But what do you do when you are drowning?

This morning I was up earlier than normal and read a blog post about a facebook / pinterest meme that I had not seen yet.  Jennifer Fulwiler wrote an excellent blog post about how this meme proves that we are living in a culture of death.  She also referred to Mindy Goorchenko's also excellent post pointing out "flaws in the analogy."  I highly recommend reading both of these posts.

Maybe I should have stayed in bed, or maybe I should not have gone online and prayed instead because that facebook meme is really bothering me.  Jennifer and Mindy make very good points of which I am in wholehearted agreement.  But that meme really hits home, and I believe that is why it is so insidious.  Comparing the "birth of a baby to a horrible form of death" is so insidious because it is a twisting of a beautiful truth.  Getting married and having children is a death, but not a horrible form of death that brings destruction.  Getting married and having children is a death to self that brings about life.  And if you do not know about death that brings life, that brings redemption, you will drown.   

"It stuns the conscience," as Jennifer says.  It stuns my conscience because it just so happens that right now in my life, I feel like I am drowning.  Sometimes drowning just in dishes and laundry and little people needing me at every minute of the day, but also in a deeper way drowning in emotions, and hurts and trying to find healing.  Sometimes I go through times where I feel dry and parched, especially in prayer, and this can bring desolation.  Other times desolation comes because I feel overwhelmed, like I am drowning.  It is in these dark moments where I think how could we possibly handle another child or how could I possibly stay here and be  a wife to my husband and a mother to my children.  And my fight or flight instinct kicks in and I either run away for a period of time or fight my way to the surface just trying to get a breath.  Neither really works.  Only surrender does. 

The answer is not to stay out of the water.  The answer is not to put on a temporary life jacket.  The answer is not to take swimming lessons.  The real answer is to let go and surrender and let the grief, sadness, hurt, and yes, death, come.  Because there is new life that is better than anything we can imagine.  Do not be afraid, Christ will rescue you.  He will bring you to the surface.

UPDATE:  Elizabeth Foss has a fantastic post Overwhelmed by the Everyday that really helps!  Surrender to God, listen to Him, and say yes to Him!

 

This is Beauty, You O Lord, have ravished my heart

+JMJ+

Tonight as I was praying in the Chapel with Jesus in the tabernacle, beauty is what was on my heart, only it felt heavy, thinking of how beauty is distorted and ignored and discarded and degraded in our world right now.  I had just read Marc Barnes' post, Dappled Things My Dear Readers.  True Beauty elevates our hearts and minds to God and His Glory.

In my facebook newsfeed this afternoon, one right after another was first a picture posted by Endow on the Dignity of Women and Feminine Genius and then another picture from a feminist group whose name I do not even want to type here, shared by a friend.  The contrast was so startling that it jarred me into realizing how the beauty of feminine dignity is so much under attack, even by those who profess to be all about giving voice to women.  It makes me so sad for my sisters that do not know their true dignity as beloved daughters of God.  Another quote that that was on my newsfeed was from Dignitas Magazine:

"True beauty emanates from a woman who boldly and unabashedly knows who she is in Christ."~Jen Smidt

True beauty is shown in these women making their Final Profession of Vows with the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles.  They sing, "The joy I feel in my soul comes from knowing You."  That is Beauty.

But, I am human, and my heart became heavy once again thinking of how, I, myself, do not feel beautiful.  Right there in quiet, peace, and tranquility, I forgot myself the dignity I have as a daughter of God.  So I began focusing on myself, rather than Christ and the beauty emanating from women who boldly and unabashedly know who they are in Christ. 

I feel spiritually beat up, bruised, tired, worn out, and just plain not beautiful.  It has been a difficult week, and I am probably too hard on myself, but really, being a wife and mother is hard work, and just plain messy.  This is especially true with young children that all have minds of their own along with a mom who is trying to figure it all out herself and often forgets who she is in Christ.  My heart has a long way to go to find healing and I just found myself thinking how can I ever be beautiful, how can spiritually beat up, bruised, tired, worn out ever be beautiful?  I feel more like a worn out wife, and definitely not a bride.  How could that be beautiful?

And then something miraculous happened.  I looked up from the tabernacle to the Crucifix, and then I realized that beat up, bruised, tired, and worn out is Beautiful, but only on the Cross.  I often contemplate the Cross when I come to pray, but I think that there must be some new lighting on the Cross in our Chapel.  It seemed brighter, and even the shadow cast by Christ hanging on the Cross, pouring out His life for me was beautiful.  Beautiful beyond words.  And He poured Himself out like that, took on the ugliness and harshness of the Cross, out of Love for me, to reconcile me to Our Father.  That is true Beauty.

