For My Aspie Children: Awareness in Claymation

Max talks about Aspergers from Gerald Thompson on Vimeo.



This is a snippet from a movie about a young girl who is a pen-pal with a middle aged man with Asperger's Syndrome.  In this scene he tells her a little about what it is like in his world.  It is a wonderfully accurate and compassionate portrayal of these amazing people.  I should know, I am mom to three of them.

PAX

Looking For Something to Deepen Your Lent?

PAX


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Learn To Live In Loneliness

Learn to Live in Loneliness
Carl Sandburg


A man must get away
now and then
to experience loneliness.

Only those who learn how to live
in loneliness
can come to know themselves
and life.

I go out there and walk
and look at the trees and sky.
I listen to the sounds of loneliness.
I sit on a rock or stump
and say to myself,

"Who are you, Sandburg?
Where have you been,
and where are you going?"

I needed to read this today. I needed to be reminded that Time by myself is not punishment, or wasted, but rather, time to get to know who I really am.

PAX

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The Times They Are . . .

So, I got a contract to write a book. I gave myself a "grace period/vacation" over Christmas, and didn't work on it. It was really nice not thinking about it through the holiday rush. But now the holidays are over, and I am writing. I wanted to let you know so that my two loyal readers wouldn't think I was ignoring them. I am probably sitting staring at my manuscript wondering what the devil I am going to write next. So, if you come here and I haven't posted in a while please say a prayer for me. I am sure the writing is going well, but a little extra prayer can't hurt. PAX - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

When Things Start to Fall Into Place

It usually means that the fight is just beginning. Or so I have found.

I have known for years that I needed to get into shape and take my health more seriously, but for whatever reason I never really got past the thought and on toward any real plan of action. I would take the matter of my slothful nature into the confessional and try to find help there. I tried to get more exercise, and I have been on every diet on the planet. Nothing seemed to work.

I would make excuses like, well at least my spiritual life is on track, does it really matter that my the other areas of my life are a mess?

Then a little over a year ago my world got turned upside down. My mom died after a long illness, and a close friend died after a battle with cancer. I fell into a deep depression from which I could not emerge on my own because my reserves were empty.

Many years ago I had suffered a similar depression after the birth of one of my children. I remember how bad I felt for so long. When I finally came out of that depression, I promised myself that if it ever happened again I would ask for help. So this time, when I found myself in that dark lonely place, and realized that I had been in a similar place before.

This time I did what I had promised myself the last time, and asked for help. With the help of my devoted husband, my Dr., my pastor Fr. Bill, and my spiritual director, I began to see a light. The light came from not carrying my burden by myself, and letting go enough to allow room for God to enter in and begin the healing process. It wasn't what one of them did, but what they all did together.

I started to see my entire life as a whole -- mind,body,soul and spirit. Without working on all the areas together, I cannot move out of the darkness. It is only when each of the areas of my life is in balance that I will become the person God intended me to be.

Now I realize that I cannot be satisfied with two thirds of a life. And interestingly, as I begin to see my plan to get into shape begin to work I an seeing that there is a spiritual component to what I am doing. I am learning about fasting and discipline and obedience and virtue. Not to mention all the extra prayer time I am getting as I work out and walk.

And as the changes in my diet and exercise affect my overall health, I am realizing that it feels really good to feel good.But, now that things are falling into place, I have a long road ahead to get to where I am what God sees as my best self.

At least I have a great team of people surrounding me helping me to reach the goal.

PAX

Till There Was This . . .

So, it is no secret that I am a huge fan of Ignatian Spirituality and especially the concept of "finding God in all things", which to me is simply an awareness that everything we are and have comes from God, so whatever we find in the world in some way can lead us back to God.

About a month ago I got a new CD from one of my favorite singing groups that has roots right here in my beloved Bloomington:  Straight No Chaser.  Among the songs on the CD is the most amazing arrangement of the song "Till There Was You" from the musical The Music Man.   If you aren't familiar with the story, this song is sung by Marian the Librarian when she realizes that she has fallen for Harold Hill.

Only when I heard this particular arrangement, sung by these ten amazing men it wasn't a love song between a woman and a man, but to me it was someone realizing that the entire world looks and sounds different when one becomes aware of God in his or her life.  Everything changes,  colors are brighter, music is sweeter, and somehow the whole world looks so amazing.  There is Love all around,  because God is Love, and those who live in Love live in God, and God in them.

Listen to the lyrics, and put yourself in the place of the singer.  How has your world changed because you are aware that God is a part of all that you do?





