OK. Quick rant about the abysmal lack of traditional Christmas music, even on our local Catholic radio station. You'd think it was bad enough that all major retailers have censored themselves from saying "Merry Christmas," printing it in their ads and playing religious carols in their stores. As a tightwad, I would have said not to buy CD's of Christmas music since it is so ubiquitous from Thanksgiving on. But I must be mistaken, because I have yet to hear more than one verse of two songs, and that from TBN, forcing me to watch their over-the-top lounge act out of sheer desperation.
So I am suddenly struck with the desire to hear all the old favorites, especially the most religious (e.g. most "offensive") ones, and I guess I'll have to go out and buy music CD's to do it. And I'll probably have to buy them at the Catholic bookstore, since major retail stores have probably censored or watered down their "holiday" music collections to include only instrumental arrangements of traditional carols, Bing Crosby standards, or compilations from Garth Brooks and Mariah Carey. And since I can't remember more than one verse of any of these carols, I'll have to go and get a book with the words in it. Sheesh.
Come to think of it, the secular world isn't too shy to milk the Catholic ethos for all it's worth, especially when it suits their purpose to distort and misrepresent the Catholic faith. I mean, how many cheesy pseudo-scholarly shows have we been forced to watch about "the historical Jesus"? They show their intrepid interviewers talking to Protestants in bare-bones churches, but the imagery of the show is all Catholic--images of the Blessed Virgin, the Pope, stained glass windows, and icons of the baby Jesus--and that's the "sexy" that sells the show.
With one shining exception.
I happened to catch an airing of "The Sound of Music" last Friday night. I'd forgotten that Maria starts out as "Sister Maria," a postulant at the local abbey. How refreshing it was to see nuns that weren't portrayed as frigid victims or subversive feminists, who were happy to be serving Christ. How refreshing it was to see the crucifix, the Church's ever-present reminder that it is Christ, and Him crucified, through whom we have our salvation. How wonderful that it is these same heroic nuns who encourage Maria to find her true vocation and who help her new family escape the Nazis.
I think the reason the world is so bent on censoring Christmas is that it's the last Catholic holiday. I mean, you have all these evangelicals with their campaigns to "put Christ back in Christmas," but they miss the fact that it's a MASS to celebrate the birth of Christ. In the Catholic Church, Christmas is not one day, but a season that lasts from Advent to Candlemas (Feb. 2). I read an excellent blog post on how, since the time of Martin Luther, one after another of the liturgical feasts that used to be celebrated as public holidays (holy days) have been subverted and secularized over the years, mostly by--surprise surprise--OTHER CHRISTIANS who saw these "Popish" celebrations as undermining their theological agendas.
The world loves the candles and the trees and the decorations and the presents, but forgets that this wealth of symbology and imagery is grounded in a thoroughly Catholic worldview that sees the material and the spiritual as one sacramental whole infused with God's grace. Both the secular view of Christmas (that glorifies only the material), and the Protestant view (that seeks to retain only the spiritual) have missed the boat. And until Christmas is properly understood once again in context, both groups will continue to have that hollow is-this-all-there-is feeling once the presents are unwrapped and the coffee pot's empty.
So crank up the Christmas carols, turn off the TV, and have a very happy, Catholic, holy day!
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Promised Pictures
Finally I've figured out how to publish pictures to the blog (a big breakthrough for a N-TG like me)! So anyone who is intrepid enough to find my site (I'm thinking friends and family here) can see and copy these pictures if they want.Above you can see newborn Thomas, and Mary, my midwife, giving him his first exam.
Dean bonding with baby.
This was funny until Carl tried to brush the baby's teeth...
Or was it his ear?That's all for now. Gotta get back on the chow train...
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Mommy Moped
Lately we've been watching a British TV show, an espionage series called The Sandbaggers. In this series, when the boss wants to send one of his agents off on a special op, he picks up a red telephone and says, "Agent So-and-so, you're on your bike." Such has been an accurate job description for me lately.
It's almost 8:30 and I'm just sitting down to dinner. Today I was lucky because I made time for a nap, but since I got up at 5:30 pm I've been feeding, bathing, and putting to bed kids. Pushing me through the day is this sense of urgency, that if I don't get up within the next 5 minutes, my schedule will be thrown off 15 minutes or more. Today my schedule has been thrown off by only 45 minutes, so like I said, I'm lucky.
Last night we were visiting friends we hadn't seen for six months, letting them meet the baby. I felt honor-bound to confide in the woman, a fifty-something who I know has never had children. "You know, I've been saying it's easy, but the truth is it's hard," I said, intending to insert an additional comment about the redemptive aspect of motherhood. But she broke in and said, "Oh, that's why I never had children." I shut my mouth.
For the past eighteen months I've seen myself as a sort of walking advertisement for motherhood: not frumpy and overweight, not stressed, not strapped for time or money, my house in order, my kid in line, et cetera. And every opportunity I've had to open my mouth I've expounded on the joys of motherhood, the pity that in today's society more people don't have children, and more of them--that I've discovered how being a stay-at-home mom has become a bona fide vocation for my life. I wonder how many experienced mothers overheard me, thinking, "She'll learn better someday."
Well they're right. It's wrong to try and convince people that they should have kids because, like home birth, "It's really not that hard." The Catholic church claims that, in the sacrament of marriage, the husband and wife are given special graces to enable them to carry out the endless, arduous task of parenthood. Because it IS hard. More so now than ever, because there are no support systems. Oh, there's day care for women who want to work (nearly everyone), and welfare for those who can't work (presumably everyone else). But for the woman struggling through the dense tangle of overgrowth that has come to choke the road to traditional motherhood, there's no one to help--outside of her church.
So what am I saying? Am I saying that I was wrong, that motherhood isn't worth it? On the contrary. Sometimes the harder a thing is, the more worthy it is of doing. And that's definitely true of motherhood. I used to want to be a famous writer, but now I'm not so sure. My kids are going to live forever. That's what souls do. And there's nobody who's going to have more influence over them than me. Not even their dad. Each one is going to be his own person, but he will bear the unique stamp of having been my child. No one else on earth can say that.
How many books can you remember that were "hot" in their day--whether it was five, twenty-five, or fifty years ago? What about a hundred years? Five hundred? How many trendy and timely tomes now sitting on the shelf at Barnes and Noble are going to be remembered in thirty years? I've shopped enough sidewalk sales to know the answer to that question. Fact is, no matter how invisible, unremarkable, or ordinary raising kids seems, that's where the action is--and there's nothing the big, sexy, worldly world offers that can match it.
It's almost 8:30 and I'm just sitting down to dinner. Today I was lucky because I made time for a nap, but since I got up at 5:30 pm I've been feeding, bathing, and putting to bed kids. Pushing me through the day is this sense of urgency, that if I don't get up within the next 5 minutes, my schedule will be thrown off 15 minutes or more. Today my schedule has been thrown off by only 45 minutes, so like I said, I'm lucky.
Last night we were visiting friends we hadn't seen for six months, letting them meet the baby. I felt honor-bound to confide in the woman, a fifty-something who I know has never had children. "You know, I've been saying it's easy, but the truth is it's hard," I said, intending to insert an additional comment about the redemptive aspect of motherhood. But she broke in and said, "Oh, that's why I never had children." I shut my mouth.
For the past eighteen months I've seen myself as a sort of walking advertisement for motherhood: not frumpy and overweight, not stressed, not strapped for time or money, my house in order, my kid in line, et cetera. And every opportunity I've had to open my mouth I've expounded on the joys of motherhood, the pity that in today's society more people don't have children, and more of them--that I've discovered how being a stay-at-home mom has become a bona fide vocation for my life. I wonder how many experienced mothers overheard me, thinking, "She'll learn better someday."
Well they're right. It's wrong to try and convince people that they should have kids because, like home birth, "It's really not that hard." The Catholic church claims that, in the sacrament of marriage, the husband and wife are given special graces to enable them to carry out the endless, arduous task of parenthood. Because it IS hard. More so now than ever, because there are no support systems. Oh, there's day care for women who want to work (nearly everyone), and welfare for those who can't work (presumably everyone else). But for the woman struggling through the dense tangle of overgrowth that has come to choke the road to traditional motherhood, there's no one to help--outside of her church.
So what am I saying? Am I saying that I was wrong, that motherhood isn't worth it? On the contrary. Sometimes the harder a thing is, the more worthy it is of doing. And that's definitely true of motherhood. I used to want to be a famous writer, but now I'm not so sure. My kids are going to live forever. That's what souls do. And there's nobody who's going to have more influence over them than me. Not even their dad. Each one is going to be his own person, but he will bear the unique stamp of having been my child. No one else on earth can say that.
How many books can you remember that were "hot" in their day--whether it was five, twenty-five, or fifty years ago? What about a hundred years? Five hundred? How many trendy and timely tomes now sitting on the shelf at Barnes and Noble are going to be remembered in thirty years? I've shopped enough sidewalk sales to know the answer to that question. Fact is, no matter how invisible, unremarkable, or ordinary raising kids seems, that's where the action is--and there's nothing the big, sexy, worldly world offers that can match it.
Monday, October 31, 2005
"Eating for Two"?
Although we are constantly bombarded with information on nutrition, new studies on how food makes a real difference in your health, and countless books on diet and the chemistry of food, I find it striking how little emphasized is the effect of what you eat on your pregnancy among health care authorities. "You're not really eating for two," they say. "All you need is 300 extra calories a day." In a country in which 60% of the population is not only overweight, but OBESE, this advice seems to make sense.
Except to my midwife.
"You haven't gained enough," she said at my last visit. I tipped the scale at 177 pounds, 17 pounds over my ideal ("skinny pants") weight. "Even if you have a seven pound baby," she went on, "you've got two pounds of placenta, three pounds of extra fluids, at least five pounds of fat for nursing, and with the extra blood volume--you've got to put on 26 pounds, minimum." Geez, I thought. Just when I can't fit anything else in my stomach. I said as much. "You need more calories and fat. Why don't you just go out and have a Whopper?" she said. "Most women would be glad to hear that." Then she recommended Haagen-Daz ice cream.
Now, I love my midwife, she's an incredible lady--I wouldn't trust my births to somebody who didn't exude competence. But I don't think she understands how against the grain her advice goes. I mean, it's one thing to add extra protein, fiber, and supplements to your diet when you're pregnant, but it's nearly impossible to add fat. Your stomach just isn't big enough and doesn't empty fast enough. I call this phenomenon the "pregnant lady gastric bypass," which is caused by having your stomach squished into the size of a bonbon by a squirming basketball-sized future quarterback (as this baby is turning out to be). If I ate a Whopper, I not only would be unable to eat any vegetables or fiber, but the fat would sit in my stomach for the next six hours. Ditto for danishes or Haagen-Daz. My only choice would be to give up all pretense of eating "healthfully," and to smack down regular doses of cream-cheese slathered Otis Spunkmeyer muffins--which just sounds disgusting.
The other problem with her advice is the cost. A fast-food burger is three dollars. So is a pint of Haagen-Daz. Danishes, which I keep mentioning because I actually have a craving for them, cost at least five dollars for a package of six to eight. When you consider that I buy my bread six loaves at a time for 33 cents a loaf, and make all my other baked goods from scratch, you can see how hard the tightwad mentality is on high-calorie foods. The exceptions are dairy products, which pretty much cost the same no matter if they're skim or whole. So I promised to buy the whole dairy products and eat them. The dilemma is amusing to my husband, who wouldn't miss a few pounds if he mislaid them. "Get thee to a Burgerville, woman. That's an order," he said. "Think of it as medicine for the baby." He had a point. I remarked on the irony that I'm willing to spend $37.00 on a bottle of fancy vitamins for my pregnancy, so why should I balk at a few extra dollars in my grocery cart?
It all comes down to habit. Once you've made the effort to change your diet, and once you've made the effort to switch to a money-saving mindset, you don't want to go back and undo all that work. You don't want to risk backsliding into old patterns. A solution might be on the horizon, however. I explained my dilemma to my neighbor. "Why don't you eat those Marie Callendar's meals?" she said. "We have a pregnant lady at work and she eats them. They have, like, 600 calories, and 400 of those are fat." Ah, I thought. This might work. Convenience foods do go on sale fairly regularly, and at least in a whole meal I would be getting vegetables and protein. TV dinner portions are always smaller, plus--I would not have to cook!
(I did buy the danishes, though.)
Except to my midwife.
"You haven't gained enough," she said at my last visit. I tipped the scale at 177 pounds, 17 pounds over my ideal ("skinny pants") weight. "Even if you have a seven pound baby," she went on, "you've got two pounds of placenta, three pounds of extra fluids, at least five pounds of fat for nursing, and with the extra blood volume--you've got to put on 26 pounds, minimum." Geez, I thought. Just when I can't fit anything else in my stomach. I said as much. "You need more calories and fat. Why don't you just go out and have a Whopper?" she said. "Most women would be glad to hear that." Then she recommended Haagen-Daz ice cream.
Now, I love my midwife, she's an incredible lady--I wouldn't trust my births to somebody who didn't exude competence. But I don't think she understands how against the grain her advice goes. I mean, it's one thing to add extra protein, fiber, and supplements to your diet when you're pregnant, but it's nearly impossible to add fat. Your stomach just isn't big enough and doesn't empty fast enough. I call this phenomenon the "pregnant lady gastric bypass," which is caused by having your stomach squished into the size of a bonbon by a squirming basketball-sized future quarterback (as this baby is turning out to be). If I ate a Whopper, I not only would be unable to eat any vegetables or fiber, but the fat would sit in my stomach for the next six hours. Ditto for danishes or Haagen-Daz. My only choice would be to give up all pretense of eating "healthfully," and to smack down regular doses of cream-cheese slathered Otis Spunkmeyer muffins--which just sounds disgusting.
The other problem with her advice is the cost. A fast-food burger is three dollars. So is a pint of Haagen-Daz. Danishes, which I keep mentioning because I actually have a craving for them, cost at least five dollars for a package of six to eight. When you consider that I buy my bread six loaves at a time for 33 cents a loaf, and make all my other baked goods from scratch, you can see how hard the tightwad mentality is on high-calorie foods. The exceptions are dairy products, which pretty much cost the same no matter if they're skim or whole. So I promised to buy the whole dairy products and eat them. The dilemma is amusing to my husband, who wouldn't miss a few pounds if he mislaid them. "Get thee to a Burgerville, woman. That's an order," he said. "Think of it as medicine for the baby." He had a point. I remarked on the irony that I'm willing to spend $37.00 on a bottle of fancy vitamins for my pregnancy, so why should I balk at a few extra dollars in my grocery cart?
