Whine alert

I have an ear infection. Pain. Low-grade fever. Sleepless nights x 2, now.

There is a truism floating around that women can endure any amount of pain and sickness and suffering and still muster on in the daily grind.

That truism is a LIE when it comes to me.

When I feel sick, I can't imagine ever feeling well, ever again. I am miserable.

I want a hand to hold and a lap to lay my head in.

[/whine] - for the moment at least.

What's in your library?

I'm nowhere NEAR done - maybe an optimistic guess is that I've got about 20% of my books entered so far? Still, this is FUN! Check out google Library - as soon as I can figure out how to enter it so my books alone show up, without the "add/delete" stuff for other people to tamper with, I'll post my list.

I think.... it's like this

A woman's heart

A woman's heart is a great mystery. We women don't even understand it, ourselves. We love when it is wholly irrational to do so, and cannot when it would make so much sense. We come to see things we'd rather not see at all - because the heart is a scope into another person's soul.

We can fight it, we can rage against it - it hardly matters. We will love despite ourselves, and suffer in the process.

I knew I was sunk when one day I suddenly realized, I want to iron his shirts. I don't iron - unless it is absolutely necessary, but suddenly I was overwhelmed with the completely irrational yearning to iron his shirts.

I learned to iron so that my father could have a nice shirt to wear to work. He had to wear uniform shirts, and my mother would take them from the washer and dryer and dump them on the picnic table in the basement (the very picnic table I now use as my desk). He'd come through, trying to get ready for work (he was a long-distance trucker), and he would say, "Do I have a clean shirt to wear?" and she'd look at him from underneath her eyebrows, usually over hte top of a book, and she'd snap, "If you want a shirt, you can iron it yourself!" and for a long time he did - and not any too well, either.

So I learned to iron his shirts, because I adored my daddy and it shamed and infuriated me that my mother, his wife, should despise him so.

I should have known not to marry Danny or Rusty - the thought of ironing their shirts was boring. But now I want to iron his shirts, and I see myself handling the fabric that he wears against his own skin, and it is an act of great service, and love and devotion to a man ... whose shirts I will quite surely never iron.

Such is the complexity and the fickleness of a woman's heart - it betrays not the men, but us, the ones whose heart it's supposed to be.

Terry Gets It

See here, please - a very good set of observations about being Catholic and Gay and the Gay political agenda.

Good goin', Terry. Thank you.

(Thanks to Angela Messenger for the heads-up.

being faithful

I have wallowed in my own sufferings, some severe and some miserably petty, for so long, it's an amazing relief to be able to look around and not see some catastrophe about to crash in on my head.

However, in the past couple of weeks I've been in a position of learning of other people's sufferings - illnesses, deaths, estrangements from friends, etc. -

I'm selfish. My little respite is so precioius to me, I don't want it disturbed.

But it has to be. God's children don't get time off for good behavior, or prolonged relief from carrying the Cross.

I'm glad I remembered that tonight - It's not so hard to carry on when you know it's a Divine Appointment you're keeping.

A hat-tip to Angela Messenger

Angela Messenger often reports on what I do over here; now it's my great pleasure to applaud her reflections on pride, at her own blog. Thanks, AM, dear!

Giving it all to God

from Rumer Godden's In this House of Brede (New York, Viking Press, 1969):
"And what did you give?" Philippa was serious again."...I was like an orchard where the fruit is ripe, but some has fallen in windfalls, some been spoiled by wasps, some sold... or given away or wasted. The owner comes and gathers what is left and gives it to God. That's what anyone does who gives up in the fullness of her life, leaves it for Him; but the one who comes at nineteen or twenty or even twenty-three...gives the whole orchard, blossom and fruit and all."

Giving my life to God, to live wholly for His Kingdom, while relinquishing the old dream to love and to belove to someone in marriage, is - for me, it's not yet satisfying.

