I'm going to start a new cuss word -

CHIGGERS!
Yep. Sounds absolutely scandalous, doesn't it?

It should. I'm house- and pet-sitting for friends this week, lovely home about eight miles from my home. I spend nights there and come home to my place to work in the mornings. I bring Tucker, the dog, with me.

Tucker, if you are interested, is a sharpei-golden retriever mix.

On Tuesday, I decided that what I really wanted to do, while the weather was so nice and moderate and dry, was to spray the poison ivy that's threatening to take over my yard again. So I mixed up Round-Up (the only time I use this stuff is on poison ivy) and headed outdoors. A stroll along the driveway led to a stroll around the back yard, which led to a stroll in the woods...

Tucker has come back with ticks (so much for the value of Frontline) and I, my friends, am covered in chigger bites. My waist, arms, legs...

Yep - definitely worthy of becoming a cuss word. Forget those words alluding to bodily functions - let a new generation of profanity arise, founded in disgust over objects not wholly-enough separate from ourselves: CHIGGERS.

Next new cussword: tobacco hornworms!

Happy Fourth of July

We are experiencing very mind weather here this year - it was in the low 60s this morning and only mid-80s now. I picked tobacco hornworms off the tomato plants, tried to mow the yard (mower choked out and so I'll have to try after it - and I - "rest" a bit). After while, I'm going to check where I can take Tucker and see some FIREWORKS.

and I splurged and had a bowl, a big bowl, of chocolate ice cream!

Y'all have fun, stay cool, try to behave, now.

How will your obituary read?

Once again, the obituary read, "She was an avid golfer...." Down here in golf country, that's not surprising - most people move here from other parts of the country for the golf, when they retire.

But it's sad, too, that a life that has ended, a soul sent on its way to God for the Final Judgment, should be celebrated and remembered for something so superficial as chasing a little ball around and trying to hit it into a little hole in the ground.

When I die, I want my obituary to read of my conversion, my love of God and His Church, my eagerness to share the Faith... I don't know that it would, since my survivors are hardly likely themselves to care about such things. But it's what I aspire to.

How should we live, in order to merit a more substantial memorial than "she was an avid golfer"?

Bubba

THIS
is
the
cat
-

That caught the rat
That joined the mouse
Brought out of the rain
And laid in the hall
(Both dead)
That woke me up at 4:30 a.m.
Meowing to announce his prowess
and Scared me to pieces -
All in the house that Laura built!

Happy Saturday!

I went across the creek to a produce stand this a.m. to pick up a cantalope for breakfast (I am determined to TRY to "do it right" in this weight-loss business, and that means eating three meals a day - so I have to learn to eat breakfast of some description, right?) -

I love this time of year! Even with flies and other bugs (I did put a fresh fly strip up in the kitchen this a.m. - flies will slip in the open windows and door especially in the face of a weather front) - I love the way everything smells, and the way I feel.

The produce had just come out of the cooler. I wish they'd leave it out, but it would go overripe in no time if they did that. We need to develop a better marketing system for fresh produce, you know? - anyway, the cantalope was warm enough to have a light perfume to it and a nice firm texture, so I bought it, and in a few minutes I'll go into the kitchen, cut it up and eat it with a 1/2-cup of cottage cheese. Wonderful flavor combinations!

and I bought a small basket of peaches. Six peaches in a basket for $2.50 - that's a little more than $.40 per peach! ridiculous! but we're lucky to have any peaches at all after the hard freeze, Easter weekend.

And then - the Lamberts have just started carrying flowers this year - I found the sweetest flower. Have you ever heard of - Indian feathers, I think it's called? It's sweeping grassy stems with the most deliciously pale, delicate pink blossoms. I just had to have one - at $4.00 for a little plant.

I got the first squash out of my garden yesterday, both yellow and zucchini. I picked the little squash while they were still tiny enough the blossoms were still attached. Later on today I'm going to try a squash blossom omelet from the book French Women Don't Get Fat. the squash themselves, I sauteed last night in butter and olive oil - they were crisp but light and had the most wonderful flavor!

I've struggled all these years with self-image, not knowing what to do with my womanhood - all those "feminine gifts" seeming so alien to me. I feel as if the blockage is being shifted, and bit by bit, in trickles and sometimes gushes, like water escaping a dammed-in pond, I'm discovering what a delight it is to be a woman, and to live as a child of God, revelling in His many gifts of beauty and sweetness.

Happy Summer Saturday, y'all!

Gee, Angela - give a gal a chance to recover -

from a trip to the dentist's!
I thought the tooth was going to have to come out; instead my favorite "Caters to Cowards" (yep! that's me!) dentist - Mark Thompson - actually was able to do a gorgemous composite filling. My chipped incisor looks like new, and my poor old molar looks good enough to move around to the front of my mouth!

but I do need a nap. Badly.

Hello Again, Naturally -

Back in... March, was it? I announced my intentions to drop off the face of the earth where Catholic Match is concerned. Well, it wasn't as easy as I thought.

One of the reasons these sites are so popular is that the fora are entertaining. CM offers the options of on-site emails and brief messages they call "emotes" - a charming easy way to exchange brief messages between members. It's fun.

And for a gal living with two cats, it's an easy and mostly-pleasing distraction.

Okay - I'll make a public confession: I also had a little bit of a "following" over there - a group of women ranging in age from their late teens to their 60s, who thought (or at least said) I am wise and witty and simply wonderful...

Not wonderful enough to stay in touch with now that I've actually pulled the plug and removed my profile, mind you... ah, the public are such a fickle bunch! LOL -

But certainly wonderful enough to gush to me and generally feed my ego in a major way.

So - I'm back. and frankly, I'm not sure I have an awful lot to say. I wrote four articles for CM/4Marks magazine - you can go to www.4marks.com and click on the magazine link: look for my wit and wisdom (choke!) in January, February, March and May. The March article is trash - literally a rough draft I sent to the editor because he was begging me to send him something - so of course it is the article that has received the most attention. My best article, "Spiritual Warfare," for the May issue, is buried in the Apologetics section while a poem of questionable quality and an over-circulated email text received Headline status.

I want to break into paying markets. That is my career goal for this summer.

and, meantime, it wouldn't hurt to posts in here more often, even pontificating a bit and being a general BORE, right?

I see I get an average of 3 views per day. Angela - how many of those are yours, Dear Heart? Well, here's a crumb. We'll see how long I can sustain this blogging stuff this time.

Love y'all - you're in my prayers.

Holy Week - Triduum

I love the Triduum. The 3-act drama celebrating the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord is my favorite time of the year.

It is grueling, through, particularly for our priests, who have extensive meetings and extra Masses with the Bishops this week (for this is the week we also remember how Christ established the Holy Priesthood) I didn't get to go to a chrism Mass this year, over which I'm rather disappointed.

For me, the work begins this evening, with the Mass of the Lord's Supper. It's a bilingual Triduum, and the combined choirs are splitting off the music between us. The "Anglo" choir is not doing much tonight, but Father did as me to lead the Pange, Lingua and Tantum Ergo.

My friend Stephanie pointed out a couple weeks ago that the Enemy of our souls, Satan, really hates this time of year and works overtime to trip us up and cause us suffering and temptation. I had never thought of it before, but this year it's quite clear she's right.

Could it be in part because this year I'm engaged in a 54-day novena, the first of which ends... on Good Friday?

This means, to me, that we are particularly obligated to hold one another up during this Holy Season. Even when I don't "feel" like it, even when I'm convinced I'm a loser and a dope and when I feel like I'm on the brink of craziness, I will pray for you. God bless and keep you - may He be glorified through us.

Catalinni - Final update

She joked about being voted off the island, but no one wanted to see her leave. God had other plans, though, and yesterday, at about 12:45 Pacific Time, my dear friend Catalinni entered Eternity.

I posted about her almost two years ago, when I was a new blogger - you can find that in the archives.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and may perpetual Light shine upon her. May her soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, rest in peace. Amen.

A recent article features a letter written by the brother of Terry Schiavo to Bishop Lynch of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida.

In the letter, Bobby Schindler says:

"The barbarism and nightmare of Terri's two week death by thirst and starvation will be forever seared into my family's memory. It is incomprehensible to us that a nation supposedly built on basic Judeo- Christian principles would allow something so wicked to happen. That is, until one realizes that just as the Culture of Death made a triumphal entry into our nation in 1973, via legalized abortion, without so much as a whimper of protest from those with the God-given authority to stop it, so now our disabled and elderly are being targeted for death. The bottom line is, when apostolic grace and responsibility are abdicated, innocent people die.[emphasis mine]

This whole idea of Christian quietism, or passivism if you will, has been much on my mind of late. We are living in a major cultural crisis: flagrant pornography passed as entertainment, legal rulings outlawing ordinary observations of our Christian heritage, such as the posting of the Ten Commandments in public venues, and a secularization of culture that makes life cheap.

We live in a world gone mad, in fact, gone mad because "good Christian people" have not had the backbone to say, first, "NO!" and even now, "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH."

Education... our educational system is cultivating generations of sheep prime for social engineering, and parents are not concerned what their children are reading and discussing, or not reading and discussing or learning in the classroom. The fundamentals of education - parts of speech, the multiplication tables and other basic math functions - that actually provide early concrete training in rational thinking have been supplanted by the conveniences of modern technologies.

