Mystical Spring

Studies are showing that too much internet use is changing the way our brains work, especially when it involves children. And who among us is not a child at heart? Ergo, we can all be included on some level.

As I sit writing this, I am hard pressed to focus on what I am writing. I am struggling to find things to say and yet, have plenty to say. But what I am most concerned about is multitasking–how I may be perceived by the other human beings, some of them the most precious ones in my life, as I struggle to type, maintain eye contact with them, convince myself that what I write is worth being expressed, and convince the little one at my knee that I will soon be available to them for play.

I am being pulled in too many directions.

God pulls me, youth pulls me, others pull me, old age pulls me, and I am left trying to figure out which one has priority or better yet, who needs my focus the most?

That is the question I ask myself today and all of you.

Does reality and the immediate relationships in it need you more or do you feel needed more intensely by your vitual online world?

Which one is more fulfilling to you?

That is where you can find your priorities.

                        Since my mother’s death, my father has endured what can only be described as ‘The Long Fall.’ Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s weeks after her funeral, it became clear to us that our mother had been keeping this little piece of personal information hidden bolstered by an unparalleled level of cooperation from our father.

A couple who fought with one another for over fifty years and called it marriage, the eerie peaceful atmosphere that descended on my childhood home felt strange to me one afternoon after walking in the front door.

I greeted my father. Following a phone call to hurry home, I felt knocked off my emotional balance, as if I had entered someone else’s house. If it hadn’t been for the large lump that could only be my father, seated in his usual brown rocking chair in front of the TV where I had left him just two months before, I might have become disoriented, turned around and walked back out the door. But the tears flowed down his cheeks when he saw me, and I knew this time it would be different, a visit that would change my life.

I was told that my mother was in her final hours of life, and arriving home I expected everything to be suddenly different.

Thinking that the walls, floors, doors, roof and quite literally the earth itself that formed the foundation around my home would have shifted, caved in, fallen apart, or blown up, I was disappointed by the silent utter devastation I felt as my insides shook and trembled. My world was falling apart, my life as I had known it ending, my history being changed and lost. There would be no more mother stories; no more mother and daughter fights over my kids, no more horror stories of the long drive home for Christmas, no more of my mother’s charcoal burned green beans. It was over, gone, completely destroyed and coming to an ending where the only thing I would be left with was my father, a man it occured to me for the first time, was one I barely knew.

 Inside my house he sat waiting for me, a calm, quiet, accepting peace upon his face which had I been quicker would have triggered a suspicious firing of my synapses, like the joining together of colored threads that clash when I knit.

