At the Holocaust Museum last Saturday, I prayed inside a cattle car used to transport Jewish victims to Auschwitz. It was quiet inside the car and a shaft of light came in through one of the high, small windows. I stood alone in the car and prayed “Hail Mary full of grace. . .”
“She was in that cattle car back in 1940,” I thought. “Maybe no one could feel her presence, but she was in that car.”
I touched the edge of the doorway by my right shoulder and prayed again. I prayed to acknowledge our Blessed Mother’s presence.
When I was fifteen I read “Night,” in a crowded public high school English classroom with purple nubbed carpet and bad florescent lighting. My high school was designed in the 1970s when my rural county was flush with coal money. The innovative design called for “open classrooms” which simply meant “no doors.” The resulting din of voices from four English classes all having ‘discussion’ on great works of Literature usually meant that you missed half of what your teacher or fellow classmate said.
All that background noise didn’t dim the horror of our six week Holocaust unit. It didn’t diminish the horror of reading a Eli Weisel’s Nobel Prize Winning Autobiography.
I read this work in a secular classroom and it terrified me. Weisel writes about the loss of faith of seeing “God hanging dead on the gallows in front of him.” That statement didn’t fit well into my heart, but I couldn’t pour my thoughts into any concrete words. How do you argue God exists against the Holocaust?
I remember the feel of my elbows against the metal desk, and the paperback pages with the grimy cheap newsprint. I remember someone being called on to read out loud the details of life in the cattle car. I’d skipped that gruesome part in my reading at home, so this passage in the text was new to me.
“We were packed against each other in the cattle cars for three days. Mothers cried out for water. We drank our own piss to survive.”
We drank piss.
I remember how those words sealed up my throat. I felt closed in, trapped. Even in a crowded classroom, with the door less room and the din of other students, I felt trapped and alone.
“There is no way I could drink my urine,” I thought. “There is no way I would survive.” And I sat through the long remaining weeks of the Holocaust unit certain that I would never have lived through the horrors of World War II, and there were probably many similar things that I couldn’t survive.
When I’ve gone through the Holocaust Museum before, I’ve looked at things that I didn’t really want to see. I felt hatred and helplessness. I felt an unimaginable distance from those criminals who did unspeakable crimes against humanity.
Always, always there was this chasm between the Nazi SS officers and me
This time, I entered the museum with my Women of Prayer Group and a beloved parish priest and my whole visit was different.
During the bus trip downtown, we prayed the rosary together. At each joyful mystery we read a passage about charity towards our neighbor. “How I treat my neighbor is a direct link to how much I love God,” is one phrase that stays in my memory.
Our priest, who studied under Rabbis in Israel, gave a stirring lecture on the intellectual currents (Darwin, Eugenics, and Zionism) which led to the Holocaust. “This was not a simply a bunch of thugs in police uniforms. The highest levels of the intelligencia supported anti-Semitic views.)
I started praying in the middle of my priest’s introductionary lecture. I was worried he might accidentally offend our museum guide. Who was elderly, seemed agitated about seeing a priest collar and just wanted a giant group of 30 women to stop blocking the entrance to the elevators.
And while I prayed for our guide to not be offended, Our Blessed Mother sort of nudged me to also pray for his heart to be opened. So I started praying. Then something happened. Our guide’s whole body language changed. He started nodding his head, “that’s exactly right.” When my parish priest mentioned that he’s been to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, our guide broke in “Me too! I am a Holocaust survivor. What you’ve said is exactly right, priest.” Our parish priest finished up and motioned us to the elevator. The elderly guide came over and started talking excitedly to our priest in private. Just as the elevator doors were about to close, my priest slipped inside.
“Our guide is an extraordinary man. He survived one of the worse Death Marches in history at age 14.”
A Holocaust Survivor trading healing words with our parish priest. I started tearing up. I got out my Marian handkerchief out of my pocketbook and started wiping my eyes. One of my prayer friends looked at me with concern. I shrugged my shoulders, “We’re only in the elevator and already I needed to use this!” I held up my Marian handkerchief and then returned it to my coat pocket
The museum is self-paced and quiet and still. I unintentionally walked alone for most of it.
I prayed at the bunkers from Auschwitz. At the recreation of the gas chambers, I forced my eyes to stay open and prayed to Edith Stein. I prayed by the racist German school books and by the free radios distributed by the Nazi propaganda machine. I prayed by lost village names, and shoes and photos of medical torture of young children.
My scheduled lunch break came, but I kept praying. I went into the Hall of Remembrance and said a rosary for the victims and the sinners.
Then I went to lunch and ate a turkey sandwich. Some of the ladies couldn’t eat, but my stomach needed nourishment. I ate my entire lunch and then ate the part of an extra tuna sandwich.
Our parish priest wanted to go back, so a few of us went back with him. There was some confusion about whether we had permission to renter at the point where our group stopped. “You’ll need a special guide,” the women in a dark museum staff coat said.
“Okay, lets get a special guide.” I turned and walked to the volunteer table. Of course, we got our same guide. The walk back led to more friendly exchanges between this elderly survivor and my parish priest.
This time, I hung around the back of the exhibit, the part where there is a constantly moving tape of Survivor stories. A woman, Gledda, I think told about when she first knew she was liberated. Here is her story as close as I can remember it:
“I came out of the abandoned factory in Poland, where I was left with all of those dying girls. They were too weak to reach the door, so I was alone. I saw a jeep come down the hill and it had a giant star on it, instead of a swastika, so that is how I first knew that I was freed.
The jeep stopped in front of me and a man came out.
“I am Jewish,” I said. Those were my first words.
There was a long silence. At least it seemed to me, there was a terribly long silence. And then he spoke, his words betrayed his emotion. He was wearing glasses, so I couldn’t see his tears.
He said in a trembling voice “I know. I am Jewish too.”
Then he said “Lady, will you go inside with me?”
Lady? I couldn’t understand who he was talking to, so I looked behind me. It took me along time to understand he was talking to me. He called me a lady. It was the first time in six years that I was addressed that way.
Then he held open the door for me. Again, no one had done that before for us.
