a long week – the girls were at the theater part or all of the day Tuesday through Saturday – and we’re all tired. Honestly, I was dreading all the trips to the theater and all the disruption of our usual schedule that this week involves. So I was amazed at how many of the little dancers (who, to be fair, had a shorter schedule than we did) wanted recital week to keep going after the last performance.

The week was grueling, but that meant the girls were together for hours, working towards a common purpose, as well as just spending time together while waiting their turns on stage. It was a different dynamic than our sheltered homeschoolers are used to, but I think it was good for them. One taught her friend to knit; the other stepped up to help clean a big mess she didn’t make. All the girls worked hard, encouraged each other, and celebrated what they had made together. I have to give credit to the instructors, who made it a point to keep everyone positive, including giving younger girls “encouragement buddies” who left them kind notes during the week. That in particular meant a lot to my daughter.

Also, there were fewer squabbles in our house than any week I can remember recently. (It may catch up to us later, but it was sure nice while it lasted!)

The show itself was a beautiful mix of ballet, contemporary dance, and aerial arts. As always, the cute little ones stole the show, but the grace and skill the older students exhibited was impressive. And I have to say, it’s hard not to get excited about an art form that allows you to be both a mama penguin and the queen of the realm in the space of five minutes. Plus, there were dragons. Flying dragons. The silks quite literally add a whole new dimension to the show.

The weird part for me was that I’ve somehow become a resource mom to our friends who are newer to the program. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined myself being the one people came to for advice on how to make a ballet bun or what to do about stage makeup. It’s a far cry from my tennis and intramural flag football days.

And while I’m not quite ready to be a “backstage mom” (taming 4-year-olds is NOT my superpower) I’m settling into this dance mom thing. I can play chauffeur, man the bobby-pin station, and provide heat packs for sore feet. My girls seem to have found something they really love, ways to strengthen their bodies and their minds, and both give and receive joy and beauty.

I’ve always accepted the idea that creating art requires sacrifice. Until this week I had only applied that to myself – not my children. I understood that if I want to spend time writing, that meant sacrificing something else, whether it be recreational reading, or sewing, or house cleaning…or all three. This week our whole family, and all the families at our dance studio sacrificed so that our children could be part of something bigger – something that brought joy and beauty to our community (and even had a “moral to the story.”)

Recital week proved to me that my girls are ready to make sacrifices to bring beauty into the world. Last week that included their time, energy, and comfort, especially the comfort of their feet. Nothing earth-shattering, of course, but their willingness to put up with suffering and inconvenience for the sake of beauty gives me hope for the world they’re growing up into.

It’s that time of year again: May Madness. Finals, graduations, recitals, Mother’s Day, and we have a birthday (7th) and wedding anniversary (16th) in our family to round it all out.

Needless to say, I’m hiding in my bedroom with books of poetry more than usual.

Still, it’s amazing to watch our kids blossom. They’re stepping out of their comfort zones, getting in front of crowds (or cameras) and sharing the gifts God has given them. I’m constantly in awe of the beauty they’re already bringing into the world.

And as much as I cringe at the thought of making small talk (or worse, housecleaning) of course it’s always good to celebrate family and new beginnings. I usually even enjoy it. Especially if there’s cake, which there will be.

But I also look forward to June, and the calm after the storm. Time for lounging and reading, playing board games, going for family walks in the evenings. Basking in the flowers and good things to eat coming from the garden.

It all comes back to the garden again, that little bit of refuge where things are slow and simple. Even in the face of army worms, slugs, and flea beetles, it’s a comfort to see these tiny seeds grow and produce twenty-, or fifty-, or a hundred-fold. Such bounty!

A talk I was listening to this week mentioned the quote, “One plants, another waters, but God gives the increase.” I feel that all the time right now as I watch our kids grow. There is no way I can take credit for their talents, or their kind hearts, or their humor. God is causing the increase in them daily, and it is my privilege and blessing to witness his goodness.

Victory! There are posts on my own blog between this and the most recent Mighty Is Her Call post! Here’s the link if you’re interested:

So I’m a little behind in my reading, but this week I finally got to the February 8 issue of Commonweal.  There is an illuminating article in there by Jonathan Malesic which contrasts the American work ethic with the dignity of the human person, and specifically, the way work is treated in Benedictine Monasteries.  (You can read it here.)

The article is beautiful and challenging.  Malesic seriously calls into question whether it is possible to respect the health and dignity of a person in our achievement-driven society.  “No reputation for customer satisfaction is worth as much as the person who fills orders and endures complaints.  Your pride in a job well done, or your anxiety, or your ego: none of those is worth as much as your dignity as a person.”