It all comes down to habit. Once you've made the effort to change your diet, and once you've made the effort to switch to a money-saving mindset, you don't want to go back and undo all that work. You don't want to risk backsliding into old patterns. A solution might be on the horizon, however. I explained my dilemma to my neighbor. "Why don't you eat those Marie Callendar's meals?" she said. "We have a pregnant lady at work and she eats them. They have, like, 600 calories, and 400 of those are fat." Ah, I thought. This might work. Convenience foods do go on sale fairly regularly, and at least in a whole meal I would be getting vegetables and protein. TV dinner portions are always smaller, plus--I would not have to cook!
(I did buy the danishes, though.)
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Physical Fitness and the Stay-at-Home Mom
I've run into enough trim, fit, and trendy SAHMs to make me doubt the old canard that says if a woman stays at home long enough she'll "let herself go" and lose her looks. But you occasionally spot a woman who looks as if she hasn't left the house since 1986 and has cases of Ho-ho's delivered to her back door. Then the trim, fit, and trendy working mom thinks, "Horrors! It's a good thing I kept working and haven't lost my looks." Now don't go all politically correct on me. If you're the Ho-ho mom, rest assured that I don't believe looks equal reality. The fact is that we have all been given different gifts, some native, some acquired. Some people just don't really care about dressing up for the benefit of others. Some are hyper-self-conscious and are constantly "done" to the nines--hair, nails, etc. But it doesn't necessarily follow that being a SAHM means inevitable weight gain.
Whether a woman is more likely to gain weight if she stays at home is dependent on several factors. Since scientists and nutritionists disagree on what exactly causes obesity, I can hardly mount an analysis here. Surely there exist working women who gain weight because, stressed and strapped for time, they end up overeating or overconsuming convenience foods without the benefit of extra activity, just as there are SAHMs who lose weight because they finally have the time to exercise and cook nutritious meals. I will exclude for the moment those with a disorder, such as hypothyroid, that causes them to gain weight no matter what they do, and assume that a woman has some control over her rate of consumption and energy expenditure. For my qualifications to discuss this topic, I'll cite my years of being a food service specialist in the military (which included stocking up for patrols, making menus, and nutrition training), my experiences with compulsive eating, and my ability to lose the extra weight I had and maintain an ideal weight for five years and counting (and if I did seek extra training to go back to work, being a nutritionist has seemed the most attractive career to me).
First, forget the quick-fix diet. What constitutes a nutritious diet has varied through the decades, but what it has always included is some proportion of protein, carbohydrates, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and fats. Now, people love to dicker about what exactly constitutes an ideal proportion of each group (I'm not even going to get into the debate over Atkins, for example). Let me just say that the preponderance of evidence points to a more varied diet as the healthful ideal--so forget about surviving on popcorn only, or meat only, or bananas only, or whatever fad diet is currently in vogue. You will simply become malnourished and then be tempted to overeat something that is not healthful. If you believe that carbs should be limited, great, just so long as you still have some of everything in the diet. You can also be a vegetarian and still get enough protein. Just don't try to live on melon shakes, think you're going to lose weight, and then get bummed when you don't. Conversely, don't stock up the freezer with Oreo ice cream and then wonder why it looks so tempting when the baby's napping. It's simply harder to overeat when you are being nourished from so many food groups.
Second, change your goal from "losing weight" to "nourishing yourself." Linguistically, saying you're going to "lose weight" backfires because we have a mental block against "losing" anything. Losing your keys and losing your mind are always bad because they are expressed negatively. So don't sabotage yourself mentally. Tell yourself that you are the family nutritionist, and it is your job to stock the pantry carefully to make sure everyone gets the nutrients they need. Let moderation and variety be your watchwords, as well as thrift, when you go shopping (it's easier when you go by yourself, as long as you can fight the Oreo ice cream temptation). Use common sense. Being a tightwad naturally lends itself to more healthful cooking, since you are forgoing the expensive (and fatty) cuts of meat and almost all the calorie-rich and nutrient-poor convenience foods. If you can't cook, learn. I did. It's hard to get fat on your own cooking--just too much darn work (those brownies aren't that attractive if I have to make them myself).
Third, keep a record. If you are actively trying to shed pounds, keep a food diary. This is effective if you are honest about it, but it requires accountability as well. Make a chart with the days of the week and record everything you eat, along with the relevant calorie/fat gram/protein gram notation if you're tracking that. You might have a goal, such as 1500 calories a day, if you're a calorie counter, or so many fat grams a day. You'll want to tally up at the end of the day and see how you did. Note how many servings of each food group there are. Also note exercise you got that day, or vitamins and supplements you took. The accountability part is important, since you're not likely to stay faithful unless someone is looking over your shoulder and is as enthusiastic about your goals as you are (husbands or mothers are not good choices). Just as with money, it's hard to get started when you're scared you'll fail. Tracking your food intake is more informative than weighing yourself every day, and more objective than trying on the same (tight) pair of pants.
Just as it pays to know your spending pitfalls, it pays to know what sets off your urge to merge with the refrigerator. I know that if I have ice cream in the freezer, I will eat a serving a day, until it is gone, period. Ditto for cookies and homemade goodies. If you know that boredom or emotional issues set you off, leave these items out of your pantry. Allow yourself only one item as a treat--something that helps satisfy part of your craving but that also delivers nutrients, so you're not setting yourself up for double and triple servings. My personal "treat" is hot chocolate made with milk (winter) or frozen chocolate milk "shakes" (for summer). Realize that dieting pitfalls include more than just food. Physical fitness includes a lot of things. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you stressing out about something, like money or marriage problems, or kid problems, that is keeping you up at night and driving you to emotional distraction during the day? Is your routine disorganized? Look your life over before you set out to achieve this goal and tackle as many of the things that bug you as you can.
What about exercise? If you're like my husband, you pity the poor joggers out on the street because you think they're in unbearable pain. If jogging isn't your thing, find something you can do three to five times a week that isn't too expensive and doesn't take too much time. Walking is ideal. In fact, when you're towing (or carrying) small kids, it's practically your only option. I like it because I don't have to wear special clothes, I don't have to warm up or cool down, I don't have to drive anywhere, and I don't need any special equipment. If your goal is substantial, say 50 pounds or more, you might need to supplement the walking with more intense activity (you should also get some bloodwork done, just to see the change in your lipids). Balance the activity with your intake. If you really don't want to or can't exercise as much as you think you should, do what you can--consistently!--and cut back on the carbs instead. Realize it's going to take time. But the longer it takes, the better. You will be solidifying healthy new habits and by the time you reach your goal, you won't feel deprived or tempted to snap back into your old routine.
So just how did I conquer compulsive eating? A couple of serendipitous changes, and a willingness to force myself to do a couple of things. First, I couldn't stop compulsive eating until I stopped working in a kitchen (galley). There was just too much food around, and I was too tired and stressed to avoid grazing all day, eating double dinners, and then hitting my rack at night (they really overworked us). The second change was a short break, almost a vacation. I got to do some training on another base, and for three weeks, I could do pretty much what I wanted in the food/exercise department. I ate smaller meals and started jogging after dinner. It felt better to do that, and I looked better. I bought smaller pants, and people made comments. Third, back on the ship (motivated by my new pants), I forced myself to get up at 5:15 am and go down to the cargo hold and hit the Stairmaster before work. In order to make this a habit I had to do it every day. No exceptions, except on weekends I'd jog down the waterfront and back for variety. Fourth, I ate smaller meals more often during the day. This made my stomach smaller and willing to accept less. I also looked and felt less bloated. If that sounds daunting, I agree. I don't think I would have kicked it so quickly had I not been shoehorned into the rigid routine of the military. I hadn't solved my emotional issues, but looking better eventually led to feeling better.
(As an epilogue, I'd like to add that my attitude towards food has totally changed since I started having babies. My midwife was the one who insisted on my keeping a food diary, and she lent me a book about nutrition during pregnancy and how much it affects the baby. She also lectures me and examines my food charts, since nutrition plays a large part in having a healthy pregnancy, an easier, natural birth, and a vigorous baby. I'm a believer, but I long for the time when I can eventually stop stuffing myself with all this protein and supplements. Then it will be a relief to not have to eat so much!)
Whether a woman is more likely to gain weight if she stays at home is dependent on several factors. Since scientists and nutritionists disagree on what exactly causes obesity, I can hardly mount an analysis here. Surely there exist working women who gain weight because, stressed and strapped for time, they end up overeating or overconsuming convenience foods without the benefit of extra activity, just as there are SAHMs who lose weight because they finally have the time to exercise and cook nutritious meals. I will exclude for the moment those with a disorder, such as hypothyroid, that causes them to gain weight no matter what they do, and assume that a woman has some control over her rate of consumption and energy expenditure. For my qualifications to discuss this topic, I'll cite my years of being a food service specialist in the military (which included stocking up for patrols, making menus, and nutrition training), my experiences with compulsive eating, and my ability to lose the extra weight I had and maintain an ideal weight for five years and counting (and if I did seek extra training to go back to work, being a nutritionist has seemed the most attractive career to me).
First, forget the quick-fix diet. What constitutes a nutritious diet has varied through the decades, but what it has always included is some proportion of protein, carbohydrates, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and fats. Now, people love to dicker about what exactly constitutes an ideal proportion of each group (I'm not even going to get into the debate over Atkins, for example). Let me just say that the preponderance of evidence points to a more varied diet as the healthful ideal--so forget about surviving on popcorn only, or meat only, or bananas only, or whatever fad diet is currently in vogue. You will simply become malnourished and then be tempted to overeat something that is not healthful. If you believe that carbs should be limited, great, just so long as you still have some of everything in the diet. You can also be a vegetarian and still get enough protein. Just don't try to live on melon shakes, think you're going to lose weight, and then get bummed when you don't. Conversely, don't stock up the freezer with Oreo ice cream and then wonder why it looks so tempting when the baby's napping. It's simply harder to overeat when you are being nourished from so many food groups.
Second, change your goal from "losing weight" to "nourishing yourself." Linguistically, saying you're going to "lose weight" backfires because we have a mental block against "losing" anything. Losing your keys and losing your mind are always bad because they are expressed negatively. So don't sabotage yourself mentally. Tell yourself that you are the family nutritionist, and it is your job to stock the pantry carefully to make sure everyone gets the nutrients they need. Let moderation and variety be your watchwords, as well as thrift, when you go shopping (it's easier when you go by yourself, as long as you can fight the Oreo ice cream temptation). Use common sense. Being a tightwad naturally lends itself to more healthful cooking, since you are forgoing the expensive (and fatty) cuts of meat and almost all the calorie-rich and nutrient-poor convenience foods. If you can't cook, learn. I did. It's hard to get fat on your own cooking--just too much darn work (those brownies aren't that attractive if I have to make them myself).
Third, keep a record. If you are actively trying to shed pounds, keep a food diary. This is effective if you are honest about it, but it requires accountability as well. Make a chart with the days of the week and record everything you eat, along with the relevant calorie/fat gram/protein gram notation if you're tracking that. You might have a goal, such as 1500 calories a day, if you're a calorie counter, or so many fat grams a day. You'll want to tally up at the end of the day and see how you did. Note how many servings of each food group there are. Also note exercise you got that day, or vitamins and supplements you took. The accountability part is important, since you're not likely to stay faithful unless someone is looking over your shoulder and is as enthusiastic about your goals as you are (husbands or mothers are not good choices). Just as with money, it's hard to get started when you're scared you'll fail. Tracking your food intake is more informative than weighing yourself every day, and more objective than trying on the same (tight) pair of pants.
Just as it pays to know your spending pitfalls, it pays to know what sets off your urge to merge with the refrigerator. I know that if I have ice cream in the freezer, I will eat a serving a day, until it is gone, period. Ditto for cookies and homemade goodies. If you know that boredom or emotional issues set you off, leave these items out of your pantry. Allow yourself only one item as a treat--something that helps satisfy part of your craving but that also delivers nutrients, so you're not setting yourself up for double and triple servings. My personal "treat" is hot chocolate made with milk (winter) or frozen chocolate milk "shakes" (for summer). Realize that dieting pitfalls include more than just food. Physical fitness includes a lot of things. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you stressing out about something, like money or marriage problems, or kid problems, that is keeping you up at night and driving you to emotional distraction during the day? Is your routine disorganized? Look your life over before you set out to achieve this goal and tackle as many of the things that bug you as you can.
What about exercise? If you're like my husband, you pity the poor joggers out on the street because you think they're in unbearable pain. If jogging isn't your thing, find something you can do three to five times a week that isn't too expensive and doesn't take too much time. Walking is ideal. In fact, when you're towing (or carrying) small kids, it's practically your only option. I like it because I don't have to wear special clothes, I don't have to warm up or cool down, I don't have to drive anywhere, and I don't need any special equipment. If your goal is substantial, say 50 pounds or more, you might need to supplement the walking with more intense activity (you should also get some bloodwork done, just to see the change in your lipids). Balance the activity with your intake. If you really don't want to or can't exercise as much as you think you should, do what you can--consistently!--and cut back on the carbs instead. Realize it's going to take time. But the longer it takes, the better. You will be solidifying healthy new habits and by the time you reach your goal, you won't feel deprived or tempted to snap back into your old routine.
So just how did I conquer compulsive eating? A couple of serendipitous changes, and a willingness to force myself to do a couple of things. First, I couldn't stop compulsive eating until I stopped working in a kitchen (galley). There was just too much food around, and I was too tired and stressed to avoid grazing all day, eating double dinners, and then hitting my rack at night (they really overworked us). The second change was a short break, almost a vacation. I got to do some training on another base, and for three weeks, I could do pretty much what I wanted in the food/exercise department. I ate smaller meals and started jogging after dinner. It felt better to do that, and I looked better. I bought smaller pants, and people made comments. Third, back on the ship (motivated by my new pants), I forced myself to get up at 5:15 am and go down to the cargo hold and hit the Stairmaster before work. In order to make this a habit I had to do it every day. No exceptions, except on weekends I'd jog down the waterfront and back for variety. Fourth, I ate smaller meals more often during the day. This made my stomach smaller and willing to accept less. I also looked and felt less bloated. If that sounds daunting, I agree. I don't think I would have kicked it so quickly had I not been shoehorned into the rigid routine of the military. I hadn't solved my emotional issues, but looking better eventually led to feeling better.
