Goodbye, 2011!

As I am writing this, I am sitting here, quarantined in my room. I caught something from one of my perpetually ill cousins this Christmas and, so, there you have it. No mind, I will just have to bombard you all with Twitter updates and blog posts! :)


What a crazy year it's been! So many ups and downs. In June I graduated, and have spent every day since then having everything I once thought about my future, my goals and dreams, my life, being turned upside down by God. Nothing in my life has been safe from His devastating love.


I'm writing now my goals for this year, but I want to do something a little different. I'm taking part in the "One Word 365" challenge, which is basically a commitment to find one word that speaks to your heart for 2012 and the hope you have for the New Year. It's an intentional sort of thing and I will write a mile-marker post every 3 months or so. Hopefully you will all consider participating! Or just doing it on your own!


So my word for 2012 is this: Χάρις - charis. 


Such a small word, yet so rich and pregnant and vibrating with meaning. 


Charis is grace; the grace that God gives, that I can live, inhabit, be. Grace that I could return, give to someone else. It is also joy, holy kindess, charity, Christ-love. 


It forms part of the word eucharisteo, eucharistia - eucharist. This sacrament I am called to live and live by. 


There is so much here! My prayer this year is to make it part of my every breath and heartbeat. 


Blessed John Paul II will also be my patron saint this year! Praying alongside me and guiding me closer and closer to Jesus. 


May all of you, too, be guided by the grace of God, and the peace that He gives! Happy New Year everyone and peace be with you and yours!

7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 1)

1. 

My first Quick Takes post ever! I thought it would be fun to do one right before Christmas because I probably won't be blogging again, or around the blogosphere, much until 2012. 

virgin is the new mermaid

At first I laughed. 

When I saw the promo for a new TLC "reality" show called "The Virgin Diaries" featuring that goofy altar kiss, I laughed like everybody else. When I saw it again on Ellen, I laughed a little less but, still, it was funny. Then I saw the actual show and I stopped laughing. I watched the morning news shows trot out "experts" to weigh in on how healthy this lifestyle is. How these smart, successful, modern women all laughed at that strange being: The Virgin.

when God uses glee and st. john of the cross in the same sentence

Bear with me, there is a method to the madness.

We must then dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. In every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides...The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross. (st john of the cross)

Ode to Autumn

Courtesy of La Tartine Gourmande

I love the changing of the seasons. There's a kind of sadness that you feel in your blood, the changing of your body rhythms, night, day. Watching the resplendence of spring lounge under the hot haze of summer. And then after such fullness, the earth cleanses itself again, shedding its leaves like an old skin. But all this happens in a big fire of color and symphony and wonder. I hate the years when fall lasts all of six minutes before that bear of a New England winter settles down until sometime in March. And I am trying not to that that so much.

So, in honor of the loveliness of fall, I'm posting this poem by the wonderful John Keats called "Autumn":

Let it be

Today has been a rough day. Every year on this day, we Americans, New Yorkers, remember where we were, what we were doing. Everyone marks this day in their own way. And now it's been ten long years, and we say goodbye to a decade lived under the shadow of the Twin Towers.

I can remember passing under them as a kid, bending my head as far back as it would go and still unable to see the top of the World Trade Center buildings. There was almost something sacred about them, that something in this world was bigger than me. It's like a punch to the gut to see the Manhattan skyline with those buildings missing like a giant gaping hole. And more, to think of all those trapped inside, how when the buildings fell, they took 3,000 innocent lives with them.

I visited Ground Zero for the first time in early October 2001, only a few weeks after the attacks. There was a makeshift chain-link fence set up around the site which, then was still a smoldering, dark, smoky pile of horrifically twisted steel.


I will never forget, as long as I live, what it felt like, smelled like, walking down that long block to Ground Zero, made eerily still by the death that, too, had passed by. Everything was still covered in a thick, powdery grey ash, like a blanket laid over a body at rest. The dust caked cars still left there, shoes, crushed phones, abandoned ambulances, blown out shop windows and apartments. I will never forget turning from busy, bustling downtown Manhattan into what could only be described as a graveyard.  I could never fully describe the feelings that day, looking over the site, my parents, my family, New Yorkers to the core, weeping.

Brief Merton post

We are words that are meant to respond to Him, to answer Him, to echo Him, and even in some way to contain and signify Him. Contemplation is this echo. It is a deep resonance in the inmost center of our spirit, in which our very life loses its separate voice and re-sounds with the majesty and mercy of the Hidden One. ... The contemplative is at the same time the question and the answer.

