Making Harmonies with Discordant Notes

OR

"How Family Life is a Lot Like 5th Grade Band"

We can all picture what a 5th grade band concert sounds like, right? My apologies to well-meaning 5th graders, but in truth, it's probably somewhere between penance and punishment. With proper guidance, however, the band members mature and learn to play the right notes at the right time. Some high school and college concerts are downright enjoyable!

Just like a band or orchestra where everyone plays the right notes, it is difficult to overestimate the value that a harmonious family life has on the world. The members of any family eventually grow up and become members of society at large and myriad groups within that society. Nobody enters the wider community without first being a member of a family in one way or another. The family is unarguably the nursery for society. It's like 5th grade band. Even though things can sound awful from time to time in our homes, it's part of a learning process that helps us to learn how to be in harmony with the world around us.

Thank God, we don't have to be perfect people to make family life work. Maybe you've heard the proverb that "God writes straight with crooked lines." Well, since my children play instruments and sing in choir, it is easier for them to understand the idea of how God can still make a beautiful symphony even when we are playing wrong notes.

When a sibling makes a bad decision, a selfish choice, or loses her temper and lashes out, the whole family suffers. This discordant note can resonate and lead to the whole day's symphony falling apart. Sometimes there is nothing we can do to stop another person from continually making bad choices.

This is where the rest of the family needs to work together and help resolve that bad note. Some families might sound like a simple hymn with gentle harmonies, while others sound more like a jazz piece with unusual and unique chords and structure. The important thing is that we don't throw our instruments (to painfully draw out the analogy) at the person who made the mistake. As they say on Broadway: "The show must go on!" We must keep playing the best notes we can, maybe by doing something unexpectedly kind, or bringing in humor at just the right moment, regardless of what the others choose to do.

When I talk to my children about how to work together with their siblings, even when they are having a bad day (or week), I give the example of the saints. Saints are not people who had an easy life because they only hung out with other saints. You don't have to look very hard to see that the saints lived with people who drove them crazy, imprisoned them, irritated them, and sometimes killed them. Yet in their souls they were able to rise above these difficulties, sometimes even converting their oppressors and enemies by their gentleness. I love the story, for example, of how the witness of St. Paul and Silas converted their jailer (Acts 16:25-40).

When the members of a family can remember to call on the grace of God to help them get along, make it work, forgive, build each other up, and provide positive examples to each other, even when everyone is so imperfect that it reminds us of early September in 5th grade band, we begin to see how God works in our world. We don't have to write every line straight or always play the right notes. God comes to us in our weakness. He can write straight with crooked lines, after all, and even with our bad notes, He can still help us to live in harmony.

Above was a bit of the inspiration for this article. My 5 year old was practicing the piano and playing rather painful notes over and over again. My 12 year old is quite the musician though, and came over and made this beautiful song with her sister. I realized that without the 12 year old, the 5 year old would just have been annoying everyone. We can help each other when we choose to use our gifts to make harmonies!

Help Me Do It by Myself

Maria Montessori was a Catholic scientist, doctor, and ultimately, educator, whose discoveries about what she called "the true nature of the child" have had a profound effect upon parents, educators, catechists, and children around the world. One of the key tenants of Dr. Montessori's understanding of the child is the silent plea to the adult: "Help me do it by myself."

When adults are aware of this need and desire of the child, amazing things happen. From toddlers who drink out of regular cups, make bread, and carefully clean out fish tanks (without killing the fish!), to 4 year olds who dress themselves (including coats and shoes) and who prepare and clean up their own snacks (including washing and putting away the dishes and sweeping the floor), the examples of what a child can do with the proper presentation and prepared environment are astounding.

A young child in our toddler
environment washing mirrors

It is not a matter of the adult pushing the child to independence, but serving as a humble guide who offers all the child needs to take his independence for himself.

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, as you may know, is inspired by the work that Montessori added to the field of education as well as spirituality. We seek to prepare an environment where the child, even the youngest child, can be independent in the very important work that only a child can do: building a man (or woman).

Our scope in our parish CGS program, of course, is limited by the time frame (less than 2 hours per week for only part of the year) and our purpose. We seek to prepare a place where the child can fall in love with God. Yet the child does not wish for us to do this work for him/her.

Much like the Montessori dressing boards that prepare a child to dress himself, fasten his own coat, and tie his own shoes, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd seeks to offer formation to the child (and adult) that will prepare the child to take responsibility for his own "white garment" which he received at baptism. The catechist prepares the presentation (usually pertaining either to the Liturgy (Mass) or Scripture, offering rich food for the child's wonder, but the majority of the child's time in the CGS atrium is for his own personal work. In this way, his faith formation is an active response of the child, a seeking to discover more, to understand better.