I followed him inside. He gave me back my dignity. This hero who fought to our ideals, he handed me back my dignity. He gave me back everything that had been lost.
And I married him! I married my hero, the first solider I saw, the first one who called me lady and held the door open for me."
What a story of love and hope. What an endnote to my trip.
We were late for our bus, so we hurried out of the exhibit. Our next stop was St. Peter’s Catholic Church, the marvelous stone building outside of the Senate Offices. We walked into this formal white marble church and celebrated Mass. We waited in the pews while Father changed into his robes for the Mass. It was a beautiful place to pray.
I thought about that last story, of how an American solider handed a woman back her dignity. A formal address and a kind gesture. That’s how a victim knew the war was over.
“That’s me, also” I thought and started crying again. (I cry a lot when I pray.) Six years in that destructive lie of premarital sex had left me in bad shape. Then along came a Catholic boy who changed the rules. He married me with honor and turned our love into a sacrament.
“He takes away the sin of the world.”
There is a new beginning for all of us.
Prayer: Blessed Mother, give us your peace. Help us lay down all our sins. Protect the innocent and crush evil with the heel of your bare foot.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
Holocaust Museum Visit
Tomorrow morning my Women of Prayer group will visit the Holocaust Museum together. We are taking along Father Avelino and will celebrate Mass together at St. Peter's in Downtown D.C. I'm excited and a little nervous.
The Holocaust Museum always stirs up deep feelings for me.
I first took my daughter to the Children's Exhibit (Daniel's Story) when she was 2. I don't let my kids wander freely in this museum, but the children's area is a beautiful, sensitive and age appropriate space. My husband's Jewish last name goes back to one of the original twelve tribes of Israel. I figure it's never too soon to be teaching the "no anti-Semitism" thing to my little Benjaminites.
Hannah took her first visit in stride. "It's not fair that they didn't let the (Jewish) children eat their favorite cake" she said at the recreation of the 1930s German street exhibit as she pressed a nose against a tempting German Bakery display with a giant "No Jews Allowed" sign. The yellow stars and the Jewish ghetto life with rotten turnip soup didn't make an impression on her two year old brain. The "no buying cake" rule did.
I tried to hurry her past the concentration camp part of the exhibit, but she was affected by the dim blue lights and the barbed wire fence. "Mom, they put people in cages here like they were animals at the zoo!"
I knelt down to my 2 year old in her double stroller seat and had one of the most dramatic conversations in my life.
"Hannie, the Nazi soldiers did lock little children up in cages. They did treat them like they were animals in the zoo."
(Thankfully, the "Daniel's sister ending up as wreaths of smoke" is absent from the child friendly movie that played overhead. So I could easily skip over the most horrid part.)
"That was a great evil. But there were good people in the world at that time, like your great-grandfather George. He went over to Germany and told the Nazi's they had to stop. Great-grandpa George and our army won. They stopped the Nazis and let all the children out."
It was a simple conversation. We lived with Hannah's Great-Grandfather at the time, so she knew him well.
Sitting in that darken room, however, it just hit me what a miracle it was that my Grandfather and Hannah's Great-Grandfather fought in the Battle of Normandy, and that he survived, and came home to have my Mom in 1946. I had a glimpse of what would have happened if WWII hadn't turned out the inevitable way it had in the pages of my history textbooks.
I went home and wrote a meaningful letter of thanks to my maternal Grandfather.
On our second trip to the Holocaust Museum, Hannah was four and newly in her CCD class. As we pass through the museum on our way get a much needed lunch break, Hannah said "I know why the Nazis were bad soldiers Mom."
"Huh? I said as I pushed a stroller with a newborn and pulled 2 lagging walkers behind me.
"The Nazis listened to the clever snake, Mom. They listened to the clever snake!"
The clever snake was Hannah's name for the clever serpent which tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. She's learned this on day one of her CCD class.
I thought her statement ranked as one of the most profound insights into history.
"Why did the Holocaust happen?" Such an angst ridden question that resounds through history. "Because the soldiers listened to the clever snake."
My latest visit to the Holocaust Museum occurred on October 31, 2008, All Hallow's Eve and a few days before the Presidential Election. We stopped in downtown D.C. to stock up on free science labs from the Smokey the Bear exhibit at the National Forestry Office. This fun, interactive exhibit is next door to the Holocaust Museum.
Instead of the somber, sullen feeling from the museum's bleak exterior, in October I entered the building with an uplifted heart. I'd just started the Carmelite formation. I just learned about Edith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who was pulled out of her Carmelite convent by the Nazis and sent to die.
"We were here!" I kept thinking. Even in this dark, awful time, there were Catholic martyrs for the faith.
At the Daniel exhibit, my feeling of peace grew. "This must have looked like our dear Pope Benedict's house" I thought, looking around at the early 1930's boyhood German home exhibit. I kept trying to dismiss this happy feeling and instead focus on the exhibits mention of Krystalnaucht, and growing Jewish tension. Yet I felt the comfortable hands of our Pope and his dear friend Pope John Paul. These two Catholic men experienced this event. They were heartbroken about the treatment and loss of their Jewish friends. This terrible event didn't occur "outside of human history", it didn't prove that "God was dead." Instead, these external tragedy shaped the deep inner faith of two of my favorite Catholic leaders in history.
In a weird way and for the first time ever, I felt love all through the Daniel's Story exhibit instead of fear and hatred.
Then I got to the end.
The children's exhibit ends with a place of reflection where you can send a post card to the fictitious "Daniel" from Daniel's Story. Usually, the inviting velvet chairs, friendly post office box, and warm lighting are a relief.
This time I felt a strong hit of bile.
Along the walls were children and adults messages who had traveled this exhibit before me. "NEVER AGAIN!" "How could this happen?" "I wish you lived in America, Daniel. This terrible thing would never happen in America."
I stood reading these messages, five days before the Presidential Election and felt my stomach turn green with bile.
How could all of these outraged visitors miss the current connection with abortion?
Here were all these people, completely disgusted with the Holocaust and meanwhile they refuse to make the obvious parallel with disregarding the moral issue of the 21 century. These same parents were going to vote for a new President in five days.
