On air with Lino Rulli

For those of you with Sirius Radio, I'll be on the show The Catholic Guy on Channel 159 at 4:00pm CST tomorrow. We promise to talk about Catholic stuff in addition to the Beastie Boys.

Writing icons

My fascination with icons and iconography continues. As I mentioned in a previous post, it began a few hours before I got an email telling me that I'm related to a Benedictine monk who's also a brilliant iconographer. I now regularly exchange emails with my long lost cousin the monk, and he recently sent me some fascinating info about "writing" an icon.

Many of you may already know these things, but I had no idea what goes into the creation of each icon. It makes me all the more enchanted with them. He writes:

There is a verb that is proper and peculiar to painting an icon: one speaks of "writing" an icon. This is because in ancient times the art of writing and painting were considered closely related. Also, an icon is considered the Word of God in visual, or pictorial form, so, since a word is "written" so a picture that is a word, is "written".

Also, when an iconographer writes an icon, he (or she, this ministry is non-restrictive) is considered to be doing theology -- really, teaching theology by the skill he employs in his work. The more skilled the craftsman, the more likely he is to attract the viewer to contemplate the Mysteries of Salvation. Generally, young artists work only from prototypes, gradually refining their sense of line and color. Older artists, who are experienced in the practice of the Faith as well, may create new prototypes, but these are always to be approved by ecclesiastical authorities to make sure they are both orthodox and edifying to the People of God.

He goes on to say that he'd like to have a beer sometime while writing an icon but can't because beer is considered food and artists fast while creating icons. (Quick aside: why on earth did it take me so long to convert to a religion that considers beer food??)

I just wanted to share this interesting info with any fellow icon lovers out there.

[comments closed for Lent]

Loaves of bread, part II

As I mentioned in my first post on this subject, I continue to be amazed at how things just keep falling into place to help us get by with this untimely, stressful pregnancy. I have a couple more inspiring examples to share with you.

The House
I didn't know if it was silly to pray to ask God to send me a house in my specified neighborhood at a good price, but I did anyway. We currently share a house with my mother but are desperately out of room, and it's just not going to work anymore once the new baby gets here. So, as tight as money is, we need a house.

I realized that the best thing I could do to make my life easier when I have three kids under three years old is to live as close as possible to my mother. Though I really dislike the location of her house (in the middle of suburban sprawl, in an area that I consider the outer edges of the universe), I knew that the right thing to do was to look for a house in the less expensive neighborhood that adjoins hers. So I asked God: please, please, please direct me to a house that will work for our family and (most importantly) that we can afford. Our budget is so low that many of my friends actually weren't aware that our metropolitan area even has any houses that cheap.

Long story short, one weekend a few weeks ago we happened to drive by a house with a "For Sale By Owner" sign out front. We called the number from my cell phone and the guy showed us the house that day. He was just beaming as he walked us through the house because he said he had been praying about this and had asked God to send him a buyer that very day.

It was beautiful: plenty of room, built recently, new roof, new carpet, immaculate condition, etc. When he told me the price I thought he had to be kidding. It couldn't be that cheap. Was there a problem with the foundation or something? No, he said, he was just anxious to get out of there and move for a lucrative job opportunity. "You're going to think I'm crazy," he said, "but I really feel like you guys being here today is an answered prayer." No, I replied, I do not think that's crazy at all.

We're closing on the house tomorrow. A couple days ago our mortgage broker called us to say the official appraisal came in and was far higher than the price we bought it for. So much higher, in fact, that the lender required us to write and sign an affidavit affirming that we had no previous relationship to the buyer. The price was so good they were suspicious.

The Furniture
This whole time, one of my biggest concerns has been going into debt. My husband and I have sacrificed so much and worked so hard over the past few years to pay off debt (no small feat when you've just started a business) that the thought of putting even $100 on the credit card makes me queasy. I don't mind having a house payment, but I really don't want any other debt.

That left me in a quandary about furniture. The last time we lived alone we had a small loft downtown and little furniture, and living here with my mother we needed even less stuff. As I looked at our budget and looked at the amount of stuff we needed for the new house I wanted to cry thinking about how much money we were going to have to spend -- probably a lot of it on credit cards. We needed:

• Washer and dryer
• Refrigerator
• Bed
  

Those were the essentials, but at some point I knew that I was also going to want to get these things that weren't critical but very nice to have:

• Couch for upstairs living area
• Coffee table
• Chair for living room
• Lawn mower
• Additional lawn supplies (weed eater, etc.)
  