(As an epilogue, I'd like to add that my attitude towards food has totally changed since I started having babies. My midwife was the one who insisted on my keeping a food diary, and she lent me a book about nutrition during pregnancy and how much it affects the baby. She also lectures me and examines my food charts, since nutrition plays a large part in having a healthy pregnancy, an easier, natural birth, and a vigorous baby. I'm a believer, but I long for the time when I can eventually stop stuffing myself with all this protein and supplements. Then it will be a relief to not have to eat so much!)
Friday, October 21, 2005
My Costco Quandary
I used to listen to a musical group called Enigma, and on one of their tracks, they had this line spoken over the music: "The path of excess leads to the tower of wisdom." Though at the time this sounded deep and mystical to me, later I realized that the statement really makes no sense and is no more than a piece of New Age fluff. Why? Because, more so than any other nation on earth, we Americans are firmly fitted into the ruts of the path of excess, and it has hardly taught us wisdom. It's not leading us to the tower of wisdom--in fact it doesn't seem to be leading us anywhere at all. Similarly, at times in my life when I just knew I was overdoing it--too much food, too much sex, too much alcohol--I felt so out of control that I thought the only way out was death. And although we do have people in our culture who think death and the tower of wisdom are equivalent, we usually refer to them as psychopaths.
Why all this fuss over a trip to Costco?
I used to think going to Costco was fun. "Let's just go and window-shop," I said to my husband. "They have all their Christmas stuff out--it'll be fun." Despite the fact that this was a dangerous thing for a tightwad to say to her hubby (who tempts her to loosen her habitual spending controls), I wanted to put my inner consumer to the test. For a year I had been playing a mental game with myself. I would think about something I wanted--or thought I wanted--and then imagine going to the store, picking up the item, going to the check-out to pay for it, loading it in the car, driving it home, taking off the wrapping and throwing it away, and finding a place to either use/display or store my new acquisition. Throughout this exercise I would try to calculate how much value this item would bring to our lives, how much money it would cost, whether it would continue costing money and/or deliver additional value, and how much satisfaction I would derive from the purchase. Finally, I would imagine the money being deducted from our checking account, and then I would compare that feeling with how I would feel imagining that same money deposited in our savings account. Not many items passed this test.
But suddenly there we were in Costco. I remembered the words of an old boyfriend who called Costco the "Land O' Plenty." He certainly seemed right. I mean, there were heaps and stacks of things. All the boxes and packages were humungous. Even the cart was so large there was enough room for two children to sit in it, side by side. Some items seemed like a good deal. Dean was fingering a heavy winter jacket. "It's only forty bucks," he said. I thought about the seven or eight other jackets and coats he had at home and drove on. There was an enormous Christmas wreath and "outdoor ornaments" that were bigger than Carl's head. There were fancy wrapped packages of chocolates weighing anywhere from one to five pounds. There were huge bags of biscottis, and giant tins of butter cookies. And there were toys. They all came in oversized boxes, packaged to thrill. There were fancy trikes and art sets and a giant dollhouse, even a "travel system" stroller and highchair that was exactly like you would buy for a new baby, only it was for a doll. There were big canisters of Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs for the nostalgic. I felt like a Dickensian child who had accidentally wandered into Harrod's from the street.
As I struggled to maneuver the huge cart down the aisles without hitting other people, I spotted some scrapbooking supplies and stopped to look. The package had 24 pairs of scissors in it, each designed to put a different sort of edge on a piece of paper. The whole package was $19.99. Suddenly the display didn't seem so benign. Who could possibly use 24 pairs of scrapbooking scissors? Who could possibly want that many? Why would they package up 24 different pairs like that? They were only scissors! The most any reasonable person could want would be maybe three or four. Befuddled, I stopped and pointed this out to Dean. "Suppose you ran a craft workshop, or were a teacher," he said. "Oh," I said. Right next to it was a similarly priced set of 100 marker pens. Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed and tired. "Let's just go to the bakery section," I said. I wanted some of the apple streusel bread that in my imagination had seemed so good. Other than a reasonably-priced baby sleeper for Carl, and some Christmas chocolates, our cart was empty. But when we got to the bread, I saw the price was $4.29. I knew I could get flour for seventeen cents a pound and bake something similar for under a dollar. We passed it by.
I had a list of things I'd been waiting for months to get at Costco because I'd determined they would have the best price, but I just kept driving the cart. I didn't want to put anything in it. "Let's just go," Dean said. We didn't even eat any of the samples. Carl was sucking his thumb, looking sleepy and tired. On the ride home I felt shifty and weird. "There's something wrong with that," I kept saying, but couldn't put my finger on what it was. After clipping grocery store coupons for a year and replacing my eggs with soy flour I had, somewhere along the line, lost my taste for richness. I had come to appreciate the leanness of mixed, powdered milk in my coffee. I had come to the point where I scanned the curbs while driving for interesting-looking piles of junk. I had learned the joy of rooting through the dollar bin at Goodwill and pulling out name-brand clothes. It wasn't so much that Costco was "wrong," or that people are wrong to shop there. It was simply that Costco tells you what the world tells you--that life is easy, comfortable, even luxurious, and that you deserve to have all these things in your life at a price you can "afford"--and I had just gotten to the point where I no longer believed it.
Why all this fuss over a trip to Costco?
I used to think going to Costco was fun. "Let's just go and window-shop," I said to my husband. "They have all their Christmas stuff out--it'll be fun." Despite the fact that this was a dangerous thing for a tightwad to say to her hubby (who tempts her to loosen her habitual spending controls), I wanted to put my inner consumer to the test. For a year I had been playing a mental game with myself. I would think about something I wanted--or thought I wanted--and then imagine going to the store, picking up the item, going to the check-out to pay for it, loading it in the car, driving it home, taking off the wrapping and throwing it away, and finding a place to either use/display or store my new acquisition. Throughout this exercise I would try to calculate how much value this item would bring to our lives, how much money it would cost, whether it would continue costing money and/or deliver additional value, and how much satisfaction I would derive from the purchase. Finally, I would imagine the money being deducted from our checking account, and then I would compare that feeling with how I would feel imagining that same money deposited in our savings account. Not many items passed this test.
But suddenly there we were in Costco. I remembered the words of an old boyfriend who called Costco the "Land O' Plenty." He certainly seemed right. I mean, there were heaps and stacks of things. All the boxes and packages were humungous. Even the cart was so large there was enough room for two children to sit in it, side by side. Some items seemed like a good deal. Dean was fingering a heavy winter jacket. "It's only forty bucks," he said. I thought about the seven or eight other jackets and coats he had at home and drove on. There was an enormous Christmas wreath and "outdoor ornaments" that were bigger than Carl's head. There were fancy wrapped packages of chocolates weighing anywhere from one to five pounds. There were huge bags of biscottis, and giant tins of butter cookies. And there were toys. They all came in oversized boxes, packaged to thrill. There were fancy trikes and art sets and a giant dollhouse, even a "travel system" stroller and highchair that was exactly like you would buy for a new baby, only it was for a doll. There were big canisters of Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs for the nostalgic. I felt like a Dickensian child who had accidentally wandered into Harrod's from the street.
As I struggled to maneuver the huge cart down the aisles without hitting other people, I spotted some scrapbooking supplies and stopped to look. The package had 24 pairs of scissors in it, each designed to put a different sort of edge on a piece of paper. The whole package was $19.99. Suddenly the display didn't seem so benign. Who could possibly use 24 pairs of scrapbooking scissors? Who could possibly want that many? Why would they package up 24 different pairs like that? They were only scissors! The most any reasonable person could want would be maybe three or four. Befuddled, I stopped and pointed this out to Dean. "Suppose you ran a craft workshop, or were a teacher," he said. "Oh," I said. Right next to it was a similarly priced set of 100 marker pens. Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed and tired. "Let's just go to the bakery section," I said. I wanted some of the apple streusel bread that in my imagination had seemed so good. Other than a reasonably-priced baby sleeper for Carl, and some Christmas chocolates, our cart was empty. But when we got to the bread, I saw the price was $4.29. I knew I could get flour for seventeen cents a pound and bake something similar for under a dollar. We passed it by.
I had a list of things I'd been waiting for months to get at Costco because I'd determined they would have the best price, but I just kept driving the cart. I didn't want to put anything in it. "Let's just go," Dean said. We didn't even eat any of the samples. Carl was sucking his thumb, looking sleepy and tired. On the ride home I felt shifty and weird. "There's something wrong with that," I kept saying, but couldn't put my finger on what it was. After clipping grocery store coupons for a year and replacing my eggs with soy flour I had, somewhere along the line, lost my taste for richness. I had come to appreciate the leanness of mixed, powdered milk in my coffee. I had come to the point where I scanned the curbs while driving for interesting-looking piles of junk. I had learned the joy of rooting through the dollar bin at Goodwill and pulling out name-brand clothes. It wasn't so much that Costco was "wrong," or that people are wrong to shop there. It was simply that Costco tells you what the world tells you--that life is easy, comfortable, even luxurious, and that you deserve to have all these things in your life at a price you can "afford"--and I had just gotten to the point where I no longer believed it.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
The Church of Ma-ma and Pa-pa
I've been meaning to get back to blogging for the past couple of weeks, but as ideas came to me for articles, they all seemed "too religious." I mean, what's happening to my Stay-at-Home-Mom angle? I meant to do a lot of articles about finances, and how SAHMs can save money, thus enabling them to stay at home. However, in explaining why a mother should consider staying at home, and to give up some things and change her buying habits for the sake of her children, I inevitably run up against the concepts of self-sacrifice, suffering, and serving others, all uncompromisingly Christian values. The fact is, I cannot make a convincing case to the secular mom on why she should stay home, when the world's values tell her that her fulfillment is paramount and that children are not that important--more like a proprietary appendage--to be stashed away in public schools as quickly as possible for as long as possible. Therefore, if one pays heed to the prevailing wisdom of our culture, the question of being a stay-at-home-mom may well never arise.
That leaves me in the position of having the freedom to write about the housewife/ stay-at-home-mom experience from the religious perspective, if in fact we angle the newsletter that way. I think this will be possible, although unsatisfyingly generic, since in aiming for an even narrower "faith-minded" audience, one is forced to make allowances for practically every shade of Christian, which many readers who are passionately committed to certain doctrines or interpretations of Scripture might find hollow. There would seem to be no middle ground that would satisfy everyone.
What does all this have to do with the Church of Ma-ma and Pa-pa? With the utmost respect to my departed grandparents, for whom I pray and sacrifice daily, I have to explain this family phenomenon. Apparently, when my mom and dad got together back in the 70's (presumably, after my dad told my mom that he would never marry a Catholic), my mom decided after long talks with her in-laws that their version of faith suited her. She became attracted to the Billy Graham revival movement, and even attended one of his crusades. She got my dad to set foot in a church, and even taught Sunday School for a time.
Fast-forward ten years. Mom divorced Dad, and although he retained custody of my sister and I, we lived with Ma-ma and Pa-pa while Dad attended nursing school. We went to an "Orthodox Presbyterian" church and the youth activities there. It was a happy time, and every night before bed Ma-ma would always come in and pray with us and we'd recite our Bible verses, most especially John 3:16. I don't know what exactly they believed, but for us it was a child's faith, a comforting faith, uncomplicated by doctrines and questions of exegesis and authority. We knew Jesus loved us and died for us and that we believed in Him, so we would go to heaven.
Fast-forward twenty years. Today Ma-ma and Pa-pa are gone, and although what I remember of their faith didn't get me too far in life, my sister clings passionately to what she remembers. My mother claims this as well, and has told me that "Whatever Billy Graham believes, that's what I believe." My dad, as well, while rejecting a faith that requires church-going, parrots verses and lines of argument that he no doubt learned in his youth. This is what I call "generic Christianity." It's a comfortable, "Jesus-and-me" religion that seems translatable to adult life straight from Sunday school, and it often serves as a middle ground for adults trying to reconcile differing denominations, creeds, and confessions.
There are a number of problems with this kind of Christianity, as you might expect. Without the regular reading and study of Scripture, one quickly loses one's moorings, relying on Ma-ma's or Billy Graham's interpretation of some half-remembered Bible verses and glossing over the rest. For example, my dad takes Paul's verse about preaching only "Christ, and Him crucified," to mean that we are not to concern ourselves over anything else the Bible might have to say. My sister has attended Seventh-Day Adventist churches without a clear idea of what they believe, not that it matters. As she told my mother, "Just because I go to a church doesn't mean I believe everything they believe." And for my mother, finally, the rejection of any organized church and the absence of any Scripture study at all leads to the uncritical acceptance of reincarnation, gay marriage, liberal politics in general and condemnations of the Catholic Church in particular.
As I turned from the "Bible church" I was attending, hoping to find some version of Christianity I could accept without doubt, I briefly considered the Church of Ma-ma and Pa-pa, but immediately rejected it. Why? Well, there was a reason I was looking for a church to attend in the first place. I knew Scripture clearly called us to worship in community AND to serve others. If you go long enough, you can lose sight of the fact that the whole point of Christ's sacrifice was not to make people unaccountable for their sins. Christ's sacrifice was not a get-out-of-jail-free card for sinners. But that is the logical conclusion of a "Jesus and me" religion. If there's no sin, there's no punishment for sin, no need for a religious mechanism to deal with sin, and therefore no need for any authority at all in matters of faith--not even the Bible.
In the Church of Ma-ma and Pa-pa, it is impossible to sin, either because one subscribes to a Calvinist view that there is no free will, and you therefore are not accountable for your sins, or because one believes, with Luther, that all sins are forgiven at the point of faith, that everyone, ALL PEOPLE, are totally depraved, and there is therefore no point in trying to avoid sin or do good, since you are so intrinsically bad that you can't avoid sin--and the good things you think you are doing are actually an offense to God. So much for worshipping in community and serving others.