We are at war, but we are also, as the late Keith Green put it, "Asleep in the Light."

We are supposed to be a countercultural people, living in accordance with the customs and traditions of a Heavenly Kingdom, of which we are subjects and heirs.

There is no question, there can be no complacent waiting for the pendulum to begin to swing back toward center of its own accord; we are the force behind the direction of the pendulum. The time is upon us to awaken from our slumber, abandon our comfort zones, and raise the cry for our nation, yea, our very world, to stop the insanities of atheistic secularism and to begin to return to God.

This generation of believers is responsible for this generation of souls, something else Green proclaimed. We are responsible; we are accountable.

Let us put on the full armor of Christ and engage in the Good Fight.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Standing up for the Truth

You probably know that I participate on several web fora. I don't do a lot of posting, overall, not compared to some, but when I post, I say what I think and unless you can address my thoughts and show me the fallacy of my position, I do not back down.

This gets interesting when posting to other women. Some women are so naive and gullible. They want everyone to be all hearts and flowers and everything to be beautiful all the time .... and part of that sweetness and light is for everyone to just all get along and no one to make waves..........

We can't all be right. If there is a real Truth in the world - and as Catholics we are all about Truth, not some subjective "my truth and your truth," but THE TRUTH - then we have to become adults and accept that compromises from THE TRUTH are a LIE, and LIES are DANGEROUS. We have to take our thumbs out of our mouths and drop the blankie where it lays and take up the Armor of Christ and get with the work God has given us.

That's what I want to do. I hope I can do it gracioiusly, but I'm afraid I'm ... forthright is a word I have encountered lately. I've also been accused of being "mean."

Look, if you want me to take you seriously, don't cry, "You're MEAN!" like some six-year old. Address my position, show me my error. But don't get into personalities, okay?

I have decided -

Reading Christine Northrup's Wisdom of Menopause and I've made some decisions:

1. I am a happy person. I may have the odd "down" moment, but fundamentally I am very happy. I like being me, I like my life... (okay, I'd like to have more money, but not be a millionaire, just ... in the $20s and $30s would be very nice indeed)

2. Men are nice. Two of them jumped to my rescue last Saturday night when I had a flat tire on my way home from a St Pat's "do." One held a door open for me yesterday. Yep! Men are very nice!

3. I am never going to retire. I am going to continue doing church work, writing and teaching until I die.

4. I am going to sqeeze all the Joy out of life that I can. Beginning right now. I'm going to go take my walk, fix my lunch, pick up and deposit my paycheck and pay some bills... visit the library... and just have a fantastic weekend, too. Tomorrow I'm going to Confession, and I'm going to find some local enrichment activity to sink my teeth into, also.

There! It's not much, but it's a start of a life blueprint for the rest of my days, don't you think?

Do You Know Your Catechism?

You are a 100% traditional Catholic!

 

Congratulations! You are more knowlegeable than most modern theologians! You have achieved mastery over the most important doctrines of the Catholic Faith! You should share your incredible understanding with others!

Do You Know Your Baltimore Catechism?
Make Your Own Quiz

Biting the hand that feeds me

I've been very fortunate to have had several articles published by the Catholic Match Magazine over the past four months. It's been good experience for me, and my articles have received very gratifying responses.

I don't get paid cash for the work; I'm paid in full membership privileges. Catholic Match is one of those sites you have to pay to participate on. I have full access to all the fora, posting privileges, email, emote, and chat access. I've been quite active since early November, I've made some delightful friends, men and women, and I'm glad I gave it a try -

But I have also decided that this online dating game is not for me.

In fact, I'm even more leery of it now than I was beforehand. I've seen a multitude of couples test the waters and then break up - I've seen women lament that their attempts to make contact with appealing men are ignored, I've seen men lament similar difficulties. The sex-segregated rooms, St. Anne's for the women and St Joachim for the men, are havens of personal revelations that have been an education, to be sure.

I think one of the worst problems with a site like this is that - let's face it: this place attracts men and women who have had no success getting along with people in real life. Except for my buddy Matt, who introduced me to the site (and who joined, I think, as a shortcut to being acquainted with potentially like-minded Catholics while he was brand new to our area - at least, I dearly hope that was all his motive), most people there have histories as long as my arm of failed relationships, many of them abusive and exploitive.

Just last night, one of the "pinkies" (women's room regulars) started a thread complaining how disgusted with the men on the site she is. She's decided to try to make it up with her local boyfriend, a man she has regularly come crying to us about - she caught him smoking dope, she was frightened because he expected physical intimacy from her that she didn't want to give him... but he's there, and he sends her flowers and what the hey, he feeds the homeless at the restaurant he owns, and that of course makes him a Living Saint.

It's a self-perpetuating loony asylum in there.

I was contacted by a fellow this week, a man who'd read my most recent article on chastity as a synonym for modesty and who wanted to thank me - and, while he had the opportunity, to complain about the women on the fora who stalk him and are so disgustingly immodest in their speech and conduct. A series of emails ensued - he sent me 2 to every 1 I sent him - and it quickly became obvious that this disgruntled man has such unrealistic expectations of human behavior that it is impossible to please him. He was particularly offended by the local affectionate term for the men's room: The Cave.

Thinking he was brand new (he's not, he's incognito in a "new" identity so as to "hide" from his former fiancee who stalked him after he broke off their engagement a couple of years ago), I explained that the Cave gets its name as a good-humored tease of the stereotype of men as neanderthals, and as a nod to John Grey, who says that men retreat to "the cave" when they have a problem to solve. This explanation only further offended my correspondant, who challenged me: "What if I were to call you a redneck?"

"Fred, I am a redneck!"

"Well, what about your weight, then? Wouldn't that offend you? It should!"

"Fred, you can call me obese, you can call me fat, you can call me a tub of lard - I really do not care. My weight does not define who I am - it only pertains to one aspect of my overall appearance. It's all a matter of having a SENSE OF HUMOR..." which poor Fred has none, by all appearances.

I'm also impressed, negatively, by the number of women who cling to rotten, abusive relationships with controlling, manipulative, and abusive men - because these guys baited them with romantic gestures and words from the very beginning of their relationships, "It was so perfect! I really thought he was The One!" they lament.

I feel like a bloomin' fish out of water in that website. I feel out of step and increasingly annoyed, disgrunted, and downright ticked off, particularly at the women. I've tried to speak Truth every way I know how - I had an article published called "Reflections on Love," in which I spoke of the difference between attraction, infatuation, and love - and about the dangers of codependency. I take a stand for sense and self-respect in the Pink Room (women's room) every chance I get. I cheer women on, I urge them to respect themselves and not to allow the men they think they love to abuse or exploit them, but to seek healthy, mutually balanced relationships -

It's like talking to a brick wall. Or, like my old Professor told us, a Korean proverb: "Spit straight up. Learn something."

I've dropped out of the Master Chorale. In addition to being swamped through Easter, I feel increasingly a need to cultivate LOCAL relationships and social outlets. It's ridiculous to place all my energies in relationships with people 86 miles away when I have a community here to cultivate and engage in. I don't know whether I'll ever see my Chorale friends again - and that makes me terribly sad. They are dearer to me than I ever expected them to be. But it's time to live in the real world, in my own community-

Yes, this community I've been wanting to escape for thirty years -

and I suppose this is the place to begin.

Rejection #1

Catholic Digest has turned down the golden opportunity to reprint "In Celebration of Holy Friendship," which was published by Catholic Match Magazine in January. One down, indeterminate number to go.

One of the reasons I am NOT going for my Teaching Certification

I subbed at the local high school yesterday morning. Got to school, got out of my car, and was crossing the driveway when a group of young men hanging out, outside the administrative building, were heard saying "shit." I called out to them, "Hey guys, watch the language." And they quieted down, but not one of them apologized.

A couple standing at the corner of the building were engaged in a full-body embrace, his hands were moving all over her, and they were engaged in a major liplock. I would have said something to them, too, except about that time I saw...

A teacher, "on duty," one presumes, since he was standing out in the grass facing toward the building as if he were there to supervise and police the action - only his nose was buried in a book and he didn't even look up when I called to the boys about their language. I walked up to him and said, "Excuse me, are you going to deal with that couple, there?"

He looked up, startled, glanced at the snogging couple and shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing I can do about it, they can do whatever they want before school starts."

"Since when! According to the student handbook, which I am required to operate under, there are certain kinds of conduct these kids can't engage in on campus at any time!" He obviously could not have cared less. And, I might add - this is the side of the building facing the drop-off point for the kids being brought to school by their parents - dozens if not a hundred parents had a great view of this couple indiscriminately making out before school started.

I am so tired to the bone of being the lone ranger of understanding that the way these kids behave in public is the tip of the iceberg of how they're behaving in private. I am so tired of double standards being held to in the public schools. I am so tired of overhearing girls talking about the most outrageous topics - what oral sex tastes like is one example of a topic I've heard more than twice in recent weeks, and who's a dyke -

Teachers can't teach nouns and verbs or require the memorization of multiplication tables. Good literature is being abandoned in favor of trash like The Chocolate War. And conduct going through the absolute toilet. I'm so mad I could spit nails.

And I have people telling me I need to be practical and go get my certification requirements so I can be held hostage by this rapidly-disintegrating educational system for the remainder of my professional life? No, thank you!