A lot to take in, right? I've been chewing on this quote lately from Thomas Merton a la the New Seeds of Contemplation. What a treasure this man is/was to the Church. His writings are so challenging yet at the same time, they make sense. I would encourage anyone interested in the contemplatives, or this aspect of Christian spirituality to take a look at his stuff.

Normal Rockwell Mary, Queen of Heaven

 

I love this painting of Mary. It reminds of something between a Norman Rockwell scene and a 1930s children’s book. Not your typical Mary painting. But I like it because she reminds of these scenes, so approachable and nostalgic. When I saw it in the Magnificat Magazine, I was inspired to write a little tribute in honor of the Memorial of the Queenship of Mary today.

Because of my dad's job I spent a significant part of my childhood in Madrid, Spain. In fact, I don't remember anything before Spain. My paternal grandfather was from Spain so we also spent a lot of time traveling the country, visiting family in their little mountain village in León (it's literally on a mountain). It was their I learned about real Spanish Catholicism, the centuries old devotions that are still meaningful today. How to practice a faith that is so rich and intoxicating and strong. A faith that's in the soil of that place. This was where my Catholic roots were born.

I have also been shaped by living in New England for many years. Trust me, the Puritans may be gone but the traces of their legacy are still around, if you look. New England is, in many ways, as far from that manifestation of Catholicism as it is possible to be. And because of this Protestant heritage (which I have learned from as well) there is sometimes a tendency to downplay our enthusiasm for Our Lady and tradition in general. 

As you may have seen in World Youth Day, this is not the case in traditional Spanish Catholicism.

Yeah. These are brought out every year for Holy Week (Semana Santa) in cities all over Spain--believe it or not--where and carried through the solemn procession of other floats/wooden statues like this depicting various moments in the life of Christ (usually the Stations of the Cross). These statues usually weigh a lot are are covered with the most decadent, beautiful flowers of whatever town they come from. They are also carried on the shoulders of sinners. Catholics (usually men), who cover themselves head to toe in either a black robe or monastic garb, because they do not want to be seen. Images of Marys like this were abundant in my family's homes. Little prayers and thoughts and pleas that came out easy as breathing were sent up all day to "La Virgen." Rosaries were always nearby and said constantly. She who held Christ as our sins finally took His breath away, always held us, always close.

While the Norman Rockwell Mary is beautiful in her own way, this is the Mary I bring my sorrows to. This Mary's heart has been pierced with a sword; she knows great pain. This is the Mary who will cover me in her mantle and gently guide me to the throne of Christ. She is elegant but fierce, strong, she can bear the weight of our prayers. When I see this Mary, I feel closer to my grandfather who know sees her face to face; I feel closer to myself, in a way, because I am closer to my roots, to my Church, to the history inscribed in my blood and my bones. 

If anyone has any special devotions or memories of Mary in their own heritage or just thoughts you would like to share, please do! I would love to hear your experiences! 

Five Minute Friday: New

Welcome to my first Five Minute friday! Today, for five minutes, I just write whatever comes to mind. No editing, no tinkering. Today's prompt is 'new'.

GO

New. Outside my window it's about to start raining. Pine trees, grass, a small road, other houses. A view that I've had for a long time now. Sometimes I long for something new to look at. I long to live in a big city where there are people and cars and commotion, or on other, quieter days, a view overlooking a deep, lush, green valley below tall mountaintops that have been there longer than any of us. Now it's thundering, and soon the tap-tap-tap of rain, strong and fierce, but surely brief will sound against the side of this window. Aren't I always looking for a new view? Haven't I always been dissatisfied with the view in front of me? Wanting another's. Ooh, California looks nice, can you imagine a view of the beach? Or maybe of a huge fountain, sculpted gardens, multiple tennis courts?

Most of the year my view here is of a blanket of white. Crystals hanging of trees. Bitter cold, the kind that hurts. And I hate it, for all eight months. What if my view was actually of another person's living room, because there was no wall between us? Or of a garbage dump? Maybe what I don't need is a new view, but the me that is loved by God just as I am. Maybe I just need to find her.

STOP

Marines, SEALs, Cows

Sometimes I get really angry. So angry I want to break something, throw something, pull a Keira-Knightley-Pride-and-Prejudice-stand-at-the-edge-of-a-cliff except without the whole basking gorgeously like a supermodel in the noonday sun. Because I have to do something, I have to get the anger out of me somehow.
 

And other days I feel like I’ll never be able to pull out from under it. That it’s in the very air I am breathing in this world.