That visit left me emotional. It left me praying my rosary for hours around the Mall afterwards. The pro-life ticket didn't win of course on November 4, which left me sad and numb for several hours.
If Our Blessed Mother were alive in Germany in 1942, she would have been packed off to a concentration camp. In America in 2009, some nosy neighbor would have advised this unwed teenage mother to have an abortion.
When my husband and I went to our local abortion mill to pray on Christmas Eve, we found it open, with the TV flickering on in the waiting room. On Christmas Eve!
The best weapon we have against evil is prayer.
Mother Theresa said that if everyone in America spent one hour in Adoration a week, abortion would end instantly. There is such a strong correlation between seeing the "hidden" Jesus in the host and seeing the 'hidden' human person in the womb.
Let us commit to ridding ourselves of "listening to the clever snake" in our own hearts this year. On January 22, the day of the March for Life, let's pray hard as a nation that the seductive lies of the clever snake get out of the hearts of our beloved countrymen as well.
The Holocaust Museum always stirs up deep feelings for me.
I first took my daughter to the Children's Exhibit (Daniel's Story) when she was 2. I don't let my kids wander freely in this museum, but the children's area is a beautiful, sensitive and age appropriate space. My husband's Jewish last name goes back to one of the original twelve tribes of Israel. I figure it's never too soon to be teaching the "no anti-Semitism" thing to my little Benjaminites.
Hannah took her first visit in stride. "It's not fair that they didn't let the (Jewish) children eat their favorite cake" she said at the recreation of the 1930s German street exhibit as she pressed a nose against a tempting German Bakery display with a giant "No Jews Allowed" sign. The yellow stars and the Jewish ghetto life with rotten turnip soup didn't make an impression on her two year old brain. The "no buying cake" rule did.
I tried to hurry her past the concentration camp part of the exhibit, but she was affected by the dim blue lights and the barbed wire fence. "Mom, they put people in cages here like they were animals at the zoo!"
I knelt down to my 2 year old in her double stroller seat and had one of the most dramatic conversations in my life.
"Hannie, the Nazi soldiers did lock little children up in cages. They did treat them like they were animals in the zoo."
(Thankfully, the "Daniel's sister ending up as wreaths of smoke" is absent from the child friendly movie that played overhead. So I could easily skip over the most horrid part.)
"That was a great evil. But there were good people in the world at that time, like your great-grandfather George. He went over to Germany and told the Nazi's they had to stop. Great-grandpa George and our army won. They stopped the Nazis and let all the children out."
It was a simple conversation. We lived with Hannah's Great-Grandfather at the time, so she knew him well.
Sitting in that darken room, however, it just hit me what a miracle it was that my Grandfather and Hannah's Great-Grandfather fought in the Battle of Normandy, and that he survived, and came home to have my Mom in 1946. I had a glimpse of what would have happened if WWII hadn't turned out the inevitable way it had in the pages of my history textbooks.
I went home and wrote a meaningful letter of thanks to my maternal Grandfather.
On our second trip to the Holocaust Museum, Hannah was four and newly in her CCD class. As we pass through the museum on our way get a much needed lunch break, Hannah said "I know why the Nazis were bad soldiers Mom."
"Huh? I said as I pushed a stroller with a newborn and pulled 2 lagging walkers behind me.
"The Nazis listened to the clever snake, Mom. They listened to the clever snake!"
The clever snake was Hannah's name for the clever serpent which tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. She's learned this on day one of her CCD class.
I thought her statement ranked as one of the most profound insights into history.
"Why did the Holocaust happen?" Such an angst ridden question that resounds through history. "Because the soldiers listened to the clever snake."
My latest visit to the Holocaust Museum occurred on October 31, 2008, All Hallow's Eve and a few days before the Presidential Election. We stopped in downtown D.C. to stock up on free science labs from the Smokey the Bear exhibit at the National Forestry Office. This fun, interactive exhibit is next door to the Holocaust Museum.
Instead of the somber, sullen feeling from the museum's bleak exterior, in October I entered the building with an uplifted heart. I'd just started the Carmelite formation. I just learned about Edith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who was pulled out of her Carmelite convent by the Nazis and sent to die.
"We were here!" I kept thinking. Even in this dark, awful time, there were Catholic martyrs for the faith.
At the Daniel exhibit, my feeling of peace grew. "This must have looked like our dear Pope Benedict's house" I thought, looking around at the early 1930's boyhood German home exhibit. I kept trying to dismiss this happy feeling and instead focus on the exhibits mention of Krystalnaucht, and growing Jewish tension. Yet I felt the comfortable hands of our Pope and his dear friend Pope John Paul. These two Catholic men experienced this event. They were heartbroken about the treatment and loss of their Jewish friends. This terrible event didn't occur "outside of human history", it didn't prove that "God was dead." Instead, these external tragedy shaped the deep inner faith of two of my favorite Catholic leaders in history.
In a weird way and for the first time ever, I felt love all through the Daniel's Story exhibit instead of fear and hatred.
Then I got to the end.
The children's exhibit ends with a place of reflection where you can send a post card to the fictitious "Daniel" from Daniel's Story. Usually, the inviting velvet chairs, friendly post office box, and warm lighting are a relief.
This time I felt a strong hit of bile.
Along the walls were children and adults messages who had traveled this exhibit before me. "NEVER AGAIN!" "How could this happen?" "I wish you lived in America, Daniel. This terrible thing would never happen in America."
I stood reading these messages, five days before the Presidential Election and felt my stomach turn green with bile.
How could all of these outraged visitors miss the current connection with abortion?
Here were all these people, completely disgusted with the Holocaust and meanwhile they refuse to make the obvious parallel with disregarding the moral issue of the 21 century. These same parents were going to vote for a new President in five days.
That visit left me emotional. It left me praying my rosary for hours around the Mall afterwards. The pro-life ticket didn't win of course on November 4, which left me sad and numb for several hours.
If Our Blessed Mother were alive in Germany in 1942, she would have been packed off to a concentration camp. In America in 2009, some nosy neighbor would have advised this unwed teenage mother to have an abortion.