I think Malesic has hit on an important topic, but his musings led me in another direction. 

There has been a convergence (the first word that came to mind was conflagration, and I think it is also appropriate) of ideas in my life lately, centered on what John Paul II called the “feminine genius.”  It’s not that I’m seeking this out, exactly.  I’ve been bombarded from podcasts sent by Well-Read Mom and friends, Caryll Houselander’s Reed of God, and a Day of Reflection at our parish, all circling this same topic.

Full disclosure: I haven’t done the background reading on this yet (the recommended reading usually includes Mulieris Dignitatem and JP II’s Letter to Women, among others).  So my understanding of the term is basically this: women have unique gifts to share with the world, specifically gifts which make it a kinder, gentler place.  Women, in general, are gifted at truly seeing the other and caring for him or her, wherever the person may be in life.

This is a drasticly short summary, but I think it will do to explain the jump I made when I read Malesic’s piece on work and the Benedictines.

The monks Malesic visited in the New Mexico desert fight the desire to make work the center of their lives by means of prayer and their rule of life.  

I’d like to argue that we mothers have a similar tool built into our vocation to help us fight this tendency to overwork.

Rumba?  Alexa? Wal-mart curbside pickup?

Nope.  Our kids.

Now you’re probably thinking, “Actually, my kids create nine-tenths of the work I do…so how exactly are they helping me to keep work from taking over my life?”

Think of a nursing baby.  He’ll spend some time laying on the floor, playing happily with his toes (hopefully!), during which time his mother frantically folds laundry, washes dishes, sweeps the floor…you get the idea.  But when that baby gets hungry, what happens? The work stops. Mom sits down, puts her feet up, and nourishes a little life. If there isn’t a cell phone or TV on, maybe she even nourishes her own spiritual life for a few minutes with some reading or just soaking in the silence.

True, this assumes there aren’t also a two-year-old and four-year-old pulling on her arm the whole time asking for snacks.  Or chasing each other around the house waving sticks. (Why are the sticks in the house!?) It’s almost never as easy at I make it sound, I know.

However, what if we took all these interruptions in this light?  Not “drat, now I’ll never get the bathtub scrubbed,” but, “Ah, yes!  Little child of God, how can I love and serve you right now?” Houselander would take it a step further, and say, “Yes, Jesus!  How can I serve YOU in this little person?”

Of course cleaning the bathtub is also serving…but that’s an essay for another day.

The monks Malesic visited have scheduled hours for work, and whether they finish the project or not, when the bell rings for prayer, they stop and go pray.  It takes practice, but they learn to accept that they must let their work go until the next work period. As Malesic puts it, “They get over work so they can get on with something much more important to them.”  That “something”? Prayer, and their relationship with God.

I don’t know any mother who can keep a monastery schedule day in and day out.  Still, we have the opportunity to put work in its place. Is a clean floor good?  Yes. Is it more important than reading to my children? Probably not. Is it more important than praying with my children?  No.

The Benedictines’ vocation is to pray.  That comes first, and everything else is secondary.  A mother’s vocation is to care for her children. That comes first, even if it means we have to drop other work (or play) to do it.  (Which I write as I tell my kids to leave me alone so I can finish writing this…yikes.)

It is in the discipline of walking away from our work, our productivity, our sense that we are accomplishing something earthly, to spend ourselves in caring for another human being, that we put work in its place.  Work is good. Human beings need work, and we are called to join God in the work of bringing order to creation. Yet we are also called to “get over” our work when our children need our help or attention.

Yes, it takes effort – mental, physical, and spiritual – to care for these little people.  It is work.  But it is work that, if we keep our hearts open, turns us towards God in a way that scrubbing and dusting and grocery shopping might not.  Dropping our menial labor to look into the face of a child is stopping to contemplate the divine, if only we can look with God’s eyes instead of our own.

(On a side note – this topic requires a part II, with some of the caveats which threatened to make this post a short book, and which I’ll get to soon.  I hope. It’s dangerous to make such promises in my state of life!)

Just a tidbit from Luke Timothy Johnson’s recent piece in Commonweal entitled “How a Monk Learns Mercy: Thomas Merton and the Rule of St. Benedict.”

“The most destructive forms of speech in community, Benedict understood, are those that involve judgments against the other.  Benedict calls this form of speech ‘murmuring,’ included [sic] all forms of griping, gossiping, and nagging.  He forbids it absolutely.  When I was a monk, I thought that the rule of silence was mainly in service of contemplation.  Now, after many years of suffering poisoned discourse in the halls of academe, I have come to understand that silence was mainly about charity.  As we learn every day in our new world of constant chatter, savage judgment, and long-distance shaming via (anti)social media, when speech is totally without restraint, mercilessness is an almost inevitable consequence.”

