A different kind of luxury

How much stuff do you need? I had a wonderful lunch today, cooked over a mud hearth. Instead of quantum mechanics, I taught two students how to thread a needle.

We brought a gift from Pennsylvania to Kamikatsu - a piece of stained glass made by Wayne Stratz, riffing off the photos I had taken at my last visit to Nakamura. I bound photos of Wayne at work to show to Nakamura - and he very much enjoyed showing the students the hearth and tea pot that Wayne had captured in glass. The photo at the top is of the onions that got folded into the soup for lunch.

The adventures of the crew are here.

Column (Redux): Doing Dishes

(Michelle is on retreat here, but thanks to the scheduled post feature, she virtually inhabits this space as well. The ability to bilocate used to be considered a saintly characteristic....)

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times March 27, 2008 - the very first one I wrote for the Standard. It resurfaced as I packed for a retreat where one thing on my mind is what it means to dispose of things. What I discard does not simply vanish, what responsibility do I take for what I acquire?

When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you just caught.” So Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore full of one hundred fifty-three large fish. Even though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come, have breakfast.” [Jn 21:9-12]

It’s nearly 6 p.m. and the lab is dark. My students have gathered up their things and retreated to the dining halls for a well-deserved meal. I’m in the small departmental kitchen, up to my elbows in hot, soapy water, washing the mugs we used at the mid-afternoon break.

“You could use styrofoam cups,” offers a colleague, clearly perplexed at the sight of the department chair doing the dishes. My offhanded, “We’re trying to be green” satisfies her, though truthfully, the environment is the least of my reasons for taking on this mundane chore.

How else would I have known how many of my students this year drink milk, not coffee? Do they like chocolate chip or lemon cookies? Each week I brew less coffee and make an effort to pick up a quart of milk.

Slowly, over the course of the semester, I grow to anticipate what they need — I hold the signs in my hands, they’re not tossed aside in the trash. It’s in my power not to do the dishes, but I suspect I’m missing something critical if I don’t.

As I read this passage from John, I am caught not so much by the miracle of the groaning net, as I am by Jesus’ anticipation of the needs of the men He had called to serve His body, His Church.

The fire is lit, there is bread waiting — made ready with His own hands, not called down like manna from heaven. “Come, have breakfast.” Appended to a Gospel rich in theological reflection on the mysteries of the Eucharist and the mystery of the Incarnation, I wonder what inspired the author to record this decidedly unmiraculous encounter, this unadorned invitation.

In her essay “The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and ‘Women’s Work,’” Kathleen Norris remembers being struck how, in the Mass, “homage was being paid to the lowly truth that we human beings must wash the dishes after we eat and drink. The chalice, which had held the very blood of Christ, was no exception.”

She reflects that our culture’s ideal self aspires to be above the doing of “humble, everyday tasks.” If we must wash the dishes, we want to make the work as undemanding as possible — get paper plates and toss them. Let someone else take care of the trash.

I suspect that the early Christians hearing John’s Gospel struggled as much as we do with the uninspiring chores of daily life — with loaves of bread that do not multiply and nets that do not fill with fish at a word. And so John’s heady and mystical Gospel ends by reminding us of the sacredness of the quotidian, of the daily.

We follow Christ not only through His passion, death and resurrection, but in the everyday ways we tend to each other’s needs. “Come, have breakfast.”

As we join the Apostles in encountering the risen Lord in our daily lives, may we be inspired by Christ’s example to become quotidian mystics. Finding God in the dishes, the laundry and the making of breakfast.

---

God our Father,
work is your gift to us,
a call to reach new heights
by using our talents for the good of all.
Guide us as we work and teach us to live
in the spirit that has made us your sons and daughters,
in the love that has made us brothers and sisters.
Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Books: Form or Function?

Just as I'm getting used to the idea that December is here, the January issue of Family Circle showed up in my mailbox. (Yes, I know, it's hardly the New Yorker, but can you say "middle school magazine drive"? and the cookie recipes are great….) Between the January hiatus and now lie a myriad of projects: grading, new kitchen cabinets, one more column to write (Christmas). I should have tucked it away for a cold grey afternoon break with a cup of tea.

Alas, I'm a sucker for anything that promises to help me tame the chaos in my house. And right there on the cover, hovering over the cinnamon buns in a cast iron pan is the line: NO MORE CLUTTER.

"Shelves crammed end to end with books usually look cluttered." I'm excited, maybe they will have some advice for the aspiring-to-well-ordered academic household. We have bookshelves, plural, in the dining room. And every other room in the house (ok, except the bathrooms -- too steamy!). And they are all crammed end to end with books. Personally, I've never counted books on actual shelves (as opposed to on desks, floors and chairs) as clutter, but I'm willing to learn!

