Not just for kids: Dear Pope Francis

Today Loyola Press released its ambitious and magnificent project, Dear Pope Francis. I found the book to be a rich source for my own meditation, perhaps because I've been on the receiving end of so many of these questions as a parent.  As an adult, I found the directness and tenderness heartening, reminding me of the core practices of my faith.  To pray wherever I am. To live in the joy of the Gospel.  To stand openly for peace and justice.  There is a lot of hope in this book, in both the questions being asked by these young people and in the responses that Pope Francis makes to them.

The review that follows appeared today at CatholicPhilly.com.

The car was always the place for the hard conversations when my sons were young. The questions would come from the back seat when I least expected it. I can still remember the rainy night I was driving down Montgomery Avenue when my oldest son, then 12, asked me why God let evil things happen.  That remains the toughest question my children have ever put to me, bar none.

In his newest book, “Dear Pope Francis,” takes on the tough and direct questions that kids will ask.  There is 9-year old Michael from Nigeria wondering “How can you settle conflicts in the world?” and Thierry who wants to know why so many people are poor and hungry: can’t God feed them?

The book lists the authors as Pope Francis and the children of the world, and it’s clear from the start that this was a collaborative work between the leader of the Church and her members.  More than 250 children, from 26 countries, sent letters and drawings to Pope Francis. Father Antonio Spadaro, S.J., met with the Holy Father and recorded his answers to the questions posed in the letters.  He then transcribed and edited the responses.  The children’s drawings are reproduced alongside the Pope’s answers, which truly bring the young writers alive.

Father Spadaro writes in the afterward that he found transcribing the conversation an extended meditation, and I found reading the book to be a similar experience.  I ended up reading it in a few sessions, stopping when I wanted to spend time with an answer — or a question.  I don’t have young ones at home any longer, so couldn’t try it out on its intended audience, but I do know that my sons would have appreciated the Pope’s directness and humor, and I would have treasured his wisdom when faced with tough questions from my passengers.

Some of the questions are poignant, one young boy wonders if his mother in heaven has grown angel wings.  No, Pope Francis tells him. She is still your mom, but she is beautiful and full of light and love for you. Others wonder about who gets into heaven and whether bad people still have guardian angels.

We learn a lot about Pope Francis and his job as we go.  He can pray in a dentist’s chair.  He loves to play soccer, but hasn’t a nimble foot, so he’s not very good at it.  We learn he is happiest in his job when he is with other people, and why he needs such a tall hat.  But in each answer, the Pope takes the children, and us, a bit deeper.  Would that we could all learn to pray wherever we were, and to more fully express our joy in God.

I sense Pope Francis’ awareness of the parents and other adults who are listening in the background to these exchanges, nudging them to think again about the tough questions, the questions that as adults we fear have no answers, that we might long ago have given up even asking.  I found myself returning again and again to the Holy Father’s answer to young Thierry about poverty and hunger.  “The real problem is that some of those who have plenty do not want to share it with others.”  What do I have more than enough of?  Where am I unwilling to share?

Reading this book I was struck by Pope Francis’ tenderness.  He is never saccharine, he never speaks down to the children, he is direct and firm.  Above all his joy in the Gospel and his deep love of God comes through in every response.  When 11-year old Clara, from Ireland, ask him if he thinks that he is really a father to us all, he tells her that he does feel like a spiritual father to us all, and that he likes being a dad.  This is a book by a holy father, indeed, who clearly loves all his children, young and old.

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Full disclosure:  Loyola Press sent me a copy of this book.

On the razor's edge

When I came home from the hospital after Tom died, everything was still as we had left it three days earlier. Used towels hung on the racks, rumpled sheets, Tom's razor and shaving brush still on the counter in the bathroom.  It was surreal.  Life was utterly ordinary when I went to work on Wednesday, and unimaginably not when I returned.

I went into the bathroom, looked at it all, and realized that he had no use of these things anymore, nor would anyone else.  I put the razor and brush into the trash can next to the sink, and systematically went through the house removing the traces of the last day, subtly altering the terrain to accommodate one, not two.  My exhausted parents watched, but did not try to stop me.
We came home this week to the detritus of a less permanent and  harrowing departure, but the after images of that other return home remained.  His razor on the counter in the bathroom, his towel hanging on the hook behind the door.  His tousled sheets. For a moment both realities were superimposed.

