Category Archives: religion

Dec7

Ain’t nothing to worry about, really.

Posted on by
Standard
Ain’t nothing to worry about, really.

I’ve been known to name self-pity as my number one pet peeve. I can feel empathy for anger, grief, even forgive lies and betrayal, but I cannot tolerate self-pity. Nothing lights my fuse faster.

At the same time, I’m a person who is undeniably prone to melancholy when the season changes, when cold and darkness encroach. Much of the year I’m flitting around, every bit as annoying as a fly at a picnic, spreading a ridiculous positive attitude or at least some humor, even if it’s caustic.

So when the heavy, dark, and sad turns inward on me, my pity parties happen alone or with just my husband as witness. They don’t involve many words or even complaints. They involve longer baths, more comfort foods, even later sleep-ins (I’m not a morning person. Nor a night-owl. I’m best from 10 to 2.) and a few tears…lots of cups of hot tea and guilty-pleasure television, curled up quiet with a blanket. Missing my cat.

I know that I have an easy life. Sometimes, the ease and joy give me guilt…because, why just enjoy the good stuff when you can muddy it up with a useless emotion like guilt? I do try to share with others my joy, as well as tears, to verbally tickle and warmly support, to send texts or cards or mac and cheese as a way of assuaging that guilt, as a way of trying desperately and unsuccessfully to deserve or earn my relatively healthy, happy daily life. Cognitively, I know that’s not how it works. But I am profoundly grateful, profoundly fearful of the other shoe to drop, and profoundly compassionate by nature.

I guess I feel that if I so abhor self-pity in others, then I certainly don’t have a place for it in my own head since I’ve already decided I’ve got an easier life than “they” do. Almost across the board, I do feel like that’s true. So I have to keep the sadness at bay, the dark and heavy that descends on all of us at some point, and not always necessarily when things are going wrong.

The tiniest little things, the most off-hand sentence thrown about, can help me with this. And that’s just what happened last week. No fanfare or explanation needed, just right to the heart of the matter.

Without specifically naming the concerns of that day, because we all take turns having the same ones in general (a dying relative, a global pandemic, a friend with a terminal diagnosis, unnamed anxiety about the future, a family member losing a job, and all on the same day…) I will simply say that one day last week, I woke up in the morning as I always do, next to my husband. Feeling my feelings, I curled towards him as I hugged my pillow, and said something like,

“I just wake up so afraid of everything.”

And with no probing question, no eyeroll, no valiant attempt to change my mind, he simply responded,

“I know, but I’m here with you.”

If you know my husband, you probably think of him as loud. Maybe funny comes to mind. Or if he has insulted or criticized you, which is probable, maybe a more colorful adjective. He is too full of confidence and candor. He tends to be a cynic. His positive qualities are innumerate, but I won’t list them because this is about how no matter what his snarkier characteristics are… there he was being Jesus. Being God.

“I know, but I’m here with you.”

Meanwhile, here’s me, the one praying daily for the Holy Spirit to “bless my words, guard my words, and inspire my words…” and it looks like that paraclete landed right on my husband instead, at least on that day.

Whatever is going to happen to me, to you, to any of us…

“I know, but I’m here with you.”

Apr2

Touch.

Posted on by
Standard
Touch.

When a baby is born and you pass her around, you wonder what she is thinking as she lies in your arms. Living in another state from our grandchildren, we spent the newborn visits hogging the first baby, trying to absorb her and letting her absorb us…hearing our voices, feeling our sway, sensing our scents. On her tummy, and eventually on her back, once she was stronger, her dinosaur bones, I would slowly spell out the letters of her lengthy name with my index finger. “K…e…n…n…e…d…y…”and finish with a big tickle up the neck, “KENNEDY!”

I could soon enough see that she came to expect it from me. Which was, of course, the point.
Eventually the child could walk and talk…funny how that happens, and quickly…and her mama turned the spelling of her name into a rhyme, “K-e-n-n-e-d-y, that’s my name, I’m sweet as pie!”
And, as kids will do with every parent’s perfect plan, Kennedy twisted that rhyme into her own ridiculous singsong, apropos of nothing, “K-e-n-n-e-d-y, that’s my name, football pie!” Then the laughter, the glee.