Pax

God is Completely Satisfied With You Just The Way You Are . . .

the problem is, you have no idea who you are.

That was one of the messages that I got from a retreat on Practical Christianity this weekend.  I spent the weekend listening to that still small voice from within.  It was telling me that as much as I want to love God, I need to also learn to love myself as God loves me.  God loves the authentic me, and in my ego-centeredness I may or may not be close at all to knowing who that person is.  

I know who I think I should be, but does that mean that my opinion of  who I am and where I am going is the same as God's?   Probably far from it.  It is only through lots of intentional prayer, and discernment that I will ever come to know who it is that God sees when God looks at me. 

Fr. Adrian, (our retreat master) said we should look at it as though we are athletes training for competition.  We can't become elite level Christians without intentionally setting aside time to make ourselves fit enough to be the person God sees us to be.  We have to work on our whole self;  mind, body and spirit.

I am good at working on the spirit and mind part of my elite level training program.  I love to learn new things, I am constantly reading spiritual books and the bible and spending time in prayer and meditation.  I spend time offering my services to others in volunteer activities and share my joy of salvation with others every chance I get.

Where I fall down is taking care of my body.  I need to get more exercise, and learn to eat better to control my blood pressure and blood sugar.   Exercise would help my arthritis.  Eating right coupled with the exercise would lead to weight loss which would in turn be good for my knees.

So,  I am going to try really hard to work on myself.  I am going to spend some time every day being intentional about taking care of my body which is a temple of the Holy Spirit; the place where God resides.  Because from now on it is not I but Christ who lives in and through me, and He shouldn't have to live in a place that looks like it ought to be condemned.

PAX

My Swiss Cheese Memory Worked in Our Favor For Once

So, Saturday afternoon I was sitting with two of my daughters watching How to Train Your Dragon when mrangelmeg came into the room and asked if we wanted to go to Mass that night and sleep in on Sunday morning.  We all looked at each other and said, sure.  We stopped the tape and went got ready for Mass.  When we were ready to leave we realized that our amazing autistic daughter hadn't yet come out of her room.

When I asked if she was ready to leave she said no, she wasn't planning on coming to Mass with us.  So since we had to leave immediately to get there on time we left without her.  But this is where my Swiss Cheese memory comes in to play.  As soon as we sat down in Church my angelbaby looked over at me and said, "Mom, we are supposed to sing at ten o'clock Mass tomorrow."   I just chuckled and said, "Well I guess we get to go to Mass twice this weekend then."

Does everyone remember what the lesson of the readings was though?  It was about our responsibility in giving fraternal correction when needed.  And Fr. used as an example from his own life going to Mass as one of the times when it is our chance to help people who don't go to Mass to want to come to Mass.

So, when we got home, over dinner we told Molly that Fr. Tom had talked about her during his homily.  She asked what he had said about her but we told her that she would have to come to ten o'clock Mass when we went to sing in the choir to find out what he had said.  She was so intrigued, that she was up, dressed and waiting for us when we were ready to leave in the morning.

After Mass as we were driving home I asked her if she heard what Fr. had said about her.  She said, "Yes, he said, it is important to go to Mass."    It was a great lesson, thanks to my Swiss cheese memory and a great homily by our parish priest and a lazy daughter who will probably not miss another mass for a while.

Pax

The Dirty Little Relationship Secret of Women and Purses

I have uncovered the root of the age old dilemma of why a rational woman can be in a monogamous relationship with one man for an entire lifetime but cannot remain faithful to one purse for longer than six months. Admit it ladies, we all have the pile of cast offs in the back of our closet to prove it.

A woman goes out and finds a purse that she absolutely loves, and for a short time that purse is everything she will ever need. Eventually though the purse's flaws begin to show; the cell phone pocket is on the wrong side, there is no place to secure a pen so everytime you need one you have to practically dump out the entire contents of the purse just to find one, not enough space for all your credit cards -- how on earth can you live with that -- I ask you?

After exhaustive discussion with many of my women friends, and looking over all of my stash of old purses for evidence I have come to a conclusion about why it is that women can't remain with one purse for the long haul. It is because we don't get to date our purses!

When we see a purse we like in the store we have to make a full time commitment to it. We don't get the chance to try it out for a while and see what flaws it might have before we decide to take it on. I don't know about the rest of you, but if I had had to make a decision about mrangelmeg on the first day we met, chances are he would have not made the cut, as cute as he was at the time it took a while for his charms to grow on me. On the other hand some of the guys I thought I really liked on that first look turned out to be really really not worth a second or third date (one wasn't even worth the first date, but that is entirely another story).

