7 Quick Takes: Beach days, WYD & Tolkien

1.

I finally made it to the beach this week! And it was later in the day so it was nice and cool out, instead of boiling and humid. It was so good and refreshing to just lay there and read a book, the sounds of the waves just washing over me. I plan on doing a lot more of this before summer ends.

2. 

Picked up my Divine Office today, and nothing felt better than the familiar thin sheets of paper, the red letters, the rhythm of psalm-antiphon-psalm-antiphon-psalm-reading. It was like drinking from a cool glass of water after subsisting on nothing for so long. I'm ashamed to say I stopped talking to God for a while, back when I was still working in South Dakota. And it hurt. I felt like God had gone silent on me, so I did too. I've been going to Mass again, and adoration. And now, today, I opened up my book of prayer. One that had sustained me for many long, hard months.

What do you do when you feel spiritually dry? Distant?

3. 

Found this heartwarming little story amid all the World Youth Day Rio preparations. Two small stories in this wide world; simple faith.

 

4.

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth...The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion.

Who doesn't love a little J.R.R. Tolkien? I found this quote at just the right time, just when I needed it.

5.

It's been a rough few weeks, a rough news cycle, a rough economy, just rough. We've seen, played across our screens, and our Twitter feeds, some really dark places in the human heart. But I think we, as Christians, need to be the ones to keep hoping, keep praying, keep believing that God is alive and working and healing.

6.

And if I do speak, I still want it to be holy and broken. I want to find this pain and minster out of it because it’s through His own broken body we find our healing.

This. This beautiful post from over at Deeper Story about being and knowing God in the silent places and the broken places.

7.
So my quick takes this week were kind of a downer, I know, but this is what I felt these things needed to be said. Let me know what you think about anything I've mentioned above and if there's anything you want me to pray for.

This week, though, you should really be catching any World Youth Day coverage you can. Here are some places I like to follow along at:

For the telly - EWTN, CatholicTV
For the internet - SaltandLightTV, Magis,
For the Twitter - WYD official, The Jesuit Post guys, USCCB

WYD Cross & Icon on Sugarloaf Mtn, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

#Stand4Life, Stand with Ireland

You know when you're in a period of transition and everything feels in flux? Right. I'm working on some new posts and thinking about what I want for this blog. In the by and by, this issue came to my attention after I learned the pink sneakers of Wendy Davis have unfortunately led to a bus tour. Read it, follow it, and pass it around. Thanks!

*  *  *

In the weeks following the infamous 13-hour filibuster by State Sen. Wendy Davis (D) over a Texas abortion bill, she quickly became the new (for now) face of pro-choice America. She's everywhere, capturing the attention of the deep-pocketed Planned Parenthood president, Cecile Richards, enough for the two to unite in a statewide bus tour called, "Stand with Texas Women!". The Democrats' new "rising star" she's set strategic minds spinning and seems to have secured for herself a shiny political future.

But the ugliness that has emerged along the pink-shirted, elaborately-marketed Wendy Davis Texas tour has been disheartening at best, grotesque and downright scary at worst. Hail Satan, anyone?

Yes, these are actual Texas lawmakers with actual coat hangers.

In Ireland, a similar drama is unfolding.

Over the last few weeks Fine Gael, Ireland's largest political party and the lead in the coalition government, has proposed the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013 which would legislate--for the first time--legal access to abortion in limited circumstances.

Lucinda Creighton, a Minister of State, has led the resistance to this bill. In a remarkable speech to the Dáil (a House of Parliament), she lays out why she's voting against the bill. 

In it, she calls out the "groupthink" behind the Bill, the irony that abortion has actually become a tool of oppression for women because of sex selection. She asks what the difference is between abortion and killing a baby after delivery, since the net effect is the same: an innocent baby, a human life, is wiped out.

She even throws out the idea that the unborn should have the right to legal representation, since babies as young as 1 day old are sometimes assigned court-appointed guardians ad litem. Ultimately, she argues abortion will irrevocably change the "compassionate culture of care for mothers and babies" in Ireland. Ultimately, abortion solves nothing.