I’m sure I did the same thing thirty years ago on the back of the baby girl who named me Mamie, albeit with a much shorter name, K-a-t-i-e. I have done it using the few letters in Noah. “Again, Mamie!” The unique arrangement of letters in Loftyn. I have barely begun to do it on the quickly broadening back of Jackson, whom we haven’t seen since late December, as he grows and forgets while we all quarantine in our respective states. I may have done it only once to the new Myles.

My calendar tells me it’s almost time for what would have been my monthly hair color appointment at my friend Mary’s salon, and I remember a wonderful woman who retired from there named Penny, whose gentle, capable hands at the shampoo bowl reminded clients of a loving grandmother. Penny always made sure there were no suds in your ears and that the water was never cold.

Beyond even that date will come Easter, when sometimes my sisters and I would crash our hard-boiled eggs into each other, “egg fight!” Someone wins, someone loses, but then everyone wins because two of us like yolks, while one of us likes only the whites. It is often a holiday that my brother-in-law has had to miss because of work, likewise his son, the chef, cooking for families who prefer a restaurant for their fancy ham, maybe pork belly and farm-to-table eggs.
My mind wanders to their other son, all six foot four of him…did he let me draw his name on his back for comfort as I “rode” the MRI machine with him as a toddler? He’s married now, and his wife gives the longest, most heartfelt hugs of anyone I have ever known.

Just outside both my back and front doors, birds are building nests. Spring is dawning, which would usually be yet another excuse for a pedicure with my mom. Last time we went together, before her winter vacation in Florida, the young women massaging our calves with lavender sugar scrub were discussing an Instagram post in which some unknown harlot tagged our girl’s boyfriend. Should she text him? Ask him to explain? Or become Nancy Drew first and confront him with evidence?

As the weather warms, I yearn to climb onto my stand-up paddleboard, hibernating in the basement, and to lunch with my friend afterwards. And to reach my fork to sample from her plate, or share some fries, maybe a sip of each other’s beer.

Zoom and Facetime prevent the grandkids from forgetting our faces, as does an old-fashioned letter written to help bridge the chasm. Distance isn’t the problem; my best friend and her husband drive across town to stand six feet from their grandsons. My sister does the same to see the babies she moved residences this past year just to be closer to. Her daughter had ice cream delivered. Proximity is not the problem.

Today, the sun shines and more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit are promised, so I will take my mom for a ride in the car since we’ve been shuttered at home together-ish. Side by side. Last week when we did the joyride, we stopped in the driveway of her best friend who came outside to chat from a distance, bundled in an over-sized Cleveland Indians jacket. The boys of summer, benched for now. If we do the same visit again this week, we may have to call that our Easter since it is a holiday usually shared with her family…our family.

Months ago, as regular flu season kicked up, I stopped ending my yoga classes by giving everyone a gentle neck massage. Some folks say that’s their favorite part of class. Others, like my friend Joolz, only tolerates it. She doesn’t want to reject my touch, but she is one who has trouble relaxing, finding peace at the end of practice. Which makes her appearance there even more valuable to me.

Mass on Sunday is on TV for now, and while I may have balked at the exchange of so many handshakes at St. Bridget’s and often surreptitiously squeezed sanitizer into my hand and my husband’s (or once, the open handbag of the woman in the pew in front of us!) I do miss the waves, winks, and thumbs-up of those friends, each of us easy to find in the same pew week after week. The big ones and the little ones. Some of us grabbing breakfast afterwards. I miss the Eucharist. It is called Communion.

My original yoga guru ends class by saying “unity in diversity; all are one.” I miss meeting her for coffee after class. I miss the group of faces I would see at noon on a Wednesday, and even more the several with whom I shared tiaras and mimosas one year ago today for a 50th birthday celebration. Thanks, Timehop.

Before this all happened, we had Thanksgiving and an 80th birthday party for our mom. We had a Christmas with the kids. Before this happened, we rang in the new year on a mountaintop from a hot tub while fireworks exploded in the valley below. Before this all happened, we made it to the in-laws in Florida for a golf visit. Before this happened, we had a weekend in Quebec with our friends. Before this happened, we celebrated our bestie Ken’s birthday.

Before this happened. And now this has happened. And everything from this point on will be “after.”

I just miss touch.

touch3

(Photo from Mother’s Day 2019)

 

Feb9

Sister Mary Yogi (previously published in June 2012 on mindbodygreen.com but no longer up)

Posted on by
Standard

(A friend asked me to re-share this and I can no longer find it on the site, so I’m copy/pasting it up here again after digging it up.)