Once again I put towels in the wash, put away shaving cream and razor, and hung my robe on the door, transforming the guys' bathroom into a space for a soaking bath.

Now is not then, but neither time nor grief is precisely linear, they crisscross the everyday, crashing into each other at odd moments, in unexpected ways.  Like in the bathroom.

Ignatian Spirituality: Give whirled peas a chance

Mateusz Tokaski Still Life with Pea

It's July, which means that Ignatian Spirituality is celebrating St. Ignatius' upcoming feast with 31 days of posts old and new.  The theme this year is finding God in unexpected places, and my reflection on encountering God's gentle sense of humor appeared last week.   I loved the layers of puns in the title the editor gave it:  God surprises in peas and teas

“You know I don’t eat anything green,” insisted my youngest son, pushing his plate of mashed potatoes, meat loaf, and green peas away from him with a single finger. Arms crossed, six-year-old Chris glared at me across the dining room table. His older brother stuck a fork in the meat loaf, and startled, peered more closely at his plate and grinned. He, at least, was on to me."

You can read the rest at DotMagis.

Python mom

The Boy got a Raspberry Pi (a small very, very inexpensive computer) from his uncle, Geek Guru, for Christmas. He brought it with him to California and yesterday the two of them spent much of the day trying to get an LED to light up on command. They downloaded and updated, The Boy learned some vi (an editor), some more Python (a programming language). The LED lit up, it flashed, a series of LEDs flashed. There was much cheering coming from the dining room.

He wanted to play again tonight, but Geek Guru went out to dinner with his wife No-No Nannette (for their 25th wedding anniversary). So I'm sitting at the kitchen table listening to The Boy gripe about the vagaries of using vi to edit a file on a Mac (the mapping of commands to keys is a bit of an issue). I taught him to keep a backup of a working piece of code, and to edit only the copy. I advised on Python where I could (I'm a pale substitute for my brother on this one; Geek Guru is a nationally recognized Python expert).

I helped him figure out one bug in his Python code, and when the LED lit up, he leaned over to me and said, "You are the best mom ever." You've heard of tiger moms? I'm a python mom.

What would we do in the zombie apocalypse?

Scene 1:  Small suburban brick home on a cool summer evening. Windows are open.  Sound of cat meowing.

Mother (on sofa with ice pack on her foot) :  Can you let the cat in?
(sound of light flicking on and screen door opening)
Son 2:  Fluffy...Fluffy...Oh, sorry, you're eating.  (sound of screen door abruptly closing)

Son 2:  (turns to mother)  Nope.

Scene 2:  Clock shows an hour later.  Sound of car pulling up, car door closes, house door opens.

Mother:  Can you let the cat in?
(sound of light flicking on and screen door opening)
Son 1:  Whoops.  (sound of screen door abruptly closing)  Sorry, Mom.  I don't do dead things after midnight.

What, I wonder, will we do come the zombie apocalypse?

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Illustration is from XKCD.

How to tell The Boy is a Scientist

In the car on the way home today he wails, "They put a camera up my nose and down my throat and I didn't get to look!"

But the guy who knew what to look for did, and said the throat is looking much better.

Summer reading

I am a "summer reading list" rebel.  Back in the day, when summer reading lists came home I would sigh (whine?) loudly, tell my boys that they did not need to pick off the list and that I would write a note to their teachers saying that I had philosophical issues with such reading lists (and you can imagine their reactions to that).  I understand the upside to summer reading lists, to keep reading skills up over the summer, to give parents and students a sense of scope and appropriate reading level.

But I think there is a downside that goes unacknowledged.  There are things to be learned by picking out your own books that contribute to the development of life long readers.  Among them how to find books you might like, how to figure out what makes for a "good" book, besides the fact that your teacher thinks it's a good book.¹  

I'm lucky, my sons are voracious and happy readers, but I wonder if even less happy readers might benefit from a bit less structure in the summer reading.  (Though like most things, this, too, has a flip side.  Ask a son to stop reading and do a chore can elicit a sigh, and chiding "Most parents encourage their children to read."