From a poem I wrote a few years ago:

We weep here at His Cross, we cry out in anguish.
He has overcome all by His Love and Mercy.
This is Beauty, You O Lord, have ravished my heart
by Your Love and Mercy. Your Cross has set me free.

Amen.

My Mother Mary

+JMJ+

My Mother Mary

Conceived by Grace,

All Grace in Grace.
Purity whole and Love to welcome
All Love in Love, your heart awaits.

To you, all innocence and beauty,

God’s messenger beckons, and
Your yes heaven awaits.
His Love He gives and you receive.

All Beauty while Incarnation rests,

You give yourself complete to Love.
Proceeding in haste to where He calls,
His Glory magnified by your willing heart.

Oh, the gift of His life,

As you await His sweet embrace
To hold His hand Divine while
Pondering His sweet face.

He depends on you,

His mother He trusts.
You give Him all of your mother’s heart
As you await the Cross Divine.

By your consent

His Heart opens to mine.
And you give your sorrowful heart
To him who knows his Love’s heartbeat.

By your yes again, you invite His bride

To rest in your Motherly Love
And in His grace Divine,
Make our hearts like unto thine.

His Fire in you, He gives us too.

All Love in Love,
All Grace in Grace
That we may ponder His sweet face.

And when your earthly walk dims

You surrender yourself wholly
And He brings you home
To dwell with Him.

~KS

Young women need justice, not drugs.

Veiling and the Virtues of Humility and Confidence

Judy has a great post over at Community of Catholic Bloggers about Donning the Mantilla.  She really has some great things to say about this subject, and it really hit home for me.  As my love for Jesus in the Eucharist has grown, God has given me a desire to veil, but I do not believe there is anyone in our parish that veils.  And so, because of a lack of courage and because of my own pride, I do not veil.  And I am not sure at this point if my daughters would begin to veil without putting up a fuss since they are not used to it. 

It is a lack of courage because I am afraid of being the only one veiling.  And it falls into pride for me because I do not want my friends, family and other parishioners to think I am being prideful by wearing a veil.  And would it be prideful for me to wear a veil?  Or is is prideful to not wear a veil?  Judy really touches on this very question in her post.  It seems like it is a great act of humility and love, and that is how I would want to begin, solely as an act of humility and love for Christ and His Adorable Heart.  Would it remain as an act of humble love?  Is it prudent to veil at this time? 

I have many more questions than answers about this.  My heart is bogged down a bit with this.  And my husband is not necessarily in favor of me veiling either, but if I say I am being obedient to him, it really is just an excuse, because I know he can be persuaded on this subject.  And really, if God has given me this desire, why am I so afraid?

What do you think about veiling?

Go read Judy's post, it is excellent!

Poll at Fr. Z's Blog

Fr. Z has several polls at his blog regarding our opinion on male and female altar servers. Please go vote at:

Should the Holy Father reverse the interpretation of the 1983 Code which allowed for female service at the altar?


Does an all-male sanctuary foster vocations to the priesthood?


Sanctuary encompasses the part of the church within the altar rail.

For what it's worth, my opinion is that there should not be female altar servers and that an all male sanctuary does foster vocations to the priesthood. Having said this, though, our daughters will NOT be altar servers even though it is allowed in our parish, but at this time we would permit them to be a lector.

Red Cardigan has a great post at And Sometimes Tea that makes some good points from a feminine perspective, although I am not in 100 percent agreement with her. I didn't read all the comments at her post but am pretty sure there are definitely some things said in the comments over there that I do not agree with.

So far I have pretty much avoided the negative comment atmosphere I've heard about in the Catholic blogosphere. I hope to remain blissfully naive about this, but if not, so be it.

UPDATE: At least that's the way I interpreted sanctuary, that it means the part of the church within the altar rail (or where the altar rail should be). Maybe I don't have that right but that is what I based my vote on.

Women of Mystery Women of Hope

Women of Mystery Women of Hope:



H/T Fr. Andrew

Empowering women???

Al Gore recently said this regarding global warming (oops I mean climate change) during an appearance in New York City:

“One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principle ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women,” Gore said. “You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children have, the spacing of the children.