Sister Mary Yogi

I wore the plaid skirt for twelve years. That’s my way of saying my family was quite Catholic. I continue to think of myself as Catholic and to participate accordingly, which bothers some people when they find out that I do Yoga. Like most of you, I don’t just do yoga, I do it a lot. And then I talk about it. And then I do it again, and try to get you to do it, and your sister, and her husband. And then I do it some more. And talk about it some more. And…you get the picture. So, since everyone knows that our asana yoga practice and poses have roots in the east, and all sorts of (peaceful, positive, healing) references to the forces of the Universe, and ahimsa (do no harm), and since (gasp!) the music some of us yogis practice to repeats mantras like “om shanti shanti shanti,” some people feel that this practice is anti-Christian or anti-Catholic. People get worried because of the obvious ties to Hinduism, Buddhism, and whatever other –ism may offend. I’ve even heard that some priests warn against practicing yoga, that it is a sin.  So how does a Christian deal with this?  I’m no authority on Christianity. But what I do know is that my daily yoga practice has brought me closer to God, drawn me to be more involved in my religion, and made me a better person. I’m not in a position to defend yoga against those who are concerned by this quandary; instead, let me reassure anyone wanting to practice yoga to whom such criticism gives pause that you control your mind and your thoughts during your yoga practice! When you struggle to remain stable in your tree pose, or when you try to get right up to your edge by lifting your gaze skyward, you have every right to say something like I do: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!” When your yogi asks you to set an intention for your practice, that can be your prayer. That intention, that gratitude, that rendering which you leave on your mat can be your offering to God, just as surely as the next person may be offering it to the Universe or the Moon or Shiva. In my own faith, God is the Universe and the Moon and Shiva, He is everything, the one true God.Who can argue with the sentiment of “the Divine light in me honors the Divine light in you?”  Every Christian learns to not hide their light under a bushel (Matthew 5:15, roughly “Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house”)  and that each of us is made in the image of God.What could be more supportive of those concepts than “Namaste,” a term which acknowledges the divinity in self and all others?  As for the “third eye”, which wigs many skeptics out:  you are just raising prayer hands towards the center of your highest source – just like when you made your First Communion!  No worries, Christians…the precepts of yoga, in any language, in any words, involve peace, forgiveness, positivity, gentleness, generosity, perseverance, support, mindfulness, and love. My intention here is not to be glib. I am not rolling my eyes at those Christians who criticize or who wonder. Instead, I’m telling you that I am one of those, or was one of those, and this is what I have found out:  God has blessed me with my yoga practice and He works through my yoga practice, just as He does everywhere else. 

I know who my Highest Source is… do you??