Photo is my stack of entirely self-selected summer reading!

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1.  Case in point, last year, The Boy was assigned to read The Great Gatsby for English, and then to say why it was a classic piece of literature.  The catch?  He didn't think it rose to that level.  (He's not alone, we looked in the literature to find several English professors who had written scholarly articles agreeing with The Boy.)

Ignatius of Loyola 3: Letters

I associate Ignatius with letters, not so much because of his prodigious output of letters, more than 7000, but because while I was away making his Spiritual Exercises, handwritten letters were how I stayed in touch with my kids.  The Boy was a wondrously faithful correspondent, writing me every third day; near the end, counting the breaths until I came home.

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Read Ignatius' letter of advice on writing letters here, a small selection of other letters from Ignatius here.

Reapply after swimming, vigorous activity or capsizing

Yesterday Crash and Math Man dusted off the boats and dug all the rigging out of winter storage (and put air in the very, very, very flat tires of the double-decker trailer). Today, my merry men and I headed off to sail at a nearby state park.

Math Man was coming from his morning golf game, so the boys and I got the boats up there, off the trailer, rigged and in the water.  After all that effort the teen-aged team was hungry, so they went off to get a snack and I slathered on sunscreen and took out the Fiat Lux.

The wind was tricksy, puffing here and pooping out entirely there.  But there was a whole fleet of other Lasers out there racing, gorgeous to behold.  Nigh on inspiring.  So inspiring, I thought I'd give a series of racing tacks a fly.  So my first tack of the season, I pushed the tiller over, pulled in the main sheet and tried to come about without losing my wind.  It was a bit rough around the edges, but hey, it was the first tack of the season.

Next tack, the wind puffs as I bring the boat across the wind.  Uh-oh.  The full sail and I are now on the same side and boat begins to roll.  I scramble for the other side, but too late.  The laws of physics have no sympathy, and certainly don't wait on my necessities.  The boat was going over, and I was going in.  Splash, bang.  I'm in the water.

I haven't had to right a capsized boat in deep water in forty years, and never without backup or another person to assist.  I wonder at my age if I can do it.  I make sure I'm not fouled in any of the lines, swim to the back and hang my full weight onto the end of the center board.  Slowly, but surely, the sail comes out of the water and the boat rights itself. Whew.  OK, now to get back in without letting the boat sail away without me.

I am short.  I am so short that the extra three inches of the personal flotation device kept me from being able to reach the inside of the gunnel.  Argh. I strip off the jacket and heave it into the boat.  Bearing more than a passing resemblance to a beached whale I'm certain, I follow the jacket into the cockpit.  I gather the lines and my dignity and am once again sailing.

It's good to know I didn't have to tread water waiting to be rescued by the lake patrol.  I lost neither glasses nor hat in the mishap.  I had brought dry clothes for the end of the day.  I could put more sunscreen on (having both swum and engaged in vigorous activity). It was, as Chesterton would have it, an inconvenience rightly considered — that is to say, an adventure.  If only the bruises didn't look like they are going to be quite so spectacular...

Sharp Melting Points

The Boy learned to make caramel at Thanksgiving (which seems so long ago).  Last night he asked me why the sugar melts so suddenly, not gradually, but collapsing into a puddle all at once. "Because it is a pure solid.  One test of the purity of a material is how sharp the melting point is."  I have a vivid recollection of a sample of something I synthesized tamped into a narrow glass straw, its crystals suddenly losing their structure and collapsing into a liquid.

I'm not pure by any means, but I think I may have reached the melting point tonight, and it was quite sharp.  I've been plugging away all week at a list of "things that must be accomplished" before weeks' end. Minutes ago I put the last touches on the exam that has to be ready tomorrow morning and just about collapsed into a professorial puddle.

One more task for the night and I really can collapse into bed.

From Phaith: Pearls of Great Price

Philadelphia's Archdiocesan magazine, Phaith, is now being published in an online version. This column appeared in the October issue.