It's Hard to Post Daily!

Okay, Maybe I'm a lazy slug, but I just cannot seem to get my act together to post every day. I don't know how "Angela Messenger" does it. Or any of my other blogger friends. I'm working on a couple of magazine articles (I just had my fourth article published with Catholic Match Magazine and am waiting to hear back on a possible reprint of one of those with Catholic Digest - please keep your fingers crossed!). Blogging might be a very good way to "Prime the Pump" - after all, "Celebration of Holy Friendship" (the article I'm hoping will be picked up by Catholic Digest) was the result of a blog entry I almost made but decided I wanted to develop as an article.

But right now it feels almost as if blogging and posting in various web fora just diffuses the energy I possess. I'm going to have to give this some more thought and prayer.

updates...

Rotten head cold. Well, at least it's not the flu, right? That's what I was afraid it was, Friday night when I began feeling really rotten - rotten, I mean, past the sinus junk that's been annoying me all week before. By Saturday I felt somewhat reassured, I was just in for a head cold.

The disappointing thing is that I have no voice... well, what voice I have sounds awful, like my daddy used to say, "Like a dying cow in a hailstorm." That cow is very weak by now.

And this is the week the Master Chorale is supposed to be singing with the NC Symphony - Edward Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. What! You haven't heard of it? Not surprising. Few Americans have, I think.

It's fascinating, especially for me as a Catholic. Elgar was Catholic, in the midst of Anglican England - and he took as his libretto a poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman, himself an Englishman (and a former Anglicn priest). The poetry is typically Victorian- a bit excessive if you know what I mean - but the theology is thrilling.

Gerontius (a tenor) is an old man. He is dying, and he knows it, and he sings about his state, his joy at seeing God, his fear of Judgment, his uncertainty about what really is awaiting him on the other side of the veil.... and the chorus is a group of the faithful, interceding for him, invoking the prayers of the angels, saints, holy virgins, and just about anyone else who might have a capacity to pray for a dying man. Then after a bit more reflection by the tenor solo - Gerontius - the chorus becomes a choir of angels, commanding Gerontius' soul to "COME FORTH!" and it does, and he dies. And that's the end of Part 1.

In Part 2, Gerontius is surprised to be able to see - it has to be his guardian angel - face to face for the first time. The angel is escorting him upward through the cosmos toward the Gates of Heaven, and explaining to him what is going to be happening. For some reason, the Angel is sung by a soprano, I think it is - I think Angels ought to be basso profundos, but maybe the contrast of men's voices wasn't stark enough?

Outside of heaven, Gerontius sees a crowd of demons (sung by... the chorus) - they accuse him "What's a saint? one who taints the air with his breath before he dies...." and mock God, calling Him a tyrant and a despot. They taunt Gerontius but cannot touch him. Gerontius and his angel continue in. Gerontius sees the holy angels travelling back and forth - and the holy saints who are in the presence of God, worshipping and adoring God -

But he isn't one of them yet. His Judgment occurs in an instant, and the angel is carrying him to still another place - Purgatory. We hear the saints-in-the-making, being purified in the Refiner's Fire of Purgatory - and they are truly happy people. The most beautiful "hymn" in the whole piece is sung by the souls in Purgatory, "Oh, wisest Love, oh, Kindest Love...." they praise Almighty God.

The piece ends on a note of triumph: Gerontius may be in Purgatory, but that means his ultimate salvation has been secured and that he will be admitted into Heaven. The piece ends with a glorious hymn of praise to God.

It really is beautiful music, and so suitable for early Lent to my way of thinking.... and I won't be able to sing it. Bummer!

Well, God works His will on us - my experience with the Master Chorale has been a glorious one, and I have made some splendid friends there. But the sense is growing in me that it is time to start living here, close to home, cultivating the interests and hobbies that will get me around people on a local level and give me a chance to have Real Life friends not just in Raleigh but down here as well - okay, more than I currently have?

More later. I've got to go get ready for work.

Lent at last

Ash Wednesday, Opening Day of Lent. Opening day of Sin season - we're gonna hunt 'em down and shoot to kill.

I need Lent this year. I feel a need for a good scouring, inside and out. I've been too careless with sin. Those venials may not be your "Go to Hell" card, but they can sure do a lot of damage, like a termite infestation, left untended.

My Protestant habits always make Lent hard for me. I still find Confession awkward and I have an aversion to it. I forget it's Friday until after I've busted the fasts to smithereens.

We keep on trying. I'm not sure I can go forty days without anything sweet (besides my morning coffee or evening tea) - but I can sure limit to Sundays, I believe, and make up for it between times. After all, in the old days, fasts and abstinences were a lot more stringent than they are now; the old folks, the saints, would be horrified at what we 21st Century Americans consider a 'sacrifice'.

This year, instead of filling my evenings with videos like The Notebook or Casablanca or Sense and Sensibility, I'm going to pop in the unwatched videos of Scott Hahn's Our Father's Plan.

I'm putting down some of my leisure reading in favor of two devotional classics: St. Francis de Sale's Introduction to a Devout Life and for the month of March, a 30-day "pocket retreat" from Sophia Institute Press.

I will be praying for you: please pray for me.

I need a little... Lent

Day after tomorrow - Ash Wednesday. I'm feeling a little impatient, almost want to anticipate the start. As with Christmas, however, all liturgical milestones need to be honored in their own time and place and not shifted around a lot. I may start my Lent reading today, but that will be the extent of my anticipation.

Keith Green wrote a song a few years ago - more than twenty-five, now - that went something like this:
My eyes are dry,
My faith is old,
My heart is hard,
My prayers are cold -
And I know how
I ought to be -
alive to You, and dead to me.

That's how I'm feeling these days. All calloused over, toughened up. Insensitive. Complacent.

It's not a good place to be. I suppose my soul-house is like the analogy I warned my RCIA people of yesterday, as we talked about sin: mortal sins can be like a bomb blast, but venial sins can be like a termite infestation - eventually, if you haven't taken care of them, they'll cause the house to fall in on itself as surely as if there had been a bomb blast.

Two months since my last Confession - always an excuse not to go. I am a lazy slug. God deserves better from me, and I want better from myself.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down....

The First Joyful Mystery: The Annunciation
We meditate upon the Angel's appearance to Mary - and her great Fiat: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me acording to thy word."

Praying for my friend today, I take this Mystery and pray:
Almighty God, You sent the angel to your daughter Mary to invite her to bear the Messiah - and she said Yes! Be with my beloved friend, I pray, and let the annunciation of Your immense love and your choice of him to be Your very own bring him joy this day. I pray that he might always be ready to say Yes! to Your call upon his life, whatever it might be. Be glorified through him, and on the Last Day may he sing Your praises with all the angels and Saints in the Beatific Vision. Amen.

But... i gotta GO!

I woke up feeling achey and mildly feverish this a.m. I sure hope it's not going to develop into anything nasty -

Tomorrow I'm supposed to go to Raleigh - the Fifth Annual Ignited by Truth Conference -

Featured Speakers are friends of mine, via their written works and blog -
Mark Shea
Peter Kreeft

I will feel simply horrible if I can't get Dr. Kreeft to autograph my poor well-worn copy of Philosophy 101 by Socrates!

The diocese of Raleigh's recently-installed bishop, Bishop Michael Burbidge, is going to be celebrating the closing Mass, too - I so very much want to meet that dear and good man of God.

Not a day I am keen on missing, if ya know what I mean...

The girl is just TOO SILLY, methinks!

Angela, of Angela Messenger fame, wants me to register my blog with some blogger registry or catalogue. Her blog has really taken off with viewers since she did.

What!

She thinks I ought to WRITE REGULARLY in this thing and keep it reasonably UPDATED???

Hey, just who does she think she's dealing with, here???

Sharing the Faith

I got to the church about forty-five minutes early for choir practice last night. Father was there, getting ready for our opening night of Bingo - and he was showing two women around the church. I greeted them and went about my business of getting ready for the kids to show up - but when I came out of my closet office they were still there. One of them dropped back and struck up a conversation with me.

She was genuinely shocked when she learned I am a convert. WHY would a CHRISTIAN want to become a CATHOLIC???

You know what? It's probably good that I used to think that Catholics were cannibals - those sorts of questions don't offend me. I've thought worse, probably, right?

So we spent more than half an hour talking - I corrected her misinformation that Catholics worship Mary (that's an old one) and that Catholics believe Jesus died but wasn't resurrected (That was a new one for me) - I told her about our Easter Triduum, invited her to come back and attend Mass with us. Since she was curious about our Bibles, I gave her my NAB which was sitting on the shelf (unused) in my office. We exchanged email addresses, and last night I sent her my conversion story.

She's the third person this week I've sent it to.

I LOVE sharing the Faith! LoveitLoveitLoveit!

Pray for this gal - her name is Linda, and I didn't catch her friend's name. They're Pentecostals, former Methodists. I expect I'll be hearing from them again. PrayPrayPrayPrayPray.....

Rant: The Chocolate War

I probably won't be invited back to sub at our local middle school - not after I complained about the video being shown to the 8th graders I subbed with yesterday.