As I scanned sales in the newspaper and looked around on Craigslist I tried not to get too stressed, and just prayed. Being in even a little debt is such a mental drain, I asked God to give me the strength to handle it without getting too frazzled with everything else that's going on.


Last week my dad, who had just moved back to Dallas and set up his new apartment, got a phone call from his company that they needed him to take over a project in the Cayman Islands immediately and they had a furnished apartment waiting for him. This left him in the difficult position of immediately needing to get rid of the following items:

• Washer dryer
• Bed
• Sofa
• Coffee table
• Recliner chair
• A few other misc. things like television, file cabinet, etc. (almost all of which I could very much use)
  

The week off his company gave him to come back to Dallas and deal with all this is the same week that we were planning to move anyway. A couple days after that, my mom told me that she was really getting tired of her refrigerator since it looks awful in the kitchen (it's white and all her other appliances are black). She'd been wanting to get a new one for a few years now but just didn't know what to do with the current one. She asked if we'd take her refrigerator so she can get a new one.

The same day, the seller of our house called us to say that he's moving into a condo and will no longer need his lawn equipment. So he is giving us his lawn mower, edger, weed eater and blower. We offered to buy it from him but he wouldn't hear of it.


I think I am going to tattoo that phrase that "every baby comes with a loaf of bread under his arm" on my back so I'll never forget. We have been so blessed throughout this whole process. And, interestingly, when I tell this story to other parents of big families they don't react with surprise. They just nod and say that, yes, that has been their experience as well. It always works out.

Also, we found out we're having a girl. Deo gratias.


Click here for Part I

[Comments closed for Lent]

Great article on homeschooling

I found this article called Schooling at Home (via The Wine Dark Sea), and I think it's one of the best things I've read in a long time. It's hard to choose what to excerpt since the whole thing is so good, but here was one of my favorite points:

To my mind, however, homeschooling's greatest efficiency lies in its capacity for a rightly ordered life. A child in school almost inevitably has a separate existence, a "school life," that too easily weakens parental authority and values and that also encourages an artificial boundary between learning and everything else. Children come home exhausted from a day at school...and the last thing they want is to pick up a book or have a conversation. Television and video games demand relatively little, and they seem a blessed departure from what the children have been doing all day. "You know I don't read all that stuff you read," a neighbor child scornfully told my eldest...Book-talk was for school, and she wasn't at school just then, thank you.

This really resonates with me. I've always had a passion for learning, yet in elementary school in particular I began to see it as a chore, shunning any extra-curricular activities that might be educational since, hey, I shouldn't have to do that when I'm not in school. I found my classes at school mind-numbing and not at the pace I needed and began to put learning right up there with cleaning my room -- something unpleasant that kids just have to do.

Only in adulthood (after I left the workforce, actually) has my passion for learning been re-ignited. I now devour one non-fiction book after another, make time every day to read or (on major sleep deprivation days) at least watch something on EWTN or the History Channel. Whether or not we end up homeschooling, I hope that my children are able to incorporate their natural curiosity about the world into every part of their lives and never think of learning as a chore to be suffered only during "school hours".

[Comments closed for Lent]

Honesty in prayer

I was looking through the archives at the excellent blog Wheelie Catholic today, and came across a post that struck me. Ruth offers some great advice about being honest in prayer, even when you're angry with God. She faced a great crisis of anger with God after a car accident in her mid-30's that wasn't her fault, from which she became a quadriplegic. She writes:

The question I had to ask was: "I don't mean to question you, God, but about my spinal cord. What were you thinking when that driver plowed into me?"

No, it's not an easy thing to say. To be more precise, it's not an easy thing to pray.

Because, as Father Mc Closkey points out [see How to Handle Anger With God], we need to learn to be honest in our prayers - and honest with ourselves and God. That's where I think I learned more spiritual maturity in my journey from anger to acceptance - was in acknowledging the kinds of feelings I had .