Victor was a bit dubious about this column, worried that he didn't come off very well, sitting in that conference room.  He did his fair share on this project, even relinquishing his favorite part (the tiling) to me.  I love the phrasing, partners in the whole of life. Marriage in my book isn't about going halvies, but about going all in.  Whether it's patios built amid the heat, or children or illness or no lights in a storm...

“Dad says this is your anniversary present,” said Chris as he tipped a wheelbarrow of sand into the form for the new patio. He sounded dubious. Covered in sweat and dust on a sultry afternoon in August, I was piling up 20 pound slabs of stone, while my husband of 20 years sat in a cool conference room at the college, sliding papers around a table. This do-it-yourself project did not look much like the anniversary gifts touted on TV. No pearls?

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.  I’d been contemplating this line from Genesis since I’d heard it read at Mass the week before while Victor and I stood on either side of our oldest son, Mike, at the opening Mass for his freshman year at college — almost 19 years to the day since we discovered we were to become parents. Bound by our vows, we found ourselves bound up anew in this child. A gift on our first anniversary from God to us.

Through the years we joked with each other that we each did 75 percent of the work of being parents, as Victor paced the floors with a disconsolate Chris at 2 a.m. or I tutored Mike in algebra after dinner. Laundry, dirty dishes, play dates and college visits. Fall hikes, family dinners, water fights and choral concerts. A full measure of challenges and joys nurtured equally by each.

 St. Augustine once said that miracles “have a tongue of their own … let us not only be delighted with (their) surface, but let us also seek to know (their) depth.” So, too, do these sacraments that hallow our lives have “tongues of their own” that speak to us not only when we first celebrate them, but again and again, drawing us into the depths of the mystery that is our relationship with God.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church begins its discussion of the sacrament of marriage by reminding us that it is a “matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life.” After 20 years of marriage — after 20 years as partners in the whole of life — my labors on the patio truly felt as much a gift from Victor to me, as it was my own gift to him. Caught up in this sacramental marriage, we are mysteriously one body. 

Chris’ comment made me think not only about the bond that Victor and I share, but nudged me to seek something of its depths. God dwells in me, and I in God. I have nothing to offer, but what I myself have been given. What work I do is not my work, but God’s gifts, at work in me. God offers to do not just 75 percent, but 100 percent, and calls forth the same in me, in each of us.

Where are the pearls? I have been given them. A string of days, dark and light, each built over time of many layers, knotted together. To have and to hold – and to share –from this day forward.

Suburban foraging

When I was growing up, my mother managed to ride herd on six kids and all their various activities and get dinner on the table as my father walked through the door. Six days a week for decades. And on the seventh day? She rested. Not on Sunday, but on Saturday.

Take out wasn't an option, due to both budgetary and geographical constraints. We lived in the country, far from pizza parlors or fast food. (Pizzeria pizza was an enormous treat when I was young.) When the kids were very young, Saturday meals were simple, pasta or soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. When we got older, my mother would announce that scrounge was on the menu. Which meant you were on your own with what could be scrounged up in the house, free to be as elaborate or as simple as you wished, as long as you cleaned up!

The Boy wandered up to my office the other afternoon to wonder what was for dinner. Math Man was away at a conference, so it was just the two of us. "I was thinking of scrounge." "I'll go forage, then."

Urban foraging may be all the rage in Berkeley, but suburban foraging is alive and well in my house at least!

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Photo is of pizza dough ready to rise. Something I've been baking at home since I was 10.

Culinary shifts

The Boy has noticed some changes in the household now that Crash is away at WJU. The laundry has decreased and the variety of possibilities for dinner has increased.

When I was growing up in a large family, my mother rotated through a fairly small set of dinner menus (roast chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans or meatloaf, mashed potatoes and spinach...you get the drift). No fussy presentations, no fancy sauces. Think Midwest, 60s, farm (though we didn't live on a farm and my mother grew up on Long Island).

As far as Crash is concerned, food is fuel and/or background for interesting conversation — and should arrive on the table with as little fuss (or spice) as possible. He's a solid and conscientious cook. He would have fit right in at the table when I was growing up (metaphorically anyway, physically, there was no more room on the deacon's benches that the kids used instead of chairs), though his palate has admittedly grown a bit more adventuresome over the last couple of years. Still, I suspect last night's dinner would not have been to his taste.