The video was The Chocolate War, based on the bestselling novel by Robert Cormier. It is the story of a sociopathic bully - who makes The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield look like a well-adjusted and productive member of society. He connives to take over the secret society, The Vigils, of a private boys' school (run by Catholic teaching brothers) and he pours his contempt on faculty, administration, and peers.

The book, and the movie, is full of profanity, masturbatory references, flagrant contempt for authority figures in general and religious in particular.

If it contains any literary merit whatsoever, I have yet to discover what it is.

Yet this book is the current hottest thing since boiling water to hit the schools.

I don't get it, and I want to know two things: First, why in the world are "educators" stupid enough to think this piece of crap is literature and has educational value? and Second, why in the name of all that is holy have parents put up with this?

I'm angry at myself today, because although I complained to the principal and the school's media specialist (who assured me that very detailed letters of explanation were sent to parents and signed permission slips on file for each of the students in the classes), I wish I had had the steel in my spine to simply refuse to show the thing. I didn't. I cooperated with feeding those tender young kids' minds mental and spiritual dung.

I just don't know what to do. I only know I feel more confirmed than before: I do not belong in education.

Uh. try again?

Hi, Y'all -
Still here. Busy, and happy.
The article I mentioned, "In Celebration of Holy Friendship," was published on January 1 by Catholic Match Magazine. You have to register to access it; married people can register with FourMarks and I believe you can access the magazine that way.

A new article has been published for February. "Reflections on Love" is accessible through catholic web - scroll down until you see Catholic Relationships heading, then click on "What Is Love?" From there you can actually click on a link that will take you to the Catholic Match article in its entirety.

Looks like I'm going to be a regular contributor to that magazine. I'm very pleased and grateful for that opportunity.

See you again soon!

Prayer Needs NOW

Chris, my co-contributor (read: technical assistant) is in hospital right now. She is in for an aneurysm.

Nora, dear friend from my choir, is in hospital, having undergone surgery for cancer this week.

Please pray for these two precious dear and wonderful women and their speedy recovery.

Yikes! Has it been SO LONG since I posted?
So much has happened, are you SURE I have been so long away???

Okay - There's a new photo, as soon as Chris is up to replacing the old one.

I started to post a few weeks ago (honest!) in celebration of the anniversary of a very special friendship. After only a couple of sentences, though, I shut down this window and went to Word, where my idea very quickly became an article, which has been accepted for publication by Catholic Match Magazine. "In Celebration of Holy Friendship" is due to appear in the January edition of the online magazine. I'll post a link here when it comes out.

The Advent and Christmas seasons are upon us. I had four concerts, two funerals and a regular Mass in three days over Thanksgiving weekend. I'm still recovering, in fact! Our Joy of the Season concert is coming up on Saturday. We're being recorded for broadcast over our state PBS affiliate, WUNC-TV (Channel 4, Chapel Hill) and a DVD will be available for sale, too. I'll post info on that as soon as I'm able.

I have a new email address for anyone who would care to contact me: chantlaura@gmail.com

I've got more stuff bubbling on the back burner. See you soon!

A Blessed Thanksgiving to you all!

It's such a trite saying: have an "attitude of gratitude."
Still, it's a lot to consider. We really do have a choice to be happy or miserable. Being happy largely begins with gratitude.

There's so much to be thankful for. I've got two cats curled up by my back, one on either side of me. It's warm in my house. The terrible storm of the past two days is past and the sun came out a little while ago with a vengeance, as if to more than make up for the nor'easter that nearly flooded our area.

Drowning Creek didn't come up to the road, thanks to the hard work done several years ago by the Corps of Engineers; it is stretched out almost a quarter mile in either direction of the bridge, though, I noticed on my way to Mass this morning.

It's Thanksgiving weekend. I'll be singing this weekend with the NC Symphony in their wonderful Holiday Pops concert. This year Grant Llewellyn is directing - a joy in itself.

I have been blessed with some of the most delightful and wonderful friends a woman ever had.

this is just the beginning of my list...

God bless and keep you all!

Guess the Christmas Carols!

1. Move hitherward the entire assembly of those who are loyal in their belief.
2. Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious sounds.
3. Nocturnal timespan of unbroken quietness.
4. An emotion excited by they acquisition or expectation of good given to the terrestrial sphere.
5. Embellish the interior passageways.
6. Exalted heavenly beings to whom harkened
7. Twelve o’clock on a clement night witnessed its arrival
8. The Christmas preceding all others
9. Small municipality in Judea southeast of Jerusalem.
10. Diminutive masculine master of skin-covered percussionist cylinders.
11. Omnipotent supreme being who elicits respite to ecstatic distinguished males.
12. Tranquility upon the terrestrial sphere
13. Obese personification fabricated of compressed mounds of minute crystals.
14. Expectation of arrival to populated area by mythical, masculine, perennial gift-giver.
15. Natal celebration devoid of color, rather albino, as a hallucinatory phenomenon for me.
16. In awe of the nocturnal timespan characterized by religiosity.
17. Geographic state of fantasy during the season of Mother Nature‘s dormancy.
18. The first person nominative plural of a triumvirate of far eastern heads of state.
19. In a distant location the existence of an improvised unit of newborn children‘s slumber furniture.
20. Tintinnabulation of vacillating pendulums in inverted metallic resonant cups.
21. Proceed forth declaring upon a specific geological alpine formation.
22. Jovial yuletide desired for the second person singular or plural by us.

Prayer Request

I'm asking you to pass the word along -- prayers requested for my dear friend Nora, who is facing surgery for cancer in the next week or two. She goes up to Chapel Hill this week for a consult with an oncology surgeon.

Hey!

I've hit 200 posts! Wheeeeee!

on Holy Friendship

Have you ever had a particular friend of the opposite sex who just blessed your socks off? Who was a friend of the right hand, of the soul? Who enriched your life in surprising ways?

Drop me an email and let me know about it, will you? I'm writing an article on the subject, and want to use more than just my own experience to illustrate...

Thanks!

"HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY"

We arrived at the Presbyterian church as we normally do, but instead of going into the large fellowship hall, we made our way to the sanctuary. Imagine 170 men and women crammed into a choir loft and pulpit area designed for less than a quarter so many people! Sopranos and baritones on the left, altos and tenors on the right (as you look from the back of the church)... we're squeezed as tightly as we can into the choir pews, on steps, on the floor... I cannot resist quipping how lovely it is to see men strewn on the floor about my feet.
Trumpets, trombones, tuba, timpani, all warming up, then tuning with the organ...
Al steps to the box in the middle of the main aisle and raises his baton -- The trumpets begin an introduction built around "Taps"...

"Here rests in honored glory...." we sing a tribute to fallen soldiers of America's wars.

I am very very proud to announce the release of the CD, "Here Rests in Honored Glory," from The Don and Mary Miller Foundation. The song, recorded by the North Carolina Master Chorale in October, 2005, was written by Don Miller, a well-known jazz musician and composer. Sales of the CD (which I am shamelessly promoting here!) will go to benefit TAPS - the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors - a charity to serve the families of men and women who have died for America.

Please visit the website and order one of these CDs. It's a worthy cause, good music -- and if I may be so brash, we do sound GOOD. Out of the purchase cost, Mary Miller informs me that $5 goes directly to TAPS. That's a mighty good deal.

Hey - let 'em know I sent you, will you? I'd like to know how effective my marketing efforts are - wink.

Here's THE PARTY!

Things I love about being Catholic:

Jesus in the Eucharist
The Poetry and Drama of the Holy Liturgy
The dignity of our worship
Jesus in the Eucharist
Being in a Church that has existed since the Upper Room
The kinship of Faith with Believers around the world
Truly, "The Communion of Saints" -
making friends with people who have lived for Jesus through the ages
Gregorian Chant
Holy Hours
The Rosary
The Aquinas hymns
Jesus in the Eucharist
Incense
Stations of the Cross
Knowing Mary better as my "adopted Mother"
The Litany of the Saints
Jesus in the Eucharist...
Pope John Paul II
Pope Benedict XVI

Oh, I do love being Catholic! Thank you, dear Heavenly Father, that four years ago, I was allowed to stand in Your holy Sanctuary and to state those powerful words, "I do believe and profess all the Catholic Church teaches, preaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God." I do believe, dear Lord! Help my life to be more fully conformed to what my head and heart believe.

I really am still here!

I've started to post twice now, and realized I wanted to develop those particular ideas as possible magazine articles.

See what bloggind does? Primes the pump! Makes me think more of myself than perhaps I warrant?

I'll talk with you tonight or tomorrow, okay?

Welcome to many visitors -- pray for me, as I have said prayers for you.

Another wonderful anniversary

Friday, November 3, marks the fourth anniversary of my reception into Christ's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I'm utterly amazed and awe-filled at God's grace and mercy in calling me to be Catholic.

But that wasn't the end of things. It seems to have been only the beginning.

One year ago November 8, I made friends with a wonderful Catholic from Chorale. He was marking his score when I plopped down beside him to chat. We'd already met, he's one of the crowd who goes out after rehearsal for food and drinks, but we'd not become acqainted. I struck up an idle conversation, but something he said prompted me to ask him where he goes to church. When he told me, it took a second to realize that he had named one of the parishes in the diocese of Raleigh.

