Celebrate

This past Saturday we hosted a dinner at home, a Lord's Day Celebration (kinda like a Jewish Sabbath) in honor of our son, Prince 85 and his bride the Princess K.  About 40 friends were present as we prayed and sang and rejoiced in the many ways that God has loved us.  It was an evening I don't want to forget, full of smiles and hugs and laughter, good conversation and some re-connecting. 

Nephew Jake, Goof Ball, Semper Fi

Jake, you used to be a goof ball.  Then you grew up and became a Marine.  You look so strong and dignified in your dress uniform.  And I am convinced that you are an excellent Marine. But I suspect you are still a goof ball.  You just hide it well.

In this moment, as you prepare to go, I see images of you as a toddler playing with Paul, as a goofy kid with braces, as a sober/hilarious teen and as a focused emerging adult at college.  And of you in your dress uniform – so straight and strong and determined.  It’s a far distance that you will travel, not just in miles but in experience and I expect that the intensity of both the brotherhood and the challenges you deal with in the coming year will be with you forever. In the midst of it – in the moments of boredom and tedium as well as the times of danger and loss I pray that you will cling to Jesus (he too has been to hell and back). If you do, He will bring healing to your soul in every way and in every need. 

You are still a goof ball.

Love you,

Aunt Katie

Any time the soul chooses to isolate rather than to embrace, it is the ego

Betty Duffy included this reference, uncited, in a post this week  and it struck me hard.  How may times have I willed to remove myself from a situation that was not to my liking - at church , in my community or family - thinking that I'd just about had it with this "whatever" - and how many times was  it a manifestation of exactly this dynamic?  Something to think about.

Sustained or Guilty

I'll call her Betty, a woman I've been talking with at church over the past year.  She brought her daughter for First Communion and decided it was time for her to get things in order in her own life and become confirmed.  So she came through my class.  She's a cheerful but wounded soul with many regrets about past choices that have landed her in a very difficult place.  She's working her tail off, has two jobs, trying to figure her life out and how to meet her responsibilities - and meanwhile she's carrying around a heap of guilt and anxiety.  One thing that's very clear is that she knows she needs God in her life, she wants God in her life and she's really trying to do the right thing.  Over the summer we talked about her desire to join the Bible Study class that would begin in September.  But we're three weeks in and she hasn't made it.  I included her in a mass email about something else and received a guilt ridden apology for "failing God again" regarding not making it to the study.  So that's one story.  Hold on to it.

Second story: I was speaking with someone about a family member, married outside the church for many years.  He wants to get his marriage blessed and return to the sacraments.  Meanwhile, he doesn't go to church and tells his mom that he knows he "should" go anyway but without being able to fully participate he's not very motivated - but he feels guilty.

What do these two stories have in common?  This idea that somehow when we don't do what we "know we should" that we're failing God, that we're being bad.  That notion so falls short of the reality it makes me crazy just thinking about it.  What is it about us, we humans, that we think that we can "fail God"? What's really happening is that we are MISSING OUT!

Does a child have to be threatened that if they don't show up for Christmas they'll be in trouble?  No. Not ever.  Why is that?  Because the child is very clear that Christmas is just about the best day ever in the year and there's no way a kid would want to miss it.  Similarly, when Betty doesn't make it to Mass or to Bible Study, what she should recognize is that she didn't receive the gift she might have if she had made it.  So, it is a loss - to her! By extension, perhaps we could say it is a loss for God as well, because he wants every good thing for us.  But we're not failing God, we're failing ourselves.  We all (as a church, as individuals) need to  hold up the reality that when we show up for God we're coming to RECEIVE, to be sustained and fed and nourished and gifted (!) not to MEASURE UP to God's expectations or standards.  There are a lot of things we do that we should feel a little (or a lot) of guilt for.  And if we're lazy or self indulgent and we fail ourselves and others we should indeed feel guilt - guilt is an emotion intended to call us to change.  But if we're sick and exhausted and strung out - or stuck in the aftermath of a bad choice and trying to work it out - well, wallowing in guilt is not the best course.  There's good guilt that calls us to change our course, our behavior.  And then there's bad guilt - the kind that paralyzes us and makes us feel rotten - but doesn't motivate us to change.

And another thing....about freedom.

When a moral choice is discussed, either in reference to the choice of a friend or one's own, it is helpful to keep in mind that the choice is in fact that of the individual, not of the parents or the society.  And that the choice is best judged in light of the relationship one has with God, in reference to our nature, our dignity.  Choices are best understood as a positive conforming to the human dignity we have been given rather than a conforming to societal (church or otherwise) norms.  This kind of choice is powerful and resonates internally rather than becoming a reluctant or resentful limiting according to the expectations of others.

I've been reading an interview with  Bryan Caplan, author of the book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think. He appears to be the  anti–Tiger Mom. “Calm down and have more kids” is his message. (Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University.) His position (with references to "twin research")suggests that parents are not particularly important in the long run, shouldn't take themselves so seriously, and should  "focus on enjoying your journey and living every day together to the fullest." His tone is lighthearted and positive - but I see a couple of issues.

  Seems to me we're just talking about the age old tension between nature and nurture. I certainly see that each of my 5 (almost grown) kids was a unique person from birth. And I agree with Bryan that contemporary parents are out of control with their controlling patterns - and that they're stressing out for no purpose. But I can't go so far as to say that parents don't matter - I see the fruit of our approaches, choices and values in the character and preoccupations of each of my 5. The  attitudes they have toward politics, the relational attitude they have to God and church, the moral choices they make and uphold to their peers are the result of our purposeful formation. We have proposed a world view, loved them well and called them to serve each other and the world - and they do. We always understood that they would have a choice in how they would live - its that darn free will thing - and we tried to make an effective case for the choices we desired. And we had a lot of fun too.

What Have We Done - Raising Children and Human Freedom

My youngest son (17) is just back from an academic program at University of Dallas.  Two weeks with 20 or so other teens, reading literature and philosophy, playing capture the flag and ultimate frisbee, making new friends and flirting (quite a bit).  He had a great time.
We spent the evening receiving a bit of a data dump on his experiences there.  Much of what we heard were biographies of those he became friends with, the pranks they played, the jokes they told - but peppered in there were references to discussions of John Donne and Nietzche at 2AM (there was a curfew but sounds like it was routinely broken by these "great kids").  It warms a mother's (and a father's) heart.....
Sounds like UD has become a possibility for college applications.  That was part of our intent in spending the money to send him.  UD or not, it seemed like a program that would benefit him in several ways - resume building, perspective building.  The outcome seems to have fulfilled our hopes - he's full of comments about Antigone, Agammemnon and Shakespeare's Sonnet 94 (which I have been informed is "chill" - current teen speak for cool).  He wants to finish memorizing it. ( I am trying to contain myself!) 
Whether Prince 94 ends up going to UD or somewhere else our money was well spent, invested, in sending him to the summer program.
These kind of investments are part of proposing a way of life, of a way of focusing on eternal and essential truths to our children.  And this proposal is itself an essential element in respecting the freedom, the human freedom of our children.  In this, we imitate our Father who is the originator of our freedom.  He proposes Life to us and we in our turn, join in proposing Life to our maturing children.