Lucinda Creighton and the other ministers who will vote against this bill do so knowing that they will lose their jobs, be expelled from the Fine Gael party, and will, most likely, lose their careers. They've been told by other ministers to check their consciences at the door, but have refused. The central question they've proposed is this: "Is a fetus/baby defined from one moment to the next on the basis of whether it is wanted or not?"

In Dublin, on July 6, there was a massive Rally for Life which brought out over 50,000 people. The last few nights, vigils have been held for life. This could very well be Ireland's Roe v. Wade moment.

 On Wednesday, when the vote was supposed to take place, the Dáil debated past the 5 a.m. deadline. They had been debating for 24 hours. 24 hours. And the debates are scheduled to continue in the evening. Over 100 pro-life protesters vowed to spend a second night kneeling outside Parliament in prayer.

It's a foregone conclusion that the bill will pass, with the majority of ministers pledging their votes. And yet, the fight continues, because it's worth it. This Thursday, I'll be praying for and with the Irish people. Keep following this issue, and keep praying!

on shattered things

 There is no place where earth's sorrows
are more felt than in heaven.

According to CNN, 566 people were found dead today in Syria. Dead from war, a six day campaign in the area.

And a few days ago, this:

How to make sense of it all. To really realize that we aren't at all promised tomorrow, even the next moment. To realize that we can never truly know the heart of another person we share this earth with, but somehow must love them anyway. To even begin to let that word - mercy - reverberate around the chambers of your heart because it can't fit in your head.

How to walk down that sidewalk again? How do we not see death around every corner? How do we stand, tall and proud and strong, hate choking the life out of this world? How do we keep our hearts pure, and not be devoured by evil?

There are humvees rolling down the street and soldiers with assault rifles and blood on a sidewalk I've walked down a hundred times and shrapnel and a dead 8 year old and a father suddenly taken and at the center of it all, a family. 

Maybe it's because I'm away from my home, away from these streets and the thick of it, but I don't feel rage or acute hate, I feel a kind of deep down sadness. We can hardly look at this, it hurts too much, like looking right at the sun. But when I do, I see a 19-year-old boy. A 19-year-old boy, too young to even know who he is, somehow filling his heart up to the brim with enough evil to do this. When does a heart stop beating good and starts beating evil?

I wake up on a Saturday and hear how they finally caught him, huddled and hiding and dying in a boat, it feels like the morning after Good Friday.

At Mass this morning, because I don't live in Massachusetts right now, the priest didn't talk about it. He told a story about a little sheep that every day went further and further out of the fold and away from the good shepherd until one day he was so far the wolf devoured him. How much does the good shepherd mourn for the lost one?

 

I sit in church today and I listen to the homily, run my fingers over the smooth pages, the short gospel. He's talking about shepherds and all I picture are the cattlemen out here. The Levis and the rough hands and the dirt-caked boots and dusty wide-brimmed hat and the crinkly face, tanned by the prairie sun.

I picture the Good Shepherd like this. And my Jesus becomes so gritty and raw and real that he's right there in the mud and blazing hot earth sun with us.

Easter Mass, Vatican, 2013

More and more, I'm learning that there is only one thing, truly, that we can hold on to. When my students' stories get to be too much, and the world itself is too much, I can always find solace in the cross. I say it now and I'll have to preach it to myself every moment of every day for the rest of my life.

When everything is shattered and the whole world is falling apart, the cross is still held together. The Cross still holds all shattered things together.

don't you worry, child

The Never Ending Story: Winter in South Dakota

The sounds of my Sunday morning: Lena Horne, Rosemary Clooney, Glenn Miller on a radio, background music over cappuccino being poured, mumbled conversation, busy but mellow. People on laptops, alone but all together. Older woman highlighting a book, younger women, teachers, like me, planning the week, seating charts for a class. 

Like me, they are probably from somewhere else. Like me, they come to this shop to plan, to self-soothe, to refresh before Monday comes. 

