Planning Parameters

Math Man has grown into a terrific cook since the pandemic, and it’s been a delight to come home at night and not always have to move directly into getting dinner on the table. Every. Single. Night. It’s been more than a relief to let some of that go, I feel cherished. Still, I have been taking the lead in creating menus and shopping lists, and the rest of what goes into running the kitchen for most of the last decade.

Math Man was a great parenting partner when the kids were small. We could swap at the drop of a hat, he could pack a diaper bag, knew what size shoes the kids wore, and could handle whatever the day threw at us as well as I could. 

Parkinson’s progression is to some extent unpredictable (though this review has some helpful data), and while at the moment I’m not terribly limited in what I can do, the advice is to be pro-active in preparing for a time when I perhaps can do much less. So the broken door lock got replace with one easier for me to use, and Math Man needs to be able to step in just as he did so long ago. This weekend he started shadowing me on the meal planning. Starting with the week’s menu. Which we keep on a call board thanks to Crash’s pandemic organization.

Math Man: How about French dip sandwiches for dinner Sunday?

Me: How about salmon instead?

Math Man: What are you thinking?

Me: Well, we should have at least one dinner that is built around fish for the protein, and at least one vegetarian dinner. Which nights do we need a quick dinner between work and an evening activity that a sandwich option would be a better choice?  What are you thinking?

Math Man: How do I figure out a menu that will include tater tots?

Me:

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Also me: Are there any nights one or both of us are out for dinner? what's in the freezer that we can use? What vegetables am I likely to be able to get at the farmer's market? Oh and I’ll be checking the board each morning to see what needs to be defrosted, if anything. 

Lost in translation

 

I am working on a piece on reading chemistry articles in other languages. I am reading "Chemistry Through the Language Barrier," written in the late 1960s when Google translate was science fiction. The advice is practical - how can you wring what you need from a paper written in Czech or Polish or...Russian or Chinese? Well, when it comes to that last, the author's advice is best summed up as "Good luck and godspeed!", but Japanese is not out of reach he assures you.

Exercises are left for the reader, in part so you will believe his methods possible.

Yesterday I was happily ensconced on the divan in my office, a cup of tea on the side table and went to grab my yellow pad to jot notes and thoughts. Argh, it was across the room on my desk. Too lazy to get up, I grabbed the nearest blank writing surface: the next blind date book on my stack.  I happily scrawled away. Now I am trying to transcribe what I wrote into my electronic notes and finding myself at a loss translating sentences where the ink failed to write on the tape.

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Earlier I had been reading the foreward and mentally debating the author. Imagine my shock when I reached the end to discover my father-in-law had written that foreward.

Profound peace

Justice shall flower in his days,
and profound peace, till the moon be no more. — Ps 72:7

“Profound peace” — this is what we prayed for in the psalm for Epiphany.  Not just peace, a simple cessation of hostilities, but a peace so deep, we could not claw our way back to war. Not just peace, tenuously enforced with threats, but a just peace. 

We prayed for that peace, for justice, as the US went in with guns blazing to decapitate the government of Venezuela. It was hard to avoid the irony.

The government would have us believe that this invasion, police action, whatever, is to protect us from fentanyl (which their own data says is not produced or trafficked from Venezuela). Venezuela does traffic some cocaine, but even if every cocaine related overdose in the US could be attributed to this route (and it’s not among the top three sources) the number of cocaine overdose deaths is about the same as the number of people in the US who die from hunger each year. (More than 20,000 people in the US died from malnutrition in 2022.) The current administration didn’t think that suspending SNAP benefits to the hungry last fall was an emergency, so why is this? 

Could it be that feeding the hungry doesn’t make for stirring military videos? 

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For two weeks of the entire US military budget, we could fund a full year of SNAP benefits. 

There hasn’t been much support for addressing drug addiction either.

Pondering : A homily for Mary, Mother of God

This homily was written for one of the Homilists for the Homeless volumes. I have been rummaging around in my old writing as I prep for a couple of upcoming retreats. I am reminded of the need for prayerful reflection, not just at the New Year but every day. There are many frames for the daily Examen, but this list is a good starting point for me. What might you add?

• What astonished me? 
• What brought me to tears? 
• What made me howl with laughter? 
• What suffused me with joy? 
• What brought me closer to God?

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As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart. — Luke 2:19

These days in particular —  poised between seasons, teetering on the edge of a new year — lend themselves to pondering, to treasuring the past year in our hearts.  What astonished us? What brought us to tears? What made us howl with laughter? What suffused us with joy? What brought us closer to God?

We contemplate, too, what the new year will bring. Will it astonish us? What new griefs will we have to bear? Where will we find God? When will we desperately need God?

Luke tells us that Mary pondered the all the events that surrounded Christ’s birth in her heart. I imagine her cradling a young Jesus in her arms, still astonished at her visit from Gabriel, still overwhelmed with joy, still worried what Simeon meant when he promised her heart would be pierced. What, I’m sure she wondered, would the next days and months bring? How would she cope?

How can we follow Mary’s example and prayerfully ponder our past, present and future with God? In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola suggested a short daily practice called the Examen, a way to recognize God at work in every aspect of one’s life. Take ten minutes at the end of the day, advised Ignatius, and seek out God’s handiwork in your life.