Hot Spinach and Chicken Sandwiches

One loaf of Brother's Bread (see note below)

3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
leaf spinach (fresh or frozen, we used frozen)

2 large bone-in chicken breasts, skin on
seasoning (pepper, orange rind, salt and ginger)
1 cup of chicken stock
2 tsp flour

Pat chicken breasts dry. Season skin liberally. Place chicken in an oven proof skillet. Bake oven at 400F for 30 minutes, reduce heat to 350F and cook until juices run clear (internal temperature of 165F). Remove from oven, take chicken from pan, and let rest for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, stir flour into drippings in pan, heat briefly while stirring. Slowly add the the chicken stock, scraping up any baked on bits and making a smooth sauce.

Remove most of skin and bones from the chicken and slice thinly.

In another skillet, melt butter in olive oil. Saute garlic in olive oil/butter mixture, then stir in spinach. Cook until spinach is tender.

To serve, place two slices bread on a plate, cover with chicken and spinach, then ladle about 1/4 cup of sauce over the top. Serve hot.

As we say around here, this one is a keeper.

Notes:
Brother's Bread is a single rise loaf from The Secrets of Jesuit Breadbaking, and comes from Wernersville's kitchens. My dad gave me the book years before I ever ventured to the Jesuit Center on an 8-day retreat, and the bread is one of my boys' favorites. I know the recipe by heart: (2 1/4 cups of water, 1 tbsp yeast....)
A good substitute would be a sturdy white bread or large loaf of Italian bread or good torpedo rolls.

The Cat Came Back

...the very next day. "

Or so went the song by Raffi that we listened to for hours on end while driving cross-country with Crash and the Boy in their (and our) younger days. And so it went with Fluffy. The cat came back, the day after we came home.

We got home around 8 Thursday night to find an anxious note from our cat care person, still no sign of the Fluff, her food and water had gone untouched for 3 days. We called for her, opened doors and began peering under beds. No sign, until The Boy called from my office, "I think I know what happened." She had pried open one of the side panels to the air conditioner I had finally put in my office under the eaves and made her escape onto the roof.

Still, where was she that she didn't hear me call for her outside? No cat that night. Or the next morning. Finally, Friday afternoon I called again for her. The Boy heard her meow, as Math Man called, "She's at the [upstairs] bathroom window!" The Boy hugged her, then turned to me, "I'll always text you so you know where I am!" He's had a small taste of parental worry these last few days and he didn't care for it.

Four days on the lam, I can only imagine the adventures she had. Where does she go? Does she have another family? Where does she sleep? Though maybe the researchers at the University of Georgia have the answers: this piece on the secret life of cats ran on NPR yesterday! You can see the world through a cat's eye here.

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The photo is of the screen, as Fluffy used the track pad and arrow keys to pull down the menu, open a tab and tried to tell her own story!

Column: The cost of patience

CatholicPhilly.com is slowly rising from the ashes of the Catholic Standard and Times. This is my first column for CatholicPhilly...

The quote from Eliot's Four Quartets at the end was tucked into a letter sent to me by a friend while I was on retreat earlier this year. Chris has never been the soul of patience (though he's prompted me to write about it more than once), and I will admit that I was as anxious to know the results of his exam as he was (both as his mother and his teacher.)

The other thing I remember waiting for in summer was the ice cream truck, a once-a-week treat which taught me discernment and indifference both. Which treat? And what if my favorite ice cream truck didn't come?

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Like the dear that yearns for running streams, so my soul is yearning for you, my God.
My soul is thirsting for God, the God of my life; when can I enter and see the face of God?
Ps. 42:2-3

What is the price of patience? Thirty-eight cents a day, by my son Chris’ calculation. That was the price he was willing to pay to not have to wait three weeks to find out his score on his AP Chemistry exam.

There’s not much need for patience in the modern world, as long as you’re willing to pay the price. Ordering a book from Amazon? “Choose local delivery and you can have it today!” appears in an encouraging green. Want it even faster? A click and it appears in on my e-reader. Waiting is a waste of time.