I also had to grow up - and accept that we have free will, which some of us exercise in destructive ways. The driver who caused my accident was on medication and not substance free - a choice made before driving. But I learned that God did not cause my accident, nor did He wish me to have it. It was the result of a very bad choice by the other driver.

Whether I wanted to face it or not, feeling anger was part of the process by which I healed. When I prayed during Mass "..just say the word and I shall be healed", I wasn't praying for a miracle so I could hop up and walk around again. I was praying for spiritual healing, so I could reconcile what had happened, deal with my anger and move on with my life with my disability. Some of my prayers to God were angry asides. I remember saying "Thanks alot, God - now what am I supposed to do?" I had my own personal showdown with God and it could have gone either way, I thought at the time.

But I think my honesty pulled me through with God. It led me to a new level of closeness with God, one where I can pray without hiding my sins from Him. I know it is okay to go to God just as I am, vulnerable and weak at times, yet able to be strong through His grace.

Though my spiritual challenge has been far different, more of a mundane undercurrent of apathy rooted in doubts, I have found that this sort of honesty in prayer is exactly what I needed to do to pull through. I never believed in God strongly enough to be angry with him. My reaction to tough times in relation to God's role in it all was more of a confused, "What's going on here?" But I brought that to prayer, along with everything else.

And, as Ruth describes in her post, I believe it was this sort of honesty that brought be to a new level of closeness with God, and opened me up to receive strength through his grace.

[comments closed for Lent]

Like feeling a heartbeat

Of all the conversion stories I've read over the past couple of years, none have resonated with me more deeply or had a more powerful impact on me than that of author John C. Wright. A former atheist, he is able to articulate what it's like to go from content atheism to deep belief in a way that I cannot.

I've been toying with writing my own conversion story before I enter the Church at Easter, but the thing that keeps hanging me up is explaining what it feels like to believe. I'd like to describe it in a way that all can understand, even those who, like me a few years ago, have never known for a single moment what it's like to know God.

Of all the rambling words I've thrown at the subject, none come close to Wright's simple analogy: "I continue to be aware of the Holy Spirit within me, like feeling a heartbeat." Yes. It is indeed just as subtle, and just as powerful, as that. A quiet, fundamental awareness.

I emailed Wright to get permission to reprint his story since I thought my readers might enjoy it. I encourage you to read the whole thing.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The conversion story of John C. Wright

My conversion was in two parts: a natural part and a supernatural part.

Here is the natural part: first, over a period of two years my hatred toward Christianity eroded due to my philosophical inquiries.

Rest assured, I take the logical process of philosophy very seriously, and I am impatient with anyone who is not a rigorous and trained thinker. Reason is the tool men use to determine if their statements about reality are valid: there is no other. Those who do not or cannot reason are little better than slaves, because their lives are controlled by the ideas of other men, ideas they have not examined.

To my surprise and alarm, I found that, step by step, logic drove me to conclusions no modern philosophy shared, but only this ancient and (as I saw it then) corrupt and superstitious foolery called the Church. Each time I followed the argument fearlessly where it lead, it kept leading me, one remorseless rational step at a time, to a position the Church had been maintaining for more than a thousand years. That haunted me.

Second, I began to notice how shallow, either simply optimistic or simply pessimistic, other philosophies and views of life were.

The public conduct of my fellow atheists was so lacking in sobriety and gravity that I began to wonder why, if we atheists had a hammerlock on truth, so much of what we said was pointless or naive. I remember listening to a fellow atheist telling me how wonderful the world would be once religion was swept into the dustbin of history, and I realized the chap knew nothing about history. If atheism solved all human woe, then the Soviet Union would have been an empire of joy and dancing bunnies, instead of the land of corpses.

I would listen to my fellow atheists, and they would sound as innocent of any notion of what real human life was like as the Man from Mars who has never met human beings or even heard clear rumors of them. Then I would read something written by Christian men of letters, Tolkien, Lewis, or G.K. Chesterton, and see a solid understanding of the joys and woes of human life. They were mature men.

I would look at the rigorous logic of St. Thomas Aquinas, the complexity and thoroughness of his reasoning, and compare that to the scattered and mentally incoherent sentimentality of some poseur like Nietzsche or Sartre. I can tell the difference between a rigorous argument and shrill psychological flatulence. I can see the difference between a dwarf and a giant.