Sep16

My wallpaper

Posted on by
Standard

Whatever you’re feeling angsty about, you have no right to. You don’t even have a real job! You don’t have children of your own to worry about. Is that why the unnatural attachment to pets and parents? How can you still be Catholic after…everything? And with a mouth like that. Wow, you’re a grandmother? I don’t check social media (eyeroll) but I did see your post about… Not to criticize, but. A boob job is not okay. I would never do Botox.  But coloring your gray hair is? Nail polish is allowed? You’re criticizing the Facetune app but you literally got a facelift. You don’t look like any yoga teacher I’ve ever seen. There’s water in the basement again. And another mouse. We will have to pay someone to take this house off of our hands someday. But you don’t even try. You could occasionally DO something instead of going out to play. You say Namaste but your disdain for the local weather girl is public. Holier than thou. I wish I had someone to pay my bills all the time. Maybe if you work at it your house will look better…your face will look better. Stop complaining. My pet peeve is self-pity. I hate winter I hate winter I hate winter I hate winter. I can’t stand the grey. I remember my dad saying he was starting to wish away five months of the year and now I’m doing the same, but when you age you don’t want to be wishing away that much time because you realize it’s not an unlimited supply. I hate the hourglass. Always have. I love being alone but I hate never being alone, never having privacy. I can laugh that I have the body (and the shoes!) of a drag queen but the nose of a toddler. So much guilt about things I’ve said or done in the past. I scratched Bryan in first grade and Russ in 9th grade and I haven’t been as reactively angry since. I don’t even have enough anger to punch someone, or a wall even. That’s weird, right? I cry when I’m mad. Right now I have two moods, gentle anger or melancholy. And all the self-talk to cheer. You are the baby. You are not the favorite! You are the favorite. I miss my friend. You used to be the favorite aunt. Just when they were little. You lost it along the way. He didn’t mean it that way. Your husband was so nice. I’ve never been a cat person. Now I’m lost to this cat. He didn’t mean it that way. He’d do anything for anyone. Show-off. That mouth. I should be writing. It is all written in my head, so much, years’ worth. Like laundry that’s clean and even folded but never gets put away. You’ll die without that laundry being put away and no one will know anything. But who would care anyway, enough to read it? Who would read it? YOU don’t even want to read it. And then you do and and WOW that’s really good! Wait, you think that’s good writing? Who dressed this weather girl, seriously. Idiot. Hot yoga is a gimmick? Self-pity is my number one pet peeve. I just want to drive by myself. I just want to have once looked the way I dreamed. It’s only because of someone else that I got a degree, or a certification, or a license. Where is the me? Gluttony is a sin. Food, and stuff. You have always been overweight, even at your skinniest. Strongest person I know. Strong. Physically, mentally, emotionally. I seriously cannot believe anyone smokes. Alcohol doesn’t like me anymore. My intentions are always good. Jewel, as a really young person, once said publicly that you can control your own thoughts and so now I do. Back when I was up all night listening to her howl. Be better. It’s not fair that not everyone gets to see what I see some days, the squirrels, the heron. Fall makes me so melancholy. I hate morning. I hate awakening. I hate winter. I used to wake up with the window open and feel the breeze, hear the birds, feel the weight of his purring body on mine and smile. Now without the purring I don’t even notice the breeze or the birds…yet. Why was I born in relative prosperity when someone is waking up on a dirt floor, cold? I didn’t earn it, I don’t deserve it! Why do you always land on your feet? It’s not fair. You don’t deserve it. One of us is going to get sick with cancer and have to care for the other. One of us is going to die. That used to feel so far away. I miss Hap. I want to achieve more but I don’t want to work harder. I should walk today, but I might sit here and watch Bravo. Fast on Mondays. No TV on Mondays. Games people play. Don’t be so hard on yourself, you don’t deserve it. One of these times the mammogram will come back bad. I don’t want to stop eating, God I love food. I want to be a vegetarian. I don’t want to be a vegetarian. I want my hair longer, one last time. I want my hair as short as a guy. Am I too old for that? Am I too young for that? Am I too ugly for that? Pretty is as pretty does. That’s what my mom always said. I can’t see my own eyebrows very well anymore to do them. Just because you go to church doesn’t make you a good person. Why do you people put your kids through this? I wish I would’ve had a flat belly just once, even if it was when I was young. Younger was uglier for me. We just have different values, that’s all, not saying whose are better. It’s like Jedd Clampett’s yard out there and I wish I cared more or wanted to do something about it. You always think you’re right. Eye roll. I’m super cool because I drive a stick shift but I’m tall and arthritic to sit so low in a car now. Seriously you’re not that old. I cannot believe you’re this old. When did it all get to be behind instead of in front of? We can suck it up, we can be the bigger person (people.) Let them do what they need to do. It’s okay. It makes me anxious when you act like an old person. Will I find you at the bottom of the stairs one day? Will it be fast or slow or dramatic? Can’t I just eat what I want and not gain weight. Does every menopausal woman cry once a day about absolutely nothing? What will I eat when I get home. What do YOU have to be depressed about? Must be nice to be you. What’s it like to be you? Fifty and to be honest I’ve never once for more than a day had a clean polished car or a clean polished house. I love the restful feeling of walking into the neat person’s house but I know they don’t often feel restful like me so how does this all work? Will I ever get it together? Obviously not and most of the time that’s okay. Laughter. Thank God for that, and now can some people not find that everything can be funny? Make me an instrument of your peace, send your Holy Spirit to bless my words, guard my words, inspire my words, actions, asana practice, and even my thoughts that they may glorify you God and best serve those you place in my path today according to your holy will for them. Help me to serve from humility and not ego and make me better. The other night I woke to the sound of a storm through the open windows, the kind of noise and breeze and bliss me and the Peeps would enjoy together, and as I lay there and cried I heard the big family of deer walking by under my window, just a different animal to keep me company. That friend that I love but is so bitter and negative and doesn’t know it. Its not THE BFF by the way. Wasn’t that a nice daily prayer tho, but the one that comes even more often is please don’t let me be such an asshole. Please make me less of an asshole. What’s my purpose here, anyway? Thanks for inventing ice cream, whoever you are. Suck it all up, buttercup. Everyone’s got stuff. All misunderstood.