A relationship with God is not something that any person can give to another, however, we can seek, both in our parish and in our homes, to prepare an environment that will help the child feel and respond for himself to that inner longing for relationship with the Lord that was placed there by God Himself.

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you." St. Augustine

The Third Degree

Growing up, we spent several years just outside of Reno, Nevada where my dad was active in the Knights of Columbus. This organization was very mysterious to me, as it was made up of (to my 7 year old eyes) very strong, brave, and loyal men who served the Church with their whole heart and soul, but I didn't know much about what they did behind closed doors. My father helped to build the mystery about this group for me when he spent what felt like months preparing for his "third degree."

(Here's a picture of my dad. He'll probably kill me for printing a picture of him, but that's okay. All of us siblings went together a few years ago to buy him the "regalia" of the fourth degree members:)

Anyway, at the time, I didn't know anything about how Knights of Columbus moved through their degrees, but from the way my dad talked, it sounded very intense. Among other things, he had to memorize the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and, I remember very clearly, the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.

As the oldest child in the family, I remember taking it on as my special task to help my father prepare for this very important ceremony. I got all of the materials and I would quiz him each night. I couldn't believe it, but it seemed to me that I caught on to these things much more easily than he appeared to.

"Ok, Dad. Now what is the Third Sorrowful Mystery?"

He'd think carefully and then say, "The Carrying of the Cross?"

"Nope, that's the fourth!"

"Ummmmm.. Can you give me a hint?"

I'd pantomime something being placed on my head and he'd finally remember. "Oh! The Crowning with Thorns!"

Needless to say, the reverence and importance with which my father treated the degrees of the Knights of Columbus took on an epic proportion in my mind. So when my husband became Catholic and was able to join the Knights of Columbus, I was ready to return to my special role of "squire" in preparing him. However, though the degrees are apparently very meaningful and special, my husband told me that he went through no such "third degree" as my father had experienced.

I was disappointed about this and shared it with my dad the next time I saw him.  I told him of my fond memories of teaching him the sorrowful mysteries while he was "studying" for his third degree, and he laughed. "You were teaching me?" he chuckled. "Ohhhhh, that's how it was."

I still feel a little sheepish for being so easily duped as a child, but I have to admit that the gift of that time with my dad, "teaching him his faith" is still a special memory for me. Even thirty years later, I feel a special connection to the Knights of Columbus for that small way I was drawn into their fraternal bond. Dad is still an active Knight of Columbus at his parish (Grand Knight this year, actually), and I'm so grateful that our parish has its own council (#10282) here at All Saints full of strong, brave, and loyal men who serve the Church with their whole hearts and souls.

Spiritual Giants

Who are the spiritual giants in your family?

A parent from our CGS program mentioned to me as an aside this week: "I meant to talk to you about something that happened to my son. One day after Wednesday CGS last year, he came home and insisted we pray together. He has kept it up each night for a year now. I don't know what happened that prompted that. Do you?"

I remembered back to last year and I clearly recalled the conversation that could have led to this boy's response. We were talking about "spiritual giants" in our family trees who carry their families and friends to heaven. The young man immediately recalled his grandfather. At his grandfather's funeral, the priest had told this boy that his grandfather was the holiest man he'd ever met.

"Wow," I told him. "That so amazing. He truly was a spiritual giant, and I'm sure he's still praying for you. But I wonder who will be the next spiritual giant in your family? Who will take his place"  One of the boys in the class nudged him with his elbow and said, "Better get on it!" I could see in the young man's face that he took this very seriously.

I also received this message last week and wanted to share it with you for you to ponder with me. Who is praying for you and your family? Who is praying for our parish? Who are the spiritual giants in your life?

"I read your blog about praying the rosary and I was thinking about what you said regarding the absence of prayer. Now bear with me because this will be a typical convoluted story [of mine] but...when I was a younger person, I had this notion that I was insanely lucky or blessed or something - but things went well for me much of the time in the big picture. Illness avoided, parents with jobs and staying married, good home, want for little kinds of things. (Which isn't entirely true, but as you know your perspective on such things is maybe not as fully aware when you're younger.)

Suffice to say, I felt like I led a charmed life and while grateful, I wasn't going to buck the trend. And that perception continued in my life for a long time. Though...recently, in the last few years, things in general have been more struggle for me. Seeing positives has been a challenge and reactions to negatives have been magnified. I got to thinking about it all and why that might be and I hit on something.

(This is where you're going to roll your eyes and remember that I wasn't well chatechized.)