In fact, it has been whispered in my family that my sister is in "error" because she believes in helping the homeless and suchlike, with her "works," and that somehow has merit in the eyes of God. And yet those whisperers have no more foundation for such beliefs than my sister has for hers! God forbid we should serve others, since that might be seen as a "work," and would therefore offend Him! You see how quickly half-remembered things from Scripture turn Christian values on their heads. Compare that with these words of Paul: "But there will be glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good, Jew first and then Greek. There is no partiality with God" (Romans 2:10-11). If, as Luther believed, our good works are repugnant to God, and if, as John Calvin believed, there is no way we are capable of choosing to do good, then this verse makes no sense. It, and the passage preceding it, clearly point to our ability to choose to do good, which then has some value to God bearing on our eternal reward (glory).
In the Church of Ma-ma and Pa-pa, one's fond recollection of those two dear loved ones substitutes for knowledge of theology and doctrine. For me, it wasn't enough. You're ultimately setting up your very own church of one believer, with no one to gainsay you--not even God.
That leaves me in the position of having the freedom to write about the housewife/ stay-at-home-mom experience from the religious perspective, if in fact we angle the newsletter that way. I think this will be possible, although unsatisfyingly generic, since in aiming for an even narrower "faith-minded" audience, one is forced to make allowances for practically every shade of Christian, which many readers who are passionately committed to certain doctrines or interpretations of Scripture might find hollow. There would seem to be no middle ground that would satisfy everyone.
What does all this have to do with the Church of Ma-ma and Pa-pa? With the utmost respect to my departed grandparents, for whom I pray and sacrifice daily, I have to explain this family phenomenon. Apparently, when my mom and dad got together back in the 70's (presumably, after my dad told my mom that he would never marry a Catholic), my mom decided after long talks with her in-laws that their version of faith suited her. She became attracted to the Billy Graham revival movement, and even attended one of his crusades. She got my dad to set foot in a church, and even taught Sunday School for a time.
Fast-forward ten years. Mom divorced Dad, and although he retained custody of my sister and I, we lived with Ma-ma and Pa-pa while Dad attended nursing school. We went to an "Orthodox Presbyterian" church and the youth activities there. It was a happy time, and every night before bed Ma-ma would always come in and pray with us and we'd recite our Bible verses, most especially John 3:16. I don't know what exactly they believed, but for us it was a child's faith, a comforting faith, uncomplicated by doctrines and questions of exegesis and authority. We knew Jesus loved us and died for us and that we believed in Him, so we would go to heaven.
Fast-forward twenty years. Today Ma-ma and Pa-pa are gone, and although what I remember of their faith didn't get me too far in life, my sister clings passionately to what she remembers. My mother claims this as well, and has told me that "Whatever Billy Graham believes, that's what I believe." My dad, as well, while rejecting a faith that requires church-going, parrots verses and lines of argument that he no doubt learned in his youth. This is what I call "generic Christianity." It's a comfortable, "Jesus-and-me" religion that seems translatable to adult life straight from Sunday school, and it often serves as a middle ground for adults trying to reconcile differing denominations, creeds, and confessions.
There are a number of problems with this kind of Christianity, as you might expect. Without the regular reading and study of Scripture, one quickly loses one's moorings, relying on Ma-ma's or Billy Graham's interpretation of some half-remembered Bible verses and glossing over the rest. For example, my dad takes Paul's verse about preaching only "Christ, and Him crucified," to mean that we are not to concern ourselves over anything else the Bible might have to say. My sister has attended Seventh-Day Adventist churches without a clear idea of what they believe, not that it matters. As she told my mother, "Just because I go to a church doesn't mean I believe everything they believe." And for my mother, finally, the rejection of any organized church and the absence of any Scripture study at all leads to the uncritical acceptance of reincarnation, gay marriage, liberal politics in general and condemnations of the Catholic Church in particular.
As I turned from the "Bible church" I was attending, hoping to find some version of Christianity I could accept without doubt, I briefly considered the Church of Ma-ma and Pa-pa, but immediately rejected it. Why? Well, there was a reason I was looking for a church to attend in the first place. I knew Scripture clearly called us to worship in community AND to serve others. If you go long enough, you can lose sight of the fact that the whole point of Christ's sacrifice was not to make people unaccountable for their sins. Christ's sacrifice was not a get-out-of-jail-free card for sinners. But that is the logical conclusion of a "Jesus and me" religion. If there's no sin, there's no punishment for sin, no need for a religious mechanism to deal with sin, and therefore no need for any authority at all in matters of faith--not even the Bible.
In the Church of Ma-ma and Pa-pa, it is impossible to sin, either because one subscribes to a Calvinist view that there is no free will, and you therefore are not accountable for your sins, or because one believes, with Luther, that all sins are forgiven at the point of faith, that everyone, ALL PEOPLE, are totally depraved, and there is therefore no point in trying to avoid sin or do good, since you are so intrinsically bad that you can't avoid sin--and the good things you think you are doing are actually an offense to God. So much for worshipping in community and serving others.
In fact, it has been whispered in my family that my sister is in "error" because she believes in helping the homeless and suchlike, with her "works," and that somehow has merit in the eyes of God. And yet those whisperers have no more foundation for such beliefs than my sister has for hers! God forbid we should serve others, since that might be seen as a "work," and would therefore offend Him! You see how quickly half-remembered things from Scripture turn Christian values on their heads. Compare that with these words of Paul: "But there will be glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good, Jew first and then Greek. There is no partiality with God" (Romans 2:10-11). If, as Luther believed, our good works are repugnant to God, and if, as John Calvin believed, there is no way we are capable of choosing to do good, then this verse makes no sense. It, and the passage preceding it, clearly point to our ability to choose to do good, which then has some value to God bearing on our eternal reward (glory).
In the Church of Ma-ma and Pa-pa, one's fond recollection of those two dear loved ones substitutes for knowledge of theology and doctrine. For me, it wasn't enough. You're ultimately setting up your very own church of one believer, with no one to gainsay you--not even God.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
On Cats, Cloth Diapers, and Suffering
Well, here it is, the much-anticipated post on the connection between the suffering we experience in this life and how it can help us and others mitigate our suffering in purgatory. For those of you unfamiliar with Church doctrine on purgatory, I'll include a nutshell definition, although I'll add my usual caveat that I'm a housewife, not a theologian, and if my explanation doesn't satisfy you, I encourage you to continue reading on the subject.
Purgatory had to be my biggest objection to Catholicism. I called it a "horrific" doctrine and clung fervently to what my grandparents had always told me, that to be "absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." That verse is the epitaph on their gravestone, and I wasn't about to let go of my belief that my dear old Ma-ma and Pa-pa were, in fact, with the Lord. Later, I had to come to grips with the fact that I was not objecting to the theological reality of purgatory as such, but of the impressions I'd absorbed second- and third-hand about Catholicism in general and purgatory in particular.
Maybe you're familiar with some of these. There are even paintings of souls wailing in the midst of fire, crying out to the Lord for deliverance. The whole controversy over indulgences, for instance, goes back to the idea that purgatory exists somewhere in time, and that for penitential works or a donation to the Church, one could reduce one's time in this fiery place and get to heaven that much more quickly. The problem with that period of doctrinal development is that it encouraged people to think of purgatory as a kind of lesser hell, and that one could get time off for good behavior. Of course, the Lutherans looked at this with horror and jettisoned the whole idea.
However, the theological reality of purgatory goes right back to Scripture, and once I had read a good explanation of the theology of purgatory, it started making sense. I was mainly objecting to the label. The problem is that, even though a believer in Christ dies in a state of grace and friendship with Christ, the reality of sin is still present. Most people, when they die, will still be clinging to this life in some way--to loved ones, to regrets, to addictions, to desires, or to venial sins that they haven't confessed (more on this later). Then we have verses such as the one in Revelation that clearly say "nothing impure shall enter heaven." This verse is bolstered throughout Scripture. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that only the "pure in heart" will "see God." Every man's work will be tested, we are told, yet even though he suffer loss, he shall be saved, "yet so as through fire." Jesus speaks of sins being forgiven in the next life. If one were in heaven, that would not be necessary. If one were in hell, that would not be possible.
There is, in Scripture, this acknowledgement of a middle state, a place of purification, in which the saints who are destined for heaven must be completely cleansed of all sin before they can indeed "see God." Even though it went against the grain of everything I've been taught as a sometime Presbyterian/Lutheran/Baptist/Bible church believer, I had to admit that the doctrine of purgatory fit Scripture perfectly, and that those other explanations seemed like an attempt to dodge the truth.
So what about that one verse I was clinging to, that to be "absent from the body is to be present with the Lord"? I had to admit that many of the beliefs I was clinging to as a Protestant were based on single verses that had been taken out of context and made to mean something that the original writers didn't intend. The problem with taking a single verse out of one of Paul's epistles and creating an entire doctrine out of it is that it's a dishonest method of exegesis. There are too many other passages that contradict it, and thus people come away thinking that the Bible is a contradictory text, and Protestant pastors have to dance all around these "Catholic" verses and try to fit them into their theology somehow. But that's like trying to make a puzzle work by taking a scissors and cutting the pieces to make them fit.
With Catholicism, that's not the case. The thing that finally convinced me was looking at how the Church supports her doctrines. She takes these verses, puts them back into context, draws on the Old Testament, the prophets, the Gospels, and the witness of the early Church, and guess what? All the pieces fit.
So where does that leave my grandparents, and what does all this have to do with cloth diapers? Nobody can say for sure, but I believe my grandparents are destined for heaven and have or are experiencing purgatory. Now we don't know for sure that purgatory involves fire, or how long it takes. These are just expressions that have been used over the years to drive home the truth about what purgatory does. It may well be that fire is just a euphemism for the feeling of loss we have when we are forced to let go of something dear to us--even if that something is sin. At some point in life we all experience "burning regret." We will probably regret that we offended God in ANY way, and that knowledge may well burn like fire in our hearts. As far as how long it would take, I've heard it said that we don't know. We must trust God, and God is outside of time. He could make it so that a thousand years of purgatory might feel like only an instant to us. What's important is not how long it takes, but what it does.
Now recall my discussion on "offering up" our suffering. This is the purpose for which we are called to offer suffering--to help other people, especially people in purgatory. How does our suffering help them? It's really a mystery, but our prayers and our suffering have a spiritual value in the eyes of God, a value that He can apply to others that we pray for and that we love and feel connected to (see my post "Disaster" for a fuller explanation). And since we are all a part of the body of Christ, the Church takes it literally that we, as one part of the body (the Church on earth), can help other parts of the body (the Church Suffering in purgatory). In fact, if we ARE Christ's body, it's part of our job.
"No way," the old me would say. "I don't believe that--I'm saved, and my folks were saved, and that's how I know they have gone home to heaven. I don't believe this stuff about sin clinging to you when you die." This is the mile-wide-inch-deep mode of religious belief. The fact is that you don't know. Not even the Church claims to "know" someone is in heaven (i.e. proclaiming them a saint) without many years of investigating and verifying miracles that can be attributed to the departed person's intercession with God. You can't assume that just because you hold a certain belief, that it is true--unless you have an authority you can count on to verify that truth.
In the Church, we have that authority. What I've said is based on Scripture AND two thousand years of theology. Just because your pastor says something or believes something or is able to argue something from the Bible doesn't make it true. This is hard, but when I finally realized that Pastor isn't an infallible authority (and neither am I), I took my first step toward Rome. Theology DOES matter. Truth DOES matter. If it didn't, Protestants wouldn't have a leg left to stand on (they only have one leg as it is).
And so it happens that when I'm cleaning up cat vomit for the fiftieth time, or choking on the ammonia smell of the diaper pail, I have to remind myself that suffering is a gift. It's like God giving you fifty bucks and saying, "Look, you can help out your relatives with this." Most of the time we say "Ugh! Just stop, God! I don't want it, OK?" What we need to realize is that suffering translates into spiritual riches we can't even calculate. God is trying to give us these gifts all the time. It's too bad that most of the time we reject them because we don't like the wrapping paper.
Purgatory had to be my biggest objection to Catholicism. I called it a "horrific" doctrine and clung fervently to what my grandparents had always told me, that to be "absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." That verse is the epitaph on their gravestone, and I wasn't about to let go of my belief that my dear old Ma-ma and Pa-pa were, in fact, with the Lord. Later, I had to come to grips with the fact that I was not objecting to the theological reality of purgatory as such, but of the impressions I'd absorbed second- and third-hand about Catholicism in general and purgatory in particular.
Maybe you're familiar with some of these. There are even paintings of souls wailing in the midst of fire, crying out to the Lord for deliverance. The whole controversy over indulgences, for instance, goes back to the idea that purgatory exists somewhere in time, and that for penitential works or a donation to the Church, one could reduce one's time in this fiery place and get to heaven that much more quickly. The problem with that period of doctrinal development is that it encouraged people to think of purgatory as a kind of lesser hell, and that one could get time off for good behavior. Of course, the Lutherans looked at this with horror and jettisoned the whole idea.
However, the theological reality of purgatory goes right back to Scripture, and once I had read a good explanation of the theology of purgatory, it started making sense. I was mainly objecting to the label. The problem is that, even though a believer in Christ dies in a state of grace and friendship with Christ, the reality of sin is still present. Most people, when they die, will still be clinging to this life in some way--to loved ones, to regrets, to addictions, to desires, or to venial sins that they haven't confessed (more on this later). Then we have verses such as the one in Revelation that clearly say "nothing impure shall enter heaven." This verse is bolstered throughout Scripture. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that only the "pure in heart" will "see God." Every man's work will be tested, we are told, yet even though he suffer loss, he shall be saved, "yet so as through fire." Jesus speaks of sins being forgiven in the next life. If one were in heaven, that would not be necessary. If one were in hell, that would not be possible.
There is, in Scripture, this acknowledgement of a middle state, a place of purification, in which the saints who are destined for heaven must be completely cleansed of all sin before they can indeed "see God." Even though it went against the grain of everything I've been taught as a sometime Presbyterian/Lutheran/Baptist/Bible church believer, I had to admit that the doctrine of purgatory fit Scripture perfectly, and that those other explanations seemed like an attempt to dodge the truth.