My wife is a Christian and is extraordinary patient, logical, and philosophical. For years I would challenge and condemn her beliefs, battering the structure of her conclusions with every argument, analogy, and evidence I could bring to bear. I am a very argumentative man, and I am as fell and subtle as a serpent in debate. All my arts failed against her. At last I was forced to conclude that, like non-Euclidian geometry, her world-view logically followed from its axioms (although the axioms were radically mystical, and I rejected them with contempt). Her persistence compared favorably to the behavior of my fellow atheists, most of whom cannot utter any argument more mentally alert than a silly ad Hominem attack. Once again, I saw that I was confronting a mature and serious world-view, not merely a tissue of fables and superstitions.

Third, a friend of mine asked me what evidence, if any, would be sufficient to convince me that the supernatural existed. This question stumped me. My philosophy at the time excluded the contemplation of the supernatural axiomatically: by definition (my definition) even the word "super-natural" was a contradiction in terms. Logic then said that, if my conclusions were definitional, they were circular. I was assuming the conclusion of the subject matter in dispute.

Now, my philosophy at the time was as rigorous and exact as 35 years of study could make it (I started philosophy when I was seven). This meant there was no point for reasonable doubt in the foundational structure of my axioms, definitions, and common notions. This meant that, logically, even if God existed, and manifested Himself to me, my philosophy would force me to reject the evidence of my senses, and dismiss any manifestations as a coincidence, hallucination, or dream. Under this hypothetical, my philosophy would force me to an exactly wrong conclusion due to structural errors of assumption.

A philosopher (and I mean a serious and manly philosopher, not a sophomoric boy) does not use philosophy to flinch away from truth or hide from it. A philosophy composed of structural false-to-facts assumptions is insupportable.

A philosopher goes where the truth leads, and has no patience with mere emotion.

But it was impossible, logically impossible, that I should ever believe in such nonsense as to believe in the supernatural. It would be a miracle to get me to believe in miracles.

So I prayed. "Dear God, I know (because I can prove it with the certainty that a geometer can prove opposite angles are equal) that you do not exist. Nonetheless, as a scholar, I am forced to entertain the hypothetical possibility that I am mistaken. So just in case I am mistaken, please reveal yourself to me in some fashion that will prove your case. If you do not answer, I can safely assume that either you do not care whether I believe in you, or that you have no power to produce evidence to persuade me. The former argues you not beneficent, the latter not omnipotent: in either case unworthy of worship. If you do not exist, this prayer is merely words in the air, and I lose nothing but a bit of my dignity. Thanking you in advance for your kind cooperation in this matter, John Wright."

I had a heart attack two days later. God obviously has a sense of humor as well as a sense of timing.

Now for the supernatural part.

My wife called someone from her Church, which is a denomination that practices healing through prayer. My wife read a passage from their writings, and the pain vanished. If this was a coincidence, then, by God, I could use more coincidences like that in my life.

Feeling fit, I nonetheless went to the hospital, so find out what had happened to me. The diagnosis was grave, and a quintuple bypass heart surgery was ordered. So I was in the hospital for a few days.

Those were the happiest days of my life. A sense of peace and confidence, a peace that passes all understanding, like a field of energy entered my body. I grew aware of a spiritual dimension of reality of which I had hitherto been unaware. It was like a man born blind suddenly receiving sight.

The Truth to which my lifetime as a philosopher had been devoted turned out to be a living thing. It turned and looked at me. Something from beyond the reach of time and space, more fundamental than reality, reached across the universe and broke into my soul and changed me. This was not a case of defense and prosecution laying out evidence for my reason to pick through: I was altered down to the root of my being.

It was like falling in love. If you have not been in love, I cannot explain it. If you have, you will raise a glass with me in toast.

Naturally, I was overjoyed. First, I discovered that the death sentence under which all life suffers no longer applied to me. The governor, so to speak, had phoned. Second, imagine how puffed up with pride you'd be to find out you were the son of Caesar, and all the empire would be yours. How much more, then, to find out you were the child of God?