Yet, when we pick up that purse in the store and look it over and decide that it is the right color, or has the right kind of pockets and amenities we have to make a commitment to it. It is only after we are committed to it that we find out that it has flaws.

In a relationship with a person, you tend to learn their flaws before you make a commitment to them, and you can decide if you are willing to live with the flaws, or if you are wiling to put in the effort to help them overcome their flaws. Not so with purses. A purse has flaws that will never go away, so you just have to live with them, and they begin to grate on your nerves.

That is why a woman will put a perfectly good purse on the pile at the back of her closet at the start of a "new season" and go off to hunt for a new model. The old one let us down. We are looking for perfection.

I noticed in my research that I tend to buy almost the exact same purse, just in different colors each new season. It has a pocket for my IPod and another for my cell phone. It has a built in wallet and is medium in size. I considered for a moment just going back to one of my old purses when the latest one let me down, but as I looked through the pile all I saw were the flaws in the old ones.

Sigh, I suppose it is time to go out and try to find a new, perfect match. Maybe, just maybe this one will be exactly what I am looking for in a purse.

Hey, stop laughing, it could happen!

Pax

A New Year

It has been a year since my mom's death.  In the Victorian era it would be time to take the black wreath off of the door and stop wearing black clothing.  It is time to move on, get on with the stuff of living. They had the right idea.

Now I feel as though I can move on.  My regrets are fewer, and my memories are sweeter.  I can imagine a life without my mother in it now.  I am ready to get on with the stuff of living again.  I love my mother, but I know that she is where she wants to be, in heaven with my dad.   And I can be happy that she is there now in a way I couldn't be a year ago.

My year of mourning is over.

Pax

A Class Act from a Classy Kid

Glee is getting a new foreign exchange student this season thanks to The Glee Project.

Damian McGinty won a 7 episode arc on Glee last night on the finally of The Glee project.  He did such an amazing job singing Beyond the Sea and giving it his own unique twist (in a way that no one on Glee has ever done to my way of thinking.  A kid with an old world, Sinatra-esque charm will be a nice addition to the show's cast.

What is most impressive to me is that throughout the entire Glee Project Damian was the most humble, consistently nice and endearing, and real contestant of all of them.  Of course he was trying to win, but he didn't have to be fake or hurtful of others in order to do it.  That is just the kind of kid that he is.

And his class really showed through in this letter that was posted on the Celtic Thunder Website today.  He has been with Celtic Thunder since he was 14 years old (oh yeah, that is why he looks so familiar, you are saying to yourself).  While he is sad to have to leave them, he knows that being on Glee is just the start of a whole new part of his life.

I wish him all the best.

What He Said: Fr. Barron responds to Bill Maher's "Religulous"

The Longest Journey . . .

is the one that takes us deep within.

It is this inner journey where we encounter God in the most profound way, because at our core is where God resides. This journey involves spending a lot of time in prayer. And to me, the best form of prayer for the inner journey isn't verbal, conversational prayer, but silent, contemplative prayer.

I read an interesting quote by Abraham Joshua Heschel about prayer that in essence says that it is conceit to think that we can actually talk to God.  Prayer is more of an immersion in God, being enveloped and surrounded by God's love and mercy.  

That is the best definition of contemplative prayer.  When I practice contemplation that is exactly what I feel,  I feel as though I am immersed in God's love, totally surrounded by it and gaining strength from it in the silence of my prayer time.

My favorite analogy for God is the ocean.  I am a fish in the ocean and God is the water that surrounds me and sustains me in every way.  In it I move and breath and have my being.  I am so comfortable in my surroundings that I sometimes forget that everything that I have comes from God's love.   As I meditate on this image it helps me to go deeper into myself and uncover my dependence on God and my deep and abiding love for his tender mercies.

Don't be afraid to try contemplative prayer,  just remember that in this case, the longest journey, begins with one image.

Pax

Blogaversary: I'm 7 This Year!

Seven years ago this month I started on this journey of blogging my thoughts for my loyal readers to enjoy. I have written a lot of my life experiences and done some pretty darn good essays about matters of faith. I have enjoyed sharing things I have read or seen on other sights or in the news. But to be completely honest, the most important reason that I have kept this up for seven years is that I can't afford therapy.

Writing is my therapy. I would continue to write on this blog if no one ever visited this site. I have wondered at times about ways to increase my readership, but it doesn't really matter. I write for me, and in some cases, I write for God. So if someone stumbles onto my site or is directed here because of my Facebook or Twitter links and is inspired or challenged by something I write, that is God's plan.