When I was a little girl, all the way until [my son] was about 2, I had one of the world's best pray-ers, praying for me ALL THE TIME. And I had another all-time great pray-er praying for me ALL THE TIME up until a couple of years ago. The first, my mom's mom who rarely missed mass and had scapulars, a rosary, a well worn blue prayer book tucked with mass cards and prayers to saints resting on the glass end table-lamp combo next to her rocking chair, lived across the street from the church and chapel and heard the bells ring out in the old way daily. The second, my dad's mom who was Methodist so did things differently than how I was raised but still dedicated to prayer nonetheless. These women were pray-ers and they offered their prayers for me and a whole slug of other people they were compelled to pray for daily, multiple times daily even.

So I got to thinking that perhaps there's a correlation between the loss of these faithful women and their presence in my life through prayer and this idea that the charmed life is also gone.

And (finally getting to the point) after thinking about it more, and then cemented by your blog post today, I realized that I didn't actually lose anything, because they both gave me witness to faith and if those pray-ers are not here on earth to pray for me, all I have to do is remember that I bear each of their names, thus I can pick up the slack.

So...do they still make those blue books of prayer? Because I need to get one."

Needless to say, I sent her a blue book!

Though I Know Nothing about It

It was an unintentional experiment.

I'm not sure why it happened, actually. Maybe it was all of the Christmas music that was available on the radio... Maybe it was the desire to jump on the phone and check in with friends I haven't talked to in a while. Whatever the case, for the first time in a couple of years, I went several days without even praying a full decade of the Rosary.

Now, the Rosary and I have not always had a simpatico relationship. I've always wanted to pray it. Check that. I've always wanted to want to pray it, but for years and years, each and every time I powered through and prayed a whole rosary it has taken a massive amount of effort to overcome my own will and get it done.

I convinced myself for a while that I didn't need to pray it if it just stressed me out and piled guilt on my head. It is a private devotion, after all. You don't have to pray it to get in to heaven. Looking back, it is probably a good idea that I stopped fighting myself and took a break. I still wanted to want to pray it, but I didn't give myself such a hard time when I didn't get it done for a while.

Fast forward several years. Somehow, little by little, the Rosary did begin to take a larger role in my spiritual life. The half-Rosaries that we prayed as a family on the way to Mass led to the habit of praying however much I could get done each time I got in the car. I joined a "Rosary of Moms" and committed to praying a decade for particular mystery of Jesus' life each month with the moms. Miraculously (for me), I found myself praying more than a single five-decade rosary most days.

To be honest, though, I didn't notice much of a difference in myself. I don't know what I thought would happen if I prayed more, but I was fairly certain I would notice something. Maybe it would be a particular grace right when I needed it, or an extra dose of patience, or a super-Mandie ability to get out of bed with my alarm in the morning. Something. I wish I could sit here and tell you that when I made a habit of praying the Rosary daily, I noticed a real change in my life. But I didn't. I still felt like the same old me, struggling to get through each day without messing it up. If God really was acting more deeply in my life, it was unbeknownst to me.

Then came the experiment.

Like I said, I didn't mean to skip several days in a row, but I will tell you, I DID notice something then. And it wasn't a good something.

I found myself at odds with people in my life that I'd formerly patched things over with. I had a sore throat from all the yelling at the kids for the mess that their rooms had become. I was brooding over injury, worried about the future, and angry at situations that hadn't bothered me in ages. I was a hot mess.

A few other times that I missed praying the Rosary, I remember having a bad day here and there. I'd already noticed that when I've missed Mass on Sunday due to sickness or taking care of a sick child, I am far less desirable as a companion that week. Through my inadvertent experiment of missing several days in a row, I now realized just how much my daily relationship with the Blessed Mother, the mysteries of her Son's life, and those beads had changed me.

Father Tom Hagan spoke at the Christ Our Life conference last September about how the the Rosary and the Mass are not just nice devotions to him anymore, he clings to them for dear life. I can't speak of it any other way than to say that this experiment revealed to me that I've become dependent on prayer to get me through the day. I've built a house of cards, so to speak. Who I am now is related so concretely to how I pray, that I am a blubbering, falling-down mess when I miss it.

Even though I still don't usually feel anything when I pray (other than guilt for not being meditative enough to feel anything), I have come to the point that I don't pray to feel things. I learned a long time ago that you can't tell the difference prayer (or Mass attendance) makes in your life based on how you feel WHILE you are doing it: it's how you feel AFTER you do it that counts.

While I would not recommend my experiment to anyone, I will say that it taught me a life-changing lesson about the gentle and sometimes undetected changes that happen when you begin to give your life more fully over to God in prayer. He will work powerfully in our lives if we just give him the time and opportunity, whether we realize it or not.