I eagerly turn the page to find this suggestion: "Group books by color or size so that they work well together visually." Somehow I suspect this person and I don't quite have the same idea about the function of books in a household. On second thought, reorganizing my shelves upstairs (Psalms has just outgrown it's original spot and had to get pushy to find a shelf to occupy) I discovered that it might not be such a bad idea. My desert fathers tomes are all appropriately desert toned, and my Rahner collection tends to shades of blue and white….maybe it could work.

What do I really need? Even more than a full time housekeeper and cook or house elf? A house librarian.

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Photo is of the books I took with me - and artfully arranged, with flowers! - in the hotel on my last trip to Southern University to talk about contemplative practices.

Gyrovague

gyrovague, n. an itinerant monk. From the Greek gyrus- (circle, circuit) and the Latin vagus (wandering).

It's not a compliment - at least in St. Benedict's mouth. "The fourth kind of monks are those called gyrovagues, who spend their whole lives seeking hospitality in province after province, monastery after monastery, staying three or four days at a time; always wandering and never stable...Of the most wretched life of all these it is better to remain silent than to speak. Leaving these behind us, therefore, let us proceed, with the help of God, to make provision for the cenobites–the strong kind of monks." [ed. note: I've left out the worst of Benedict's characterization of the wandering monastic - which I feel safe saying does not apply to me.]

The last of Ellis Peters' wonderful mystery novels about Benedictine Brother Cadfael, Brother Cadfael's Penance, takes up this theme. Cadfael leaves his monastery, to which he's vowed stability, to go to France. His abbot worries that Cadfael will become a gyrovague. Cadfael ultimately returns, though it was a struggle and he ends doing penance prostrate on the floor of the abbey church (a place I've actually been, though Cadfael is quite thoroughly fictional).

I'm packing up to leave one more time, for a short residency in Virginia. I'm having a hard time putting my clothes into the suitcase, I've no desire to leave again quite this soon. I've ended up packing far more than I usually would, carrying along some comforts of home (hot chocolate, a vase for flowers with the notion I'll stop at the supermarket near the campus) and tons of books. And so this time I'll drive instead of taking the train. Returning via I-95 may be penance enough, no need to prostrate myself!

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Photo is of Shrewsbury Abbey church. From Wikimedia commons.

Burn these clothes

After wearing the same clothes for 36 straight hours of brutal travel, I wanted nothing more than to burn them, or toss them down a oubliette, or throw them into the replicators to have their molecules re-arranged into something (anything) different.

I settled for a good wash. And a very long shower.

Last traveling mercy? A "ten minute beat up" by a lovely young woman staffing the express spa (isn't this an oxymoron?) at Heathrow. The massage left me in such a puddle I wondered if I'd be able to get on the plane.

Column: The Sluices of Heaven

For the record, it appears that 1 cubit is 45 cm.

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard and Times on 20 August 2009.]

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, and on the seventeenth day of the month, that very day all the springs of the great deep burst through, and the sluices of heaven opened. And heavy rain fell on earth for forty days and forty nights. — Genesis 7:11-12

It hadn’t been raining when I left early for Mass, but as I rehearsed the psalm, I realized the sanctuary was growing ominously darker. Soon rain was pounding a tattoo on the slate roof of the church. The front doors opened to reveal sheets of water rippling in the wind — and an utterly drenched Chris, who had ridden his bike over only to have the heavens open on him as he arrived.

“Does anyone know the conversion between cubits and centimeters?” joked my friend Lisa. It truly seemed as if the sluices of heaven were open wide and we should all be building arks.

When Mass ended, I piled the sopping bicyclist into my car and headed home through the rising waters. My thoughts were on dry clothes, a cup of tea and the remaining loads of laundry from camping — I was not seriously entertaining thoughts of floods or ark construction.

I wonder what those on the earth were thinking when the great flood came; when did they realize this was not just another storm but a catastrophe in the making? My moment of truth came when, laundry basket in hand, I flipped on the basement light to find water lapping at the bottom step and inexorably soaking the boxes we had foolishly left on the floor until we could get around to sorting them.

Muttering imprecations, alas, not under my breath, I mustered my sons to help me deal with the sodden mess that our basement had become. For the next eight hours we mucked out the mud and water and hauled up what could be salvaged and out what could not. There was a lot of time to talk, to listen and to think — about arks and floods, about pasts and futures, about what to keep and what to toss.