"You're... Catholic?" I think I stammered. His face took on a certain set that told me he'd already (having only lived in NC a few months) taken a heavy hit of southern anti-Catholicism. He affirmed quietly, and with great dignity, that he is indeed Catholic. I nearly jumped off my chair. "I'm a convert! I just celebrated the third anniversary of my Confirmation!" and my brand-new friend's face lit up like Christmas morning and he grabbed my hand and shook it clean up to the shoulder.

After chorale we sat side by side at the restaurant and talked and talked and talked. It was quickly evident that this is a man who is a joyful, intelligent Catholic (I have since learned that he is quite devout - that is to say, he's wonderfully serious about his Faith). He was also nice! I don't know when I've had such a delightful, stimulating evening.

During the course of our conversation, he mentioned that he is a student of John Paull II'd Theology of the Body. I'd heard of it through COL, but I'd never done any reading on the subject. He immediately offered me the loan of some tapes he thought he had in his car (he did).

Wow. Heavy. "like being hit by a freight train," my friend recently said. Uh, yeah - right slam into the solar plexus. Painful but the best sort of painful. At times I was literally unable to catch my breath from its impact. You mean, Lord, that's what it's all about??? Being male and female, reflecting in our particular Part the Totality of Your image and likeness, being a living metaphor for the union between Christ and His Church?

My life will never be the same, thanks be to God, because of a remark, carelessly and spontaneously made, but a brand new friend.

Sometimes it's not enough for us to know the "Thou Shalt NOT's" of sin -- sometimes we need to know the rest of the sentence -- "So that thou SHALT delight in the fulfillment of God's BEST PLAN for your life as a man or a woman."

YOU Are INVITED...

the BIGGEST BIRTHDAY/ANNIVERSARY PARTY EVER!

Hello, Everyone, Yep! today is the old warhorse's Birthday. (Thanks, Chris!) I'm what some might call "45.95 plus shipping and handling." (49, okay?)

BUT...

Even MORE EXCITING...

Next Friday, November 3, is the Fourth Anniversary of My ReceptionInto The Church.

So -- in celebration of these two awesome events, I'm throwing a party that can be celebrated round the world -- and indeed, I am sending it to friends throughout the U.S. and Canada, England, The Netherlands,Italy, and Australia.

Here's how it is supposed to work:

First, between now and Friday, please make a Holy Hour (or half-hour or whatever you do) -- I ask that you remember three very particular intentions for me:

A) My growing work in the Church (Music Director, Adult Faith
Formation leader) is stretching me more than I thought I could be
stretched. I love it - but pray that God would lead, direct, sustain,
and TEACH ME.

B) Reconciliation with my daughters.

C) The conversion of souls and reconciliation of those who have left the Church.


After you have made your Holy Hour (in lieu of which, if you simply cannot make it to the Church for a Holy Hour, will you offer a Rosary for me?) I want you to get your favorite dessert, and your favorite beverage - and enjoy!

If you're on a diet, you are temporarily exempt to indulge, so far as health issues will permit (I know a diabetic can't eat my aunt's pound cake -- okay, SHOULD NOT) for the one brief occasion.

On Friday, let's all gather in your favorite internet forums and tell stories, especially stories of faith and answered prayers, of love, family, and friends -- and just generally enjoy one another's company.

Or through the week, post said comments HERE.

How does that sound?

Happy Birthday Laura!

A Great game!

There are 30 books of the Bible in this paragraph. Can you find them? This is a most remarkable puzzle. It was found by a gentleman in an airplane seat pocket on a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu keeping him occupied for hours. He enjoyed it so much he passed it on to some friends. One friend from Illinois worked on this while fishing from his john boat. Another friend studied it while playing the banjo. Elaine Taylor, a columnist friend, was so intrigued by it she mentioned it in her weekly newspaper column. Another friend judges the job of solving the puzzle so involving she brews a cup of tea to help her nerves. There will be some names that are really easy to spot. That's a fact. Some people, however, will soon find themselves in a jam, especially since the book names are not necessarily capitalized. Truthfully, from answers we get, we are forced to admit it usually takes a minister or scholar to see some of them at the worst. Research has shown that something in our genes is responsible for the difficulty we have in seeing the books in this paragraph. During a recent fund raising event, which featured this puzzle, the Alpha Delta Phi lemonade booth set a new sales record. The local paper, The Chronicle, surveyed over 200 patrons who reported that this puzzle was one of the most difficult they had ever seen. As Daniel Hummana humbly puts it, "the books are all right there in plain view hidden from sight." Those able to find all of them will hear great lamentations from those who have to be shown. One revelation that may help is that books like Timothy and Samuel may occur without their numbers. Also, keep in mind that punctuation and spaces in the middle are normal. A chipper attitude will help you compete really well against those who claim to know the answers. Remember, there is no need for a mad exodus, there really are 30 books of the Bible lurking somewhere in this paragraph waiting to be found.

A parent's prayer

Heavenly Mother, keep us always in mind of your Son's great mercy and understanding as we pray for our children. They are grown-up now and have left us and are living their lives according to their own ideas. We feel anxious and worried because they do not seem to feel the need of Christ, to understand the wisdom of his ways, or to be fully at ease with us or themselves.
Intervene, dearest Mother, in their lives at the moment you know to be right and help them to understand the things that lead to their peace. Help them to see their need of Christ and to experience the greatness of his love, so that we may all proclaim as you did, that his mercy truly is from generation unto generation.

Amen.

(thanks, Angela)

Hey, TIM BLAIR FOLKS!!!

I've got tears rolling down my cheeks. No -- I'm fine. It's from laughing so hard. I saw that all of a sudden my little blog had been SLAMMED by tons (okay, 30) views since I looked last night -- all referred by a place called TIM BLAIR.NET

When you get to how mad Tim is, I'm the next-to-last "Very" -- or was at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight time this afternoon.

Y'all have fun! Come back and see us again some times -- the latchstring is always out to the good people of Australia!

Banning VEGEMITE???

Okay. Now we know the federal government has taken leave of its senses. THIS is the OTHER SIDE OF STUPID.

Update: Monday, October 23: the link seems flawed. I couldn't re-open it from my original source, either. So sorry! The point was, because Vegemite contains more than the miniscule amount of folic acid (vitamin B-9, I think it is) allowed by U.S. law, the food has been banned from the U.S.

Yeah. Folic acid. The stuff the FDA has been urging pregnant women to get more of... the stuff we all need more of than that "prescribed by law" minute bit we get in our multivitamin.

Really dangerous, that.

The tyranny of emotionalism

I've been watching with some interest the ... um... dialogue (?) between a friend of mine and a woman from California, on a popular Catholic web site.

It started out as a friendly banter; I almost would have thought she was flirting with him: "You're going to Mass?" she wrote him, "Give my love to my sweet Jesus for me!"

Now it's deteriorated into something ugly. My friend has become "mean." "Disgusting" is one of the nicer words she's used.

What in the world -- !

Well, the thing is, my friend is a deliberate Catholic. That is, he's done a lot of reading over the years, and he knows the Church's teachings on many subjects (not least of all, abortion, euthenasia, capital punishment and other life issues), and he's made the deliberate choice to yield his opinion, emotion, and intellect to the wisdom of the Church. And he's doing an extraordinarily good job of presenting the Church's teachings and requirements to a woman who is -- on the basis of her own emotions -- determined to find offense in his steadfast presentation of the Church's teachings.

War is a horrible thing, the Church acknowledges, but sometimes it is not only just, it is necessary. Capital punishment is a horrible thing, also, but sometimes it is just and necessary. Abortion, however, is never ever ever right, and it is the moral and religious duty of every Christian to oppose the diabolical slaughter of millions of unborn annually, to oppose it with might and main -- and with vote.

She resents this. She wants to demonize the Bush administration and the Republican party as a whole for the loss of visible lives through capital punishment and the war in Iraq, establishing her outrage as a higher priority than the far greater wrong - greater morally and numerically - of the invisible losses of abortion and euthenasia.

And now she's demonized my friend (who has presented fact and principle with far more gentleness and kindness than I might have been able to do under similar circumstances) for refusing to honor her fine feelings as a greater authority than the teachings of the Church.

A woman's emotions are a powerful thing. I don't think I overstate the case when I suggest that, often, our emotions are our reality. We are swayed by them, governed by them; our energies are at the mercy of them more often than not.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. They can be our great strength. Our hearts make us keepers of hearth and home, for instance, cause us to be passionate champions for not only our families and loved ones but also, through the centuries, for causes of morality and justice. It was Pilate's wife who, because of her sensitive feelings, begged her husband not to have anything to do with the controversy that was the conviction and crucifixion of Our Lord.

But our emotions are also our weakness. Without the development of will and intellect, of strong moral conscience, a woman's emotions will lead her into unholy alliances - carnal relationships with unworthy men, or to become proponents of terrible wrongs (like abortion or euthenasia or sometimes even justice and morality in more general terms) solely by the influence of sentiment.

I was raised in word to follow what is right, but in practice to follow what felt best to me at any one moment. Of course, how I have felt has been at the mercy of everything from what I did or didn't eat for breakfast, how others have behaved, and not least, hormonal (horror-mones) influences. I know too well, too painfully, the sad consequences of a life lived in obedience to emotion.

I've also been immensely blessed to have received a good education, at Guilford College that, despite its extreme liberalism, did much to develop my mind. It's largely been an exercise in self-education, but I am learning to recognize my feelings for what they are; I try to test my intuition wherever I have the opportunity, and I try to recognize the pull of emotion and to base my decisions on more reliable factors.