So what about that one verse I was clinging to, that to be "absent from the body is to be present with the Lord"? I had to admit that many of the beliefs I was clinging to as a Protestant were based on single verses that had been taken out of context and made to mean something that the original writers didn't intend. The problem with taking a single verse out of one of Paul's epistles and creating an entire doctrine out of it is that it's a dishonest method of exegesis. There are too many other passages that contradict it, and thus people come away thinking that the Bible is a contradictory text, and Protestant pastors have to dance all around these "Catholic" verses and try to fit them into their theology somehow. But that's like trying to make a puzzle work by taking a scissors and cutting the pieces to make them fit.
With Catholicism, that's not the case. The thing that finally convinced me was looking at how the Church supports her doctrines. She takes these verses, puts them back into context, draws on the Old Testament, the prophets, the Gospels, and the witness of the early Church, and guess what? All the pieces fit.
So where does that leave my grandparents, and what does all this have to do with cloth diapers? Nobody can say for sure, but I believe my grandparents are destined for heaven and have or are experiencing purgatory. Now we don't know for sure that purgatory involves fire, or how long it takes. These are just expressions that have been used over the years to drive home the truth about what purgatory does. It may well be that fire is just a euphemism for the feeling of loss we have when we are forced to let go of something dear to us--even if that something is sin. At some point in life we all experience "burning regret." We will probably regret that we offended God in ANY way, and that knowledge may well burn like fire in our hearts. As far as how long it would take, I've heard it said that we don't know. We must trust God, and God is outside of time. He could make it so that a thousand years of purgatory might feel like only an instant to us. What's important is not how long it takes, but what it does.
Now recall my discussion on "offering up" our suffering. This is the purpose for which we are called to offer suffering--to help other people, especially people in purgatory. How does our suffering help them? It's really a mystery, but our prayers and our suffering have a spiritual value in the eyes of God, a value that He can apply to others that we pray for and that we love and feel connected to (see my post "Disaster" for a fuller explanation). And since we are all a part of the body of Christ, the Church takes it literally that we, as one part of the body (the Church on earth), can help other parts of the body (the Church Suffering in purgatory). In fact, if we ARE Christ's body, it's part of our job.
"No way," the old me would say. "I don't believe that--I'm saved, and my folks were saved, and that's how I know they have gone home to heaven. I don't believe this stuff about sin clinging to you when you die." This is the mile-wide-inch-deep mode of religious belief. The fact is that you don't know. Not even the Church claims to "know" someone is in heaven (i.e. proclaiming them a saint) without many years of investigating and verifying miracles that can be attributed to the departed person's intercession with God. You can't assume that just because you hold a certain belief, that it is true--unless you have an authority you can count on to verify that truth.
In the Church, we have that authority. What I've said is based on Scripture AND two thousand years of theology. Just because your pastor says something or believes something or is able to argue something from the Bible doesn't make it true. This is hard, but when I finally realized that Pastor isn't an infallible authority (and neither am I), I took my first step toward Rome. Theology DOES matter. Truth DOES matter. If it didn't, Protestants wouldn't have a leg left to stand on (they only have one leg as it is).
And so it happens that when I'm cleaning up cat vomit for the fiftieth time, or choking on the ammonia smell of the diaper pail, I have to remind myself that suffering is a gift. It's like God giving you fifty bucks and saying, "Look, you can help out your relatives with this." Most of the time we say "Ugh! Just stop, God! I don't want it, OK?" What we need to realize is that suffering translates into spiritual riches we can't even calculate. God is trying to give us these gifts all the time. It's too bad that most of the time we reject them because we don't like the wrapping paper.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Martha Behind Bars: a review
I didn't think I'd get big into evening TV this fall, but when you are an avid knitter, you must have something besides silence to stitch on. Therefore, I am willing to watch even dreck, provided it doesn't violate my moral sensibilities. And TV movies are some of the best dreck there is.
Let me start out by saying that I'm not really a Martha fan. I don't know much about her except that, like Debbie Fields, she survived a nasty divorce and went on to start a successful company. We are all familiar with Martha's "housewife" ethos, though, and the movie milks that appropriately--there's a cooking scene in which she insists all the spices be freshly ground; and in another scene she testily plucks a flower arrangement off the set, saying, "My readers don't want to spend their hard-earned money to look at the same flower arrangement we had four months ago." Her business is built on presenting an image of housewifery that no one can really aspire to and, as the movie makes clear, she is anything but a housewife herself.
In fact, the film is an unflattering portrait of the person. Martha is played by a plushy (or padded?) Cybill Shepherd who can't quite affect Martha's look but is uncannily "on" with her voice--just close your eyes and it's Martha. It's not charitable to assume, however, that Cybill's presentation is a fair one. Martha is portrayed as a consummate, calculating corporate shark with a cell phone in one hand, a palm pilot in the other, and a team of assistants dogging her footsteps. She is demanding, acquisitive, and cold. In the spice-grinding scene she brings her mother onto the set with great hoopla, only to leave her alone with an assistant who does the actual cooking, while Martha breezes off to another stage to have her picture shoot for next month's magazine. When her friend Mariana Pasternak tells her of her aspirations to sell real estate, Martha brushes her off with, "Seems like everyone and her sister is selling real estate these days." Later you feel a sense of justice when Mariana is the one who reveals Martha's culpability for the stock sale in court.
While the first hour follows Martha's wildly successful public offering of Martha Steward Omnimedia and the subsequent unraveling of her public image as the SEC investigation drags on, the second half of the film is consumed with Martha's life in a minimum security federal prison. The music is dramatic, but while Martha may be in prison, she is hardly "behind bars." She receives regular visitors and communicates with her supportive fans via mail and a personal web site addressed to them. She doesn't have to endure much indignity--I would think that the other inmates would have been more harsh or rejecting--although the guards are faceless stuffed shirts who treat Martha as callously as one might expect, down to the strip search and an implied body cavity search.
In fact, the prison sequence seems to be an attempt to squeeze some character development into Ms. Shepherd's curiously wooden performance. While Martha tries to stay "above it all," the other inmates won't let her. They eventually reveal themselves as more compassionate and accepting than Martha herself, who finally defrosts enough to help the gals with the Christmas decorating contest, which was the most heartwarming scene in the film. The famous poncho that a fellow inmate knitted for her makes continual appearances throughout this sequence, although what inspires the woman to gift Ms. Stewart with this labor of love is anyone's guess. By the time Martha leaves prison her stock has tripled, her business suit is back on, and she greets her welcoming staff with the words, "Now where were we?"
While I didn't have very high hopes for a TV movie of this type to deliver an inspiring message for the sake of humanity, I did expect it to deliver a story. Every beginning writer knows that in a story you have to have not only a sequence of events, but a main character that readers (or viewers) can expect to relate to at some point--that must progress through the conflict in such a way as to CHANGE THEM SOMEHOW. In this respect, "Martha Behind Bars" fails miserably. Why would an audience want to watch a rich, omnipotent corporate mogul endure public humiliation and incarceration, only to wind up watching a rich, omnipotent corporate mogul crow over the fact that she is even more successful because of her prison stint? While it may be an accurate picture of American "justice" as visited on the elite, it is hardly a good story.
So was it a complete waste of time? Not really--you can always learn a lot from a story done badly. And I got two more inches done on my knitting.
Let me start out by saying that I'm not really a Martha fan. I don't know much about her except that, like Debbie Fields, she survived a nasty divorce and went on to start a successful company. We are all familiar with Martha's "housewife" ethos, though, and the movie milks that appropriately--there's a cooking scene in which she insists all the spices be freshly ground; and in another scene she testily plucks a flower arrangement off the set, saying, "My readers don't want to spend their hard-earned money to look at the same flower arrangement we had four months ago." Her business is built on presenting an image of housewifery that no one can really aspire to and, as the movie makes clear, she is anything but a housewife herself.
In fact, the film is an unflattering portrait of the person. Martha is played by a plushy (or padded?) Cybill Shepherd who can't quite affect Martha's look but is uncannily "on" with her voice--just close your eyes and it's Martha. It's not charitable to assume, however, that Cybill's presentation is a fair one. Martha is portrayed as a consummate, calculating corporate shark with a cell phone in one hand, a palm pilot in the other, and a team of assistants dogging her footsteps. She is demanding, acquisitive, and cold. In the spice-grinding scene she brings her mother onto the set with great hoopla, only to leave her alone with an assistant who does the actual cooking, while Martha breezes off to another stage to have her picture shoot for next month's magazine. When her friend Mariana Pasternak tells her of her aspirations to sell real estate, Martha brushes her off with, "Seems like everyone and her sister is selling real estate these days." Later you feel a sense of justice when Mariana is the one who reveals Martha's culpability for the stock sale in court.
While the first hour follows Martha's wildly successful public offering of Martha Steward Omnimedia and the subsequent unraveling of her public image as the SEC investigation drags on, the second half of the film is consumed with Martha's life in a minimum security federal prison. The music is dramatic, but while Martha may be in prison, she is hardly "behind bars." She receives regular visitors and communicates with her supportive fans via mail and a personal web site addressed to them. She doesn't have to endure much indignity--I would think that the other inmates would have been more harsh or rejecting--although the guards are faceless stuffed shirts who treat Martha as callously as one might expect, down to the strip search and an implied body cavity search.
In fact, the prison sequence seems to be an attempt to squeeze some character development into Ms. Shepherd's curiously wooden performance. While Martha tries to stay "above it all," the other inmates won't let her. They eventually reveal themselves as more compassionate and accepting than Martha herself, who finally defrosts enough to help the gals with the Christmas decorating contest, which was the most heartwarming scene in the film. The famous poncho that a fellow inmate knitted for her makes continual appearances throughout this sequence, although what inspires the woman to gift Ms. Stewart with this labor of love is anyone's guess. By the time Martha leaves prison her stock has tripled, her business suit is back on, and she greets her welcoming staff with the words, "Now where were we?"
While I didn't have very high hopes for a TV movie of this type to deliver an inspiring message for the sake of humanity, I did expect it to deliver a story. Every beginning writer knows that in a story you have to have not only a sequence of events, but a main character that readers (or viewers) can expect to relate to at some point--that must progress through the conflict in such a way as to CHANGE THEM SOMEHOW. In this respect, "Martha Behind Bars" fails miserably. Why would an audience want to watch a rich, omnipotent corporate mogul endure public humiliation and incarceration, only to wind up watching a rich, omnipotent corporate mogul crow over the fact that she is even more successful because of her prison stint? While it may be an accurate picture of American "justice" as visited on the elite, it is hardly a good story.
So was it a complete waste of time? Not really--you can always learn a lot from a story done badly. And I got two more inches done on my knitting.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Why I want my mom to get an annulment
We all grow up with this image of what we perceive marriage to be. We might have to hearken back a couple of generations, but almost without exception, when young people imagine marriage it is in an ideal, almost sacramental sense. Where does this feeling come from? Why do people have it? Because marriage IS a sacrament. In the eyes of Holy Mother Church, marriage is supposed to last a lifetime. Married couples are supposed to love one another, sacrifice for one another, raise a family, and not go to bed angry. The goal is to provide a secure environment for the family to go on, something the kids can come back to.
Whatever you believe about divorce, whether you agree with the Church's teaching that a true sacramental marriage can never be dissolved by any human authority, or if you believe no-fault divorce must be available on demand for the sake of all concerned, most people would agree that divorce is not the *goal*. Divorce is what happens when something goes wrong. In my mom's case, there are a lot of factors that could be to blame for what went "wrong." You could say that the economy and the times were against them, they were too poor and life was too hard. You could cite the abuse that went on. You could make a convincing case that my father was struggling with undiagnosed mental illness and that my mother couldn't live with that. Most of the reasons, however (with the exception of the mental illness, perhaps) do not constitute grounds for nullity in the eyes of the Church.
Well, what is annulment? A decree of nullity issued by the Catholic Church declares that there was never a valid marriage to begin with. It's not a "Catholic divorce," and it's definitely not a get-out-of-jail-free card for troubled marriages. The Church doesn't say that just because marriage is hard, there are grounds for nullity. The Church says many beautiful, profound, and sensible things about marriage, but she does say that it IS hard. That's why you have pre-marriage counseling--and that's why the Church says no to premarital sex and contraception because, among other reasons, they introduce fatal flaws into the marriage that practically ensure failure. However, there are cases when one or both of the parties concerned enters the marriage under pressure, or without consent, or in haste, or without a true idea of what marriage is and what it requires, or without the intention to live up to the marriage vows. And there are many, many marriages involving baptized Catholics that do not follow the proper form--i.e. by a priest in the presence of at least two witnesses.
Such a marriage was that of my parents. I don't know when and how they were married, but it wasn't by a Catholic priest. And they certainly didn't have the necessary knowledge, consent, and intention to live their married life in accord with Church teaching. In fact, my mom told me that my dad told HER that he would never marry a Catholic. So their marriage began with a rejection of the Church. Since my mom is a baptized Catholic, it would be fairly easy for her to obtain an annulment on the technicality that since the marriage didn't follow the proper Catholic form, it could be declared null.
Now why do I want her to do this? A lot of people want a declaration of nullity for a past marriage because it impacts their relationship to the Church now, in most cases because one or both of the parties has remarried or wants to remarry in the Church, and the prior marriage is considered valid until proven otherwise (remarriage, in the eyes of the Church, isn't possible, but the misnomer sticks). But my mom has never sought remarriage. She can't trust a man enough, after my Dad. And I think that, deep in her heart, she's still a good Catholic girl who pinned all her hopes on that marriage ideal--and once it fell apart, she can't seek another one, because in her bones she knows it's only possible to be truly, sacramentally married once. The greatest aspiration of a young woman's life is often the hope of a good marriage. And she has been living with that cruel disappointment for twenty years.
It is because of the divorce, I think, that her relationship to the Church is poisoned. She believes the Church punishes divorced people and once told me that "they [the Church] try to control your personal life." Despite the fact that Christians are called to obey moral authority (whether of the Bible, if you are a "Bible alone" Christian, or of the Church, if you are Catholic), she has come to see self-control, serving others, and obeying moral strictures as an echo of the oppression under which my father forced her to live. And so with a cry of "Never again!" I see her as not only enduring the great hurt of a shattered marriage, but also cutting herself off from any chance of help or healing.