When my husband and I went to our local abortion mill to pray on Christmas Eve, we found it open, with the TV flickering on in the waiting room. On Christmas Eve!
The best weapon we have against evil is prayer.
Mother Theresa said that if everyone in America spent one hour in Adoration a week, abortion would end instantly. There is such a strong correlation between seeing the "hidden" Jesus in the host and seeing the 'hidden' human person in the womb.
Let us commit to ridding ourselves of "listening to the clever snake" in our own hearts this year. On January 22, the day of the March for Life, let's pray hard as a nation that the seductive lies of the clever snake get out of the hearts of our beloved countrymen as well.
What are they thinking?
For those of you who don't live in the DC metro area, D.C. proper, the Southern suburbs in Virginia and the Northern Suburbs of Maryland are 3 areas with a 30 mile radius with 3 different cultures. Our Washington Post even comes out with 3 different front page covers depending on where you buy their paper.
Still, it seems a little odd to have the Secret Service traffic plan during the Inauguration to completely discriminate between commuters from the Southern suburbs in Virginia vs. those in the Northern suburbs in Maryland.
Quote for the Washington Post:
"First was the hysteria of announcing over 4 million people might be flooding the Mall. Later, they amend that number by half. Then they announce there will be no parking, few toilets and that everyone will be standing and waiting for hours. Then they tell people not to bring children and, finally, they close all the bridges," fumed Virginian Holly Kenney. "Do they think we're dense? Clearly, the public is no longer welcome." . . .
The plan unveiled by the Secret Service and area transportation officials Wednesday closes all Virginia bridges across the Potomac and interstates 395 and 66 inside the Beltway to personal vehicles. It also cordons off a large section of downtown Washington to help manage the unprecedented crowds expected. Maryland, in contrast, has no planned road closures.
One more reason to love living in Mary's Land!
Still, it seems a little odd to have the Secret Service traffic plan during the Inauguration to completely discriminate between commuters from the Southern suburbs in Virginia vs. those in the Northern suburbs in Maryland.
Quote for the Washington Post:
"First was the hysteria of announcing over 4 million people might be flooding the Mall. Later, they amend that number by half. Then they announce there will be no parking, few toilets and that everyone will be standing and waiting for hours. Then they tell people not to bring children and, finally, they close all the bridges," fumed Virginian Holly Kenney. "Do they think we're dense? Clearly, the public is no longer welcome." . . .
The plan unveiled by the Secret Service and area transportation officials Wednesday closes all Virginia bridges across the Potomac and interstates 395 and 66 inside the Beltway to personal vehicles. It also cordons off a large section of downtown Washington to help manage the unprecedented crowds expected. Maryland, in contrast, has no planned road closures.
One more reason to love living in Mary's Land!
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Finding my Home Among the Carmelites
In ninth grade, I lost my steady lunch group. For five years, I'd eaten lunch every school day next to my best friend Kellum Ayers. Kellum was Scottish, with a Scottish Terrier named "Scottie", thin blond hair and an amazing talent with the violin. Some days, I brown bagged my lunch with bologna, cheese and mustard sandwich. Some days, I had peanut butter and red raspberry jelly. Some days I had a Capri-Sun. Sometimes, I had a can of Cherry Coke. Occasionally, I had enough spare quarters to buy an Almond Joy at Huffington Market for dessert.
Every day, however, I had Kellum's sunny chatter about the latest happenings in Orchestra class to accompany my lunch.
Then my Dad failed his tenure review at Ohio State University and suddenly I got yanked out of my "perfect" suburban high school dreams and placed in a rural West Virginia where there were actual dirt roads and days off for deer hunting season and boys who wore Redwings to school instead of K-Swiss tennis shoes.
Nine grade was a bit of a culture shock for me.
I remember sitting in Health Class filing out a State Testing Form which had the following question:
How many years of school do you intend on completing?
a) ninth grade
b) tenth grade
c) eleventh grade
d) twelfth grade
e) some college
"How ridiculous!" I thought. At 14, I knew I was going to graduate school. Here the official state form wouldn't even let me check off a bachelor's degree.
I snorted out loud, and several of the guys sitting next to me looked up. I rolled my eyes and pointed to this questions. They looked back at me in confusion.
That's when it forcibly struck me that in my 9th grade Health Class, I was one of only three ninth graders. Health was a freshmen required class. If you flunked it, you repeated it. I sat in a 35 person class filled with 32 juniors and seniors. There was a big chance that most of the people in my class weren't going make it past letter "b."
The world sort of opened up to me in that moment.
In retrospect, the whole yanking me out of sheltered suburbia was a good thing.
During my ninth grade year, however, it was incredibly lonely.
Every time the bell rang for first lunch at 11:45, I'd get an anxious knot in my stomach: "Where would I sit at lunch?"
By some scheduling fluke, I got assigned to the lunch period with very few freshmen. I think there were 12 freshmen girls in the whole cafeteria at that time.
Ten of them were freshmen cheerleaders.
The freshmen cheerleaders were all good Christians. These girls were extremely kind. They let me sit down at their table. They asked me kind questions about my family and my sports interests.
The problem, of course, is that I don't have an sports interests. I had no idea how the Pittsburg Pirates differed from the Pittsburg Steelers. I didn't have a boyfriend who followed baseball or football or basketball. (My father and baby brother didn't even follow baseball or football or basketball.) I had no idea what being "pre-engaged" meant. I had no favorite perfume, or favorite skin care regime or favorite shade of Cover Girl lipstick. I didn't even have a common Algebra homework to groan over, because I skipped out of even taking a math class that year.
So every lunch period I sat down with a steaming, yet inedible hot lunch of mashed lasagna and faced a wide social gulf between my inner world and the rest of humankind at Buckhannn-Upshur High School.
It wasn't that the Cheerleaders weren't open. It wasn't that they weren't friendly or kind. It was just that deep down I knew it was only a matter of time before the glib social small talk around the lunch table bumped against a brutal uncomfortable truth; I was a strange, strange girl from an alien planet.
So everyday for a year at 11:45 AM was "Please, don't make me sit at the Cheerleader table today."