I should have stopped, looked down into the bag of yarns to see if I was tangling several things together. I should have but there was so little time to think and only enough time to react.What was unraveling around me was being accomplished slowly as we daughters became fixated by funeral expenses, insurance policies, and who was to ride in the hearse.Our mother died and our father was left behind. It somehow didn’t seem right. Didn’t studies usually tell us that women are the ones who out live men? Hadn’t my nursing experience shown me that I had twice as many female patients to care for than men? Hadn’t all of my mothers’ friends out lived their husbands? My mother had been the strong one, my father the hypochondriac. My mother had to be forced to go to the doctor, my father ran in the doors of the office so often they kept his file on top of the office desk. My father was sickly for years, had a bad back, gout, was blind in one eye, took pills for anxiety, and slept on the couch a lot. He saw as many as six doctors at a time. Terrified of being ill, he hated any talk of death, denied it, rejected it, and had absolutely no use for it. She on the other hand faced up to it with an equal dose of controlled terror and southern dark humor. For her to die first wasn’t fair, it simply wasn’t right, not that I wished him ill, not at all, but this felt like an insult to my training and intelligence.My parents were very proud of both their nurse daughters, one who lived two hours away, and the other twelve, both with jobs, obligations and families of their own. Being the youngest and the one who lived the farthest, I had taken care of countless patients and their families who faced the demon Alzheimer’s but my own father’s condition had escaped me, blown right by me, hiding behind smiles, tears, and an occasional head shake. Secretly my parents had made a pact between them, in the midst of their warring days together, to keep their daughters ignorant of their plight.“Ah, I can’t remember right now,” he’d say, whenever I asked him a question and I would give him a pass. Why not? He was over eighty after all.But as we attended to her, he would sit in his rocking chair in the living room, watching TV, drinking his occasional soft drinks, generally taking care of himself all the while keeping his little secret tucked away deep inside a back pocket along with his handkerchief, comb, and empty wallet.It wasn’t a month after the funeral, when everything was placed out in the open at last, thanks to a neighbor who had seen him walking down the street at midnight and called us. Medications helped break his long fall for awhile and one day he perked up and asked, “Where’s your mother?”“She died, Dad. Do you remember?” I replied.“Oh, yeah,” he tells me and shakes his head adding for no reason, “she was a good wife.”“Do you really think that, Dad?” I continue, trying to hide my shock. “You and Mom did nothing but fight all those years. She used to call you some terrible names.”But he sits in front of me and shakes his head again, “Oh sure,” he says, “Sure she did. She said all those things, but she never meant anything by it.”That was the first time I learned of my father’s generous nature.It is some comfort to me, his youngest daughter, the baby of the family and the one who tends to ruminate over family history mining for gems of meaning for all of our lives. It makes me feel as if the struggle that went on inside my family structure had not really been personal but more situational, that if they had been wealthier things might have been different between them. It is comforting until the moment when I call him on the phone. I hold my breath, trying not to cry, which would only alarm him more. Where is she, he might begin to wonder? Why isn’t she here, why is she upset, is she hurt, is she in danger, but then, mercifully, his brain synapses fire once more and he stumbles over the consonants until he lands on S. Then he utters my name. “Susan, Susan, is that you? Well, I’ll be.” This is all I ever get. These few words are all that fire between the synapses.My physical visits to him are much more painful. Never the heroic figure that many kids spoke of as their fathers, I still admired mine for simply being there. He worked at a job; made sure his daughters had good educations, and had an honorable reputation. I never had to look the other way when I went to school every day. Our bills were always paid, food always in our stomachs and we lived in a safe and pleasant structure. Certainly all of these were average expectations for a father and he fulfilled them with nothing much else to spare. He lived up to the idea of being just an ordinary man, never having enough money for fancy trips, content to be at home with his TV set and its bent take on a world.One afternoon during my visit, he sat in his rocking chair watching me and my sister sorting through bills at the dining room table. I was hurrying to leave, wondering if I could make it through the big city traffic that lay ahead of my drive two hundred miles away.I glanced over to where he was seated. He was smiling, his pale lips curled up at one side, his eyes far away, even as he looked right at me. “What are you looking at, Dad?” I asked.“My two daughters,” he said without hesitation, without pause, without struggle. It was a direct answer, straight from the synapses.“I need to leave here soon, Dad. I’m leaving in a few minutes but I’ll be back in the spring.” This time would be especially difficult since I lived so far away, it would be six months before I could get back to see him after the winter snows.He nodded and smiled that strange smile again. “It’s all right. I see you right here.”Placing his index finger to his temple, he tapped. “I see you here all the time.” There it was, the second time I had experienced my father’s generous nature. Despite his being incapable of expressing himself, he still understood my pain at being so far away. He was allowing me to go because he trusted in my word to return.I have often wondered many times what life would have been like if my mother had lived longer. I have wondered what life would be like if my father did not have Alzheimer’s and had just continued to putter on his own around an empty house. I know that one day he will forget my name entirely along with my sister’s name as he has already forgotten our mother’s. When that day comes, the history of my life, along with all the father stories, will stop and will end as well.But in the meantime, great gifts have been given out, gifts that might never have been given if it hadn’t been for his disease.There is the gift of clarity in love that goes for years unspoken until it pushes its way to the surface where it demands a moment of urgent expression. There it is unleashed in the synapses of the brain, moved along by the intensity of its simple endurance.And when that happens, the unity of such purpose reaches toward those who need it where it stretches itself beyond every human boundary. 