It had been a while since I’d delved into the story of Noah from start to finish. It appears but twice in the three-year lectionary cycle, in Lent and over a few days in Ordinary Time. Away on a retreat, I decided to spend some time soaking in those three chapters of Genesis.

Rather like my basement, which I will admit is a jumble of outgrown toys and boxes, the narrative of the great flood is a tangle of two perspectives. The vivid voice of the Yahwist source woven through the precise and prosaic tones of the priestly authority brings unexpected life to a story often reduced to a recitation of the animals boarding two by two to amuse small children. There were depths in it I had forgotten.

God asks Noah to save everything that “has the breath of life” and to bring along what might be needed to provide for their needs and the needs of Noah’s family. Sifting through what was in my basement brought me to reflect on what I thought I needed to keep safe. As I put away things on higher shelves I began to ask myself, is this something I would have taken on the ark? Do my family or I need it? Does it breathe life into our lives? Or should I let the floodwaters take it?

In the end my basement was a cleaner and less cluttered space, but the clearing out had gone further than the physical bits and pieces. With so much space, I had always given into the temptation to hang on to things, to keep or get things “just in case.” Then God sent a flood and a chance to begin anew.

“Do I need this?” I now wonder before packing something away in my ark of a basement. Maybe not.

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Father, guide us, as You guide creation according to Your law of love. May we love one another and come to perfection in the eternal life prepared for us. Grant this through our Lord, Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. — Concluding prayer from Morning Prayer, 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Role of Mature Females

Overheard on a Shark Week episode playing in my sun room: "She is a mature female, a perfect candidate to carry the transmitter."

The researchers did not expound on why a mature female shark was preferable to a male (mature or not) in this context, but I have some theories. I'm the only one in my family who carries a purse, for a long time it was a large hobo bag. I could be depended on to have tissues, snacks, amusements, a pen and enough space to stash the extra stuff my male outriders did not want to cart around in their pockets - keys, wallets, phones. Ditto on bike expeditions - I have saddle bags, so "could you carry the extra water? jackets? snacks?" If you need something carried on a trip - long or short - you asked the "mature female" in this primate troop.

Post the Exercises I have deliberately downsized my bag, chosing not to have something to cover every contingency along every time I leave the house, as a reminder of how much control I do (or do not) have of my life. It's been a helfpul ongoing meditation - but the men in my life are still trying to readjust to having carry their own stuff.

See this shark's purse anywhere??

column: God alone is enough

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 19 March 2009]

Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than a great fortune with anxiety. — Proverbs 15:16

There is a math joke that says that mathematicians are God’s way of turning coffee into theorems. Or in my case, tea into words. On sabbatical leave this spring, I’m spending many hours writing, a cup of tea always within reach. I seem to bring a new spoon up every time I make a fresh cup. On a good day of writing there might be more than a half-dozen spoons scattered across my desk.

“How many spoons do you have?” wondered a friend, slightly aghast, when I mentioned that you could track my scholarly productivity by the daily spoon count.

“At last count? A few dozen, maybe.” I responded sheepishly.

When I was in graduate school I knew exactly how many spoons I had — four. If I had more people than that for dinner, my guests had to bring their own silverware! Now I have spoons for more guests than my house could hold. Enough that I might not notice how many have migrated to various spots in the house for a week or more.

In his 1967 encyclical, Populorum Progressio, Pope Paul VI reminds us, “The pursuit of life’s necessities is quite legitimate; hence we are duty-bound to do the work which enables us to obtain them: ‘If anyone is unwilling to work, do not let him eat.’ But the acquisition of worldly goods can lead … to the unrelenting desire for more … Rich and poor alike — be they individuals, families or nations — can fall prey to avarice and soul stifling materialism.”

Do I really need all those spoons? Searching the house for spoons I had left lying about and loading them into the dishwasher, I contemplated this verse from Proverbs. I wondered if tending to my current surfeit of spoons — and other worldly goods — might be taking time and attention I would rather devote to other things, might indeed be stifling my soul.

Lent is a season of fast; we undertake to deprive ourselves of what is necessary. Fasting strips away the excess and invites us to reflect how much is enough — not only of food but also of all the material things in our lives. In calling the Church to a renewed sense of fasting this year, Pope Benedict quoted St. Gregory’s Lenten hymn Ex more docti mystico: “Let us use sparingly words, food and drink, sleep and amusements. May we be more alert in the custody of our senses.”

Haunted by a vision of a Dickensian chain of clanking spoons pursuing me through purgatory, I’m finding myself gradually more alert to the unnecessary things that have collected in my life that stifle my sense of God’s providence. I look to strip out the excess, not just during this short season of Lent but permanently.

In Lent, or outside of it, God alone is enough.