I was also able to perform, for the first time in my life, the act which I had studied philosophy all my life to perform, which is, to put aside all fear of death. The Roman Stoics, whom I so admire, speak volumes about this philosophical fortitude. But their lessons could not teach me this virtue. The blessing of the Holy Spirit could and did impart it to me, as a gift. So the thing I've been seeking my whole life was now mine.

Then, just to make sure I was flooded with evidence, I received three visions like Scrooge being visited by three ghosts. I was not drugged or semiconscious, I was perfectly alert and in my right wits.

It was not a dream. I have had dreams every night of my life. I know what a dream is. It was not a hallucination. I know someone who suffers from hallucinations, and I know the signs. Those signs were not present here.

Then, just to make even more sure that I was flooded with overwhelming evidence, I had a religious experience. This is separate from the visions, and took place several days after my release from the hospital, when my health was moderately well. I was not taking any pain-killers, by the way, because I found that prayer could banish pain in moments.

During this experience, I became aware of the origin of all thought, the underlying oneness of the universe, the nature of time: the paradox of determinism and free will was resolved for me. I saw and experienced part of the workings of a mind infinitely superior to mine, a mind able to count every atom in the universe, filled with paternal love and jovial good humor. The cosmos created by the thought of this mind was as intricate as a symphony, with themes and reflections repeating themselves forward and backward through time: prophecy is the awareness that a current theme is the foreshadowing of the same theme destined to emerge with greater clarity later. A prophet is one who is in tune, so to speak, with the music of the cosmos.

The illusionary nature of pain, and the logical impossibility of death, were part of the things I was shown.

Now, as far as these experiences go, they are not unique. They are not even unusual. More people have had religious experiences than have seen the far side of the moon. Dogmas disagree, but mystics are strangely (I am tempted to say mystically) in agreement.

The things I was shown have echoes both in pagan and Christian tradition, both Eastern and Western (although, with apologies to my pagan friends, I see that Christianity is the clearest expression of these themes, and also has a logical and ethical character other religions expressions lack).

Further, the world view implied by taking this vision seriously (1) gives supernatural sanction to conclusions only painfully reached by logic (2) supports and justifies a mature rather than simplistic world-view (3) fits in with the majority traditions not merely of the West, but also, in a limited way, with the East.

As a side issue, the solution of various philosophical conundrums, like the problem of the one and the many, mind-body duality, determinism and indeterminism, and so on, is an added benefit. If you are familiar with such things, I follow the panentheist idealism of Bishop Berkeley; and, no, Mr. Johnson does not refute him merely by kicking a stone.

From that time to this, I have had prayers answered and seen miracles: each individually could be explained away as a coincidence by a skeptic, but not taken as a whole. From that time to this, I continue to be aware of the Holy Spirit within me, like feeling a heartbeat. It is a primary impression coming not through the medium of the senses: an intuitive axiom, like the knowledge of one's own self-being.

This, then, is the final answer to your question: it would not be rational for me to doubt something of which I am aware on a primary and fundamental level.

Occam's razor cuts out hallucination or dream as a likely explanation for my experiences. In order to fit these experiences into an atheist framework, I would have to resort to endless ad hoc explanations: this lacks the elegance of geometers and parsimony of philosophers.

I would also have to assume all the great thinkers of history were fools. While I was perfectly content to support this belief back in my atheist days, this is a flattering conceit difficult to maintain seriously.

On a pragmatic level, I am somewhat more useful to my fellow man than before, and certainly more charitable. If it is a daydream, why wake me up? My neighbors will not thank you if I stop believing in the mystical brotherhood of man.

Besides, the atheist non-god is not going to send me to non-hell for my lapse of non-faith if it should turn out that I am mistaken.

Posted by John C. Wright on Catholic Answers Forums on Wednesday November 23, 2005 at 11:21 AM. Reprinted with permission.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

[comments closed for Lent]

Loaves of bread

The exciting news today over at Into the Deep has prompted me to write my own DEO GRATIAS! post.

There's a saying that "every baby comes with a loaf of bread under his arm." Somebody told me that a couple months ago when I first discovered the shocking news that I was pregnant.

I've been really surprised at how true this has been in our case. As I mentioned, this pregnancy brings with it a lot of serious financial concerns. The day after I wrote that post, when so many were praying for us, I got three unexpected checks in the mail. One was for a fairly large amount.