Ignatius’ prayer begins by recognizing that we are always in the presence of God. Don’t be timid, ask God to help you pray, to bring his light to bear on your day. The line that opens today’s psalm well captures what Ignatius hopes for those praying the Examen: O God, be gracious and bless us and let your face shed its light upon us. [Ps 67:2]

Next, says Ignatius, tell God you are grateful. Ingratitude — not pride or greed — was the ultimate root of all sin, thought Ignatius. If we cannot see that all we have, our very lives and all that surrounds us, comes from God, then we are blind to God. God is our true treasure. Be specific, search your day for one or two luminous moments for which you are particularly grateful, and give God thanks for these gifts. 

The meat of the Examen is a review of the day. Take it hour by hour, noticing with God where you felt his presence, where you felt particularly beloved. Where did you love in return? The point is not to scour for sins, small or large, but to become more and familiar with how God is at work in your life. This is what God desires for us, as he asked Aaron to bless the Israelites, and by extension, us. May the Lord uncover his face to you reads the last line of Aaron’s blessing in one translation. May you see the Lord.

It is often the small things that turn out to be most important, the moment when someone unexpectedly waved you ahead in a long line at the grocery store, or the sense of awe you experienced walking out the door into a beautiful afternoon. As C. S. Lewis in noted in his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, “We must not be too high-minded. I fancy we may be sometimes deterred from small prayers by a sense of our own dignity rather than of God's."  Don’t be too high-minded, share it all with God.

We are humans, and inevitably we fail in our love for each other and for God. So notice, too, the moments that make you wince as you review the day. Ask God to forgive you and prayerfully seek his advice on what remedy you might make. Who should you apologize to? Is it once again time to seek out the sacrament of reconciliation? What might you do differently next time? Ask God for the grace to walk anew in his pathways.

Pay attention to your feelings during the review of your day, what part of this prayer stirred your heart the most? Talk it over with God. Ignatius recommended doing this as one friend might speak with another, heart to heart. Finally, look to tomorrow. What are you worried about? What are you looking forward to? Close your prayer by asking for God’s grace and strength 0for what is to come.

As we begin this new year, resolve to take up the habit of sharing your day with God, treasuring its joys as Mary did, and pondering anew how you might in this moment grow closer to God. Like the shepherds and all who heard their stories, allow yourself to be astonished at what God has done for you, the small miracles as much as the large. 

May the Lord bless you and keep you, may his face shine upon you, and may you have peace, today and all the year to come.

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Image is Mary, Seat of Wisdom, at St. John's Abbey.

Anna in the temple

 

I sat in the last pew in my parish church. Praying, enfolded in the syrupy warmth of a late summer day, alone except for God, and the spirits of all those who’d prayed here before me.  The light of the prescence lamp danced in the dimness of the chancel, ivory walls smudged with color from the stained glass windows. Cicadas buzzed, my phone did not. 

Prayer in this space seemed to be as simple as breathing.  Like the prophetess Anna, who Luke tells us never left the Temple, I longed to stay here, caught up in beauty, in prayer — caught up in God — for the rest of my days. Instead I went home and made dinner.

As I chopped vegetables I thought of a scene in the film Into Great Silence, which chronicles a year in a centuries-old Carthusian monastery. A monk is chopping celery in silence, awash in light from the kitchen window. The thunk of his knife on the well-worn cutting board echoed the rhythm of the psalms the monks chanted day in and day out, making a prayer of the ordinary.

I worry that I want prayer to be an extraordinary experience. That I want to keep prayer reserved to sacred spaces, to come to prayer completely tidy, my metaphorical counters cleared and the dishes washed, not up to my elbows in suds facing a sinkful of pots.  I want to be eloquent, I want to be silent and composed before the Creator of all things, I want to be wholly present. I want to be holy.

But I suspect God is unbothered by the awkwardness of my prayers or the unpretentious surroundings in which I make them. He is as delighted to join me in the kitchen amid the potato peelings and unwashed pots as he is to find me quiet and still before the tabernacle. As Teresa of Avila wryly told her Carmelite sisters, “entre los pucheros anda el Señor”. If you are in the kitchen, the Lord walks among the pots and pans.  Whether in the temple like Anna or in the kitchen like St. Teresa, God besieges us.

As extraordinary as it is to be drawn into a relationship with the immanent and transcendent Triune God, prayer is meant to be an ordinary part of our lives. Like the making of dinner and doing the dishes, it is what sustains us. In his short book, The Need and the Blessing of Prayer, theologian Karl Rahner, SJ advised, “Pray every day and pray the everyday.” 

Like the desert fathers who wove baskets to the simple rhythm of the Jesus prayer — Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me — ask for mercy as you peel the potatoes, place yourself in the presence of God as you fold the laundry. Say grace before your midmorning cup of coffee, trace the sign of the cross on your child’s forehead before they go to sleep. Bless the ordinary moments, every day. 

And perhaps then we can be like Anna,  praying night and day in the temple of this world, knowing every space holy, every moment sacred.

— February 2021 Opening essay in Give Us This Day

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Image is of interior of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the ceiling of the nave lit by sunlight through stained glass