This is a constant struggle, and I am distressed by the lack of stronger moral training for women in this morally relativistic -- this increasingly morally atheistic -- culture in which we live.

If you should see..

... my younger daughter, Sarah, tell her I love her and am praying especially for her on her 25th birthday.

She was born on October 20, 1991, a week before my 24th birthday, and as I held her in my arms after a long, hard, arduous labor, all I could think was how untenable was Dan's and my plans to stop with only two children. holding that newborn in my arms was a joy and a contentment that I couldn't just tell God I wouldn't do any more.

He had other plans. I never had more children, one of my great sorrows. But Christy and Sarah have more than made up for the disappointment.

Whenever I am tempted to think I would like to go back in time and change my decision to marry their dad, I think of them, and I'd gladly do it all again. They make it all worthwhile.

Their existence justifies mine.

Two wonderful books

Browsing in the local library a couple of months ago, I found a wonderful book, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, by Wendy Shalit. Wendy writes about her discovery of an old-fashioned religiously-based modesty and the consequences of immodesty on our culture -- and particularly on women.

It's a book I recommend most enthusiastically. I am also happy to report that pre-publication sales are underway for Wendy's new book: Girls Gone Mild: Young Girls Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to be Good

You'll also enjoy checking out Wendy's blog.

Can an earnest Catholic woman FLIRT?

Okay, I'm not so sure I've ever really done a lot of flirting. My parents' voices personalize my superego, and a very efficient job it has done of keeping me meek and restrained over the years. But it took me aback when, back in May, a friend asked me just who I was flirting with these days. Or maybe it was "how many?" he asked.

Did I say "taken aback"? My dears, my friend is a 6' tall good-looking Catholic gentleman... it embarrassed the everliving daylights out of me!

So... I began to do some heavy evaluating.

Actually, this predates the query posed by my friend. For a little less than a year now, I've been in the midst of a major paradigm shift (more on that some other time). I have been holding past relationships up to the Light of the holiest of Christian ideals, ideals explained and illuminated in John Paul II's Theology of the Body and been grieved by the compromises I've been willing to make over the years.

I've also found myself brought back to myself, to my right mind, after years of carelessness and compromise of long-ago ideals. Consequently, I've been motivated to evaluate and modify my behavior so that my future life might be of a different, superior quality than the past.

Simultaneously with the attitude change, I've found myself being shown, through the Grace of the Holy Spirit, memories of conversations that had brought about or contributed to those compromised relationships. Grievously painful, that.

My conclusions are still in process of being fully formed, but here's what I've got so far:

*I have come to believe that flirting is not about friendship or about the cultivation of wholesome comraderie, but is, rather, about sex. It addresses, seeks to appeal to, that more carnal base of operations whereby men and women are superficially attracted to one another.

*If my friend and brother takes himself to "the BOX" (i.e., Confession) and one of the things he has to bring before God is the sin of carnal thoughts...
and if those carnal thoughts found their point of entry into his mind through some immodest or suggestive comment I've made -- or if he is not Catholic but still sins, knowingly or not, in consequence of my provocation --
... then I'm guilty of sinning against my brother, to whom I ought to be devoted to help attain Heaven.

*I also have bought into a worldly view of relationships, particularly dating and courtship relationships, or of attracting and inviting relationships, that I'm no longer complacent cannot be in violation of what I believe as a Christian.

So, for the time being:

I renounce flirting. I'm going to do some more evaluating of the topic and general, and my habits in particular.

Let me know what you think, and I'll let you know how it goes.

Counting blessings...

There are times when I feel like a salmon trying to get upstream, pushing against vigorous, if not overwhelming, currents of emotion and circumstance that seem determined to leave me stranded and dying where I sit. It's too easy to look at the negatives and to become entrapped in hopelessness and despair, or at least despondancy.

Counting blessings may seem like Pollyanna's game, but it is a decent antidote. I know it from experience.

One of my journals, a couple of years ago, I began with the sole intention of recording daily blessings. It was a bad patch, my nerves were raw... I felt about to go under for the third time. Then I watched through my bedroom window as a bluebird lighted on the ground outside. The sunlight catching the blue and rose of his breast and face gave me a momentary sense of being transported beyond myself --

I felt as if God were sending me a brief message of cheer and hope.

I realized that there are many such moments in each day, certainly each week, that I owed Him to pay attention to. I began jotting them down:

The bluebird. A small herd of deer in my yard when I returned from choir practice. The cloud arrangements. The smell of fresh-plowed earth; the smell of same earth with raindrops penetrating it. The butterflies flocking around the buddleia. The quail I watched for over an hour from the kitchen window - positioned under the front-yard dogwood, thrusting his little chest and chin out as he called "Bob-WHITE!" The Canadian geese honking overhead as they approached Hawthorne's pond. The hawk circling the field. A hug from a friend. The fragrance of incense during Mass...

So many ways God tells us He loves us and has not abandoned us!

and Life AFTER

Discovering your husband or ex-husband is gay really isn't the end of the world. It only feels that way for a substantial period of time.

We all deal with it in our own way (some ways healthier than others). I remarried after eleven years, an event I wish I could delete from my history as much for its brevity as for its horrific wrongness. But at least he was straight! (which is one of two reasons I got involved with him in the first place, the other being that he really enjoyed talking to me)

I've had relationships with men that were far from healthy, but thankfully, with only one exception, an integrity was maintained throughout that allows us to still be friends in varying degrees.

I learned something in that process -- no I learned a lot of things, beginning with

1) I really like being a woman, and I'm glad God made me one.
2) I really like being me!
3) Mom was right: I didn't amount to a hill of beans. I amounted, am amounting, to a great deal more.
4) Dan was right: I am a "trophy."
5) My own instincts are most of the time spot on, worth paying attention to -- at the very least investigating.
6) God brings dignity and beauty to each of our lives - and if we keep an inner ear tuned to learn His voice, we will see His gifts to us.
7) Before we can be honest with others, we have to have the courage to be fundamentally honest with ourselves.
8) Anger is part of the process. It's not the defining part, or the terminal part. It just sometimes feels that way.
9) Soul companionship is more memorable, more re-live-able, than the most mind-blowing sex.
10) I'm just getting started.

Let it be known...

I got an email a little while ago from a friend down under -- that's Australia, by the way -- urging me to be gentler in my treatment of Dan. He may not have had the choice, she said...

I believe the beautiful boy I used to love was denied his choice by age 14 when the selfish bastard seduced him. Maybe there was even a selfish bastard before the one I knew about.

Just what culpability Dan faces for his homosexuality is known only to God, Who is a just God as well as a merciful One, Who alone has the true and full knowledge and perfect understanding of all the factors that cause us to do the things we do.

I don't believe Dan will get off scott free simply because of some verbal assent of Who Jesus Is; salvation requires more of us in return to His sacrifice. But I trust God to be fair -- to Dan, and to me.

I do blame Dan for what has happened since. Maybe that's uncharitable, maybe it's unfair. But it's the way I see it, and it's the way I'm calling it.

Hey, Dan -- an open letter to the Ex-

Dear Dan,
Since Beth has so graciously published me in the Greensboring blog (where do people hang out, if they think Greensboro is boring? They ought to move further south!) I have some hopes that you might recognize and check this blog out. If you do --

I am ready to file for the ecclesiastical nullity procedure in the Church. I was Confirmed in November, 2002 -- my conversion story is very early in the archives of this blog. You and I discussed this nullity idea several years ago, when I first began exploring converting, I think you'll remember, and you offered no objections at that time. I need a current address for you, so the Tribunal can contact you and offer you the opportunity to participate in the proceedings.

I assume you likely will prefer not to participate; however, if you tell the tribunal rep that, yes, you're gay, you're out, and it's not something we discussed before we were married, then that's the end of it, I'm free in the eyes of the Church to date, marry, get on with my life. If you choose not to participate or to cooperate with the tribunal rep, then they'll come back to me asking for witnesses: family, friends, anyone who can give a statement about our marriage, our lives now, etc. I'd have to name your parents, your siblings, others... and I'd rather not -- not so much to protect you as to protect them. I know Richard and Lila are elderly and have been plagued with poor health in recent years. Remembering Lila, I dare say it would upset her terribly, and she'd come back and harp at you about it.

I hope you'll be willing to cooperate. I really, really want this.

Our older daughter told me next to last time I saw her that you're living with a partner now. I hope the life you have chosen for yourself is everything you were promised it would be. My life is quiet and I am happy, really, in just about every way imaginable.

Give the girls my love. Remember to keep a generous portion for yourself. I get angry, resentful (I am adept at understatement, you see)... but I do remember, don't forget, the boy I used to love... who was my hero in defending me against Mother... who held me and cried with me when I had the miscarriage... who held me and shared the awe (despite the brutal nausea) of my being pregnant... who helped me get through difficult and frightening labors... who helped me first to know the Lord and so paved the way for the Faith I now find such joy in... my friend.

There are some people, friends, from the old days you might want updates on if you want to contact me.

You know how to reach me -- the email address Judy had for you is now closed, of course (as I suspect you know) -- I still am at the same address and phone number I've been at for 12+ years now. Email is the most consistent way to reach me, though. Judy can give that to you, of course. I have no contact with Deann and won't use her as an intermediary.