My goal isn't to have thousands of followers or win awards for what I write here. My goal is to write what is in my heart. If what I write touches one person, then that is enough for me.

Thank you to those of you who show up here from time to time to see what I decide to share on these pages. Thanks even more to those of you who comment on my posts, because your comments make me think and make me stronger in my faith and make me a better writer as well.

I wonder what the next year will bring? It will be fun finding out.

Pax

The Real Vocational Crisis: We Aren't Praying Equally for All of Them

Twice in the past two days I have heard or read impassioned prayers for young people to be open to God's vocational call to the priesthood and religious life.  Neither prayer mentioned asking God's help for these young people to listen carefully and thoughtfully to God's call to Holy Matrimony, which is also a vocational path to which arguably most of these young men and women will be more likely to be called than to either the Priesthood or religious life.  I think this is a very huge mistake.

I contend that a lot of the problem with marital difficulties among men and women who were raised in the Catholic church might be because we live in a larger culture that sees marriage as a limited, disposable and often unnecessary institution.  And then within our churches we hear prayers for vocations which call only the priesthood and religious life as being set apart, called by God for a higher purpose.

Speaking for myself as well as my devoted husband,  we both know that from a young age we were called to the vocation of marriage.  We went into our marriage thinking of it as a vocational choice to honor God and through how we live our lives and raise our children to point others toward God.  In the act of having our five beautiful children, and raising them in the faith we are doing it for the greater good of the Kingdom.  We continually pray for our marriage as a vocation, and to help  our children be open to God's vocational call to them wherever  that call may lead them.

And yet, when the Church as a whole prays for vocations, my children only hear about vocations to the priesthood and religious life.  They don't hear about marriage as a vocation and rarer still are prayers for the vocation of single Catholic adult. (to which at least one of my children has been called I believe).

As I see it (and have only heard in one vocational prayer) Marriage is the source of all other vocations.  Without holy marriages open to procreation where will  the Church find the children  to be called to be the next generation of priests and religious?  Since the church doesn't believe in artificial insemination they won't be creating them in a laboratory.

I also contend that if we worked as a church to pray for and strengthen the vocation of Holy Matrimony, and teach it as a vocation to which men and women are called the crisis in vocations to the priesthood and religious life will be overcome.  Men and women will choose marriage more wisely and with a thought toward having more than 2.2 children (if you look at some of the families in our churches today you see these kinds of couples already emerging).  More children raised in the faith means more children for God to call to vocations  to the priesthood and religious life.

So the cure for the vocations crisis is not in praying for more vocations to the priesthood and religious life, but in praying for the vocation of holy matrimony first, or at least as equal to and on the same level as the other vocations in the church.

I wonder if we had an International year of the Family within the church, and focused all of our prayers for an entire year on that vocation, what kind of miracles might begin to happen?

Pax

Knitting Myself Back Together

I just realized something about a week ago.  I haven't really been knitting much since January.  That means since the worst of my depression I haven't been able to pick up the needles and work the stitches.

Then about a week ago I pulled a book off of my stack of "to be read when I have the time" novels and began to read.  The book just happened to be The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood.  It is a book about knitting and grief.  One woman early on in the book even says "We knit to save our lives."

In an amazing God-incidence, the final character introduced to the knitting circle in the book is a woman named Maggie who is so filled with grief that she can't seem to learn even the most basics of knitting.

After I finished reading the book I read the Author's forward (in the reading group copy, Norton Publishing,). In it Ms. Hood states that during a time of grief in her own life she lost her ability to write.  I too am experiencing a very dry spell in my own writing.  I can't seem to get any ideas from my head into words on the screen.  I am at a total loss.  I barely even write in my journal.  It was such a gift to know that 1) another writer had been where I am now and found her way out of it successfully and 2) knitting helped.

So, I am picking up a project I began last Christmas when my daughter was visiting; a shawl for her to take on airplanes where she is always cold that she can use as a blanket on the plane but wear as a shawl through the airport.  It has a beautiful basket-weave pattern that is very rhythmic and will help me get out of my thoughts.  Each stitch will be a prayer for my daughter and with each stitch I will hopefully be closer and closer to feeling like I can live without the weight of my grief someday.

It feels good to have the needles in my hands again.  The yarn slips through my fingers and with each row the shawl takes shape.  In a very cathartic way it even feels good to tink and frog -- remove mistakes for non knitters.  Tink means to remove stitches one at a time  (knit spelled backward, get it) and frogging means ripping out entire rows or numbers of rows of stitches (rip-it  rip-it rip-it).  And when I finish this project I have already picked out my next one, but I need to make a trip to the yarn store for that because I looked in my needle drawer and I don't have the right needles to make it.  Wonder what treasures I will find when I get there?