On the one hand, the old dream does not die at once, but in inches. Loving someone now who does not love in me in at all the same way helps push me along a bit, I think; I never thought I would say, there is one man in all the world for me, but there it is, and so I am freer than ever before to look beyond marriage to living wholly consecrated to God. It is a bittersweet realization.

And on the other, there is this approaching fiftieth birthday and all the reflections of past decisions, and grief for bad choices and a sort of why couldn't I have realized how much there is? before I made some of the crap-awful choices of past years. I've given away and wasted so much of the fruit of my life, when the Master would have kept it far safer for Himself than I was capable of doing.

Still, the Master wants the orchard of our lives whenever we have the capacity to give it all to Him. At this point of my life, I like to think the trees are laden with ripening fruit. Some varieties of apple are mid-summer, like the "horse apples" that my aunt and uncle had on their farm (that made the most wonderful fried apple pies!); some will ripen to be harvested later into the Fall.

Whatever fruit my life is preparing to bear, let it be for Him, and not for myself for a change.

It's looking good -

I've sought counsel from several good people who have an idea of my fundamental capabilities - and I've got to tell you, my favorite response was with one friend whose response to my query, "do I have what it takes?" was

"Oh, hells yeah!"

That made me laugh. I needed to laugh.

So - I've talked via phone with Mary, I've got to call a couple of people in our dioceses for some feedback - but this coming week my major task is to apply to Franciscan University's Distance Learning Program and get my application for a Stafford Loan in the works.

I realize, too, that in going this route I am closer to coming to terms with the likelihood that God is calling me to remain single for the Kingdom. It's not at all what I would choose for myself, but at least I am coming closer to feeling called, not just condemned, to single life.

Birthday Season Commences!

Dear Catalinni had the wonderful habit of celebrating an entire Birthday Season - making the rounds to varied scattered family members during her birthday month and letting them fete her in grand style.

I just caught myself announcing my birthday, coming up October 28 - I'll turn 50 at 8:16 p.m., exactly, if you wish to know.

I've taken a page out of Catalinni's book - Let the Celebrations Begin!
Laissez les Bontemps Roulez!

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Who can imagine ME -

as a canon lawyer?

I mean, this is not a professional ambition common to little Protestant girls.

"So, tell me, young lady - what do you want to be when you grow up?"

"I have always had an intense yearning to study canon law" is not the answer we give.

So - I have a friend from a website, known affectionately as "canon law Mary" because she is named Mary and she is, yes indeedy! a student of the canon law licentiate program at the prestigious St Paul University in Ottawa.

Mary has decided that her first mission in this, her final semester of canon law study, is to persuade me to succeed her as brilliant laywoman scholar at her soon to be alma mater.

Whoa. Wow. Sensory overload, here.

It'll take at least five years. The licentiate program is a 3-year course of study, but I'll have to have some courses in theology and philosophy, 2 years' worth, before I can begin canon law studies. I can obtain those courses through distance learning at several good universities, including Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.

But that will mean graduating at age 55 or thereabouts... which will still allow me to look forward to some twenty years' service in exchange for my efforts - and, if I'm lucky, the ability to pay off the exorbitant student loans I'll have to take out to go to Ottawa (which is about half the cost of North America's only other canon law licentiate program, Catholic University in Washington, DC)

I'm going to look into it. Had a good soul-searching chat with a friend who is a solid academician this morning, and have contacted a priest friend for counsel.

Y'all pray for me. Y'hear?

Cleaning House!

I've never been a particularly domesticated woman. From the time I was a little girl, wanting to play house, I've been criticized and discouraged and even actively ridiculed - first by my mother, who wasn't capable of rising above the criticism she'd grown up hearing, then by my ex-husband (gay men are invariably more domesticated than most women, anyway)

Compound this little deficiency in my nature by the fact that I fell and ripped a hamstring a couple months ago - sitting, standing (we dubbed it this week-end, un-sitting), climbing steps... ranging somewhere from very uncomfortable to downright agonizing!