We come here for our Sunday rituals, sink into the safe warmth of low lighting and booths and coffee. Maybe pick up a dripping, sticky cinnamon bun, a hot cup of Kona, warm from the inside out.

* 

It's hard to be from somewhere else and land here. Dropped here; by choice but unknowing all the same. "The revolving door of South Dakota," they say.

And Longing.

It's a living force, a driving force, and it brings us out here. Away from the flashing lights of the coasts and the glittering oceans of people and Things to Do and Places to Go and out here to the desert. 

To the dry and weary and empty plains. Parched land. Hard, cold earth. Unyielding, unforgiving, unkind.

We are all longing for something or else we wouldn't be out here. Some of us don't even know what that is, what we're looking for. 

Maybe we're looking for the beginning. 

The start of the road, the canku wakan, the red road, the holy road, narrow and rocky. A long dirt road out in the hills that takes you home.

* 

In two months I'll be back in Boston. Back with familiar faces, slink back into the crowd. Not so exposed, so vulnerable.

Because out here that's what you are. All the time. You're from Somewhere Else; you got on a plane far away and came out here, you packed in a suitcase all the bits of yourself you've put together your whole life, landed here, and found that most of what you packed won't survive the winter. 

Sometimes they'll forgive you for it, for not being enough. Sometimes they won't. 

Sometimes the kids will ask you why on earth you would ever want to leave There and come Here? What's Here? And you will respond, "You are here. I came because you are here." And some days this will be true, and some days it won't.

Some days you'll miss the five minute drive to Starbucks, and good seafood, and huge malls, and concerts and movie theatres and being comfortable.

Out here almost every day, multiple times a day, I feel like Jennifer Lawrence falling at the Oscars.

Basically.

But some days the clouds will part and the huge sun will flood the huge sky and the wide open plains with light and warmth and a gentle breeze and you will close your eyes and listen to the silence.

 

This beautiful, scary silence that breaks something open in you. Something you didn't even know was closed.

And it hurts. It hurts to be broken open, poured out like a clay mug.

Or maybe you find yourself outside at night. Outside on the prairie and it's a clear night, the clearest night you've ever seen. And you look up, tilt your head all the way back and you still can't take it all in. It just goes on forever this night sky; and you can see, if you really open your eyes, every single thing that's up there.

                                          

7 quick takes {special edition} {also vol. 8}

Normally, and because of the genius of Jen Fulwiler, I devote these quick takes to my takes on the week, any happenings in my life and/or pop culture. This week I'm going to shake things up a bit. I'm going to try to tell a story in 7 points. If it's horrible, I beg your forgiveness. If it's boring, just skip to point 7. Here we go.

(1)
About a year ago, around this time, I graduated from college, was totally lost in the world, and had no idea what to do next.

(2)
A few months before that, and through the summer, God, like a good cook over his crock-pot, was randomly (or so I thought) stirring in me a deep interest in the Dakotas, particularly South Dakota. Maybe it was because I'd never been to the plains, maybe it was because of the Native American culture, I don't know. But there it was.



(3)
Because of this I was interested in watching a Frontline documentary (which I NEVER do) about a struggling Native American reservation in South Dakota. And it broke my heart.

(4)

It came at a time when I was distant from God, away from Mass and the sacraments. But I had such a strong reaction to this, all I could think was - these poor people, who have been so neglected by the rest of America, need hope. Not that I thought I could give to them - hope was in short supply for me at that time. 

(5)

But I contacted some people who were doing really beautiful work, planting seeds of hope in a (seriously) dry and weary land. I never thought anything would come of it. But, somehow, God, in drawing me back to Himself, made it so clear to me this was exactly where He wanted me to be next year.

(6)

I fought God for MONTHS over this. Did I really want to move 2,000 miles away from everything, and everyone I loved?? NO! No Starbucks, no Barnes and Nobles, no TV, no more driving my car. Did I say no Starbucks? Obviously, Jesus won that epic arm wrestle.