Nov6

On being Catholic…

Posted on by
Standard

#bene

I just made that up. It stands for “blog entry, no editing.” So here that goes:

Why am I a practicing Catholic? (IF I am a practicing Catholic.) I humbly submit that even professing myself to be a practicing Catholic feels like an overstatement, not because I don’t consider myself one but because humility (yes, humility) prevents me from feeling that I do enough successful Catholic-ing to boast the practice, although I’d be proud to say that I am trying.

But the priests fondling little boys! But the power and corruption and cover-ups! The hypocrisy, the money, the nuns with their rulers. Yes, all of that. But “here’s what” (as Andy Cohen might say):

I belong to a family. I don’t always agree with them, their behavior, their mistakes, their opinions, their rules and criticisms, the way they raise their children or treat their husbands or what they make for dinner.  I am still a proud member of my family.

I work for a company. I don’t always agree with the owners, their choices, what they wear to work, what music they play in the lobby, the style of the product they sell, the tagline they stenciled on the front door, the color they painted the walls.  I am still grateful to work there and consider myself a proud member of their team.

I live in a community. I don’t always agree with its leaders, the way they enforce the speed limit on my street, the poor business decisions that have led to the empty storefronts, the rusted fire hydrant in front of my house, the lack of responsiveness to complaints, the fact that bulk trash pickup occurs only once a month. I still choose to live here and support the local economy and am proud to be neighbors with the population.

You see where I’m going here, I’m sure. I don’t have to agree with the Catholic church leadership on everything. I am but one member of this body. So yes, that might make me an imperfectly practicing Catholic, but I still call myself Catholic. You may think the Catholic church doesn’t like gays because it will only marry a man and a woman. You may think it thinks poorly of women because they aren’t allowed to be priests. You may think many things about the many things you disagree with the church about. Understand that the church has very specific reasons for its laws. And I have been fortunate enough to be educated my entire life by Catholics, lay and clergy, from preschool through high school and beyond. I was fortunate that all of these influences, all of the folks who have been placed in my path to guide me in my faith have somehow imparted to me that MY personal faith is one informed by my religion, yes, but more importantly by my prayer life, my living relationship with God–the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. My conscience is informed by my conversations with God. Which is not to say that I get to make things up, decide which rules are right and wrong for the Church, because that’s not the case. As a responsible person of faith, I read about and experience my religion, deliberately, to inform my conscience. I ask for help in prayer, and it is delivered to me in books, readings, human beings, nature, news, suffering, and joy…jobs, relationships, pets, vacations, athletic endeavors, illnesses.

I know how I feel about homosexuals, and immigrants, and bad guys, terrorists, orphans, the mentally ill, the imprisoned, Jews, Muslims, interracial couples, cops, criminals, the elderly, the unborn, the born-again, the agnostic and atheist, the current president of our country, the harassed and the rapist. Every time I need to make a decision about my words or actions about one of them, that decision is informed not by my family, my job, my community, nor my religion, but by my informed conscience. My conscience, my personal faith informed and fed constantly by my active, living relationship with the holy trinity through prayer and worship and works and participation.

I’m wrong, hell yes, all the time. I revise and reconsider, beat myself up and nod at myself in agreement. But I practice. Not just being Catholic, but being me, being human, being a person of faith and a witness to that faith. I ask for the help, and it comes. It NEVER FAILS to come, in fact. When I ask for the inspiration, the words, the thoughts to be right, the answers come. It’s miraculous, actually.

I’m not a practicing Catholic because I agree with every law of the Catholic Church. But it is this particular religion which has given me the people and experiences which have brought me thus far in faith, and I will proudly accept the challenge placed before me in prayer to stand with her in support–as I do with my family, my job, my community. I know that it is right to do so because conscience tells me so.

More than all of that, I believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that it happened, and I believe that because it happened I am saved and forgiven. I really do believe it. And so I want a seat at that table. That table is only memorialized at every Catholic Mass with a consecrated host. I would never want to be without the opportunity to share in that promise. So, I am a practicing Catholic.

I am a practicing Catholic. And by the way, the Catholic church isn’t a building or even an organization or an institution, as a whole. It is all of those things, and I won’t even use this platform to explain the vastness of the social help given through Catholic Charities Association to people of all descriptions, but wholly it is the eyes, hands, feet, hearts, voices and strength of its members. Like me.