We are tucked in snug here with a snowy forecast. The fireplace has been lit and the logs that we swore at as we chopped and sawed them into a proper size during our fall harvest, are now offering up to us their warmth as they dance across our toes.

It is winter now, the time when we turn inward, put on those extra pounds of insulation and prepare for the long haul ahead toward spring.

My thoughts on this Christmas Eve turn to Mary as she travels in the cold toward that stable in Bethlehem.

When you get a group of women together, they tend to speak of major life episodes. One such episode is childbirth.

I wonder what Mary’s thoughts were before she gave birth to her child? Did she know fear at the uncertainty of it all?

Did she think God might take her own life once she had been used for God’s purpose? After all, there is no mention that she would live afterwards to see her son grow up. There was no sure thing, no sure promise given to her, that she would thrive after giving birth. All she had been told was that she would bear a son, call him Jesus and he was to have a mission in life of influence.

It was all about him. It was not about her.

Mary’s ‘condition’, her state of mind at this moment must have been one of extreme fear of the unknown and yet we hear of her steadfast calm in the face of uncertainty.

I hope that as I stand on the threshold of a new decade, a new calendar year, a new season of Joy and Hope, that I may keep the courageous ‘condition’ of Mary in mind during snowy and stormy weather.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

What’s in a name? Why is it that names of characters in books are so important for writers to get right? Are names really that important?

As I struggle to begin a new novel (this time a YA book I’ve been thinking about for awhile) I am at a loss as to what to call my main character. So many decisions to be made quickly that will impact the entire story!

Should it be male or female? Should the name be distinctly American or more blended to include an audience that is global? If a male is called by a Polish name, does it mean they are Catholic since Poland is considered a mostly Catholic country? The most Catholic in the EU?

What we call our characters, as well as our children, will mark them for life and in this case, the life of the book and story. Writers must be careful. We must be vigilant to every nuance that a name implies.

In this regard, I wonder how Mary felt when told in the gospel of Matthew by Joseph that the baby she would carry was to be called Jesus? Would she have said, “oh that’s a nice name.” Or would she have protested just a little and say, “but I always wanted a child with the name of Samuel?”

Jesus, with his life, death, resurrection, but more importantly through his love, provided a name greater than all names. He could have been called George or Jeff, Raymond or Samuel, Ahmad or Jeremiah.

It wasn’t just about his name. It was also about his life.

What Jesus demonstrated to us through his life proved far more powerful than mere words or chosen names. At the name of Jesus we associate Love, Compassion, Generosity, Kindness, Patience, Steadfastness, and Truth telling.

At the name of Jesus, we associate the highest level of these virtues and values.

What is it that you and others associate with your name?

What name do you want to be remembered for?

This sounds like a big chunk to write about but through the use of Symbolic Logic, its not so bad.

Once I took a class for a math requirement on this subject. I thought I’d lose my mind before it was completed but I did finish–after a long cold and endlessly pain filled semester. Now I call upon those long lost and never really learned skills to help me construct this simple (as in reallly simple) equation.

GOD IS LOVE AND GOD IS PEACE.

IF BEAUTY IS ART, THEN ART IS BEAUTY.

If God is Love, then God is Peace, and if Peace is God, then Love is God.

If God is Love, then God is Beauty. If Beauty is God, then Art is God and if God is Art, then God is Peace.

Do you see my problem?

It seems so simple to live and yet, if it is, why do I stumble so often?

What does spring mean to you?

According to the doom and gloomers, we are set to endure a year of misery in the financial markets, and the world global finance picture as a whole. We have the ’shouters’ of destruction aka Rush Limbaugh, who continue to threaten and intimidate the average American into thinking that we should rebel against Hope when it appears to be in short supply.

What exactly are Americans being asked to do? What should we do?

For the first time in ten years, we are being asked to act and Spring is the season for action, after all, isn’t it?

We are being asked to do without, to take risk, to project Hope for the future, and to believe in the idea that truth and good will triumph over evil.

Why not take this risk? Why not believe in good over evil? What have we more to lose?

As a Christian nation, even one apparently Rush would like to move back to, we pretend to project the idea of optimism in the face of doubt. This is our foundation, our belief in the eternal good and its triumph.