Take care.
Laura

Hey, Beth --

Thanks for the heads-up in the Greensboro gay blog. Now I might be able to track Dan and let him know I need him for the nullity process -- either him, personally, or a bunch of family and friends witnesses. I don't think he wants that.

I miss the charming, lovely, affable boy I used to know. The fellow who used to be such a wonderful and companionable friend. If you know what happened to him along the way, I hope you'll pop in and tell me where I can find him. The snide, snarky, deceitful, selfrighteous contemptuous buzzard I knew in later years is no fun at all.

Oh, and while you're so busy being so pleased with yourself for joining the Fairy Prince in blaming me for everything (do queens bear no responsibility for their choices and the hurt subsequent and consequent to thosse choices?), perhaps it will interest you that I continued with my therapy- until Dan cashed the insurance check instead of turning it over to the therapist like he was supposed to do. He, on the other hand, told one therapist, "I know a marriage takes a lot of work, I just don't want to be bothered," and the other he just quit coming, always had something "better" and "more important" to do.

Both counselors (both women, by the way -- how come you haven't commented on the idea that homosexuality is fundamentally misogynistic at its core?) still remember him. Less than fondly.

Yet grace abounds...

I began the questionaire for the nullity petition for the Diocese of Raleigh before I was hired at OLA, and the questions brought about such an intense re-living of the experiences, the loneliness, the memories of Dan's hostilities, that I hadn't finished the petition in four years.

But I want to celebrate the many ways God demonstrated grace to me and helped me along.

First was my church. I wasn't Catholic in those days, didn't even dream I ever would become one. I was a fervent evangelical, member of evangelical churches, and those churches, and the people in them, were great support to me even while they didn't know I was experiencing all the other, ugly stuff.

I realize now that even in the 70s, when Dan made his first announcement to me that things were more complicated and painful than he'd let me know before, I could have gone to our pastor, a lovely man named Dale Brister, who would have been fully supportive and helped me see my way through the crisis. There were men and women in subsequent churches, too. But everybody loved Dan, and it was such a horrible thing to accuse him of... and there was that horrible burden of being wholly unable to talk about some things, back in those days.

But the emotional and spiritual support was there, and the grace.

The man who'd very much wanted to have an affair with me was, in a strange and convoluted way, another gift of grace. There was something comforting about being found desirable, adorable, by a man, even a man not my husband. And Bernard was responsible for re-awakening my love of reading and a hunger for reading things far more substantial than I'd known up until meeting him. He was really responsible for getting me to read C.S. Lewis' meatier works, and Watchman Nee, and excerpts from other theologians. Bernard was enchanted by my mind, when Dan thought I was stupid.

Then I got to go to Guilford College. It was my first academic success, and I was discovering abilities and loves I'd not dreamed myself possible of. I was encouraged and applauded by brilliant men and women whose credentials I couldn't dismiss as I had been able to minimalize Bernard's admiration. One professor, the one I was accused of having the affair with, who had something of a reputation for being impossible to get along with, told one of his colleagues, and it got back to me, that I was "one of the most brilliant students to come down the pike in (his) entire career."

That one remark did more to awaken me to my own value and merit than anything else I had encountered. It was easy not to take the commendations of other professors quite so seriously; they were warm, affirming men and women, "nice" people, which made their enthusiasm for my developing abilities easy to dismiss from serious consideration.

Still, had it not been for those men and women -- Beth and Mel, Joe and Ellen, Carol and John, Becky, Ann, Jeff... -- I don't think I could have finished college, no matter how startling Rudy's praise had been. They were my community, my family, my support as my marriage to Dan was falling apart and as I was going through the nightmare of discovering he is gay.

More recently, other friends have come onto the scene as instruments of mercy, healing and grace. There was Jim, my former boss, who discussed intellectual and spiritual issues with me between legal cases, and who inadvertently started the ball rolling toward my falling in love with the Church. There have been other teachers, colleagues, bosses, who have brought about degrees of healing and restoration over the years.

And now, there is the Church, the Sacraments, to hold on to, giving me literally Jesus Our Lord, Himself, in tangible and concrete ways.

I have to say that the real test of God's goodness to me is that I can say with all earnestness, I wouldn't wish what I've been through on my worst enemy... but I also wouldn't take a million dollars for it. I like this woman I'm becoming. Right now I'm in the midst of a major paradigm shift (more on that later?) and I am excited about my present and my future as I've never been before.

Such beauty on the horizon!

It's not just gay men who make terrible husbands; other men with serious psychological issues are nightmares, too. And not only gay men are misogynists. But homosexuality is a particular sort of misogyny -- dispising the feminine on such a deep level that the man has only contempt for a woman's body as well as her mind and soul.

Dan and I were part of the same circle of friends throughout high school. Then, during our senior year, Dan was hired by the same variety store I worked at, so we were spending even more time together. After we graduated, we'd go out, sometimes with a couple of friends, sometimes just the two of us, after work, hang out together until almost 11:00 (my weeknight curfew)... it was late August, immediately after one of our friend's wedding, that we had the great revelation that we were wanting to spend all our time together, had become immensely important to one another.

While we were dating, Dan was companionable, good-humored, loads of fun. He was always the life and heart of our gang, anyway, and I basked in his intelligence and sense of fun and adventure. He never pushed about sex, and, since I'd been wracked with guilt about a prior, unchaste relationship, I thought Dan was noble, self-disciplined. After all, he'd been instrumental in the formation of my Christian discipleship for more than two years; he'd been an exemplary (if sometimes overzealous) Christian youth.

We'd sit and talk for hours, building our dream castles, yes, but also grounded in various realities in our lives. He was a staunch defender against my mother, who could be so cruelly critical.

Actually, we both had issues we were running away from. I loved my parents and wanted to be close to them, but they had made it clear that if I ever left home without their approval, I'd be cutting myself off. I had to get out, my mother was mentally ill (I didn't know it then, but she wasn't in the hospital for headaches - Daddy felt it was in my best interests to "protect" me from knowing too much).

I didn't know it then, but Dan had issues and fears he was running away from, too. He'd been seduced, at age 14, by the adult relative of another of our friends; it had left him scarred, afraid of his own sexual inclinations. It wasn't self-control that had kept him from trying to score with me.

Then, after we were married, he immediately became distant, uncommunicative, unaffectionate. I'm an affectionate woman, and even the most casual of one-armed hugs, or a hand resting on his arm or shoulder, would bring about a violent reaction: he'd jerk away from me as if scalded, make a snorting noise, and say, "Don't! You know that annoys me!"

After we moved to Greensboro in '82, he began working at the YMCA, where he met whole new groups of people. Some of them became his friends. He began, every couple of months, announcing that he was feeling restless and that he was going to go visit some of his friends. They never called the house, never were named, never were met. I had no friends that he didn't know -- most were from Church -- and even the good people we knew from our church, he became unreasonably critical of. He even seemed hostile toward some of them.

I became desparately lonely. A therapist from Focus on the Family, whom I had written in near-desparation, called me on the telephone, and as I described my situation, he warned me that he was concerned, advised me to seek out local counselling. "You're at extremely high, frighteningly high, risk for an affair," he warned me.

I had the opportunity. We had a friend from church who thought I was beautiful, witty, intelligent, and very desirable. I wasn't interested. I wholly believed that, if I'd just follow the rules and be faithful, God would give me a miracle. It didn't come the way I wanted it to.

It has to have been horrible for Dan. Son and grandson of Baptist preachers, highly idealistic... He had a lot to risk if his worst fears were grounded in reality. I believe he thought that getting married, functioning sexually with a woman, perhaps fathering children, would be all the barometer he'd need to assure himself of his "normalcy."

I think that's the way it was, anyway. He won't discuss it with me now. Or wouldn't, last time I talked with him about it. This was more than ten years ago -- he'd come out to our daughters, and according to them, to his parents and siblings. I asked him, how do you reconcile the contradictions between your strong Christian commitment and this lifestyle you've adopted? His answer was distressing, even in those days before I ever attended my first Catholic Mass: so long as he believed and acknowledged Jesus Christ as the Son of God and his personal savior, his salvation was assured.

He was already attending the Metropolitan Community Church.

If only he'd been straightforward with me, said something along the lines of, "Laura, I'm so sorry, I've really tried, but..." and owned some degree of responsibility, even attempted some empathy for the agony I was going through, it might have made the present more bearable. But he never has been, and has only lied, deceived, and manipulated. Whatever his choices have been, they are all my fault.

Now that I have your attention...

Okay. I've just "outed" myself as the ex-wife of a queen, and already I've gotten an email from a woman who saw the post and wanted to let me know I'm not alone -- she has a friend going through a divorce after some 20 years of marriage and three children... same issue.

That's probably why I decided to go ahead and lance this latest emotional absess in public -- to try to offer, however limited my ability might be, some support for other women who are discovering themselves to be caught in this nasty trap of ultimate misogyny. One summer, when I was working for a lawyer, a little more than ten years ago, we had no less than four women clients who had discovered their husbands' treacheries. I suspect the problem is far more widespread than most people have ever considered.

We need a support group. There are support groups for every other wacko disorder coming down the pike -- why can't there be a support group for women recovering from emotional and spiritual exploitation and abandonment by men who prefer other men?