Throughout the next few weeks we seemed to get one financial break after another. We didn't win the lottery or anything, and we still have very serious financial challenges, but it's just enough. Whereas before we were facing the serious possibility of simply not being able to get by, perhaps having to cram into a relative's house indefinitely or have me get a job, we now have enough. Just barely enough.

And the biggest news of all came today. Shortly after I read the good news at Into the Deep, I went to the pharmacy to talk to them about getting Lovenox. I've been praying about this and asking others to pray since I need this medication but it's just not something I can afford. I'd called to ask how much it would cost and they said they were having trouble running my insurance, but it was showing $2,418 for a one-month supply. During my last pregnancy my insurance covered more of it and a one-month supply was only a little over $800, so I went down there to figure out what was going on.

The plan was to shuffle my feet and perhaps get them to give me some samples since I'm flying this weekend, which is a high risk activity for having Factor II and being pregnant. I handed the lady the prescription and asked what the total would be, my "Woe is me" speech on the tip of my tongue. She replied, "You have a $30 copay for a one-month supply."

I asked her to confirm it, and she said she was certain that is correct. To my immense relief I am able to set aside my list of ideas, my spreadsheet with possible sources of money to pay for this medication. My insurance has not changed since last time, when it was over $800. I almost got teary-eyed. It was my answered prayer, my loaf of bread.

Deo Gratias.


Click here for Part II, and click here for an update on this story

[comments closed for Lent]

Little rays of light

Sometimes little things come up out of the blue to fan the fire of my faith, just when it's down to the glowing coals.

The latest occurred a few weeks ago. I came across Adoro te Devote's post about how she's become entranced with icons, and I was struck immediately with the thought that, YES!, I too feel very drawn to their ethereal beauty and the peaceful feeling it gives me to simply gaze at an icon. I'd never thought about it either way before, but I suddenly decided that I must have one immediately, and started Googling around to learn more about them.


A few hours later, I got an email from my father's cousin whom I correspond with occasionally. Someone emailed her a PDF of our Christmas newsletter in which I mentioned our conversion to Catholicism. She asked if I was aware that on our side of the family we're related to a Benedictine monk. She mentioned that my grandmother once met him and they really hit it off, and he has a reputation for having the best sense of humor in the whole family.

A what? A monk? On that side of my family? I was shocked. Through my father's side of the family I'm a seventh-generation Texan. That family tree is (so I thought) composed only of Bible-believin' Baptist and Methodist country folks who haven't been Catholic since one of our ancestors walked up to a church in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517 to see what that piece of paper was on the door.

I would have been surprised to find even a stray lapsed Catholic through my father's bloodline, let alone a Benedictine monk. My relative gave me his name and email address, and I looked up his monastery's website based on the domain name on his email. A few clicks into the site I saw that the monastery had a profile for him. To my surprise and delight I found out what his work is at the monastery: he's a master iconographer. Finding that out lifted my spirits and was one of those things that just sort of felt like it was more than a mere coincidence.

I emailed him and introduced myself, and we've been corresponding ever since. He's sending me two scapulars that he had blessed (he sent me a photo of them still dripping with holy water), and a good book for me to read during Lent. It's hard to explain exactly why it brings me such joy to be in contact with this long-lost cousin of mine. I suppose one reason is because I have a deep respect and admiration for those who follow the call to consecrated religious life in our modern, decadent society. It takes a rare person. To know that I'm actually related to someone like that is extremely surprising and inspiring.

Another reason is probably that it's nice to think that I have a cousin who "gets it", who believes that the Church and its teaching is so profoundly true and beautiful that it's worth dedicating your whole life to. I don't know many people like that, and it's exciting to know one more.

And another reason is just my fascination with the rich simplicity of monastic life, particularly the Order of St. Benedict.

I could go on, but I'll stop since you get the idea and I'm not sure it's even possible to put my finger on why it's such a delight to correspond with my cousin the monk. But every time I see his name in my inbox, and read his emails about what new book the brothers are reading or his work with an icon, it's like a ray of light in my day.