This Spring, let us put our ‘money’ and treasure where our hearts are purported to be–directly in the place of Hope in our future. This after all, is the culture of Life we proclaim every Sunday. It is time to see those like Rush for what they truly hope to achieve–to drag the culture of Life into the culture of Death where their own misery and personal profit can prevail.

Spring–a time to work, laugh and love. Good will prevail. We are called to make it appear.

“The task of a Christian is to make the thought of PEACE once again seriously possible.”

It is timely for me to read these words of Thomas Merton, especially as the world appears incapable of understanding the very idea of hard work.

 My mother spent her life working. It was either in the house, at a secretarial job, or in the yard. Her work in the yard she especially loved. She hauled bags of dirt, compost, horse manure at times, and shrubs, plants, and every kind of young tree.

What she showed to both of her daughters was one thing–life is full of hard work and then you die.

I do not say this with any degree of cynicism. This is life–we work our life span and then we end that life span. What we accomplish in between is hard work.

Do we enjoy such work or not is the real question?

I think we all understand that happiness, aka PEACE, doesnt’ come at the end of a gun. When force is used, there is always a loser and that loser fills with anger/resentment/jealousy/ or any number of negative emotions that simmer until payback is accomplished. Justice is required and the defeated see justice denied, therefore, needed and sought after a time.

This attitude of the defeated plants the seeds of future wars. How does PEACE have a chance to bloom?

I have always resented the idea that PEACE is for wimps. That seekers of peace seek an easy way out–one filled with roses and floating angels of sillyness. Those who look at PEACE in such a narrow fashion are ignorant. They have never attempted the intensely hard work that PEACE demands. It is extremely difficult to get your emotions under control, to understand exactly what you need, what you hope for, and what you can’t live without in order to ask for PEACE. If you get this far, you need the stomach and courage to extend yourself in risk.

And that’s where all the military generals and military establishment fall back. They are not trained for such initiatives. They are not aware of how to do it. They are taught in words such as tactics that accompany losses and might/power.

The quick release of a bomb gives such limited satisfaction that those seeking PEACE can only stand by in amazement at such obvious ignorance and stupidity. What a waste of resources (financial and human).

How long can such lazy thinking continue?

Who will have enough strength and courage to stand up to the rigors required for PEACE?

Born into wealth, this great saint of the East was born into an area today known as Turkey. in 330 CE. This means he was born less than 20 years after the Council of Nicea where the Nicene Creed was broought into being. Just imagine what an exciting time that must have been! It was a time when people such as Basil were schooled in the art of rhetoric. What exactly is that and why would anyone be convinced that they should waste their lives going to school for such a thing?

In the ancient world it was considered highly desirable that a young man would enter the world understanding how to make himself clear in what he said, how he argued the positions he held, and that written communication was effective–at times, persuasive. It was important to have an educated person in a household who could go before judges and other authorities and be able to argue effectively on behalf of the family. Studying rhetorical skills could be an effective weapon in a family arsenal who may otherwise have lacked funds or public standing. For Basil, this skill would be used to advance a career among higher authorities as well as among the public.

After concluding his education, he eventually removed himself from public life by entering the monastic world. You can read more about why he gave it all up, if you google New Advent Catholic Encyclepedia online.

Here in Advent, we move forward toward the darkest night of the year. As the days grow shorter, it is tempting to stay in bed. Why bother to get up?

One day is just as gloomy, rainy, ice filled, snow filled as the next.

I have to force my mind to think of sunny, better times. After all, the sun is shining somewhere in our world and where it is shining is most certainly beautiful. In sunny locations, there are usually blooming flowers, blue ocean water, sandy beaches, and lots of green trees. But out my window, I am as far away from that pleasant atmosphere as I am from the moon–or at least, that is what it appears like.

So, I have to think of other things to motivate this writer. I have to remember that even in sunny places there can be war, famine, disease and poverty. Just because there is sun, doesn’t mean there aren’t problems.

And that is my point exactly.