Or do we pay more than just money to avoid a wait?

Summer when was I was young was all about waiting. Waiting for the change in pitch of the motor on the turquoise churn that meant a batch of my mother’s homemade vanilla ice cream was ready. Waiting for the raspberries to ripen. Waiting for it to be dark enough for the fireworks.

Summer’s waiting was about recognizing the moment when something was truly ready — not ‘nearly ready,’ not ‘ready enough,’ but fully ripe and sweet.

This sort of waiting always feels to me like a small dose of agere contra, the pushing back that St. Ignatius of Loyola recommended when we are overanxious and tempted to take shortcuts. Feel like cutting your prayer time short? Stay an extra five minutes instead, advises Ignatius. In a hurry to get to work and stuck in the Route 202/I-76 confluence? Let that car merge in front of you. Don’t pick the raspberry until it is ripe.

I remember sitting on the porch steps waiting for the ice cream to finish (in truth hoping that my mother would let me lick the paddle, an infrequent treat in a large family). I didn’t wander off to watch television, or read a book. I watched and waited, my longing ripened by my contemplations.

All these years later, I can still smell the sharp scent of salt and ice, taste the vanilla and cream, feel the roughness of the blue-flecked fiberglass bucket and see my mother’s hands as she carefully lifted the canister from the chilly brine.

In his reflection on this psalm of longing, St. Augustine remembers his own attention to what is around him, looking for God in his everyday experiences. He pondered what was around him, and longed until he had poured out his soul, until all he had left was his desire to see the face of God.

Those summer waits taught me how to long, how to let waiting be more than something to be endured. To learn to push back against the allure the immediate has, even if it is a bit bitter. To learn to thirst until I want nothing more — or less — than God. This is what patience pays.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
— T. S. Eliot from East Coker

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Photo is from ByTheLivingRoominKenmore at Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons license.

#RhetoricalDevices

"You can't use hash tags on Facebook¹," says The Boy reading my status over my shoulder, with an air of exasperation. It's not like he hasn't told me that before. It's not like I will pay any heed now.

I point out that the hashtag in question (#proudparent) isn't meant as a searchable marker for some tweet I'm making, but is a rhetorical device. Really, can you imagine anyone electively hunting up boastful parents on Twitter? (OK, I did - results are here.) It's a whispered aside, a letting slip of something slightly outrageous, an "oh, all right, if you must know..."

Susan Orlean had a delightful go at the semiotics of hashtags a couple of years ago. I love her description of the hashtag as a permeable barrier between what we can say and what we shouldn't, really, have let slip: "..the hashtag is like a bit of chicken wire between what you are consciously and deliberately saying, and what just happened to slip out, especially useful when you are making a comment and pretending that you absolutely, positively will not name names, and then, whoops, it just came tumbling out."

She later reports on their escape from Twitter and into written language. Two years later, I'm hardly cutting edge (something I'm sure my teens know).

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1. The Boy got a 5 on his AP chem exam. He's a sophomore in high school. He didn't take the course, but did all the work outside of school, and largely without help from anyone else. David McCullough might not think this is special, but I thought it worth a shout out.

Hark I hear the harps

As part of a summer organization binge (an attack precipitated by the finishing of the house renovations) I bought two new bookcases and have been electronically cataloging and re-shelving my professional books. This afternoon both boys were up in my office clearing their plans for the rest of the afternoon when Crash peers more closely at the shelf he's casually propped up against.

"A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin? Seriously, Mom?"

"If a library is reflection of its owner's mind, I'm not totally sure what my books tell tell you about me..."

"Knitting Know-How..."

"Dictionary of 26 Languages..."

Yes, yes, I know I've got ecclectic interests. Finally The Boy spys a small blue book, "Mangles, Mops and Feather Brushes?"

A reprinted book of household hints from the late 19th century. He opens it at random and begins to read solemnly, " 'Inspection of Linen. Fold carefully — with taste.' With taste?!"

We're all confused. Honestly, I'm happy if the laundry gets put away period, I don't care if it's been folded tastefully or even folded at all, as long as it's not in baskets in the sunroom.