I think said yes to at least two Friday dance dates that year, solely so I had a place to sit for a while other than the Freshman Cheerleader lunch table.
Fast-forward two years to the beginning of my junior year, where I found myself sitting next to a girl I'd shared the same Cross-Country Team Bus, Pep Club Bus and Band Bus for three years. Only today, during this otherwise ordinary lunch in the same glaring lemon yellow cafeteria, we start having a real conversation about a book, I think it was Pride and Prejudice. Suddenly, we start finding all of this commonality, like that we both adore English class but despise Math Class, and it turns out that I find a new best friend again. I found my "Kellum." And all I can think, after all of my lonely, at loose end lunch periods is,"I finally have a person to sit next to at lunch!"
That grateful feeling is all I can say about finding the Carmelite order. It feels so good to have a home in the Catholic church.
I know what I'm supposed to do. I'm a contemplative. I'm supposed to pray.
I don't pray well yet. I don't pray often. Yet I still know where my lunch table is in the interior social map of the heart.
The Catholic church. A grand place for everyone inside!
Every day, however, I had Kellum's sunny chatter about the latest happenings in Orchestra class to accompany my lunch.
Then my Dad failed his tenure review at Ohio State University and suddenly I got yanked out of my "perfect" suburban high school dreams and placed in a rural West Virginia where there were actual dirt roads and days off for deer hunting season and boys who wore Redwings to school instead of K-Swiss tennis shoes.
Nine grade was a bit of a culture shock for me.
I remember sitting in Health Class filing out a State Testing Form which had the following question:
How many years of school do you intend on completing?
a) ninth grade
b) tenth grade
c) eleventh grade
d) twelfth grade
e) some college
"How ridiculous!" I thought. At 14, I knew I was going to graduate school. Here the official state form wouldn't even let me check off a bachelor's degree.
I snorted out loud, and several of the guys sitting next to me looked up. I rolled my eyes and pointed to this questions. They looked back at me in confusion.
That's when it forcibly struck me that in my 9th grade Health Class, I was one of only three ninth graders. Health was a freshmen required class. If you flunked it, you repeated it. I sat in a 35 person class filled with 32 juniors and seniors. There was a big chance that most of the people in my class weren't going make it past letter "b."
The world sort of opened up to me in that moment.
In retrospect, the whole yanking me out of sheltered suburbia was a good thing.
During my ninth grade year, however, it was incredibly lonely.
Every time the bell rang for first lunch at 11:45, I'd get an anxious knot in my stomach: "Where would I sit at lunch?"
By some scheduling fluke, I got assigned to the lunch period with very few freshmen. I think there were 12 freshmen girls in the whole cafeteria at that time.
Ten of them were freshmen cheerleaders.
The freshmen cheerleaders were all good Christians. These girls were extremely kind. They let me sit down at their table. They asked me kind questions about my family and my sports interests.
The problem, of course, is that I don't have an sports interests. I had no idea how the Pittsburg Pirates differed from the Pittsburg Steelers. I didn't have a boyfriend who followed baseball or football or basketball. (My father and baby brother didn't even follow baseball or football or basketball.) I had no idea what being "pre-engaged" meant. I had no favorite perfume, or favorite skin care regime or favorite shade of Cover Girl lipstick. I didn't even have a common Algebra homework to groan over, because I skipped out of even taking a math class that year.
So every lunch period I sat down with a steaming, yet inedible hot lunch of mashed lasagna and faced a wide social gulf between my inner world and the rest of humankind at Buckhannn-Upshur High School.
It wasn't that the Cheerleaders weren't open. It wasn't that they weren't friendly or kind. It was just that deep down I knew it was only a matter of time before the glib social small talk around the lunch table bumped against a brutal uncomfortable truth; I was a strange, strange girl from an alien planet.
So everyday for a year at 11:45 AM was "Please, don't make me sit at the Cheerleader table today."
I think said yes to at least two Friday dance dates that year, solely so I had a place to sit for a while other than the Freshman Cheerleader lunch table.
Fast-forward two years to the beginning of my junior year, where I found myself sitting next to a girl I'd shared the same Cross-Country Team Bus, Pep Club Bus and Band Bus for three years. Only today, during this otherwise ordinary lunch in the same glaring lemon yellow cafeteria, we start having a real conversation about a book, I think it was Pride and Prejudice. Suddenly, we start finding all of this commonality, like that we both adore English class but despise Math Class, and it turns out that I find a new best friend again. I found my "Kellum." And all I can think, after all of my lonely, at loose end lunch periods is,"I finally have a person to sit next to at lunch!"
That grateful feeling is all I can say about finding the Carmelite order. It feels so good to have a home in the Catholic church.
I know what I'm supposed to do. I'm a contemplative. I'm supposed to pray.
I don't pray well yet. I don't pray often. Yet I still know where my lunch table is in the interior social map of the heart.
The Catholic church. A grand place for everyone inside!
Tips on Attending Daily Mass
In 2008, my humble little convert family started attending Daily Mass together at 6:30 AM each morning. Our Holy Father gets all credit for this new habit. (We started attending Daily Mass in April to prepare our tiny kids to sit through the Papal Mass.) Since we have 3 kids under age 6, we're the only noisy ones in the pews at that early hour. A friend asked me to share some advice gleaned on this subject. Here's a recap of my email to her.
Reasons to go to Daily Mass:
1) You have a front seat to your priest's best homilies.
2) You effortlessly learn Scripture & observe cool, formerly unknown Saint's Days.
3) You get to form close friendships with other highly motivated and extremely kind parishioners. The "Daily Mass" folks tend to be a regular, stable group who you'll meet over and over again at church events. We've formed close friendships with people of all different ages, and in our immigrant Catholic church, from all different countries.
4) You get to know your priests well and they get to know your family.
5) Your kids get exposed to Mass as a regular part of Daily Life.
Those are just the quick tangible things that keep us former night owls going to bed early so that we can wake up at 5:30 AM, dress extremely sleepy children into nice clothes and bundle them into a freezing car in the dark.
