Finally, a Proper Distraction
A wedding, books, and 50 pounds of potatoes
In a few days, my oldest son will marry his sweetheart and we will see our family numbers grow for a second year in a row. Two new daughters and one grand baby! But how can one truly tally the expansion of this kind of love in a family? Certainly not by any human calculation. We are adding numbers but the growth feels more like an interior deepening… like a world within a world that digs far beneath a lake bed. Maybe like the cavernous Lake Erie salt mines which are invisible to the bustling locals but so real. Or the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland (photo above) where tens of generations of minor-artists carved an extraordinary chapel from the mineral walls just because they could, and where even the chandeliers are made from salt crystals.
And still… there’s more… and deeper.
Family is something extraordinary, though I used to wonder why God allowed me to have so many children in spite of the fact that I’m such a broken human being. Don’t you love them better than this, Lord? Why did you give them to such a flawed caretaker?
I believe the answer is, in part, that He loves me as much as He loves my children. In my pride, I wanted to believe that I am God’s gift to my family… yet time continues to reveal the truth that my own healing and formation in the love of my family is nothing short of astonishing. I am for them but they are also for me. This relationship of love is not magical but certainly mystical. Through desolation and consolation, trial and celebration. Grace upon grace. One silent chisel at a time.
Within the vast depths of these familial mysteries, I’ve found peace in uncovering the great work of my life but I’m also inclined to run away to the surface. I have so many distractions and I love them inordinately. They keep me from the harder deeper work of vocation and I am well aware that they do. So…
I’ve taken a hard break from social media in order to better prepare for this wedding; to return to fruitful silence and enter into this weekend with greater ability to focus, to work, to pray, and to see. The results so far have been as expected: Difficult. Lovely. It is not that difficult for me to be cut off from the chatter of the world, but it is difficult to live an undistracted life, facing what has gone undone (and who has gone unseen) while I’ve been mentally absent.
Never a comfortable confrontation. In my weakness I prefer distraction.
Dresses, cakes, and the lovely mundane
In spite of all the elevated talk about setting aside distractions, I’m grateful to enjoy the details of wedding preparation and the opportunity to shop for pretty dresses and fuss about all manner of passing things. My 8-year old daughter agrees and spent two full weeks deliberating over her dress options and has only just now made her final decision. (She’s still not convinced but at least she’s moved on.) I made a note to remember my earrings this time (I left without them last wedding) and have my checklist of details which won’t be noticed but still must be done…
Ear cleaning for the newly minted 6-year old.
Buy hair pins.
Toenail polish that no one will see.
Clean the house which will be unclean just as quickly.
Set alarms.
A thousand lovely mundane things.
We’ve also been celebrating birthdays, sacraments (First Communion and Confirmations), and graduations… just rolling along with a thousand reasons to give thanks, shed tears, pray harder, drop balls and laugh about it all.
Oh, and if you are looking for Pentecost and Confirmation celebration ideas, I’ve shared some HERE in the past. Also, the fact that I successfully created a candy flame for the top of a cake is a highlight of my creative achievements as a mother… so I like to remember that.
What I’m Reading
When I put down my phone I pick up real books, and my tendency is to read multiple at a time, not because I’m that smart but because I’m that distracted. My brain has been acclimated to digital scrolling and so now my books are sprinkled throughout the house in stations as if they are separate apps in my physical space. It’s ridiculous but I enjoy it and it does edify. Here are my current reads:
On Being Human
by Fulton Sheen
An Easter gift from my husband. Sheen is on my perpetual reading list and I like that this book is a collection of brief reflections that can be read quickly and separately. I can open the book anywhere and be fortified for the work of the day and reoriented toward things of God. From Chapter 8:
Nothing is more destined to create deep-seated anxieties in people than the false assumption that life should be free from anxieties.
I would like to see a dialogue between Fulton Sheen and Jordan Peterson. Now that would really be something. Somehow I think Peterson would come out of it a Catholic.
Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues
by Leila Miller and Trent Horn
Just digging in to this after receiving a copy from Catholic Answers. I have a growing list of books that I consider important puzzle pieces for my kids’ future families; topics such as Pregnancy and Birth, Sexuality, Marriage, Homemaking, Prayer, Faith and all those details that I don’t want to forget and can’t fully pass on orally. I call it my Legacy Shelf and this book fits on that shelf. It covers everything from IVF to porn, briefly and clearly so that it works as a functional aid. The book is written as a tool to help parents prepare children, but is a great overview for adults as well.
The Church and I
by Frank Sheed
Rereading this. An autobiography of sorts and that both confounds and delights me. The first part of the book is biographical and reflective, filled with random details (including fun bits about contemporaries like Chesterton and Belloc whose works he published) that he weaves into something unlike anything I’ve read before. He tackles scandal and also leaves uncomfortable questions unanswered while still loving the Church and standing in Truth. I am currently rereading Part Two in which Sheed gives a most breathtaking summary of his experience of faith and Church. Highly recommended for anyone who loves the Church but is struggling to like her and stand with her in these times…
Anyone who finds the Church on earth so imperfect as to be no longer tolerable should ask himself solidly, somberly, “How is a perfect society to be built up of people like me?” If he sees no difficulty in that then either he is a person of unique perfection, or he does not know himself very well. Even what we think of as the average decent Christian (you perhaps? me perhaps?) cannot be half-witted enough to think of himself as ideal building material for a perfect social order. And Jesus did not, very definitely did not, build his Church on average decent Christians…
Jesus and his Church cannot be understood at all unless we realize that it was his choice to unite men to himself, and continue his redemptive work, through humanity—not through some triply refined essence of man, but through the humanity that actually exists. He took what he found, he still takes what he finds. — Frank Sheed
The Day is Now Far Spent
by Cardinal Robert Sarah
Another reread. My social media fast means that my news feed has also been inaccessible to me. I’m passingly aware of what happened at Uvalde, the World Economic Forum meetings, Monkeypox… things that would typically saturate my mind and speech. But I’ve been away and it’s been good. When I first read Cardinal Sarah’s book in 2019, I was fascinated. Reading it in 2022, I see that it was not so much prophetic as simply an account of the present reality. He saw it all and wrote about it. All of it. He doesn’t mention WEF but he speaks of the UN. He doesn’t mention Uvalde but he speaks of the violence of a post-Christian world. He doesn’t speak of viruses but he speaks to the declining health of the vulnerable due to the crimes and sin of world leaders. Transhumanism. Church scandal. It’s all there with eyes fixated on hope and the truth of Jesus Christ. I am benefiting much more from the second read.
50 Pounds of Potatoes
It’s not easy to finish up a bit of writing when one is distracted by 50 pounds of potatoes and a 6-year old. The latter is delightful and I am trying to stay focused but end up giggling at his intense whispers. He’s a cowboy today and he’s rounded up a herd of cattle and bad guys with his cap gun. The thought of this kid ever getting lost in the blackest vortex of a cell phone gives me mom-level grief and so I’ve been consumed for the last few minutes in this parental musing. How can we help these kids keep interior silence and stay open to the movement of God in their lives?Anyway…
I also notice the potatoes and recall that at some point I have to transform them into something edible. And then I think of the wedding and a hundred other really wonderful things. In this moment, social media seems small and shrunken and maybe I don’t even want to go back. For now, those thoughts are on hold. I have dresses to iron, potatoes to wash, and a whole lot of living to do.
Thanks be to God.
May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. See you on the other side of Pentecost. Come, Holy Spirit!
Melody
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WELL NOW WHAT HAVE YOU DONE. Now I would say I need you to, but really would just love it if you did, include your Legacy Shelf contents somewhere accessible. And I get all you say in the beginning. We once hosted a kiddo from an orphanage in Ukraine for the summer (and decided to offer to adopt him but at sixteen he was not entirely down with the somewhat humbling task of integrating himself into life in a family with rules and expectations and such so he at first accepted and then backed out) and I had fallen into the trap that it was 100% *we* who would be helping *him* and was therefore quite surprised by how much *he* helped *us*. Definitely proof of love, yes. And yay, yay, yay, yayyyyy for weddings!!! There will be dancing, yes?? (asks the non-dance)