I would love to see my mother reconciled with the Church. I don't see a lot of hope for that, but I must pray and hope anyway. I keep stuffing information about the annulment process into envelopes and sending it to her in the hope that she might one day realize that if it's true the marriage never existed in the first place, then she can re-write the story of her life, and instead of seeing her marriage to my father as a betrayal and a failure, she can say to herself, "that was never a marriage in the eyes of God." Her whole view of marriage, her life, God, and even the Church, could change. I know she wishes I'd just shut up and leave her to live her own life, but how many people who've had a change of heart, come back to God or the Church or changed their minds or lives profoundly, have said, "If that one person hadn't stopped bugging me, I wouldn't be where I am today."
Finally, why do I personally want her to petition for an annulment? Because most of the great pain and trauma in my life stems from that same divorce. The way I view my life and my identity, the reasons I've done the things I've done, go right back to the drama that took place in a trailer in Idaho in the 70's. For me the divorce was a betrayal of everything a kid wants the story of their lives to be. The divorce makes their marriage, their love, my life, into a lie. If that lie were erased, if God could say to me--through the Church--"Your life is not about this," then maybe I could finally heal something I've been dragging around for twenty years.
Whatever you believe about divorce, whether you agree with the Church's teaching that a true sacramental marriage can never be dissolved by any human authority, or if you believe no-fault divorce must be available on demand for the sake of all concerned, most people would agree that divorce is not the *goal*. Divorce is what happens when something goes wrong. In my mom's case, there are a lot of factors that could be to blame for what went "wrong." You could say that the economy and the times were against them, they were too poor and life was too hard. You could cite the abuse that went on. You could make a convincing case that my father was struggling with undiagnosed mental illness and that my mother couldn't live with that. Most of the reasons, however (with the exception of the mental illness, perhaps) do not constitute grounds for nullity in the eyes of the Church.
Well, what is annulment? A decree of nullity issued by the Catholic Church declares that there was never a valid marriage to begin with. It's not a "Catholic divorce," and it's definitely not a get-out-of-jail-free card for troubled marriages. The Church doesn't say that just because marriage is hard, there are grounds for nullity. The Church says many beautiful, profound, and sensible things about marriage, but she does say that it IS hard. That's why you have pre-marriage counseling--and that's why the Church says no to premarital sex and contraception because, among other reasons, they introduce fatal flaws into the marriage that practically ensure failure. However, there are cases when one or both of the parties concerned enters the marriage under pressure, or without consent, or in haste, or without a true idea of what marriage is and what it requires, or without the intention to live up to the marriage vows. And there are many, many marriages involving baptized Catholics that do not follow the proper form--i.e. by a priest in the presence of at least two witnesses.
Such a marriage was that of my parents. I don't know when and how they were married, but it wasn't by a Catholic priest. And they certainly didn't have the necessary knowledge, consent, and intention to live their married life in accord with Church teaching. In fact, my mom told me that my dad told HER that he would never marry a Catholic. So their marriage began with a rejection of the Church. Since my mom is a baptized Catholic, it would be fairly easy for her to obtain an annulment on the technicality that since the marriage didn't follow the proper Catholic form, it could be declared null.
Now why do I want her to do this? A lot of people want a declaration of nullity for a past marriage because it impacts their relationship to the Church now, in most cases because one or both of the parties has remarried or wants to remarry in the Church, and the prior marriage is considered valid until proven otherwise (remarriage, in the eyes of the Church, isn't possible, but the misnomer sticks). But my mom has never sought remarriage. She can't trust a man enough, after my Dad. And I think that, deep in her heart, she's still a good Catholic girl who pinned all her hopes on that marriage ideal--and once it fell apart, she can't seek another one, because in her bones she knows it's only possible to be truly, sacramentally married once. The greatest aspiration of a young woman's life is often the hope of a good marriage. And she has been living with that cruel disappointment for twenty years.
It is because of the divorce, I think, that her relationship to the Church is poisoned. She believes the Church punishes divorced people and once told me that "they [the Church] try to control your personal life." Despite the fact that Christians are called to obey moral authority (whether of the Bible, if you are a "Bible alone" Christian, or of the Church, if you are Catholic), she has come to see self-control, serving others, and obeying moral strictures as an echo of the oppression under which my father forced her to live. And so with a cry of "Never again!" I see her as not only enduring the great hurt of a shattered marriage, but also cutting herself off from any chance of help or healing.
I would love to see my mother reconciled with the Church. I don't see a lot of hope for that, but I must pray and hope anyway. I keep stuffing information about the annulment process into envelopes and sending it to her in the hope that she might one day realize that if it's true the marriage never existed in the first place, then she can re-write the story of her life, and instead of seeing her marriage to my father as a betrayal and a failure, she can say to herself, "that was never a marriage in the eyes of God." Her whole view of marriage, her life, God, and even the Church, could change. I know she wishes I'd just shut up and leave her to live her own life, but how many people who've had a change of heart, come back to God or the Church or changed their minds or lives profoundly, have said, "If that one person hadn't stopped bugging me, I wouldn't be where I am today."
Finally, why do I personally want her to petition for an annulment? Because most of the great pain and trauma in my life stems from that same divorce. The way I view my life and my identity, the reasons I've done the things I've done, go right back to the drama that took place in a trailer in Idaho in the 70's. For me the divorce was a betrayal of everything a kid wants the story of their lives to be. The divorce makes their marriage, their love, my life, into a lie. If that lie were erased, if God could say to me--through the Church--"Your life is not about this," then maybe I could finally heal something I've been dragging around for twenty years.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Who's a Housewife Anymore?...Continued
[Blogger's note: Before the devastation of Katrina, I had intended to finish up a series of posts on certain attitudes that I have held and encountered from others about being a stay-at-home-mom. Please bear with me, as this is eventually intended for print, and please comment if you feel I've rendered something inaccurately or if you can think of an attitude that didn't make it in.]
ATTITUDE #2: Gosh, you're really lucky!
This is the being-a-stay-at-home-mom-is-somehow-like-winning-a-raffle attitude. Implied within the statement is that my husband brings home truckloads of cash, which makes it more desirable for me to stay at home and spend his money, instead of working myself for $12.50 an hour. It also completely overlooks all the planning, organization, and hard work that I do in order to maintain a lifestyle I can be happy in. The simple fact is, being a SAHM is not an accident. If I reverted to old habits, abandoned the goals I've set, and refused to expend effort to learn how to do things myself, being a stay at home mom would quickly become a state of stress and torment. I realize that people who say this are not trying to insult me, but the underlying assumptions within that statement betray yet another common myth about SAHM's: that we are somehow either way richer or way poorer than other families.
ATTITUDE #3: I wish I could stay at home, but my husband is disabled, or can't keep a job...or (insert other valid reason here).
I completely sympathize with these mothers. It is often one of the blessings I thank God for every day, that He gave me a healthy husband who is a good provider. I believe that for most mothers, economics is near the top of the list of reasons why they work. This is even more true for women who find they just can't survive financially without supplementing the family income (meaning they are working to put food on the table, not for extras). It is a fear that stalks my nights, imagining what I would do if Dean was disabled, or came down with a debilitating condition. I reassure myself through prayer, financial and savings strategies, and the knowledge that it is better to have a good marriage than a mate who is in the peak of physical or psychological condition. And many of these women ARE in good marriages, they just have to work to make it. To them I say, God bless you.
ATTITUDE #3 1/2: I am choosing to work because I have found fulfillment in my job and in being a working mother.
It occurs to me that these women must exist, but they also must be getting rarer (I haven't met any yet. Besides, they have their own magazine). I have to ask myself whether they really like being pulled in three directions at once, or if they are in denial. At any rate, true objectivity on this issue seems impossible.
ATTITUDE #4: Well I HAVE to work, I'd just go crazy at home, houses are so expensive these days, etc. (defensive reasons)
The defensive attitude is easier to identify, and even easier to understand. But I don't find it easy to sympathize. The people who make these kinds of statements usually act as if the SAHM believes her state in life is superior to theirs, prompting them to defend their own decisions. Why be defensive? Maybe they envy the SAHM and wish they could do the same, but feel beleagured by multiple pressures coming from work, the kids, the husband, the culture, etc. Or maybe they've simply bought into one or more of the myths of being a stay-at-home-mom (see below).
The fact is, there's a reason this person has made the choices she has. If she really wanted to stay at home, she could do any number of things. She could choose to give up some things that she (or her husband) thinks are necessary but are really extras. They could put forth effort to change their lifestyle to a less expensive one (moving to a less expensive area of the country, for example. And if that sounds extreme, consider people who are forced to move because the economic opportunity in their chosen region has petered out). Or they are the rare type that is both disciplined and organized and are working toward a concrete goal. Unless you're going to get into a much longer conversation, I would just try to let the defensiveness bounce off and maybe make a charitable statement about how you've faced your share of hardships too and that our choices inevitably carry tradeoffs. We are all responsible for our own decisions.
ATTITUDE #5: [...........................................] (nothing)
Some people are genuinely flummoxed by the SAHM state and can't think of a thing to say in polite conversation about it. This is awkward, because it most often happens with family members. They know YOU, or so they think, and they know what they do all day, but they don't want to pry too deeply into what you do all day. Or they may not be interested. Family relationships decay as a result. That's sad, and I have to say that some of the responsibility falls upon the SAHM to speak up and not censor her news, thinking it too boring. I have been guilty of this myself, particularly with male relatives. I hope this newsletter turns out to be a partial solution, that by not censoring myself and by trying to make my life more interesting to those who do not share it, family relationships could be enhanced.
"Why examine these attitudes at all?" you may wonder. "I never think about this stuff." My response to this is, roll your eyes heavenward and thank God you are not a writer. We are cursed with the desire to obsess verbally about such things and then inflict them on others. We only hope there are others out there who do think about such things without being driven to write about them, but are still interested in reading about them.
ATTITUDE #2: Gosh, you're really lucky!
This is the being-a-stay-at-home-mom-is-somehow-like-winning-a-raffle attitude. Implied within the statement is that my husband brings home truckloads of cash, which makes it more desirable for me to stay at home and spend his money, instead of working myself for $12.50 an hour. It also completely overlooks all the planning, organization, and hard work that I do in order to maintain a lifestyle I can be happy in. The simple fact is, being a SAHM is not an accident. If I reverted to old habits, abandoned the goals I've set, and refused to expend effort to learn how to do things myself, being a stay at home mom would quickly become a state of stress and torment. I realize that people who say this are not trying to insult me, but the underlying assumptions within that statement betray yet another common myth about SAHM's: that we are somehow either way richer or way poorer than other families.
ATTITUDE #3: I wish I could stay at home, but my husband is disabled, or can't keep a job...or (insert other valid reason here).
I completely sympathize with these mothers. It is often one of the blessings I thank God for every day, that He gave me a healthy husband who is a good provider. I believe that for most mothers, economics is near the top of the list of reasons why they work. This is even more true for women who find they just can't survive financially without supplementing the family income (meaning they are working to put food on the table, not for extras). It is a fear that stalks my nights, imagining what I would do if Dean was disabled, or came down with a debilitating condition. I reassure myself through prayer, financial and savings strategies, and the knowledge that it is better to have a good marriage than a mate who is in the peak of physical or psychological condition. And many of these women ARE in good marriages, they just have to work to make it. To them I say, God bless you.
ATTITUDE #3 1/2: I am choosing to work because I have found fulfillment in my job and in being a working mother.
It occurs to me that these women must exist, but they also must be getting rarer (I haven't met any yet. Besides, they have their own magazine). I have to ask myself whether they really like being pulled in three directions at once, or if they are in denial. At any rate, true objectivity on this issue seems impossible.
ATTITUDE #4: Well I HAVE to work, I'd just go crazy at home, houses are so expensive these days, etc. (defensive reasons)
The defensive attitude is easier to identify, and even easier to understand. But I don't find it easy to sympathize. The people who make these kinds of statements usually act as if the SAHM believes her state in life is superior to theirs, prompting them to defend their own decisions. Why be defensive? Maybe they envy the SAHM and wish they could do the same, but feel beleagured by multiple pressures coming from work, the kids, the husband, the culture, etc. Or maybe they've simply bought into one or more of the myths of being a stay-at-home-mom (see below).
The fact is, there's a reason this person has made the choices she has. If she really wanted to stay at home, she could do any number of things. She could choose to give up some things that she (or her husband) thinks are necessary but are really extras. They could put forth effort to change their lifestyle to a less expensive one (moving to a less expensive area of the country, for example. And if that sounds extreme, consider people who are forced to move because the economic opportunity in their chosen region has petered out). Or they are the rare type that is both disciplined and organized and are working toward a concrete goal. Unless you're going to get into a much longer conversation, I would just try to let the defensiveness bounce off and maybe make a charitable statement about how you've faced your share of hardships too and that our choices inevitably carry tradeoffs. We are all responsible for our own decisions.
ATTITUDE #5: [...........................................] (nothing)
Some people are genuinely flummoxed by the SAHM state and can't think of a thing to say in polite conversation about it. This is awkward, because it most often happens with family members. They know YOU, or so they think, and they know what they do all day, but they don't want to pry too deeply into what you do all day. Or they may not be interested. Family relationships decay as a result. That's sad, and I have to say that some of the responsibility falls upon the SAHM to speak up and not censor her news, thinking it too boring. I have been guilty of this myself, particularly with male relatives. I hope this newsletter turns out to be a partial solution, that by not censoring myself and by trying to make my life more interesting to those who do not share it, family relationships could be enhanced.
"Why examine these attitudes at all?" you may wonder. "I never think about this stuff." My response to this is, roll your eyes heavenward and thank God you are not a writer. We are cursed with the desire to obsess verbally about such things and then inflict them on others. We only hope there are others out there who do think about such things without being driven to write about them, but are still interested in reading about them.
Friday, September 16, 2005
Riding in Airplanes with Babies
It is possible. I will even go so far as to say that it is possible with a 15-month-old, while you are seven months pregnant. But it is not fun. Especially if the plane is small, you have a large person seated next to you, and the flight is longer than two hours, which mine thankfully was not.
The purpose of this flight was to see my aging grandparents, show them their great-grandson, and go to Mass with them just once--as a fellow Catholic--before they die. As far as I know, I am the only Catholic, besides them, in the family. Each of their five children has gone his separate way and, I presume, the grandchildren have followed suit. I find it amazing that, in my own life, the Church has exercised a pull on me despite my having been alienated from these grandparents at an early age, and despite my own anti-Catholic father's attempts to estrange me from them and trash the Church. This trip was my attempt to communicate that at least one branch of their descendants has gone home to Rome.