I would have never imagined that an inspiring Catholic would come to me from my deeply Protestant, Texan side of the family. But sometimes help comes from the most unlikely of places.

[comments closed for Lent]

Closing my eyes

A few hours after I wrote the post about faith and control I opened up my Lenten reading, Pope Benedict's Journey to Easter (discovered via The Cafeteria is Closed). I immediately came across this paragraph, which was exactly the reminder I needed:

"To be converted" means to follow Jesus, to walk with him, on his way. But let us again insist on the fact that God "brings us back," converts us. Conversion is not human self-realization, and man is not the architect of his own life. Conversion consists essentially in that decision by which man ceases to be his own creator, ceases to seek his own self and his self-realization, but accepts his dependence on the true Creator, on creative love, accepts that his dependence is true freedom and that the freedom of autonomy emancipated from the Creator is not freedom but illusion, deception.

And a sweet friend sent me this little prayer after reading that post:

Dear Lord, I do not ask to see the path. In darkness, in anguish and in fear, I will hang on tightly to your hand, and I will close my eyes, so that you know how much trust I place in you, Spouse of my soul.

~ Blessed Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad

So I've had confirmation that my hunch that I must trust before I can be close to God was right. Now for the hard part: putting it into practice.

As I mentioned in the previous post, it is so very hard to trust when you still have issues with faith. I actually almost never have serious doubts about God and the Church anymore. The world just makes too much sense seen through that lens. I've seen too much proof. But for me to place the outcome of my life, and therefore the lives of my children, in the hands of a Being that I can't sit down and have a cup of coffee with and pepper with questions about the details of his plans, is difficult. Very difficult.

It's not that my doubts are so strong, but that I'm putting all my chips on this one bet. Now that I'm a parent it becomes so daunting and frightening to yield control my life, of our lives, to an unseen, mysterious Entity. I think it's very unlikely that I'm wrong or deluding myself about God's existence...but I look at my children playing on the floor, who are so dependent on me, and can't help but think: What if I'm wrong? What will become of us?

Also, the sheer logistics of growing closer to God, becoming more in tune with his will, are difficult in this phase of life. My seven-month-old has a new habit of waking up every two hours at night to scream for no particular reason; my two-year-old is a little bundle of energy; we have some really daunting financial issues in front of us; this new pregnancy is high risk, expensive and somewhat complicated to manage; and I'm just exhausted all the time. I know that daily work as a housewife can be a prayerful experience, that you don't need to live the life of a nun to grow close to God, but I feel particularly mentally and physically taxed right now, leaving little room for spiritual growth.

My best efforts at prayer and reflection are not that great, often muttered through a haze of sleep deprivation, sometimes even resentful selfishness, so I worry all the more about turning over the reigns of my life. What if I misunderstand God's will? What if his voice isn't getting through to me amidst the fatigue and the chaos?

I know that it's frustrating that I write this post during a time that I've closed the comments. I'm sure that you all have brilliant things to say, as always. But I think that this time there's not much anyone can say to help me. This one's between me and God. I take all these fears, all these "What if?"'s, and offer them to Our Lord. I tell him that I give up, I'm too tired to figure it out on my own anyway, and that if he has a path he wants me to follow he'd better speak up so that I can hear him over the screaming baby and the talkative toddler. I offer him my best efforts at faith and prayer, which are pitiful, but it's the best I can do right now. I ask him to help me, even if I'm not doing my part very well. And I'm going to trust.

I'll take the risk that I'm wrong and God and faith are all a grand self-delusion. If that's true, then we have bigger problems anyway. In my biggest leap of faith yet, I'm going to say and live Blessed Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad's prayer. In the midst of one spiritual setback after another and a disappointingly dry Lent -- in the face of these very trying spiritual tests, the lackluster and the uneventful -- I will simply close my eyes, and trust. We'll see what happens.

[comments closed for Lent]

Replying to emails

Just a quick note to say that my long spell of illness has left me horribly behind on replying to email. Some of you wrote me a couple weeks ago and I've still not been able to reply. I am slowly but surely working through the 102 emails in my inbox, but it may take a couple more weeks to get through it all. But I will read and respond to every email (eventually).

Rocking chairs for big families

Artist Hal Taylor creates the perfect rocking chair for nighttime reading with a bunch of little ones (via the very addictive Neatorama).