Here's the mystical part that I can't put easily into words. "It's the Eucharist." Its the summit of Catholic life. It's the world's greatest miracle that gets enacted at your local parish church each and every morning and several times on Sunday. When you show up to the "optional" Mass, you receive grace. You get told explicitly in a homily or in a Sacred Scripture quote exactly how you are supposed to change your life to better conform yourself to Christ. And like the helpless humans that we are, Christ gives you himself to help you reach up to God.
If I'm asked why I drag a pack of restless young children to Mass each day, my simple answer is "because I need it." I need Mass. I need the Eucharist. I need that daily dose to get myself through the laundry washing, and the naughty chair enforcement, and the finding of the missing buckle shoes.
I go to Mass nearly day because I need Christ.
I go to Mass nearly every day because Christ needs me. He needs me there to receive his daily outpouring of love.
When I'm at Daily Mass, I get to pray for the needs of our whole Church and our whole world. My kids get to notice that the three Wisemen moved a little bit closer to the Nativity set and that someone kindly glued back the donkey's ears which got broken off last Sunday. By going to Daily Mass, I get to pray, to go to confession and to be blessed on every trip home to see my parents, every big meeting for my husband and every scary homeschooling meeting for myself.
When I go to Daily Mass, I'm already in a holy routine. When my father-in-law had his scary helicopter flight to the regional ICU, we didn't have to look up the next Daily Mass times. We already knew it by heart. On that scary day when we didn't know if Jon's Dad would be okay, we got up at our regular time and prayed our "regular" Mass with with our beloved parish priest and a beloved group of devout friends.
Not every day is an "emergency", of course. But every day, especially these hectic days with lots of young bodies in my house, is Holy. The single greatest help to living a more holy life is to "eat Jesus" more often!
If you feel any pull of your heart to go to Mass more often, just start. Don't make a big plan or big announcement. Start where you can. Drag the kids out to Mass at Candle Mass on Feb 2. Or start going by yourself on Saturdays in honor of Our Blessed Mother.
Start where you can start and let yourself be surprised by all the heavenly help that will race forward to embrace you!
Anyone else going to extra "optional" Masses either alone or with young children in tow?
Reasons to go to Daily Mass:
1) You have a front seat to your priest's best homilies.
2) You effortlessly learn Scripture & observe cool, formerly unknown Saint's Days.
3) You get to form close friendships with other highly motivated and extremely kind parishioners. The "Daily Mass" folks tend to be a regular, stable group who you'll meet over and over again at church events. We've formed close friendships with people of all different ages, and in our immigrant Catholic church, from all different countries.
4) You get to know your priests well and they get to know your family.
5) Your kids get exposed to Mass as a regular part of Daily Life.
Those are just the quick tangible things that keep us former night owls going to bed early so that we can wake up at 5:30 AM, dress extremely sleepy children into nice clothes and bundle them into a freezing car in the dark.
Here's the mystical part that I can't put easily into words. "It's the Eucharist." Its the summit of Catholic life. It's the world's greatest miracle that gets enacted at your local parish church each and every morning and several times on Sunday. When you show up to the "optional" Mass, you receive grace. You get told explicitly in a homily or in a Sacred Scripture quote exactly how you are supposed to change your life to better conform yourself to Christ. And like the helpless humans that we are, Christ gives you himself to help you reach up to God.
If I'm asked why I drag a pack of restless young children to Mass each day, my simple answer is "because I need it." I need Mass. I need the Eucharist. I need that daily dose to get myself through the laundry washing, and the naughty chair enforcement, and the finding of the missing buckle shoes.
I go to Mass nearly day because I need Christ.
I go to Mass nearly every day because Christ needs me. He needs me there to receive his daily outpouring of love.
When I'm at Daily Mass, I get to pray for the needs of our whole Church and our whole world. My kids get to notice that the three Wisemen moved a little bit closer to the Nativity set and that someone kindly glued back the donkey's ears which got broken off last Sunday. By going to Daily Mass, I get to pray, to go to confession and to be blessed on every trip home to see my parents, every big meeting for my husband and every scary homeschooling meeting for myself.
When I go to Daily Mass, I'm already in a holy routine. When my father-in-law had his scary helicopter flight to the regional ICU, we didn't have to look up the next Daily Mass times. We already knew it by heart. On that scary day when we didn't know if Jon's Dad would be okay, we got up at our regular time and prayed our "regular" Mass with with our beloved parish priest and a beloved group of devout friends.
Not every day is an "emergency", of course. But every day, especially these hectic days with lots of young bodies in my house, is Holy. The single greatest help to living a more holy life is to "eat Jesus" more often!
If you feel any pull of your heart to go to Mass more often, just start. Don't make a big plan or big announcement. Start where you can. Drag the kids out to Mass at Candle Mass on Feb 2. Or start going by yourself on Saturdays in honor of Our Blessed Mother.
Start where you can start and let yourself be surprised by all the heavenly help that will race forward to embrace you!
Anyone else going to extra "optional" Masses either alone or with young children in tow?
Monday, January 5, 2009
Benjamin Academy of the Arts and Sciences
It's official, we passed our first review with flying colors!
The Holy Spirits fingerprints were all over this meeting. We had a tender Asian grandmother do our review. We were supposed to bring a sample of reading material for our review. I limited myself to 2 books per subject area. When I brought out the plastic bin of books, the darling Mrs. L burst out with "so many books for a kindergartner! That is good! That is very good!"
We had the most pleasant hour of conversation. Mrs. L is completely on the same page as us. She was so happy to see Hannah's drawings and scribbled "books." As a former math teacher, she was all over Math-U-See and my random collection of unfinished Number Street drawings.
"Emotional security counts," according to Mrs. L. "The most important thing you can do is read them a book each night, sign them a song and then give them a hug from Mommy and Daddy. That way the child had no bad dreams fearing that they are alone in the world."
Can you imagine a sweeter, more confidence building portfolio review? So much for my fears of being busted for not more vigorously pursuing phonics!