My house was a nightmare -

Enter friends: Stephanie. Mary. Emily.

Stephanie lives in Indiana, we talk on the phone a lot. She sort of jump-started the domestication gene long-dormant in my pathetic psyche. She also sent me the most gorgeous teacup, a graceful elegant thing of such feminine lines and proportions that I can hardly take my eyes off it. The cup was part of her grandmother's collection.
Mary lives in Texas. She recently sent me a set of dishes - red, Churchill dishes, again far more elegant than anything I've ever dreamed of choosing for myself.
Emily lives down the road in Charlotte. She gave me warm hospitality when I sang at the Eucharistic Congress last week, and I was so delighted with her little house, she offered to come help me with mine.

She came on Saturday. She was a busy worker bee, helping shift furniture, vacuuming in the odd corners I currently can't reach, pulling odd pieces from hiding places and setting them in a place of prominence. She set me to sewing curtains (the machine broke, my curtains are being hand-sewn) and ordered me about with meal-making while she did a regular "House Invaders" job for me.

I LOVE my house now! One more room to finish on my own, and it will become a "formal" dining room -
Photos coming eventually, okay?

Hi' y'all from Angela Messenger!

Greetings to the folks who are checking out the blog from Angela Messenger's - I need to respond to Angela's recent gift to me - a blog award! but it will have to be tomorrow. I took Tylenol PM and the "PM" is kicking in like crazy.

zzzzzzz.......

Could there be Beauty -

I'm reading a marvelous book, Captivating, by John and Staci Eldredge. Staci is a former/lapsed Catholic; she and John write for an Evangelical press. I have actually read this book once before; last year, going to Raleigh to sing with the Master Chorale, I went into Barnes & Noble one afternoon and read this book over a latte grande... and journalled like a fiend - This month, when I had a bit of money to spare, I had to buy it for myself.

This idea that each woman is created as a Beauty is disconcerting to me. You see, all my life, I have believed that I ranged from Plain to Mostly Ugly. No, I couldn't play dress-up, my mother told me; I was too rough, too careless, too clumsy; I would tear or break or dirty.... Every compliment about my prettiness was always responded to with a disapproving look and "Pretty is as Pretty does." I was rough, clumsy, etc., so obviously I could not be pretty. The message was even more firmly packed into my mind during my first marriage; homosexual men don't particularly care about the beauty or worthiness of a woman, except as how it might reflect on them.

So - I'll be fifty years old in a month, and all these years I've thought of myself as "plain." All for the simple reason that I didn't deserve any better.

I don't know who some of the readers of this blog are - there are some locations that I recognize (Linda, God love you for your loyalty!) and some that make me wonder... despite the possible risk of being discovered, I want to tell a story about myself, a story that reading Captivating has caused me to relive, vividly, this evening.

It was nearly two years ago. I had met a fellow Catholic at Chorale, had quickly come to admire him in that way that is dangerous for a woman like me - that fervent admiration for a man's character, intellect, accomplishments, and in this case, his Faith. I longed for every opportunity to be in his presence, to engage in conversation with him, because somehow, in his company, I did not dislike myself so very much, because he awakened good and noble things in me that I had lost along the years.

We attended Mass together one Sunday after one of our concerts. He followed me to the parish with the late Mass, and I waited as he rummaged in the back of his vehicle for the umbrella, as it was a grey, drizzly evening. He opened the umbrella and held it over my head -

and I had one thought: either I am going to walk half in and half out from under this thing, or "the girls" are going to keep bumping into him. Terribly embarrassing thought, that! and without deliberating, I reached up and took his arm to steady myself against the probable awkwardness of ... ahem. cough. (shhh - boob assault)

He looked down at me and smiled the gentle smile that I love, and he snugged his arm, with my hand in it, against his side, and I was starkly aware for the first time what a strong, sophisticated, and virile man he is.