While we have never been close, they seemed to get the message. Grandma's enthusiasm was palpable as she handed me a small box and said, "Here's a rosary, in case you don't already have one," and showed me some of her treasured religious objects, like an old wooden crucifix she bought in the forties. Grandpa showed me his rosary and gave me a blessed medal to put on mine. In twenty years of knowing these people, they have never shared anything truly personal with me. I felt that coming down at this time had been the right thing to do.
We attended Mass at the huge old church that was down the street from their house. St. Mary's was built around 1956, a spanish-style church with a bell tower, and sprawling school buildings that once handled the bustling parish that was, but which now stand empty. The priest still says daily and Saturday Mass as well as Sundays, but he now splits his time between the Taft and Buttonwillow parishes. The Saturday Mass, moreover, was in Spanish, in order to accomodate the town's growing Hispanic population. Following it was like trying to follow a football game in three different languages. If you know enough about football, however, you can follow the game anyway. I soon gave up on trying to flip back and forth between the Spanish and English translations in the missal, and only got lost a couple more times. The inside of the church itself was that perfect marriage between detail and simplicity, and I hope it stands for a long time to come--even if all the Masses are in Spanish.
Religious strife between me and my mom and sister was kept to a minimum. My sister, a sometime Seventh-Day Adventist churchgoer, witnessed to me in good Christian fashion about how her faith had transformed her life and she couldn't do anything without Jesus. I affirmed this generic Christianity without committing myself to any particular doctrines. To do so would only have been to open a huge can of worms with my sister, who is not up to discussing religion rationally and doesn't know how to limit her comments. Mom told me later that my sister knows I'm a Catholic, but that she doesn't understand why I would do that, because "Catholics worship Mary." I told Mom that at least I had gone to the trouble to learn enough about her religion to know it was not a cult, and so the least she could do for me is investigate Catholicism enough to discover that those old canards that are so widespread simply aren't true. I did not muster the courage to confront my sister on this issue, however.
Which brings me back to airplanes and the joy of coming home. I'm glad I went, but I paid a price in suffering for this trip. I was pushed to my limit physically, with the lack of rest, and so committed sins of uncharity and impatience that I will have to admit in the confessional. However, I found myself again experiencing the power of God leading me to do and say "the right thing" many more times than I would have had I not been regularly receiving our Lord in the Eucharist. This is the grace of God, which is not my doing, so I cannot boast.
The purpose of this flight was to see my aging grandparents, show them their great-grandson, and go to Mass with them just once--as a fellow Catholic--before they die. As far as I know, I am the only Catholic, besides them, in the family. Each of their five children has gone his separate way and, I presume, the grandchildren have followed suit. I find it amazing that, in my own life, the Church has exercised a pull on me despite my having been alienated from these grandparents at an early age, and despite my own anti-Catholic father's attempts to estrange me from them and trash the Church. This trip was my attempt to communicate that at least one branch of their descendants has gone home to Rome.
While we have never been close, they seemed to get the message. Grandma's enthusiasm was palpable as she handed me a small box and said, "Here's a rosary, in case you don't already have one," and showed me some of her treasured religious objects, like an old wooden crucifix she bought in the forties. Grandpa showed me his rosary and gave me a blessed medal to put on mine. In twenty years of knowing these people, they have never shared anything truly personal with me. I felt that coming down at this time had been the right thing to do.
We attended Mass at the huge old church that was down the street from their house. St. Mary's was built around 1956, a spanish-style church with a bell tower, and sprawling school buildings that once handled the bustling parish that was, but which now stand empty. The priest still says daily and Saturday Mass as well as Sundays, but he now splits his time between the Taft and Buttonwillow parishes. The Saturday Mass, moreover, was in Spanish, in order to accomodate the town's growing Hispanic population. Following it was like trying to follow a football game in three different languages. If you know enough about football, however, you can follow the game anyway. I soon gave up on trying to flip back and forth between the Spanish and English translations in the missal, and only got lost a couple more times. The inside of the church itself was that perfect marriage between detail and simplicity, and I hope it stands for a long time to come--even if all the Masses are in Spanish.
Religious strife between me and my mom and sister was kept to a minimum. My sister, a sometime Seventh-Day Adventist churchgoer, witnessed to me in good Christian fashion about how her faith had transformed her life and she couldn't do anything without Jesus. I affirmed this generic Christianity without committing myself to any particular doctrines. To do so would only have been to open a huge can of worms with my sister, who is not up to discussing religion rationally and doesn't know how to limit her comments. Mom told me later that my sister knows I'm a Catholic, but that she doesn't understand why I would do that, because "Catholics worship Mary." I told Mom that at least I had gone to the trouble to learn enough about her religion to know it was not a cult, and so the least she could do for me is investigate Catholicism enough to discover that those old canards that are so widespread simply aren't true. I did not muster the courage to confront my sister on this issue, however.
Which brings me back to airplanes and the joy of coming home. I'm glad I went, but I paid a price in suffering for this trip. I was pushed to my limit physically, with the lack of rest, and so committed sins of uncharity and impatience that I will have to admit in the confessional. However, I found myself again experiencing the power of God leading me to do and say "the right thing" many more times than I would have had I not been regularly receiving our Lord in the Eucharist. This is the grace of God, which is not my doing, so I cannot boast.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Disaster
It has been almost a week since the hurricane disaster and I have yet to wrap my mind around it. Unlike many people with cable television, however, I haven't been able to consume as much reportage on this event as I might have wished. This leaves me in the perhaps unusual situation of, rather than being numbed, remaining shocked and disbelieving about all the things I have heard (especially the horror stories). It's just as well. I would simply drive myself crazy (in my pregnant and hormonal state, moreover) and render myself unable to think at all. I really doubt my ability to blog on this topic, and nobody is really reading it yet, but if I looked back over my archives at some point in the future and found nothing about the biggest disaster to hit the U. S. in 100 years, I would regret that I didn't even try. That said, I can't hope to add much to the commentary but the housewife angle; however, that's what I'm here for.
My first reaction is helplessness. I can't put any nervous energy toward work, or drown my awareness in the hum of traffic, or saturate my optical nerves with images from CNN. I look out my window and the plants are still growing. I go get gas and the prices are still (fairly) low. I open cupboards full of groceries and go to the bathroom a dozen times a day. My well-fed baby laughs and claps his hands. He is learning to put things into containers. There is nothing in my situation that is analogous to that of the evacuees. On the other hand, I feel a heightened level of anxiety over little things. I got upset with my husband for not spending enough time with our son, who appeared today to eat a little rock, that I am afraid will get all knotted up in his guts and need surgery. My husband feels a twinge in his tooth and I envision a $3000 dental bill. Meanwhile, I saw a stray bug in the kitchen and assumed the house was infested. In other words--you name it, I'm nervous about it. Is this all fallout from the disaster, or just housewife neurosis? We gave to the relief effort today and will probably give again, but it doesn't seem like enough.
A woman in my situation called into the Catholic Answers Live radio show and put the what-do-I-do question to the guest, Rosalind Moss, who comes on regularly to speak to people about their personal struggles. Rosalind told the caller an insightful thing. She told the woman, whom she knows, to offer her sufferings to Jesus on behalf of those souls who are suffering and who have died in the disaster. This predominantly Catholic concept is known popularly as "offering it up." This is a concept that took me a long time to grasp as I was going through the conversion process. I'll do my best to put it in a nutshell, but don't hare off and quote me as if I were a theologian. This is a layperson's understanding.
The human race is united in the sense that we all have the spiritual capacity to pray for one another. I wouldn't scorn prayers from a Muslim or Hindu. Even an atheist can wish another well, even though that one would probably deny that he or she was doing anything spiritual. But the Body of Christ, in particular those who are united to his Church through baptism (yes, this includes many Protestants as well), possess a special awareness of the power of prayer and are especially effective intercessors for one another and for any human soul. Included within the Body of Christ are also those who are suffering in purgatory (the Church Suffering), and those united with Christ in the beatific vision (the Church Triumphant, in heaven). There are degrees of effectiveness in prayer in the sense that the closer one comes to denying the things of the world and focusing on the promise of heaven--in effect, the closer one comes to Christ--the more efficacious those prayers are, the closest and most potent prayers being those of the saints that are with Christ in heaven, with the Blessed Virgin at the forefront. This is the basic idea of the communion of saints in the Catholic Church.
Time for a Bad Analogy of earthly to heavenly things. Imagine that every person in the world has a cell phone, but they are cell phones from all different eras of cell phone technology. Somebody in Harvard has a clunky old Eriksson, Mexicans in Guadalupe have the latest whiz-bang circuitry and cut their own movies, and people like me have their trusty old Qualcomms and Nokias. Now imagine that at the top of every Catholic church in the world is a massive cell phone signal transmitter, that transmits every call it receives straight to Heaven. Now imagine that in heaven there are no cell phones because nobody needs them anymore. Jesus is right there in the room and the saints can simply tell him their prayers, whereas the souls in purgatory down the hall have to sort of shout, but they can still be heard. Still closer is the Blessed Mother whispering in Jesus' ear. Over the loudspeakers you can hear the prayers coming in from all the cell phones on the earth. Naturally some have more static than others, depending on how clear that person's connection is with Jesus and His Church. This is all bunk, but you get the general idea (Jesus isn't hard of hearing--it's our fault if we mumble or remain stubbornly silent). We all possess the capacity to communicate and pray to God in various degrees. Obviously a Harvard scientist who denies all form of religion is going to have a heck of a lot of static on his line, but it doesn't mean God doesn't hear him. It just means his spiritual equipment isn't up to date, or isn't working well, or that he's too far from the Church to get any signal through. On the other hand, Jesus hears every word Mary says, clear as a bell.
Now, if I haven't muddied the waters intolerably, let me add suffering to the mix. Suffering is something that seems to affect us negatively, but has the remarkable ability to clear up our statick-y line to God in a hurry. Christ hears the prayers of the suffering in a special way, because he himself suffered as one of us, for our redemption. Now if we consciously enhance our prayers with the special intention of offering our sufferings as a sacrifice for the sake of others, it's as if we've tripped an amplifier and our signals go way up. St. Paul spoke of "adding" his sufferings to those of Christ on the cross, to "fill up what was lacking" in those sufferings. Now does that mean that Christ's suffering was somehow inadequate? Of course not. On the cross, as Tim Staples says so eloquently, Christ won enough graces to save a billion worlds (infinite graces beyond our comprehension). Far from being inadequate, Christ's suffering opened the floodgates of grace and enabled us to access his one great sacrifice by offering him our many limited and finite sacrifices. Through those offerings, grace is released by the power of God to fulfill those intentions of ours that are the will of Christ. Thus, said Rosalind to the distraught caller, your sacrifice WILL have far reaching consequences for the souls on whose behalf you have offered your suffering. Who knows the good that may be done?
Now if you aren't impressed by the Church's theory of offering our suffering to Christ as expressed by a housewife in Vancouver, Washington, I recommend consulting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or searching keywords like suffering, sacrifice, purgatory, and communion of saints on Catholic.com. They will express it far better than I will. In the meantime, I think I will go to bed and continue to meditate on the Glorious Mysteries, asking Christ to accept the sacrifice of my suffering on behalf of those souls who are suffering and who have died in this disaster (and try to find a better metaphor for prayer than cell phones).
My first reaction is helplessness. I can't put any nervous energy toward work, or drown my awareness in the hum of traffic, or saturate my optical nerves with images from CNN. I look out my window and the plants are still growing. I go get gas and the prices are still (fairly) low. I open cupboards full of groceries and go to the bathroom a dozen times a day. My well-fed baby laughs and claps his hands. He is learning to put things into containers. There is nothing in my situation that is analogous to that of the evacuees. On the other hand, I feel a heightened level of anxiety over little things. I got upset with my husband for not spending enough time with our son, who appeared today to eat a little rock, that I am afraid will get all knotted up in his guts and need surgery. My husband feels a twinge in his tooth and I envision a $3000 dental bill. Meanwhile, I saw a stray bug in the kitchen and assumed the house was infested. In other words--you name it, I'm nervous about it. Is this all fallout from the disaster, or just housewife neurosis? We gave to the relief effort today and will probably give again, but it doesn't seem like enough.
A woman in my situation called into the Catholic Answers Live radio show and put the what-do-I-do question to the guest, Rosalind Moss, who comes on regularly to speak to people about their personal struggles. Rosalind told the caller an insightful thing. She told the woman, whom she knows, to offer her sufferings to Jesus on behalf of those souls who are suffering and who have died in the disaster. This predominantly Catholic concept is known popularly as "offering it up." This is a concept that took me a long time to grasp as I was going through the conversion process. I'll do my best to put it in a nutshell, but don't hare off and quote me as if I were a theologian. This is a layperson's understanding.
The human race is united in the sense that we all have the spiritual capacity to pray for one another. I wouldn't scorn prayers from a Muslim or Hindu. Even an atheist can wish another well, even though that one would probably deny that he or she was doing anything spiritual. But the Body of Christ, in particular those who are united to his Church through baptism (yes, this includes many Protestants as well), possess a special awareness of the power of prayer and are especially effective intercessors for one another and for any human soul. Included within the Body of Christ are also those who are suffering in purgatory (the Church Suffering), and those united with Christ in the beatific vision (the Church Triumphant, in heaven). There are degrees of effectiveness in prayer in the sense that the closer one comes to denying the things of the world and focusing on the promise of heaven--in effect, the closer one comes to Christ--the more efficacious those prayers are, the closest and most potent prayers being those of the saints that are with Christ in heaven, with the Blessed Virgin at the forefront. This is the basic idea of the communion of saints in the Catholic Church.