We all have problems. Everyone in the world–no matter whether the sun is shining or snow is falling or ice is sleeting up your windows, we all are on this planet together worrying, working, not working, existing, all of us with our problems together.

How nice it might be to just entertain this thought?

What would happen, what might just happen, if we put ourselves aside and came to the table with all of our problems? Could one person be of help to another?

These are also just thoughts as we celebrate the one document whose birthday is now the big 60–the Declaration of Human Rights.

And as we approach its ideas, still fresh and green, from our positions here in the snow and ice, maybe it is good that we are still traveling toward it in the dark.

Just as I cheered on the first steps my children tak in life, so I cheer on the Church as it evolves over time and throughout history.

There have been giant steps taken toward advancement in thought. There have been major setbacks as well, but through it all, and as a non participant, I am thrilled when that first good step is taken.

As members in the world body of Christ, we need to take off our glasses, spread wide our arms and cheer on as well. After all, what happens to one, happens to all, if we truly believe what Paul writes, and with that all comes advancements and setbacks.

I’d like to cheer on the advancements, discuss the setbacks, and decide what truly is both progress and regression. There will be both.

This is the truth of any human construct. For us to believe otherwise is folly of the kind that allows us to stick our heads in the ground, complain about what is not, and keep complaining while our mouths fill us with dirt. Inaction is just as unhealthy as wrong action. But we must have both sooner or later.

This week I have been involved with peace activities centered on 9/11. This has allowed for me once gain, to think on the issues that construct peace. How difficult the work is and how necessary it is to continue despite the lack of it in the world.

As I have said before, peace is not for wimps. It is akin to parenting–where you struggle toward a goal int he dark hoping that your child will eventually get with the program. Just like parenting, it is a lifelong journey and the Church is here to help us.

Let us pray this week that the Church always sees its way toward helping us learn, live, and keep peace in the forefront of our lives.

 Most people would say to me, “Are you insane? It isn’t safe there” and yet I respond to such comments with ‘you can get killed walking across the street, can’t you?”

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How can one not want to visit the place that birthed all three of the Abrahamic faiths? How can anyone, either religious or not, think that there is not a more important spot on earth than the one where so many of the worlds’ religious struggles have taken place?

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There is so much history yet to be discovered on this most sacred of soils. So many stories yet to be told.And the best thing about taking a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is that you also become part of the story. Yes, you become a part of the history of a region where thousands upon thousands of other pilgrims just like you have arrived here from over the centuries.

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Pilgrims like Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Pope John Paul II, and countless movie stars, pop singers, and heads of state just to name a few from recent history.

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But besides those, you will trace the footsteps of pilgrims who have come to the Holy Land throughout different time. During the Renaissance, poets such as Lord Byron visited the region and the Middle Ages saw a huge influx of people as well. The Crusades may have been going on in one part of the Holy Land, but pilgrims seeking the land of Jesus came through at other ends of the region not active in the war. Along the way they endured hardship and pain, but with their eyes fixed on the prize of seeing and worshipping in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, they continued on until they arrived at their destinations.

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Where else in the world can you make such a claim?

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Come to the Holy Land. Join your ancient ancestors in the walk of your life. Come see where it all began, where Jesus walked, preached and spoke his words of peace to all.  Come to the Holy Land. There your sisters and brothers in faith wait just for you! 

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By: Sue Stanton

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To join a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2009 please contact me at merton420@hotmail.com

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This book is my favorite to date and suits ages 4-10. Just out from Paulist Press in time for Lent 2008, it is part of a Catholic best selling and award winning series for kids. I am excited to hear your feedback on it.

You know, the Stations are pretty intense. They speak of the torture and death of Jesus on the Cross but they also give to us a pathway for looking at the difficulties and challenges held within the every day struggle of our own lives. Pick up a copy and let me know if you agree.

This book is dedicated to the Christians of the Holy Land–those steadfast keepers of the flame–who maintain a living presence there and who I would especially invite you to go and show your solidarity with. They are an extra special jewel of the Church and pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a tour every Christian should make. Our rich spiritual heritage lies waiting in the rocks, stones, sand and dust. What a great privilege it is to meet these people.