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Nada te turbe, nada te espante, todo pasa;
Dios no se muda.
La paciencia todo lo alcanza;
Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta;
Solo Dios basta.

Let nothing disturb you, nothing distress you. All things fade away.
God is unchanging.
Patience obtains everything.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone is enough.

— Found on a bookmark in St. Teresa of Avila’s breviary

Minimal Surfaces and Maximum Storage

Math Man has been know to refer to my purse as a black hole - particularly after one memorable night. There was a raging ice storm, I had to be at a board of trustees meeting. Math Man parked his car for me at the far end of campus, and took my tiny Mini home before things got truly dire out. At the end of the meeting, I couldn't find my car keys. I dug through my bag, certain I'd put them in there. "They must be in my office," I thought. A quarter-mile trudge across campus through sleet and ice, to my office. A colleague lets me in, but no keys.

No keys? I search under papers, and in the few odd spots I might have tucked them. Not there. As a last ditch effort to avoid calling Math Man and confessing I had lost my keys, I emptied my bag on my desk. Bingo. The keys. Where were they when I was looking for them, I wondered.

My current theory, hatched as I dug through things to tuck into my briefcase before a trip yesterday, is that my purse is roughly speaking a sphere (at least when I have it pretty full). A sphere is a minimal surface, the smallest amount of material that can enclose a given volume. In other words, it has the most "inside" stuff in the least "outside" stuff. No wonder I can't find anything! It's all in the middle...

Lasting treasures

The Boy and Crash are hanging out with their cousins this week at the sea side. Today they all went to the arcade. They collected tons of tickets to exchange for "stuff". She of the Book opted for one small ornament to put on her dresser at home to remember the vacation by. Crash, The Boy and Perpetually Tired Teen? Gentlemen of instant gratification. Things that go "pop" and candy topped their list. The most lasting thing they acquired? The Boy's scary mechanical hand...

Time shifting

It's the start of ordinary time and I've moved out of one volume of my breviary into another. Various pieces of my life are tucked between the covers: prayers cards of all sorts (my mother's funeral, a friend's daughter, one from a retreat director a few years back, St. Michael); photos (my kids); a bookmark (a pre-Raphaelite angel); notes (twelve points on humility from St. Benedict, a scripture verse from my spiritual director); and other ephemera of my life (a shopping list - butter, eggs and flour, a cartoon - Baby Blues, a prayer - for patient trust, a strand from the prayer shawl knit for a dying friend)

Tonight I'm staying in the old novitiate at Wernersville. It's a good moment to take stock of what should stay, what should go, what I need to be reminded of. Not just in what's held in prayer (or held in my prayer book, at least), but in my life.

Cat in the bag?

The cat actually isn't in my bag -- she's asleep on the sofa next to me, but earlier today she was enjoying exploring the contents of my purse. Inspired by Kathryn, I dumped my bag on the bed to see (a) if there was anything useful in it; (b) if it could shed some weight and (c) whether there was any uneaten chocolate there! Yes to (a) and (b), but not (c).

Oddest things in my bag: a clementine (I ate it)
Heaviest item: breviary
Lightest item: paperclip (ok, there were 10 paperclips in there?)
Least useful item: lipstick (can't remember when last I used it)
Most useful item: Moleskin with everything in it from my agenda to important phone numbers to notes for writing

And I had 4 pairs of glasses in there? What's the oddest thing you carry around?

Velvet SUVs

Where does a 400-lb gorilla sit?

Anywhere it wants to, goes the joke. Where does a 6000 lb SUV stop to pick up kids? Same answer, it seems. Watching an SUV stop in the middle of a traffic lane on a major road to pick up kids today got me to thinking about why people drive these infernal machines. (Full disclosure: I drive a MINI and ride a bike, which makes SUVs look seriously big to me.)

Parking is tight near where I live, and watching an SUV do a 10-pt turn to get out of a parking lot can be diverting, but it makes me wonder why people who live here buy these enormous vehicles. Unlike the ranch country where my dad lives, there is rarely a need to go off road here to pick up your mail or take the trash out. They use more gas, make more pollution, dump more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, require larger parking spaces and increase congestion (because of their height, cars tend to "hang back", so fewer cars can move through an intersection at a time - watch the next time you're behind one!). They're bigger, dirtier and scream, I've got lots of money!

In Victorian times, velvet drapes that were so long that they pooled on the floor were all the rage. They, too, took up more space than was needed for their function, and were "dirtier". And of course, the reason for having them was to subtly advertise your wealth. I can afford something that is way bigger than it needs to be, and the staff to maintain it. And we all know what happened to the British Empire, eh?