Time for a Bad Analogy of earthly to heavenly things. Imagine that every person in the world has a cell phone, but they are cell phones from all different eras of cell phone technology. Somebody in Harvard has a clunky old Eriksson, Mexicans in Guadalupe have the latest whiz-bang circuitry and cut their own movies, and people like me have their trusty old Qualcomms and Nokias. Now imagine that at the top of every Catholic church in the world is a massive cell phone signal transmitter, that transmits every call it receives straight to Heaven. Now imagine that in heaven there are no cell phones because nobody needs them anymore. Jesus is right there in the room and the saints can simply tell him their prayers, whereas the souls in purgatory down the hall have to sort of shout, but they can still be heard. Still closer is the Blessed Mother whispering in Jesus' ear. Over the loudspeakers you can hear the prayers coming in from all the cell phones on the earth. Naturally some have more static than others, depending on how clear that person's connection is with Jesus and His Church. This is all bunk, but you get the general idea (Jesus isn't hard of hearing--it's our fault if we mumble or remain stubbornly silent). We all possess the capacity to communicate and pray to God in various degrees. Obviously a Harvard scientist who denies all form of religion is going to have a heck of a lot of static on his line, but it doesn't mean God doesn't hear him. It just means his spiritual equipment isn't up to date, or isn't working well, or that he's too far from the Church to get any signal through. On the other hand, Jesus hears every word Mary says, clear as a bell.
Now, if I haven't muddied the waters intolerably, let me add suffering to the mix. Suffering is something that seems to affect us negatively, but has the remarkable ability to clear up our statick-y line to God in a hurry. Christ hears the prayers of the suffering in a special way, because he himself suffered as one of us, for our redemption. Now if we consciously enhance our prayers with the special intention of offering our sufferings as a sacrifice for the sake of others, it's as if we've tripped an amplifier and our signals go way up. St. Paul spoke of "adding" his sufferings to those of Christ on the cross, to "fill up what was lacking" in those sufferings. Now does that mean that Christ's suffering was somehow inadequate? Of course not. On the cross, as Tim Staples says so eloquently, Christ won enough graces to save a billion worlds (infinite graces beyond our comprehension). Far from being inadequate, Christ's suffering opened the floodgates of grace and enabled us to access his one great sacrifice by offering him our many limited and finite sacrifices. Through those offerings, grace is released by the power of God to fulfill those intentions of ours that are the will of Christ. Thus, said Rosalind to the distraught caller, your sacrifice WILL have far reaching consequences for the souls on whose behalf you have offered your suffering. Who knows the good that may be done?
Now if you aren't impressed by the Church's theory of offering our suffering to Christ as expressed by a housewife in Vancouver, Washington, I recommend consulting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or searching keywords like suffering, sacrifice, purgatory, and communion of saints on Catholic.com. They will express it far better than I will. In the meantime, I think I will go to bed and continue to meditate on the Glorious Mysteries, asking Christ to accept the sacrifice of my suffering on behalf of those souls who are suffering and who have died in this disaster (and try to find a better metaphor for prayer than cell phones).
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Housewife? Who's a housewife anymore?
Since I stopped working outside the home in February of 2004, I've had a chance to examine several of my own, and others', attitudes about being a SAHM. Here are a few:
- What do you do to fill all those hours?
- Gosh, you're really lucky.
- Wish I could do that, but [valid reason]
- Well, I can't do that because...[defensive reason]
- Silence (they really can't imagine my life, so they don't know what to say).
First, a word. This is a topic that provokes strong reactions from other women who work. Many times the stay-at-home-mother is greeted by the reaction that her lot in life must be either an expression of license (my husband is richer than your husband) or an object of pity (the poor thing is a prisoner in her own home). The conversation dies, just like that.
In response, I have developed the attitude that "our circumstances may be different, but it's just as hard for both of us--only in different ways." What I mean is that we all expend a certain amount of effort to live a lifestyle that makes us most comfortable. And I don't mean just materially comfortable, but mentally and psychologically and emotionally comfortable, too.
Some people are willing to expend incredible amounts of effort to be around other people most of the time because they are psychologically uncomfortable being alone. Some women think they can't be good mothers unless they work--they are emotionally uncomfortable with the challenge of being with their kids all day. Some women crave the intellectual stimulation they get from a career so much that they are mentally uncomfortable dealing with only mundane matters on a daily basis (the newsletter, in fact, is my attempt to seek relief for this problem).
Therefore, it doesn't necessarily follow that either woman--the mom that works, or the mom that stays at home--should feel superior or inferior to the other. They are simply seeking to fulfill the needs they've placed as their highest priority. There is nothing wrong with this, but one thing you will notice me emphasizing from time to time is the importance of goals and choices, and taking responsibility for your choices. The mother who works because she is running away from the need to learn to manage a household is no more liberated than the woman who stays at home out of fear, and experiences endless stress and chaos. They have chosen their priorities, but not consciously. Therefore it is impossible to take responsibility for those choices. On the other hand, the mom who works knowing she is meeting a goal should feel comfortable talking with the organized housewife who knows her worth.
So, with the sound conviction that there is nothing unavoidably horrible OR inherently sublime in the state of the SAHM, let's dive in:
ATTITUDE #1: So what DO you do all day?
I thought I would have empty, endless hours ahead of me as a stay-at-home-mom. I was assured by other SAHM's that this was a myth. I wasn't so sure. Then the baby came, and I discovered they were right. Suddenly I was a 24-hour-a-day milk machine. Despite my fatigue, however, I was driven to do things other then sleep when I put my baby down, because that was the only time when I wasn't stuck to the couch with my boobs exposed.
Incredibly, as the baby got older, I developed a standard of productivity unknown in my pre-baby life. I became a whirlwind of activity and efficiency. Suddenly there were all these projects around the house that needed doing. And since I hadn't spent that much time at home before, I didn't notice that I hated the backyard, or that I longed for different-colored walls in my bedroom. I also didn't notice the running toilet, the cracks in the wall, or the leaky faucet. My days are devoted to the necessary "business" of life--baby care, housework, and bills--but I also have ample time to fix up the house and do many things to improve its value that I wouldn't have had the time for had I gone back to work. I am confident that I am making this house a real investment, increasing its value by the many (mostly little) things I do to maintain and spuce it up.
The other thing I do with the extra time is what I call Reading the Fine Print. If I was working, I would be too exhausted to examine bills and receipts for mistakes or hidden charges or ways we could save money. Granted, even though sitting down with a fat insurance contract with my turkey sandwich isn't the most fulfilling thing about staying at home, it is an eye opener. I've since made several changes that will save us hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in the future. I find I do have one time advantage that many other SAHM's probably don't have. Since my husband is gone most of the time, I have far less housework, cooking, and laundry to do, which saves more time that I can devote to other projects.
In fact, in the year that I've been a stay-at-home mom I have found that not only can we afford it, but after caulking all our financial leaks and evaluating my own earning potential, I have come to believe that, unless circumstances were radically different (if my husband were to become disabled, for example--God forbid--or if, due to unprecedented bad economic conditions, he was limited to working at Wal-Mart), I far prefer staying at home and filling my hours doing things that benefit my family's goals.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
The Catholic Angle
When I conceived the idea for a newsletter for stay-at-home-moms, I wasn't thinking of making it religion-specific. I wanted to have as large an audience as possible, and since my premise is that SAHMs are a relatively small number to try and reach, I didn't want to shoot myself in the foot by shrinking my audience even further. "After all," I reasoned. "If I can't find enough SAHMs to make friends with, there can't be THAT many out there" (Actually, if I were really honest with myself, I would admit that I don't need to know twenty SAHMs to fill my social calendar--I know only 3, and that seems to be enough for me. However, it does seem strange that we don't really connect the way I assumed SAHMs would. Is it time, or different values? More on this later). The newsletter would also involve the collaborative services of a friend from college (and SAHM) who happens to be an editorial genius, and who also happens to be religious, but not Catholic.
However, when I found out about the excellent services available on Blogger.com, there seemed to be no obstacle to creating a personal blog for my own writing that either doesn't find its way into the newsletter, or needs an airing before we spend bucks to print it. Why didn't we conceive the idea as a web-based publication? Well, because:
However, when I found out about the excellent services available on Blogger.com, there seemed to be no obstacle to creating a personal blog for my own writing that either doesn't find its way into the newsletter, or needs an airing before we spend bucks to print it. Why didn't we conceive the idea as a web-based publication? Well, because:
- I am intimidated by all the technogeek stuff involved
- It would be problematic (but not impossible) to find a server home for our creation, as well as more expensive
- I felt I would be giving up too much control over my "baby" if I had to farm out too many services beyond the two-person partnership that was developing
- Publicizing and distributing a paper newsletter has a certain appeal when you're not sure how many readers you're going to have--if the newsletter is in their hands, reading it is instant gratification, unlike trying to get someone to go online and find and navigate your web site, and never really knowing your readership
- It is more intuitive to charge for a subscription to a paper publication (since people have the product in their hands) than to a web-based one which may involve electronic payment methods and other technogeek gobbledygook stuff that would probably cost more money but, since web-based publishing appears to be cheaper, we wouldn't be able to charge as much (to say nothing of the fact that I have never paid money to subscribe to any service available on the Web, many services being available for free).
This brings me back to the Catholic angle. When I was dreamily saying to myself, "There should be a newsletter for stay-at-home-moms, just like the Tightwad Gazette," I immediately thought of The Catholic Housewife as a title, and immediately dismissed it. As much as I feel it fits my perspective the best, I felt the word Catholic would alienate way more people than the word Tightwad. And the word Housewife doesn't cover the SAHM angle. But since this blog is a personal venture, I feel the title carries some advantages in the online world.
There seems to be no shortage of faithful Catholics wandering the Web looking for stuff they can relate to. And since none of it seems housewife-specific, I may be filling a small, but important, niche. In fact, it may be easier to find Catholic housewives on the Web than in my parish. And, if it seems that SAHMs in general are underserved, how much more underserved are Catholic SAHMs? Oh, I know there are many wonderful "family" web sites out there for Catholics. I'm sure in time I'll come to visit them and mention them here. But I'm betting they don't contain the internal perspective of the actual women around whom these families turn.
In conclusion, it simply dawned on me that I would never be able to share my faith, as a Catholic, in the newsletter. Am I talking about hard-hitting apologetics or evangelization? No, unfortunately I don't have the time or the resources to aim so high, and there are already excellent blogs and web sites out there covering this (like Catholic.com and jimmyakin.org). No, I'm talking about housewife stuff, like how cleaning cloth diapers can be kind of like working out your purgatory in this life. I guarantee you won't find insights like that anywhere else!
Monday, August 29, 2005
THE UNEXAMINED LIFE
I consider the Stay at Home Mother (SAHM) to be an endangered species.
What? you say. What about all those moms on the Dr. Phil show? Isn't there currently a resurgence, or renaissance, if you will, of the oft-maligned and mysterious occupation of the SAHM? It's true the media seizes on this topic from time to time with all the curiosity of a paleontologist contemplating a bone fragment. They usually have an air of shocked disinterest as they trot out a raft of recent polls and hold up a couple of specimens of "proof" that women still do this.
In truth, aside from the head-scratching of pollsters and pundits, I believe there are many more SAHM's out there than make the news. But what is unclear is whether these moms have chosen the lifestyle or if it has been thrust upon them. Less than half the SAHM's I know seem to be more-or-less permanently invested in staying at home by choice (they have religious convictions about it, and/or more than two kids). The majority are actively seeking work, or taking courses with the intent to seek employment outside the home. The most common reasons I hear cited are financial problems, boredom, or the husband is not pulling his end of the load (I don't mean to exclude single mothers, but I include them in the working mother category, for obvious reasons. They need a newsletter, too.).
I am in the first category, both for the reasons I mentioned, but also because I find myself suited to this occupation by talent and temperament. Also I am set apart by the fact that my husband is away from home the majority of the time; thus we have a radical division of labor in our marriage that puts us in the permanently dedicated category, unlike SAHM's who have daddies who come home at night. Simply stated, I said to my husband, "If you're going to be gone so much, SOMEBODY's got to be at home, to give our kids some stability." My final reason is that I can't earn enough to justify the added expenses of daycare, transportation, etc.
Some mothers who might be interested in the newsletter are women who currently work (I have met a few of these), and wish they could stay at home, but are scared off by several myths common to the SAHM:
What? you say. What about all those moms on the Dr. Phil show? Isn't there currently a resurgence, or renaissance, if you will, of the oft-maligned and mysterious occupation of the SAHM? It's true the media seizes on this topic from time to time with all the curiosity of a paleontologist contemplating a bone fragment. They usually have an air of shocked disinterest as they trot out a raft of recent polls and hold up a couple of specimens of "proof" that women still do this.
In truth, aside from the head-scratching of pollsters and pundits, I believe there are many more SAHM's out there than make the news. But what is unclear is whether these moms have chosen the lifestyle or if it has been thrust upon them. Less than half the SAHM's I know seem to be more-or-less permanently invested in staying at home by choice (they have religious convictions about it, and/or more than two kids). The majority are actively seeking work, or taking courses with the intent to seek employment outside the home. The most common reasons I hear cited are financial problems, boredom, or the husband is not pulling his end of the load (I don't mean to exclude single mothers, but I include them in the working mother category, for obvious reasons. They need a newsletter, too.).
I am in the first category, both for the reasons I mentioned, but also because I find myself suited to this occupation by talent and temperament. Also I am set apart by the fact that my husband is away from home the majority of the time; thus we have a radical division of labor in our marriage that puts us in the permanently dedicated category, unlike SAHM's who have daddies who come home at night. Simply stated, I said to my husband, "If you're going to be gone so much, SOMEBODY's got to be at home, to give our kids some stability." My final reason is that I can't earn enough to justify the added expenses of daycare, transportation, etc.
Some mothers who might be interested in the newsletter are women who currently work (I have met a few of these), and wish they could stay at home, but are scared off by several myths common to the SAHM:
- We live on beans and bread and feel incredibly financially deprived
- We run a psychological hazard of being bored to death or driven crazy by our kids
- We are destined to gain horrendous amounts of weight
- We are all religious zealots and somewhat unbalanced
- We run the risk of becoming mindless devotees of Dr. Phil, or [insert the soap opera of your choice]
- We will become lonely and uninteresting to other people
I will consider these in subsequent posts. I have found that only reasons 5 and 6 hold any real danger to the SAHM, because of the social isolation I explained in my initial paragraph. These are also the complaints (coupled with financial problems) most often cited by my friends who are SAHM's looking for work, and the reasons cited by some working moms I've met who claim that their jobs save them from the inevitable cabin fever. It is not my intent to stand on a soapbox and try to convince or exhort mothers who want to work outside the home that they should not do so. But I would like to explode some myths and give them a peek at how we do it and why it is worthwhile.
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