They departed down the stairs, singing (in two part harmony) Dashing Away With A Smoothing Iron. I'm remembering a day when The Boy was 1/2 the age he is now (and half the height), invaded my office of an afternoon. And as they broke into "Hark, I hear the harps eternal..." I realized that I was hearing the sounds of heaven, right here and now.

Shifting Gears

Teaching The Boy to drive a manual transmission has made me think about how I know what I know — and how Ignatian application of the senses might help me push me beyond the knowledge that I can put into words (like how to shift into first gear).

"As a teacher and an academic, I spend a lot of time figuring out how to say what I know and how to get other people to do the same, which has a tendency to slop over into my prayer. Not only am I tempted to limit my conversation with God to what I can put into words, but a part of me is hoping that God in return will pick up the chalk and sketch out a series of equations and diagrams which make clear in every particular what I want to know...."

Read the rest at This Ignatian Life.

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Photo is of Crash Kid and my dad's Model A.

Ding Dong

Not as in Avon is calling.

In the afterglow of the Great Graduation Event (Crash's backyard party), The Boy suggested a game of Bananagrams. I am good at Bananagrams. It would be false humility to claim otherwise.¹ I don't. In fact, I tell everyone in the room. I'm really good at Banagrams.

So I join Favorite Facebook Nephew and The Boy in a round. I win. FFN is frustrated.²

We play again. Same result. In the middle of round 3, FFN resigns his position in favor of his mother, No-No, and Math Man takes over The Boy's spot. (FFN and The Boy go off to play some game at which I do not excel that resembles chess and uses lasers. They don't care who wins as long as it isn't me.) No-No and Math Man are at a serious disadvantage; not only are they taking over midstream, but are both novices.

Geek Guru tries to level the playing field by distracting me with a secondary conversation. I am mistress of the universe. I can talk and make words on the floor. "Bananagrams!" I exclaim proudly (not that this victory merits such).

Suddenly No-No looks closely at my tiles. "QUINTY?" she inquires.

Oh. No. I had created "SQUINTY," then siphoned off the S to use elsewhere. There is no redemption in Bananagrams. Should you declare victory under these circumstances, the round resumes, but without you. "Noooooo...."

From the sofa, Geek Guru begins, "Ding-dong, the wicked witch, which old witch, the wicked witch...." The rest of them join in.

Pride. It goes before a fall.

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1. I am good because the game favors those with larger vocabularies, good spatial skills and lots of practice. I spent a lot of time playing it with The Boy on vacation a couple of years back.

2. Note that FFN could destroy me in under two minutes with his eyes closed in any videogame. Probably in under 30 seconds. We all have our strengths.

Phaith: Become what you receive - Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi is celebrated this week (the date depends on your local diocese, the traditional Thursday or translated to Sunday). My column in this month's Phaith, on how meals shape our communities, large and small. Full disclosure: The table at my house rarely rises to the level in the (stock)photo that is shown with the article. Trust me on this one. And the conversation is not always, shall we say, elevated in tone. But there is much laughter and love....

"Dinner was almost cleaned up, the last dishes were stuffed into the dishwasher, and Chris was at the kitchen table neatly packing the leftovers while chatting up our guest. A cherry red apron over his jeans, Mike was sifting powdered sugar over the top of a chocolate cake. Kaitlyn bet him a cake that he'd get into Georgetown, and acceptance letter in hand, he's making good on the wager.

As he presents his creation with a flourish to Kaitlyn, wrapped and ready for her to take home, I notice that he's put it on my best cake plate, a wedding gift from a good friend. "Nice choice," I tell him. He grins.

The china cabinet isn't off limits to the kids at my house, so I'm neither surprised nor bothered that Mike has gone rummaging in it for just the right platter. He knows, too, that I believe in using the good dishes not only for big holidays, but also to mark somewhat less momentous occasions -- such as the end of semester breakfast with my students, where guests are perched on chairs, and parked on the carpet.

My kids have learned that meals are about more than refueling. It's a time set aside for us to be together, to hear how the day has gone, to laugh together."

Read the rest in Phaith.

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Photo is of Mission San Miguel's sanctuary. My parent's parish.