We all have frightening similarities. One of my friends pointed out that gay men who marry tend to pick "trophy wives" for themselves. At first I snorted in disbelief; I've always thought of myself as very plain and ordinary. But then I went back into the box of mementos and dug out my high school senior photo -- and saw a really lovely girl smiling out of that picture -- clear green eyes, long hair, sweet smile... (Thanks, Pal -- for seeing me with fresh eyes and shocking me into seeing myself anew.)

We also were idealistic, trusting, perhaps gullible. All five of us were very religious; we had picked me with strong religious ideals, also. We had married with great hopes and expectations only to be confronted during our honeymoons with strangers who did not enjoy intimacy with us, who began to withhold affection and attention and conversation from us, who always had a plausible excuse for same... We all suffered unbearable loneliness and a downright neurotic response of trying to be perfect so we could be worthy of the love of men who so obviously despised us. Most of us had become humiliated by the necessity of always initiating sex (and most of us, being loving and passionate women, were attempting to initiate often).

We gave up lives of our own, in most cases -- interests, hobbies, friends -- because our husbands demonstrated resentment of anything that distracted us from them. Also, we were hopelessly optimistic that someday, somehow, our husbands would come out of their trance and want our company, our affection... and we wanted to be on hand when the moment finally arrived.

For me, the breaking point was my success in college. After years, first from my mother and then from Dan, of being told I was dumb and that I'd never amount to anything, that I was only tolerated out of pity, I was discovering my intelligence, my love of learning, the value of my intuitions, at Guilford College. I made Dean's List -- something no one would have believed possible before I enrolled there. I was the happiest I'd ever been, and I think it drove Dan crazy that I could be appreciated, supported, validated by anyone who discredited his contemptuous opinions of me. It was the first day of Finals Week, Fall Semester of my third year at Guilford, when he announced that he was leaving me.

Oh, he was magnanimous, as always -- it wasn't me he intended to leave, only our "dump" of an apartment (cinder blocks on a concrete slab, built in the late 40s); I could come with him or not, as I chose. Basically -- he put it in such a way that, if I chose not to leave college, not to come with him, the divorce became solely my fault. But I knew that if I ever moved from that apartment (which rented for $90 a month in a day when the going rate for 2-bedroom apartments was closer to $500) I'd have to give up school, success... and myself. I let him move on his own.

Of course, I wouldn't know about his gay friends and the double life he'd been leading for several more months, but the pathology of our relationship was beginning to lose its grip on my soul.

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are!

I can't find Dan, my first husband. I have the paperwork ready to file for my nullity petition with the Diocese of Charlotte, and when I tried to call and let him know he's going to be contacted about it, the old number I had for him has been disconnected, and I've since learned he's no longer with the employer I last knew of. We had promised one another, long ago, that for our daughters' sake we would always be able to stay in touch with one another. Evidently he has changed his mind and forgotten to tell me about it?

This is not the first time he's made a major change and "forgotten" to tell me. Some five months after we separated, he had oral surgery. This was the first time he'd had any kind of medical need in the entire time I'd known him (more than fifteen years, at that point), and since we were supposed to be working on reconciling, it seemed only right to me that I should be with him for this crisis. But, no, he had already arranged another friend to take him to the oral surgeon's and to be with him as he recovered: his friend Randy. I was welcome to stop by his apartment after I got off work, of course, and when I did, and when I met Randy and saw him and my handsome husband together, all the other problems we had had over the years suddenly made sickening sense to me: they were in love with each other.

Dan had tried to tell me of his homosexuality a couple of years after we were married. We'd been having trouble since the honeymoon -- arguments over lack of communication, Dan's sudden intolerance for physical affection and companionship. He'd cracked a joke after our honeymoon, that after we'd consummated our marriage his only thought was, That's what all the fuss is about? We'd not been intimate before, and I'd admired his self-control; it turned out he just wasn't interested.

Then after one particularly ugly quarrel, in which I'd pointedly asked him if he wanted a divorce since he obviously did not like being married, he broke down and began to weep. He told me a story he now vehemently denies: of being seduced by the older relative of one of our friends, at the age of 14. It was a mutual masturbation scenario, as he told me of it then, but it had left him strongly marked. "I've always been afraid, if you hadn't fallen in love with me and married me, that's where I would have ended up," he said.

This was the mid- to late-'70s, when nice people still didn't discuss some things. There was no one I could trust with the burden placed upon me, and it was terrifying. I was physically sick for three days, then I pushed the conversation and all its attending risks and revelations back into the depths of my memories... until meeting Randy popped the cork and let it all come spewing, spurting, geysering out.

A couple of my friends have been wanting me to blog about this for a while, and it's not something that can be done once for all. Discovering that one's most intimate life partner is gay is a devastating experience, but for me there was also a mercy: for years, Dan had tried to turn everything into being MY FAULT, and because Dan was wonderful, smart, likeable, and my parents' favorite, he had to be right; now I knew that if I'd been perfect it would not have been good enough.

What I don't understand is how he has been able to face our daughters all these years and tell them, repeatedly, that his homosexuality had NOTHING to do with our divorce, continuing the theme of "It's all your mother's fault." He even invented an adulterous relationship for me (greatly exaggerating a very benign "mutual admiration society" with one of my professors to fit his needs for self-justification)... and my daughers believe him.

This one is going to develop over a while. There are too many of us in the world, women who have been betrayed by this ultimate misogyny, this rejection of ourselves for our very womanhood, to remain silent any longer. I've been paying for this man's deceits for thirty years. It's time I found my voice, and this blog is where I'm going to sing.

TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT!

Tune in to your computer, at www.theclassicalstation.org -- click on "Listen Online" and stream the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, featuring the North Carolina Master Chorale, performing Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the "Resurrection." I've written about this elsewhere.

Oh, do, please listen in!

8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The concert will be re-broadcast later in the month, but I forget that schedule right now. You will see it on WCPE's web page.

oh! and do please let me know what you think!

Today would have been my mother's 78th birthday, had smoking-related lung cancer not taken her life fifteen years ago, on March 7, 1991. She went into respiratory failure; for three weeks the doctor told us she could go "any minute now" as she struggled and fought for each attempted breath. In the end, when I, weeping, told her there was no more help for her suffering, she waited until we were all out of the room, then she simply let go.

Her final illness was something of a Purgatory for her. All my life, she was suspicious, critical, isolated, unable to fully love or accept the love I her daughter and several of her extended family and friends had tried for years to give her; in those final days, she was amazed at how lovely and kind everyone was; she, who had such an aversion to public displays of emotion, patted my arm to comfort me as I wept at the sight of her struggles for air, of her body swollen and splitting from fluids building in her tissues, in her skin, when her kidneys began to fail.

My mother was able to make choices regarding her own health care in her final months, and she faced death with a greater dignity, courage, and peace than I had seen her facing life. Her doctor said -- and you must know that my mother was not an easy patient -- that he'd seldom seen such courage and dignity in the face of the decisions my mother had made when she received the diagnosis that she had cancer.

Unfortunately, too few people are allowed to make the decisions my mother was able to make -- that is, to leave matters of life and death in the hands of the God Who gives us life. My mother, for all her eccentricities, peculiarities, and (what we politely call) "problems," did believe in God, and she was willing to let Him do what He wanted with her life, including ending it on His terms, in His time.

Most people aren't alowed these choices. Instead, they are the victims of another sort of "choice" -- the choice of therapeutic abortion. A child is conceived through the choices of its parents, to engage in sexual intimacy; the child, an inconvenient reminder of perhaps an undesired responsibility that comes with intimacy, becomes disposable. An appointment at a clinic, some ten minutes in stirrups, a surgical procedure or a vacuum extraction rips apart the preborn's limbs and little torso, and the matter is over and done with.

Or is it? The women I have known over the years who have had abortions -- and some of them have actually had more than one -- suffer for their "choice." Something happens in the mind and soul of a woman who denies the most profound aspect of our sexuality: our ability to bear children. She becomes either severely depressed in grief for the wrong of her choice -- and these are the lucky ones; the others, who deny that they have done anything wrong, or that the procedure has had any consequence in their lives, seem to be operating in an emotional 2-dimensional world. This is hard to describe, but perhaps you have known women who have gone from one bad relationship to another, who have denied responsibility for other choices, who seem always to be searching for some elusive something that they can never quite identify, much less attain... searching for some peace and serenity that is never to be found where they are searching.

Abortion is murder, yes. But let us not forget the surviving victims of this action: the women and men who live with the reality of a child dead by their own choosing.

Abortionists will never tell the whole story of abortion. It's bad for business. Abortion as an industry represents maximum financial gain for minimum investment of time, energy, or interest. It is in the best economic interests of abortionists to try to persuade the general public that abortion is simple, easy, "safe." It is the latter claim that is the biggest lie. When a living soul is killed, a procedure is not safe at all -- and emotionally, spiritually, it is a death sentence for all who seek, obtain, and aid the procurement of said services.

Only a Righteous Judge -- appealed through by most sincere repentence -- has the power and the authority to commute that sentence.

Let us pray today for all who are harmed by the deceitful and demonic rhetoric of abortion "rights" -- the unborn, yes - but also mothers, fathers, grandparents, friends... nurses, doctors and all whose hands are bloodied by this atrocity.