“You have to lift child survival rates so that parents feel comfortable having small families and most important — you have to educate girls and empower women,” he said. “And that’s the most powerful leveraging factor, and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.”

Ubiquitous availablity of fertility management? This empowers women? Really? Societies begin to maker better "choices"? Really? Maybe he needs to read this. Or possibly this might convince him. Or perhaps this? No, I guess it is because of the money he can't see the truth.

I thought that population control was so 70s. Guess not.

Over population is a myth.

Celebrate Life articles!

This morning, I was so excited to see a blog post by Leticia at Cause for Our Joy about an article she has written as a tribute to her mom and how her "mother's example as a woman of prayer and pro-life action led to [her] activism and prayer, and that of her grandaughters" for the magazine Celebrate Life. This article is only available in the print edition of the magazine. Hmmmm....may have to think about subscribing to American Life League's Celebrate Life!

On the cover of this issue is Dr. Mildred Jefferson!! And in this issue is a beautiful tribute to Dr. Jefferson by Judie Brown.

Considering I did not know anything about Dr. Jefferson until just a few days ago and wrote a short post about it, I am excited to see this. Thanks Leticia!

Feminine Genius in the Catholic Church

I read an amazing post by Elizabeth Scalia over at The Anchoress called The Myth of Held Back Catholic Women. It was very inspiring. Especially considering the media's attack on the Church in recent weeks. Not that these attacks are anything new, but they have been quite intense recently. The Anchoress was responding to the Lisa Miller piece at Newsweek which she called "staggering nonsense on several levels". Amen sister! People who are attacking the Church about not ordaining women do not understand Catholic teaching at the most fundamental level. This is not the post to go into what the Church teaches (look for that sometime in the future) about why in her wisdom, given by Christ, women are not ordained. I am very thankful that God created men and women to complement eachother, not to compete with eachother. There are God-given gifts and abilities women have that men do not, and God-given gifts and abilities men have that women do not. This does not negate our equal dignity, but in fact is a grace that helps us to fulfill our potential and become all we are meant to be.

Here's an exerpt from the Anchoress refuting the myth about oppression of women in the Catholic Church:

The fact is, for all of the talk about how oppressive the church has been for women, there has been no other institution in history which has given women such free reign to create, explore, discover, serve, manage, build, expand, usually with very little help from the coffers of the diocese in which they worked, and often with little to no intrusion on the part of the male hierarchy.

And these have not been mealy mouthed “sheeplike” women, but educated, accomplished women who have chosen their lives because they could do nothing greater with their gifts. Rose Hawthorne, daughter of Nathanial Hawthorne, founded the Hawthorne Dominicans, an order of nuns who take care of cancer patients – free of charge – and who subsist entirely on donations. The Grand Duchess, Elizabeth left her royal privilege behind to serve the poorest of the poor and suffered a 20th century martyrdom. The daughter of General Patton joined forces with a nun, Mother Benedicta, in France after WWII to come to America and form the Abbey of Regina Laudis, an abbey that is still attracting educated women, sculptors, writers, linguists, musicians – creative women – to use their gifts in the praise of God and for the good of us all. Did I mention that Mother Benedicta, before she became a nun,
was a medical doctor who helped to hide and treat Jews who were being hunted by
the Nazis?

I can go on…Mother Theresa built an international order of women which thrives, doing work no one wants to do, wouldn’t do in a million years. For that matter, she might seem quite mad – she probably is – but there is in Alabama an extraordinary and strange woman named Mother Angelica, the media-mogul you never heard of, who founded a Franciscan monastery and church in (of all places) the hottest bible belt in the deep South, and then – with two hundred dollars ($200.00) and no help from her bishop – was inspired to build a television station (and a radio station), which has become EWTN, a global Catholic network – also founding an order of friars – while hobbling around on crutches, yet.

Extraordinary, mad women, all of them! And I cannot think of a single institution on the face of the earth other than the Catholic Church which would have allowed them to run with their madness, BE who they were and accomplish great things.

The church gets a bad rap in this area. She has fostered literally thousands of great, great women, whose accomplishments are unjustly overlooked because they were done in a habit and a wimple. Compare them with the ‘ideal’ of today’s “smart, educated, successful” woman, like . . . Maureen Dowd, who only yesterday was whimpering about how difficult it is to be a celebrated woman in a position of prestige and power because – you know – men are so mean! The contrast could not be more
stark.

Do go read it.