As a final mark of the Holy Spirit's presence occurred when we got to the music section. Last Saturday, I completely panicked over our lack of music lessons this semester. For Hannah's portfolio I photocopied two Catholic hymns. That section seemed a bit small so I added our Nutcracker unit. When typing out the labels for the portfolio, Jon made a mistake and wrote NUTCRACKER BALLET in huge bold letters. The words jumped out from you on the page. We were going to change it but ran out of time.
So in the midst of this delightful review, Mrs. L turns the page and NUTCRACKER BALLET leaps off the page at her.
She stops in silence for a moment. Catches her breath.
Out tumbles this long story of how much she loves this ballet and how important it is for young girls. Her own granddaughter performed this ballet in front of 1200 people in St. Louis at age 10. Mrs. L loved the performance so much so put the Nutcracker as the ring tone on her cellphone.
So when she turns the page and sees the pictures of Hannah's dance and choreography notation, she almost faints. "This is so advanced!" she shouts and notes all sorts of nice things on our official paperwork.
And to think, that was one of the many parts that sort of landed in the portfolio by accident. Yes, just another day of the Holy Spirit at work.
(It went so well, I'm sheepish about all my earlier stress. It wasn't until later that I realized that in both side of my family we have public school teachers who are deeply opposed to our decision to home school. Jon and Ibuilt it up in our minds that the entire public school system in Maryland was hostile to home-schooling. I'm glad to know that some boogymen only exist in our imaginations!)
The Holy Spirits fingerprints were all over this meeting. We had a tender Asian grandmother do our review. We were supposed to bring a sample of reading material for our review. I limited myself to 2 books per subject area. When I brought out the plastic bin of books, the darling Mrs. L burst out with "so many books for a kindergartner! That is good! That is very good!"
We had the most pleasant hour of conversation. Mrs. L is completely on the same page as us. She was so happy to see Hannah's drawings and scribbled "books." As a former math teacher, she was all over Math-U-See and my random collection of unfinished Number Street drawings.
"Emotional security counts," according to Mrs. L. "The most important thing you can do is read them a book each night, sign them a song and then give them a hug from Mommy and Daddy. That way the child had no bad dreams fearing that they are alone in the world."
Can you imagine a sweeter, more confidence building portfolio review? So much for my fears of being busted for not more vigorously pursuing phonics!
As a final mark of the Holy Spirit's presence occurred when we got to the music section. Last Saturday, I completely panicked over our lack of music lessons this semester. For Hannah's portfolio I photocopied two Catholic hymns. That section seemed a bit small so I added our Nutcracker unit. When typing out the labels for the portfolio, Jon made a mistake and wrote NUTCRACKER BALLET in huge bold letters. The words jumped out from you on the page. We were going to change it but ran out of time.
So in the midst of this delightful review, Mrs. L turns the page and NUTCRACKER BALLET leaps off the page at her.
She stops in silence for a moment. Catches her breath.
Out tumbles this long story of how much she loves this ballet and how important it is for young girls. Her own granddaughter performed this ballet in front of 1200 people in St. Louis at age 10. Mrs. L loved the performance so much so put the Nutcracker as the ring tone on her cellphone.
So when she turns the page and sees the pictures of Hannah's dance and choreography notation, she almost faints. "This is so advanced!" she shouts and notes all sorts of nice things on our official paperwork.
And to think, that was one of the many parts that sort of landed in the portfolio by accident. Yes, just another day of the Holy Spirit at work.
(It went so well, I'm sheepish about all my earlier stress. It wasn't until later that I realized that in both side of my family we have public school teachers who are deeply opposed to our decision to home school. Jon and Ibuilt it up in our minds that the entire public school system in Maryland was hostile to home-schooling. I'm glad to know that some boogymen only exist in our imaginations!)
New Year's Resolution: To Learn How to Suck with Grace
In a few hours, I have my first home school review with the State of Maryland.
Ever since my husband and I heard the first nudging to "home" school for kindergarten some nine months ago, I've sat in dread of this review. All of my poor friends have spent months listening to me verbally roll my eyes at this meeting. I cried during the five hours it took me to assemble a portfolio of Hannah's work on Saturday night. Then on Sunday night, I feel into sin. I screamed at my kids for dragging the chocolate King Cake into their bedroom and picked a fight with my husband when he tried to ease my nervousness with hugs and words of comfort.
All of my sin is because I'm a baby. I don't want to go to a meeting with a State Official telling me that "I'm doing it wrong."
My Mother is an Education Professor. "Doing teaching right" has a far, far exaggerated place of importance in my mind. Home schooling has revealed a definite tendency towards perfectionism in my life.
There's no way to be "perfect" in this portfolio review and that lack of a standard is driving my pride crazy. I couldn't find a specific checklist on how to "pass" this review. Even the basic guidelines contained in my meeting letter such as, "make a list of your textbooks," is problematic for me.
As an unschooler, we don't use textbooks. We don't have worksheets. For my Science Class, I'm bringing a Audubon Magazine article about Venus Fly Traps because that what we do for science class. I read a fun article about endangered carnivorous plants and then we all jump around pretending to eat flies with our arms and make up theories as to why the Venus Fly Traps are losing their populations in North Carolina.
I don't know how this is going to go over with my Portfolio Reviewer. It might go over well, but it might totally miss the mark especially since, I tend not to be the best "recorder" of all of our spontaneous fun science conversations.
Besides, kindergarten isn't really supposed to be about unit studies on carnivorous plants. It's supposed to be about learning how to count. Somehow, we've gotten stalled on anything past the number 9.
My daughter, Hannah, doesn't get the whole "number placement" thing. She doesn't see any pattern yet from 0-9, and 10-19, or 20-29.
I've got the sweet Decimal Street from Math-u-See with the tiny green house for the ones and the blue apartment building for the 10s and the red castle for the 100s. Yet Hannah doesn't get the rule that only nine people can fit into the "ones" house and then when another friend comes to stay they all have to move into the 10 place and leave the ones place empty with a giant zero.
Hannah does like math rules. She thinks that if a friend is coming to stay, they can all hang out in the green "one" house. "The green family doesn't need to move into a new house, Mom! The little girl isn't coming to stay. She doesn't need a new bed. The little friend is just coming to play for a few hours!"
