Postscripts From The Catholic Spitfire Grill

So today as I was heading to the eye doctor’s to pick up the jacket left behind by my children a couple of days ago (mutter sputter), I passed a man walking with a duffel bag on his back in the brutal cold. (It was 47 degrees here and in Houston that is brutal. You may stop guffawing now if you live where 47 degrees is a winter heat wave.) He was clearly down on his luck and I said a quick prayer for him as I went in the opposite direction that he was walking. But on the way home, he was walking in the same direction I was driving and I was just overcome with wanting to help. Now, I know it is not the sensible thing to do to pick up a stranger, but I didn’t have my children with me so I decided that I was risking only myself. I also ignored the very sensible voice of my best friend on the phone who said “You are going to do WHAT!? You had better CALL me when you drop him off” Good. Not sensible but I’ve got someone in the background waiting to call the cavalary if I don’t turn up…that’s prudent. I made a u-turn and offered to help.He was headed to “Nawlins.”  Well now, “Nawlins” wasn’t on my list of places to visit but I did offer to take him the 30 or so miles to I-10 where he was more likely to find somebody who was headed that way. I dropped him off with money for some meals and he walked off in the direction of Nawlins and I picked up my cell phone and assured my best friend of my safety. It wasn’t convenient. It wasn’t sensible. But it was the right thing to do nonetheless.

When I got home, I sat down to do today’s Mass readings with the children. And today’s gospel added precisely the right grace notes to my morning.

Mark 4:21-25 Jesus said to his disciples, “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible; nothing is secret except to come to light. Anyone who has ears to hear ought to hear.” He also told them, “Take care what you hear. The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you, and still more will be given to you. To the one who has, more will be given; from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

Is there anything even remotely sensible about the Grace we are given from God? How many times do we squander the gifts we are given? And how many times have we hurt our Lord by rejecting Him? Sensible indeed. If He can be vulnerable, and risk having His previous gifts to us squandered and rejected, how much more should we be ridiculous for His sake?

Let me be clear. I do not support either major candidate for the presidency. I have disliked McCain and his politics for as long as I can remember. I have disliked Obama and his politics for not quite as long. Nevertheless, I cannot cast my vote for someone who is campaiging on a promise to pass legislation that will surely increase the number of abortions in this country. I am not a one issue voter, but Obama’s absolutely uncompromising stance on abortion including voting against protecting babies born alive, and partial birth abortions, etc. totally disqualifies him for dog catcher much less POTUS.

But I digess. Back to voting third party. Unless a third party candidate is on the ballot in enough states to win an electoral majority and ideally in all 50 states (and yes, I know how hard that is to accopmlish for a third party candidate) they are simply not only not going to win. Furthermore, they are not prepared to govern if they do win.

The Constitution Party candidate (the one I have heard most often as the favored third party choice…although, he is not my particular temptation in the third party realm), Chuck Baldwin, is currently on the ballot (not as a write-in) in states constituting 318 electoral votes. That leaves 220 electoral votes that he absolutely cannot get. You need 270 to win.

So to be clear here, all Obama and McCain have to do TOGETHER is get 48 electoral votes in the states where Baldwin is on the ballot and he cannot win. Can’t. You think that Obama isn’t going to take 55 electoral votes in California? Or that Texas (34 electoral votes) isn’t going to McCain? That’s the reality.

And let’s just suspend reality for a minute and ask, “How is a third party candidate, that doesn’t even have the depth of support to get on the ballot in all 50 states going to govern in the event he actually got elected?” The whole idea of accumulating and spending “political capital” is a very real one and a third party candidate wouldn’t have ANY to start with.

I think that third party candidates for President help foster the notion that the most important vote we make is the one for President and that the only way we have to influence politics is with our vote. Meadow muffins. We’ve got a lot of options available to us. We can build a new party by doing the hard work necessary to get local people on the ballot and building from there, NOT by starting at the top and working down. We can have fund-raisers and talk to our neighbors for the the entire 4 years between presidential elections so that there is a base to build from. We can support the special interests that we care the most about with our hard earned money. We can write those people we do elect and send letters to the editor and hold our elected officials accountable ALL of the time and not just the 6 months before a presidential election.

It’s not our presidential vote that we “throw away.” It’s all the time between elections that is thrown away when we could have been working and investing some of our OWN political capital so that we aren’t faced with a choice of the lesser of two evils. If we are faced with a choice of the lesser of two evils, I don’t think that voting thrid party is the way to assuage our conscience. It’s how we use our time and money between elections that will truly fix our conscience.

This…..

….is a baptismal font.

You will see something similar to it in every Catholic Church every place on the planet. They come in many different sizes and shapes and depending on when the church was built it might be at the front of the church or at the door as you walk in. Even if it is big and looks like it might sort of be like a fountain, it is not. It is a baptismal font. You may dip your fingers in the water and bless yourself with it, if you would like. Even if you are not Catholic. Really. Everyone is welcome to bless themselves with the water. It is not, however, a wishing well. Please do not throw money into it.