There are a number of other useful insights in the article, but whether it is at work, church, or in the home, I can relate to Johnson’s experience here.  So much of the talk is negative, tearing down either the hearers or others who aren’t in the room.  It makes me think, maybe my house needs more silence…

On the other hand, how do you convince kids to fold their laundry without nagging?  I am open to suggestions.

And then, how do you convince them not to nag and judge each other?  Besides by example, which, clearly, I’m not good enough at to count on.

Still, this passage in particular was a reminder for me to be careful with my speech.  Especially around my kids, who are forming their own patterns on mine.  Yikes.

Johnson closes with this thought, summing up the rest of the article.  It sounds like marching orders to me:

“But if Christians are to cogently and consistently represent the face of mercy – which is the face of Christ – in this valley of tears, then in some fashion, I think, they must find ways to gather together for prayer, to sing the psalms and canticles, to practice silence in the name of charity, to readily confess their faults to each other, and to receive strangers as Christ.”

A year ago – or maybe closer to two – I was at a friend’s house.  She had a little hand-written note on her refrigerator, on red construction paper, which said,

“Lay hold of goodness, rather than justice.  -St. Isaac the Syrian”

I commented that maybe I needed one of those for my fridge.  We could use that sentiment in my house.  So, being the woman she is, my friend moved the magnet and handed the note to me to take home.  It was on our fridge until we moved; it seems to have disappeared in that (ongoing) process.  But the impact hasn’t left us.

The girls were preparing for a All Saints’ Day party.  (How cool are our friends?  One hosted a party for 40+ children and their moms, and the kids prepared saint themed games, and everyone dressed up as saints and told the group about the saint they were dressed as.)

Anyway, Isaac needed a saint to impersonate.  Of course, Issac the Syrian (aka Isaac of Nineveh) was his choice because, well, his name was also Isaac.  And I knew the quote from the fridge…so we looked up the rest of the quote so Isaac would have something to say about Isaac the Syrian at the party.

Phew.  This is going somewhere, I promise.  Here is some more of the quote, from OrthodoxWiki:

“Be persecuted, rather than be a persecutor. Be crucified, rather than be a crucifier. Be treated unjustly, rather than treat anyone unjustly. Be oppressed, rather than zealous. Lay hold of goodness, rather than justice.”

Ouch.  Of course, I had to share that one with Craig when he got home from work.  And he looked up the rest of the homily, and took to it like a Cajun to gumbo, and has been working out its implications in our daily lives ever since.

And I even found myself using it a day or two ago.  (It only took a year – or maybe two – for the idea to be imbeded in my brain enough that I thought to use it!)

It was a little like this:

“Daughter A, can you please wipe the table?”  (Of course I was at least this polite.)

“No, it’s not my turn, and Daughter B skipped wiping it after breakfast, so she should do it.”

“Well, Daughter B is already laying down for quiet time, so could you please do it this time, just to help me out?”  (I was carrying a tired baby, who also desired nap time, and trying to do something else…who knows what…but it wasn’t very compatible with wiping tables.)

“No!  She should do it.”

[Lightbulb appears over my head]  “Daughter, remember how we have been talking about laying hold of goodness, instead of justice?  It would be just for me to drag your sister out of bed and make her wipe the table, but here is a chance for you to lay hold of goodness by doing it even though it’s not your job.”

“No!”

The table had to wait quite a while before it was finally wiped.

I suppose we can’t all live up to the standards of the desert fathers all the time.  

Despite such minor setbacks, I’m not giving up on this one.  I would guess that roughly three-quarters of the fights in our house have to do with someone thinking a situation isn’t just – who gets the last cookie, who has to do the extra chore, etc.  And this includes myself, with thoughts like, “I cooked, and did the dishes, can’t someone else at least take out the trash?”

Which would probably be just – but my whining about it doesn’t help any of us grow in holiness.

So I’m not prepared to take on all the dirty work, just to be good.  I don’t dare to hope that my kids will decide to follow my example and suddenly want to fold all the laundry and clean the chicken coop.  But I can start thinking a little differently about these situations, and start trying a little harder to do what’s good, rather than what is simply just.  I can try to point my kids in this direction, too.  Maybe if we can ask ourselves “what would be good for me to do” instead of “what would be just to me” we would make some progress.

After all, it’s God’s goodness, God’s merciful justice, that I’m counting on for forgiveness for all those times I’ve fallen short of goodness, or even simple justice.

The Lanyard – by Billy Collins

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.