Hannah likes to do math Hannah's way.
"You do math your way, I'll do it my way." That statement has been repeated often during this semester. Curiously, the lovely teacher on Math-U-See does not have any guidelines for the great "why do we all have to count the same way at the same time?" going on in my kindergartner's head.
We've stayed stuck on the parallel play during math time for a few months now. As a result, our portfolio has pages and pages of Number Street, with detailed drawings and my cut-out pictures of "numbers of Popsicles" needed for the ice cream truck. Hannah has people, horses and flowers numbering 11, 13, and 27 hanging out all in the "ones" house. Whether this meets the criteria of "regular and thorough home instruction for the State of Maryland" is anyone guess.
The State Reviewer might tell me to give up and start giving out math worksheets. Oh, and please give more tests and informal assessments. (I'm really bad at the recording and testing where we currently are thing.)
Also, I'm pretty sure we flunked the physical education section. Because in hind sight, I did a "here's the playground go play," which is more recess than a "progressive program in cardiovascular fitness" which counts a P.E. Honestly, we didn't even get recess nearly enough because I'm a bookworm who hates the cold. Bundling up the 18 month old, finding the missing gloves and hats, and locating that one missing shoe never seems worth the effort. So mostly we stay inside and let the kids jump around on our couch and swing on the door handles. I'm not sure this honestly qualifies as "gymnastics."
Teaching is humbling work, because it's too vast to do well or perfectly. It's a lot like parenting or being a spouse.
My priest has told me to "do the work the best you can and hand the rest over to God." Today is the day to test my virtue of obedience.
Today is the day I listen to some criticism, not as "punishment" but as a source of direction in my life.
I would never choose to be vulnerable like this to someone in authority such as in this home school meeting. But humiliation often leads to the virtue of humility.
Blessed be the name of the Lord. He leads his servants in the ways they need to go and not where they want to go.
Ever since my husband and I heard the first nudging to "home" school for kindergarten some nine months ago, I've sat in dread of this review. All of my poor friends have spent months listening to me verbally roll my eyes at this meeting. I cried during the five hours it took me to assemble a portfolio of Hannah's work on Saturday night. Then on Sunday night, I feel into sin. I screamed at my kids for dragging the chocolate King Cake into their bedroom and picked a fight with my husband when he tried to ease my nervousness with hugs and words of comfort.
All of my sin is because I'm a baby. I don't want to go to a meeting with a State Official telling me that "I'm doing it wrong."
My Mother is an Education Professor. "Doing teaching right" has a far, far exaggerated place of importance in my mind. Home schooling has revealed a definite tendency towards perfectionism in my life.
There's no way to be "perfect" in this portfolio review and that lack of a standard is driving my pride crazy. I couldn't find a specific checklist on how to "pass" this review. Even the basic guidelines contained in my meeting letter such as, "make a list of your textbooks," is problematic for me.
As an unschooler, we don't use textbooks. We don't have worksheets. For my Science Class, I'm bringing a Audubon Magazine article about Venus Fly Traps because that what we do for science class. I read a fun article about endangered carnivorous plants and then we all jump around pretending to eat flies with our arms and make up theories as to why the Venus Fly Traps are losing their populations in North Carolina.
I don't know how this is going to go over with my Portfolio Reviewer. It might go over well, but it might totally miss the mark especially since, I tend not to be the best "recorder" of all of our spontaneous fun science conversations.
Besides, kindergarten isn't really supposed to be about unit studies on carnivorous plants. It's supposed to be about learning how to count. Somehow, we've gotten stalled on anything past the number 9.
My daughter, Hannah, doesn't get the whole "number placement" thing. She doesn't see any pattern yet from 0-9, and 10-19, or 20-29.
I've got the sweet Decimal Street from Math-u-See with the tiny green house for the ones and the blue apartment building for the 10s and the red castle for the 100s. Yet Hannah doesn't get the rule that only nine people can fit into the "ones" house and then when another friend comes to stay they all have to move into the 10 place and leave the ones place empty with a giant zero.
Hannah does like math rules. She thinks that if a friend is coming to stay, they can all hang out in the green "one" house. "The green family doesn't need to move into a new house, Mom! The little girl isn't coming to stay. She doesn't need a new bed. The little friend is just coming to play for a few hours!"
Hannah likes to do math Hannah's way.
"You do math your way, I'll do it my way." That statement has been repeated often during this semester. Curiously, the lovely teacher on Math-U-See does not have any guidelines for the great "why do we all have to count the same way at the same time?" going on in my kindergartner's head.
We've stayed stuck on the parallel play during math time for a few months now. As a result, our portfolio has pages and pages of Number Street, with detailed drawings and my cut-out pictures of "numbers of Popsicles" needed for the ice cream truck. Hannah has people, horses and flowers numbering 11, 13, and 27 hanging out all in the "ones" house. Whether this meets the criteria of "regular and thorough home instruction for the State of Maryland" is anyone guess.
The State Reviewer might tell me to give up and start giving out math worksheets. Oh, and please give more tests and informal assessments. (I'm really bad at the recording and testing where we currently are thing.)
Also, I'm pretty sure we flunked the physical education section. Because in hind sight, I did a "here's the playground go play," which is more recess than a "progressive program in cardiovascular fitness" which counts a P.E. Honestly, we didn't even get recess nearly enough because I'm a bookworm who hates the cold. Bundling up the 18 month old, finding the missing gloves and hats, and locating that one missing shoe never seems worth the effort. So mostly we stay inside and let the kids jump around on our couch and swing on the door handles. I'm not sure this honestly qualifies as "gymnastics."
Teaching is humbling work, because it's too vast to do well or perfectly. It's a lot like parenting or being a spouse.
My priest has told me to "do the work the best you can and hand the rest over to God." Today is the day to test my virtue of obedience.
Today is the day I listen to some criticism, not as "punishment" but as a source of direction in my life.
I would never choose to be vulnerable like this to someone in authority such as in this home school meeting. But humiliation often leads to the virtue of humility.
Blessed be the name of the Lord. He leads his servants in the ways they need to go and not where they want to go.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)