(7)

As a result of all this madness, I will be leaving for South Dakota in just a week! To get in the mood, so to speak, I've been reading a lot of the wild frontier books. Okay, so they mostly have been historical romance novels. Same thing. The point is, they inspired me to try to look at this new step in my life as one big, 'Wild West' adventure. Like I'm heading out west searching for gold or something. I'll be chronicling my journey on a special page on the blog every week or so. It's not totally set up yet, so stay tuned!

God bless you all! <3 

7 quick takes {v. 7}

1. 

Is it just me or did this week feel reeeeaaaalllly llloooonnngggg? I think it's because of the Fourth of July. Speaking of which, did you all see that video from San Diego where, due to a computer issue, an 18 minute fireworks show (all 7,000 fireworks) went off at once, in 15 seconds? Yeah.

2.
This week my family and I went to see the new Spider Man movie. At first I didn't want to see it because I thought it was kind of silly that they were rebooting the series. But I LOVED it!! It was absolutely nothing like the Tobey Maguire movies. I highly recommend it (although it might be too long for little ones!)

3.
Besides Spider Man, this has been kind of a weird couple of weeks in pop culture, yeah? "Magic Mike" was released (blech) and Fifty Shades
of Grey has somehow become THE book for American women. Now that someone has finally told me what the book is about I'm stupefied, horrified, and mystified.

Remember the good old days? *jk*

4.

I'm thinking of doing a post on these happenings, especially in terms of a single girl trying to live a chaste life. It doesn't exactly help keep impure thoughts away when I've got Channing Tatum's abs thrown in my face! World, give a girl a break! If any of you have any thoughts on this, let me know by tweet or here or whatever so I can incorporate it! 

5.

Now if you're looking for a good book to read, I've been going through Papa Benedicto's latest Jesus of Nazareth book. I promise you, you'll be blown away. His writing style is so personal and like a teacher who gently guides you through the Scriptures until you see what he sees, which will change the way you see Jesus. Here are a couple of excerpts to show you what I mean:

"When all is said and done, the future will not place us in any other situation than the one to which our encounter with Jesus has already brought us." (p. 50)

"'Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away' (Mk 13:31). The word--which seems almost nothing in comparison to the mighty power of the immeasurable material cosmos, like a fleeting breath against the silent grandeur of the universe--the word is more real and more lasting than the entire material world...[It] is the solid ground on which we can stand, which holds firm even when the sun goes dark and the firmament disintegrates." (p. 51)

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Fifty Shades of lame, guy!

6. 

When I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago that on my maternal grandmother's side (which is German) I have a great-aunt or something who used to be a barmaid in Bavaria! I saw this picture of her when she literally looked like one of those Viking women with the outfit and an armful of giant beer mugs. This wouldn't be so cool, except for the fact that she was barmaid to THE POPE!! 

Ja!

Apparently, he was one of the regulars and my dear old great-aunt would plop a cold one in front of him whenever he came in. What's more, the whole family from Bavaria even went to the church where he was pastor! Ahh! I'm pushing for them to see they can wrangle a personal visit with the Pope (does he even do that?) but it's a work in progress. Still, how cool is that??

7. 

If you've made it this far, I want to personally thank you for putting up with my little rants and raves! Stay tuned, because I have some neat plans in the near future for this place! God bless!

lord, have your way

I've been thinking a lot lately about surrender. About Jesus, the Good Shepherd. About following wherever He leads.

Like St. Augustine, I have long tired of running from Him. It's the scariest thing to ask Him to change you, transform you, reshape you and remake you. And the walls around my heart are made of stone.

But no matter how far you run, there's always that still small voice, calling you home, "Come. Come.."

And, He tells us, He calls us by name, and we, His lost sheep, will always recognize His voice. No matter how far we wander.

It's been a long, hard tug-of-war, and I have fought Him over every little thing He asks of me. But how can I deny Him? Him who poured out every inch of Himself for me?

Today, give Him your praise, your worship. I don't know if you're aware of my epic love for Hillsong United, but their new CD, "Cornerstone", is just as incredible as all their other ones. Watching this video, I couldn't help but cry out to Jesus. Make these words your words, let Him heal your broken heart and bind up all your wounds.

Lord, have your way in me...