Faith in the face of tragedy

Jill has another stunning post about faith and grace in the face of tragedy. Below is an excerpt of her story of her father's sudden death, which occurred the day after the D&C for her seventh miscarriage:

My poor Dad was suffering greatly. His chest heaved violently with the struggle of taking each breath. He had not taken the larger dose of morphine that would have eased him because he wanted to be awake and lucid to see me. For the same reason, he was wearing a powerful oxygen mask that forced air into his lungs, which was very painful but kept his blood oxygen level high enough for him to be mentally alert. He had kept the mask on for hours and eschewed more morphine the whole morning while I packed and traveled. He wanted to see me one last time, and he knew how heartbroken I would be if I never got to say one last good-bye.

The rest of my family left the room as my husband and I said good-bye to Dad. I told him how much I loved him, what a wonderful father he had been and how blessed I felt that he was my dad, how much I will miss him. I asked him, for my own reassurance, whether he believed that he would have eternal life due to Jesus' saving grace. He nodded emphatically and, despite his breathless, almost complete inability to speak, forced out "Yes!" I cried and said, "I will see you in heaven, Dad, and it will be wonderful. Take care of my babies until I get there." I leaned over and hugged him, and he smiled and managed to say "Love you."

Faith, trust, and control

My flu symptoms are finally gone, though I'm now left with a raging sinus infection that leaves me with a constant, throbbing headache and heavy fatigue. It was impressed upon me how sick I've been when I went to the doctor yesterday to discover that I've lost seven pounds in the past couple of weeks...no small feat when you're 13 weeks pregnant.


As I lay in bed last night, unable to sleep from a nagging cough, I wondered if there was perhaps something I could learn from this, or that maybe this illness directly coincided with the beginning of Lent because I was meant to gain something spiritually from it. I quickly decided that unless God was trying to reveal to me that "being sick blows" or "it totally sucks to have a sinus infection" that this was just a purposeless, totally annoying illness that did nothing but derail all my big plans for Lent.

I spent a while dwelling on how this illness has completely inhibited my spiritual progress: my big vision of having an extra prayerful experience at Ash Wednesday Mass, to get up early to pray the Rosary, to go with good Catholic friends to a Knights of Columbus Friday fish fry -- all wonderful plans that did not come to pass. I've felt so rotten I've barely even been able to remember to say a few prayers here and there.

But as I listened to this internal dialogue something jumped out at me: it's all about me being in control, about my plans. And as I thought back over the past couple of years, I realized that, in general, I have always expected to grow closer to God on my terms. I want a sign that fits my requirements at the time and place of my choosing; I want my first Adoration experience to be powerful so that I'm easily motivated to go more often; I want this final Lent before I enter the Church to deepen my faith according to the schedule laid out on my calendar, starting with a stirring Ash Wednesday Mass and ending with a movie-quality Easter Vigil experience. And when things don't happen in the manner, time and place of my choosing, I promptly resign myself to frustration and despair.

I have never, I realized, been able to let go and trust in God.

Illness was not on my carefully-crafted Spiritual Growth Agenda for Lent 2007, so I threw up my hands and lost much of my zeal. This mentality is very typical of me, and I see now that it's a major roadblock to faith. I don't know if trust in God comes more easily for people who were raised in religious households, but I can definitely say that when you've lived your life as an atheist it's hard to give up the notion that you're in control, that your life is yours to plan and manipulate at will. Because I'm so entrenched in my role as organizer and leader, whenever I think of setting aside the checklists and the calendar and just prayerfully letting God guide me, I have this absurd gut-reaction thought that's something along the lines of, "What if God screws it up?"

So, yeah. I have a lot of work to do. But I'm glad to have realized this because, looking back on my spiritual journey so far, it's now glaringly obvious to me that I am not usually willing to fully (or even partially) trust in God, and that I'll never become the person he wants me to be without it. I suppose I keep waiting until my faith is rock-solid and every single doubt has been washed away before I put too much trust in this mysterious God of ours. But perhaps that's backwards. I'm starting to think that trust comes before faith, that God will draw me close as soon as I'm willing to admit that I'm not the one who's running the show.

[comments closed for Lent]