We walked into Church, talking until we reached the entryway to the Church - he had me proceed him down the aisle, he motioned me into the pew ahead of him. He lowered the kneeler before I could hook my foot over it and draw it down (my mindless habit) - We prayed side by side, worshipped Christ in the Holy Eucharist; at Communion, he motioned me to precede him in the reception line - After Mass he held my cape and gently draped it across my shoulders....

I've never felt this way, before or since - for one hour, in the presence of a strong and good man, I felt myself to be sweeter and gentler, more womanly, than I have ever known myself to be. The unremitting necessity of self-sufficiency was for a sweet hour lifted from me - I felt shy, a stranger to myself.

And it was only an hour - but its effect on me has never fully dissipated. I read this book, and I relive the rush of awareness, the sensibility of parts of myself I'd never been awakened to before...

And I am grateful that I have been allowed this even-fleeting touch of such strength and goodness in a man that opened my soul to this other, repressed Laura - whom I want to know better and to give full development to.

I almost doubt her existence; perhaps it was just a strange but predictable combination of hormones and chemicals in the air that gave me that glorious hour - and therefore it cannot have been an ontological self awakened, at all -

The struggle with weight - no, there has been no struggle, because until tonight I have left unquestioned and unchallenged the certainty of my own ugliness - my core, fundamental, ontological ugliness.
The struggle to keep house, to bring order and beauty to my intimate dwelling place - a reflection of my perennial condemnation to not being good enough, not being worthy of anything good...

But I remember the twinkle in his eyes as I took his arm that afternoon - and I remember the way he held my high school portrait and studied it - studied it! not just casting a careless polite glance at something so outdated and irrelevent! - and the smile that played about his lips as he looked at the girl I used to be and said, "I think I know this girl."

And tonight I am compelled to question my own self-doubt and self-loathing.

Because of the strength and influence of a good man.

I am Yours, O Lord -

My dreams, my desires, the yearnings of my heart -
I place in Thy Hands, O Lord.
Do with me as Thou wilt -
with my life, my abilities, my ambitions -
(not that I have many ambitions, but what I have are Yours)-
My affections, my hopes,
All things belong to Thee.
I will follow You where You call me -
only let Your voice come clearly to my inner ear
so that I might not confuse it with other noise of my ego's wants.

Be glorifed, dear Lord - in and through and even,
when we must be blunt about it -
In spite of me.
amen.

So God said "No - "

... to whatever it was you were begging Him for. Maybe it was that job, or the miracle to save your marriage, or the life of your child -

And you did everything you were told you are supposed to do -
You prayed the novenas, you fasted, you made other sacrifices, you were careful not to step on cracks and you stood on your head...

And, oh, your faith was immense -

And God still said, "No."

We are told - by well-meaning people who can't bear to tell us the truth, by popular movements, by our "authority figures" - that if we just play the game right, God will honor the desires of our heart -

Actually, what we're often told is that, if we just follow this particular formula, God has obligated Himself to do what we wish.

That's a pagan idea, worse than a heresy; God does not subject Himself to our whims and wills -

But we, in our utter desparation, believe, we cling to every bit of flotsam within reach, because we are desparate to receive what we want.

When God says "No," it doesn't mean that we failed. Oh! how we can beat ourselves up over that! - I must have done something wrong, I must have spoken the words (the incantation?) out of order, I must have failed in some capacity - my faith must not have been strong enough -

No. God is only exercising His Divine Right as the Almighty Creator of the Cosmos - His omniscience that there are greater fruits ahead.

When I saw the mom's fevered prayer request for the life of her son, back last fall, I knew that he would die, and I feared for the woman, because her prayer request was worded in such a way that I knew she had bought into this neopagan notion that God can be bought. Sure enough, the boy died a couple of weeks ago, and I have gotten word that she - who was absolutely defiant in the face of his failing health: "Mary will do what I ask her to do!" - has reached a bad place, a bleak and miserable place.