Pax

Crock-Pot Healing

We are so immersed in the Microwave generation it is really hard for us to think in the long term anymore.  So when healing takes a long time it can be really hard to be a patient patient.  I am in the middle of a long slow healing process, and I am running low on patience.  I want to be back to normal now.  Each time I go to the Dr. I get good news, but even that isn't enough.  I want a microwave healing instead of a crock pot healing.

As I was thinking about this the other day I remembered a story one of my spiritual directors told me about St. Therese the Little Flower.  She was very impatient for something to happen and her spiritual director told her that you can empty  a vase by turning it over and dumping out the water or you can empty the water by dropping in one tiny pebble after the other.  Each tiny pebble displaces a bit of the water, and eventually after enough pebbles have been dropped into the vase the water will all be gone,  and in its place will be thousands of tiny pebbles.  God works in both ways; sometimes God chooses the latter way because it is more compassionate.  We need the time that it takes with each pebble drop to adjust to the change in water level.

So the slow and steady upward trend of my healing is just fine by me because God's timing, while it may not be my ideal choice, is perfect. I would love to be healthy tomorrow, but there is much I can learn as I wait; patience, cooperation, determination, courage, strength and an appreciation for how fearfully, wonderfully I am made.

Pax

Be Careful How You Word Your Prayers

So, I have had a horrible dry stretch in my writing.  I have attempted at least three times a week to open the files for either project I am working on and I sit for at least a half hour staring at a blank computer screen and I can think of nothing to write.   I haven't even been able to write blog posts that I think are very good.  I have written a few that I thought were passable,  but not like the old days. 

I mentioned it to a friend how frustrating it feels to be a writer with nothing in my head to write and she told me a story.  

There is a psychologist who works with people in Los Angeles. At times he works with creative types like screenwriters and authors.  When one of his patients has writer's block he says they should try this:

Every day when you wake up you say a prayer asking God to allow you to write the worst sentence you have ever written, and then set about the task of writing.  Somehow giving yourself permission to write lousy prose breaks through the mental block you are experiencing.  

So, I did just that, for weeks I prayed that God would allow me to write the worst sentence I had ever written.  Then I sat there at my computer and still nothing came.  Then one day I was sitting at my computer trying to write a blog post about gratitude and it happened.  I wrote three of the worst sentences I had ever written in my entire life.    They were trite, uninteresting and  made less than no sense.  

I sat at my computer, and looked at them and almost cried with relief.  God had answered my prayer.  

I learned two very important lessons that day:  1) God answers prayers in God's time, so be persistent in prayer.  and 2) be really specific about what you want from God.  Why couldn't I have asked in my prayer for God to allow me to write like I used to write; meaningful prose from deep in my soul?   Prose that was so beautiful that sometimes I would read it and wonder at the fact that it had actually come from me.  

Thank you God for answering my prayer, but next time could you give me what I need and not what I ask for?

Pax

Downloading Patience

So, I am sitting here at my favorite Starbucks, sipping a Zen tea and waiting for a very, very long download to complete to my computer/Garmin.  It occurred to me that watching something download is the New Millennium equivalent of watching paint dry.  It is the most boring, frustrating activity I can think of doing.

Silly me, I forgot to bring a book with me.

It wasn't until I had been watching the numbers go down, then back up, then down, then back up again for about  thirty-five minutes, that I was wasting a great opportunity to practice patience instead of annoyance.  I mean really, here I was drinking Zen tea, and becoming more and more frustrated instead of using all this wonderful free time to let my mind center on God.

I began to take that inner journey,  letting go of everything; my surroundings, the smooth jazz coming from the XM radio station playing in the background, the download status that kept trending up-then-down on my computer screen, even the fact that my hair was still a bit wet from my workout at the gym just before I came here, and sat with my eyes closed and centered myself on that seed, planted deep inside.  (The image I have come to use as my center).  Conscious of my breathing, and then even letting that go I let the moments slip away along with my frustrations, cares, heartaches and prayers.

I allowed myself to completely rest, wanting nothing, seeking nothing, doing nothing.

Patience is surrender.  Surrender is peace. Purity of heart is to will one thing.

Who knew downloading Garmin Maps would be the pathway to peace?

Pax

Blimey!

Even funnier if you realize that the accent he uses in Law and Order UK isn't his real posh upper-middle class British accent either.

Jamie Bamber is a really versatile actor.

BBC America Rocks.

Pax