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.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
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).
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