"And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it." Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

Unconditionally

I had a plan.

Knowing that my husband would be gone for more than two weeks this December, I had lists and ideas and great hopes for the gift I would give my husband for Christmas: a clean house.

Aside from a few near occasions of sin that surround trying to accomplish this goal as a single parent of 6 children, and some actual occasions (thank you, Jesus, for the Sacrament of Reconciliation!), I accomplished my goal. I rid my home of 50+ totes of clutter and trash and clothes and shoes that we'd been holding on to over the course of 6 children and 14 nieces and nephews who have been sharing clothes. Clean at last! Even the garage got a "scrubbing" before my darling husband returned.

He returned after a 14 hour drive and was very patient and kind as the girls excitedly showed him around our now-orderly (and in some places, newly-painted) home. It was about an hour in when my exhausted husband off-handedly noted behind me as I was cleaning up the dinner dishes: "Looks like we're back to filling the junk drawer up with junk."

I was heartbroken. I brooded for a while over this slight, and tried not to be angry at him for noticing "the one thing I didn't get to,"

I thought for a long while about why this bothered me so much in that moment. I already know that my husband does not love me because I am such a stellar housekeeper. He loves me for me, praise God, and he tolerates my tornado tendencies. He does his best to love me unconditionally, even if he gets frustrated with me sometimes for my faults. Usually I am happy with being loved unconditionally because I know that I could never earn his love. This time, though, I really wanted to be loved for what I had done because I thought it was perfect... Except I can never be perfect.

The best part of me didn't do all that hard work because I wanted my husband to be happy with me, but because I wanted him to be happy. Period. I have to be content with being loved for who I am, not for what I do, even when what I do seems pretty great to me.

As I was headed to early morning adoration last Friday, I began to understand that if I am not careful, I do this same thing with God. I sometimes try to earn His love by the good things I do, and I am heartbroken when I fail.

Just like with my husband, I could never earn God's conditional love. He knows me too well. I can, however, bloom and grow and produce great fruit in the freedom of knowing the God loves me unconditionally. He doesn't need me to be perfect, he just needs me to remain with Him.

As I look in the eyes of baby Jesus this Christmas, I pray that He will teach me to love Him and others the way that He loves me.

He comes as such a helpless baby. He didn't come on Christmas Night with miracles and power, He came tiny hands and trusting eyes.

In the baby Jesus, we can love our God not because He gives us all the things on our Christmas list this year, but because He gives Himself. And so I ask for the grace this Christmas to give the Him myself in return.

Unconditionally.

When God Will Be All in All

To celebrate the beginning of Advent, our Level III (4th-6th grade) children studied the Prophecy of the Shoot of Jesse and the Peaceable Kingdom last week. You would be amazed at the quality of theologians we have in this parish.

This was the passage we focused on:

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 

The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. 

They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. 

In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the peoples; him shall the nations seek, and his dwellings shall be glorious." Isaiah 11:6-10 RSV

They knew that Isaiah was speaking to the people of Israel in a time of darkness. Their "glory days" seemed to be in the past (the Kingdom of Israel was split into North and South). The immediate future wasn't looking so great for them either (Babylonian exile). But here in Isaiah it seems that the prophet is trying to teach the people to listen to God and to wait in HOPE for something.

"It sounds like the the time when God will be all in all," one of the 4th grade girls offered. "Of course, Isaiah is talking about when the Messiah comes, but he's really talking about the Parousia," submitted a 6th grader in a different session.

Spending time in the atrium with the children of our parish, I am growing in my faith and perspective each year. Advent is a time of year when we listen to the prophets who prepare us for "a great light" and "a child [who] will be born to us," but as I listen carefully with these children, I can't help but realize that Advent is not primarily a celebration of Jesus' birthday. For us, it is a reminder of the hope which His Birth gives for the Parousia. (We say it Pair-uh-SEE-uh).

The time is coming when there will be no more war, no more hunger, no more wailing or pain, no more tears, and no more death. Parousia: when God will be all in all and His Kingdom will have no end.

"So," I asked the children at the end of one atrium session's reflection, "as we spend time in Advent preparing, what should we be preparing for?"

"Parousia," a child responded, as they all nodded their heads.

"And how do we do that?" I wondered.

"Well," (and I am not kidding you, a child actually said this), "we do what we can to make the world like Isaiah said: we feed the hungry, we make ourselves more like God wants us to be, so we're ready."

Let us follow the shining example of these wise children and do the same. One day, God WILL be All in All. Let us make Him so in our hearts today!