Over the years, the thoughts that go through my head have varied. At the beginning of my homeschooling journey, I used paper and pencil and could do this job in a few hours over each weekend. Gradually at I added more children to the school roster and as they advanced in “wisdom and stature” [snort] the job became more complex and I added software to help me with the task. Those years were marked by a sense of optimism. I couldn’t wait to share with my children all of these exciting learning opportunities. I loved grammar (can’t proofread for beans though in case you were wondering where the evidence of that love is)…why shouldn’t they love it too!? So of course, a langauge arts program that includes learning how to diagram sentences would be fun for us all. Latin? Of course! A daily nature journal? What a way to get out into God’s Creation and learn to love it! I won’t bore you with the laundry list but the evidence of my optimism is still all there on my schoolroom shelves. The optimism of those earlier years has been replaced by a sense of reality. The reality is that my children have long regarded anything involving actually writing on paper to be something akin to a form of medieval torture. The sentence diagramming thing? It’s gathering dust. Somehow the children that God gave me don’t appreciate the beauty or the importance of grammar. Latin? Well there wasn’t room for the second langauge they needed (Spanish) and that third language I wanted them to have (Latin). My visions of well scrubbed, happy, polite, obedient children enthusiastically participating in the formation of their minds has been replaced with reality. They’re grumpy in the morning. For that matter, they are grumpy right up to the point where I say that we’ve done enough school for the day. They still have trouble correctly identifying whether the dishes are clean in the dishwasher and responding appropriately. I still can’t see to make them understand the wearing of clean clothes is an important life skill. They CRY if they have to write anything more than a few sentences. In short, I have to push and cajole and persuade and bribe and pester and nag and….

Just like God has to do to me? To get me to join in all that He has for me?

SHHHH…..I didn’t hear that Lord, I was busy telling you about how my children make me work SO hard to get them to do these wonderful things. Would you please not interrupt me with a “teachable moment” about my own faults?

And so I leave you with the first immutable rule of homeschooling….

These people and people like them….and here should not be getting ugly emails much less death threats or threats of any kind. Yes. What has been said and done is unspeakably ugly and disrespectful. Blasphemous. So?

As Christians we are commanded to love those who ridicule us and revile us. Period.

Sure. We can storm eBay and ask that they not allow the sale of consecrated items. We can make known the depth of outrage caused by such desecration. We can take reasonable precautions to prevent additional acts of desecration, but we have to LOVE the people that mock us and our Faith. That means no death threats. No violence. No ugly words. Not just because these things are counter-productive, but because they are wrong.

If you need a weapon, drop to your knees and fast and pray. Offer reparation on their behalf.

Here’s one to get you started…..

Act of Reparation

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, animated with a desire to repair the outrages unceasingly offered to Thee, we prostrate before Thy throne of mercy, and in the name of all mankind, pledge our love and fidelity to Thee!

O Sacred Heart, through Thy powerful grace, may we become Thy apostles in the midst of a corrupted world, and be Thy crown in the kingdom of heaven. Amen.

Besides….bad manners speak for themselves.

Yes. I know this was much worse than just bad manners but at the very least it was terribly bad manners and on that most reasonable people could agree.

and feel like this:

Of course some of us are just wearing feathers, doing our best bird impression, and chanting “Here kitty, kitty….”  but I digress….

Now besides feeling like the conversation is nothing but a set-up for converting you from the clutches of Rome, there is the sheer magnitude of what you’ve got to know to be ready for even the most basic challenges to your faith.

Then there is the questioner who has spent the entire conversation hammering away at the “You worship statues and dead people/Mary worship” lines, only to walk away and announce that Catholics never talk about their relationship with Jesus!!

Now if it turns out that the Shroud of Turin has nothing to do with  Jesus, my world is not going to be shattered. But after reading this book, I am convinced that it is more probable that the shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus than not. I think of it as the burial cloth of Jesus. In any case, because the image is of a beaten and crucified man and I cannot see the shroud and not think of Jesus. So I purchased a high quality print of the shroud and hung it on the wall at the foot of my bed.

Obviously, it easily calls to mind the very high price that was paid for my redemption by Our Lord. But it is a detail that I learned of the image on the shroud from The Shroud of Turin, that got me the most teary when I read the book. The image on the Shroud of Turin bears the distinct imprint of flowers. It had just never occurred to me that those disciples that took charge of His Body and His burial, would have included flowers with the linen, and spices, and aloes. I would love to have heard Jesus on the hillside for the Sermon on the Mount. I would love to have been present at the Wedding at Cana. There are any number of events miracles in the Gospels that I would love to have been present for, but most of all I think, I would like to have been among the disciples that brought Him flowers on that day.

I can’t take back the sins that made it necessary for Him to die. I just want to bring Him flowers, to let Him know how sorry I am and to say “Thank you.”

Too many times I think that we think we are being holy when we can pick up our fingers, point them,  and accurately discern the sin that our neighbor has committed….did you notice how I dragged you right into this?….all right….Let me re-phrase that. Too many times, I think I am being holy when I can accurately discern sin in someone else’s life. It’s so darn easy isn’t it? They are too focused on money or they gossip or lust or are ungenerous with their time or their money. But in the end, most of the time they know they are sinning and quite frankly don’t need hypocritical me stepping in to do the Holy Spirit’s job. And in the end, my helpfully pointing out where the poor sinner needs to straighten up usually just ends in ME being accused of being judgmental…can you imagine? Truthfully, I don’t go around pointing such things out but I do stuggle with the temptation to do so from time to time. But perhaps it is because I am so easily tempted to uncharitableness and judgementalism that I was so struck by St. Catherine of Siena. Here was a woman who was so intensely devoted to Our Lord and so deeply committed to rooting out all worldliness in her life that she simply radiated the Holy Spirit. Apparently she inspired people to abandon their sinful lives by get this….just being holy. She didn’t walk into a room and tell a priest that he was violating his vow of poverty by the richness of his possessions. She didn’t stand on a street corner, point her finger, and tell the notorious libertine that he should leave his married mistress. No. She just sat and listened or watched or prayed (silently) and the next thing  you know these people were making a beeline for the confessional, selling their possessions and giving them to the poor, and abandoning their worldly ways. Not because she said a word about it to them but because she gave herself completely to Our Lord and trusted the Holy Spirit in her to speak to those around her instead of opening her mouth herself.