With the very certainty that I foresaw the boy's death, I also saw that his death would be the catalyst to bring many souls into the Kingdom of God. Sometimes we can do more for Our Lord when we are denied what we want - and this is going to be such a case. I believe it with all my being.

Pray for this family, please -
and don't doubt God's mercy, or His power, just because He won't play our games.

Okay. More than two months since my last post. I think one of the things I dislike about blogging is that it isn't interactive enough. My life isn't exciting enough, and my thoughts and insights are not profound enough, to justify sitting here putting them out into blogland as if the fate of the Nation rested on my shoulders.

I enjoy feedback, dialogue. I like being told something I said in a website was smart, or outrageously funny... heck, I even get a kick out of a good fight once in a while!

That just doesn't happen in a blog. It's a monologue that gets thrown out into cyberspace in a perennial echo... and for all I can tell doesn't make a spit bit of difference anywhere, to anyone.

So - what is happening in my life the past two months?

Early August, I fell getting out of the bathtub. My left foot hit the linoleum and just k-e-p-t o-n g-o-w-i-n-g.... Honey, I couldn't do splits as a preschooler! Let's just say it wasn't a pretty sight - and for the life of me, I couldn't get my right foot off the floor of the bathtub! The scary thing was when I felt something rip (and heard it too - that is ONE GROSS SOUND) and I realized the phone was half way down the other end of the house and I was completely and totally alone. But I was able to eventually pull my right foot out of the tub, stand up and hobble off to bed. Then I got out of bed, went to the kitchen, got an ice pack out of the freezer, too the last of my post-oral-surgery hydrocodone and went back to bed. I was able to sleep, and a friend helped me look up on the internet and verify that I had a pulled hamstring...

The next day, Saturday, I went to housesit for friends going out of town. Steps going in to the house from every door. Steps up to the showers and bedrooms. My knees took a beating, compensating for the hamstring injury. I'm still recovering from that.

I have a couple of photos from the Eucharistic Congress in Charlotte, which was this past weekend. That was a real treat - I sang with the combined choir on Friday night, had a solo in the dona nobis pacem of the Mozart Coronation Mass - a very nice experience overall.

Got to see and meet Father Benedict Groeschel - he was the Friday night speaker, talked about Eucharistic Adoration. When I download his photo I'll post more about his talk.

I'm not singing with the Master Chorale this season, but decided to try to cultivate a local social outlet so am singing with our local county choral society. The music is not nearly of the same calibre (that will be another post - I had to pick a horrible year NOT to sing with the NCMC) - but again, it's a local group and will give me an opportunity to meet people in my own community. I need that.

Okay - Josh, if you pop back in, I'm back LOL - God bless you, dear friend! and bless you in your seminary studies.

There must be more than one moral to this story...

I ought not to laugh, but I can't help it - it's just too........
http://www.wral.com/news/strange/story/1604949/

Maybe people who have neglected repairs to houses, left them vacant too long, not kept up wiht mowing... ? What do you think?

He's done it now -

Oh, that Bubba has really gone and done it now. Woke me up at 6:30, "talking" to me a mile a minutes - then starts making the most disgusting noise...
The damned cat had brought a half-eaten rat up onto my bed. Absolutely disgusting! Nasty! Revolting! GROSS!

When God says "I Love You"

It often doesn't come with trumpet blasts and verifiable miracles. Sometimes it comes with the bluebird perched on a branch of the dogwood right outside the living room window - or the vivid blue of the spiderwort in the roadside bank.

Returning from my evening walk, just a few minutes ago, a bit of movement from the other side of my house caught my eye; it was three deer. I'm sorry that I did not have my camera with me, and they were too far away to have gotten a decent photo anyway. They stood, frozen in their suspicious awareness of me. By the time I reached the back door, they were bounding toward the woods at the back of the field.

I often see deer tracks cutting into the sand in my yard, but it is not as common as I would enjoy to see them so close to the house in broad daylight. It was truly a great treat, and it felt as if God were sending me a brief love letter.