This was a fun one. Partly inspired by an Exhale Taylor Swift writing prompt and partly from Steinbeck’s The Pearl, I wrote it with my nine year old in mind. She has asked to read my poems but as she firmly believes a poem must rhyme, I didn’t feel like sharing any of my recent ones with her. So it was fun to read this one aloud to her! Got some laughs.
cheerios crunching underfoot magnatile towers crashing down vroom of the roomba making its rounds look! look at this! can we read a book now?
wails, cries, as Daddy is leaving someone is always earnestly singing the same line over and over again – the toddler’s still determinedly grieving
tinkering on the piano, the same tune splashing in the sink – there’s no more spoons! can I have more? can you get a bowl? almost done with this, I’ll be there soon
falling hush of nap mid-day burrowing under blankets to read the tiny clicking of perler beads savoring the silence each of us needs
then a barrage of noise and backpacks can you sign this and give it back? can I go ask them to play with me? Dad’s home! dinner’s ready! – no more snacks!
evening sounds like teeth being brushed I’m sorry, will you forgive me, family prayer peace be with you, finding pj’s to wear goodnight, I love you, slowing the rush now one final song, and one final touch
As I’ve been getting back into writing again, I’ve been thinking about what I read and how it feeds me. In September I read a poem by Benjamin Myers and a thought he had about poetry, something along the lines of how poetry feeds a particular part of the soul. I was struck by this and his poem “Field,” and felt how I have been malnourished in this regard for a while. Anyway, my list is pretty much the Well-Read Mom book club list, that’s about all I can usually keep up with. So, shout out to Well-Read Mom! This is my fourth year in it and I love it, highly recommend. It’s nation-wide so maybe there’s a group near you! I especially like when it gets me to read and love books I wouldn’t pick up on my own.
January: -Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin -Summa Domestica by Leila Marie Lawler -The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot (was surprised how much I loved this, and discussing it and learning more about Eliot)
February: –True Grit by Charles Portis (picturing the movie in my head the whole time. A fun one.)
March: –Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (liked it, then loved it after discussing it) –Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy (helped me navigate some new parenting things this year! some good mantras to keep in mind – “This is a good kid having a hard time. I am a good mom having a hard time.” )
April: –Works of Mercy by Sally Thomas (“On Monday mornings I cleaned the rectory for the good of my soul.” one of my all time favorite novels. Like, the kind of novel I would want to write. Has some gut punching moments of grace.) -A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken (a reread for me but didn’t finish it this time)
May: -The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis reading parts of Anne of Green Gables series with Evangeline
June: –Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (didn’t finish but enjoyed)
July: –The Mysterious Benedict Society Books 2 and 3 (summer reads with Evangeline)
August/September: –Helena by Evelyn Waugh –He Leadeth Me by Walter Ciszek, SJ (a friend lent to me for my retreat and it was exactly what I needed. my mantra all fall was, “For what can ultimately trouble the soul who accepts every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God and strives always to do His will?” powerful words from a man who spent 20 years in Siberian prison camps) –Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (was suprised by this book! loved the narrative voice, how disarming it was, how deeply Christian a novel it is for a popular audience. and the ending is amazing)
September/October: –The Risk of Education by Luigi Guissani (still reading slowly) –Hannah’s Children, The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth by Catherine Ruth Pakaluk (surprisingly cathartic/encouraging to hear these women’s stories and really enjoyed discussing this with other college educated women in my neighborhood who have lots of kids)
November: –The Aeneid by Virgil (glad I read it, enjoyed learning more about it and Virgil, how many people and works have been influenced by it in the last two thousand years – crazy!)
December: –My God and My All by Elizabeth Goudge (biography of St. Francis. soooooo good. highly recommend. makes me want to visit Assisi someday.And read more of her novels.)
Overlook at New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, CA. Photo by The Manual.
Jesus knows how bodies work
Your hunger for truth, beauty, and goodness is real. Really take, really eat, really be fed. It is here for you. I am here for you. I had been going to mass for months and the real presence was my last obstacle. At a New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, CA, we gathered around the altar with a few other people at a daily mass, and as the priest spoke the words, “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you,” he held up the bread that the monks made there, and I felt in my body that this was Jesus, that he was speaking to me. It was less a command and more permission granted, affirmation given. You are hungry, and I am here to feed you. I was overwhelmed to be seen and known in this way, and I sobbed through the rest of this very intimate mass.
That kind of mystical experience of the eucharist has only happened that one time for me. I became Catholic shortly after becoming a mother, and my typical experience of receiving the eucharist is much more mundane. I’m usually herding a preschooler in front of me or holding a squirmy toddler. I don’t often feel that I have much of a devotion at all to Jesus in the eucharist. And yet, the grace is still there. He still feeds me. And he feeds the baby inside me, which is growing without conscious thought or effort on my part. Jesus knows how bodies work.
“If I had you, I would eat you up, I love you so much!”
In Caroline Walker Bynum’s essay, “Women Mystics and Eucharistic Devotion in the Thirteenth Century,” she explores how, for many women in this time, “The eucharist was … a moment of encounter with that humanitas Christi … For thirteenth-century women this humanity was, above all, Christ’s physicality, his corporality, his being-in-the-body-ness; Christ’s humanity was Christ’s body and blood” (p.129). These women had a profound understanding of Jesus’s experience of living in a body that impacted everything about how they understood him and their own bodies. “The humanity of Christ with which women joined in the eucharist was the physical Jesus of the manger and of Calvary. Women from all walks of life saw in the host and the chalice Christ the baby, Christ the bridegroom, Christ the tortured body on the cross” (p.130). And, in a way that seems crazy to us now, these women knew that that they could unite with Christ’s sufferings in their bodies and express their love for him in a physical way.
It is this “being-in-the-body-ness” that I experience when I am tired and distracted at mass. It is not removed from Jesus’s experience. He knows what it is like to be in a tired, distracted body. It is this “being-in-the-body-ness” I live when I look at my baby and am overwhelmed with love for this truly good, undeserved gift. In and through the body, this mystery of new life came to me. When I smother my baby in kisses and nibble at her chubby cheeks, that feeling of I love you so much, I can’t get enough of you, I just want to eat you, is not removed from Jesus’s experience either. God created us, in our bodies, with an appetite for what is truly good. Bynum writes, “Both in a eucharistic context and outside it, the humanity of Christ was often described as ‘being eaten’ … Anna Vorchtlin of Engelthal exclaimed, upon receiving a vision of the baby Jesus: ‘If I had you, I would eat you up, I love you so much!’” (p. 129-130) These thirteenth-century women knew, in a way I am just beginning to discover, that this appetite is real. We live in bodies that literally hunger for the good and beautiful, and it is Jesus we desire. This is my body, take and eat. He is here, to feed us.
Visitors join the monks around the altar at mass. Photo by New Camaldoli Hermitage
In the first trimester of this pregnancy, when I was feeling super tired and introverted, I found myself using the pregnancy as an excuse to get out of social commitments. I know we planned to hang out tonight, but actually, I’m pregnant and I just want to go to bed at 8pm (real text by moi). Right after that, I was invited to give a talk to some undergrad women for an Advent day of reflection. And I jumped at the chance – it did not even cross my mind to say no.
Before I left my work with campus ministry in California, one of my colleagues, Wes, spoke a word of encouragement that I’ve been thinking about lately. He said something like, I hope this next season of life would give you the chance to use gifts that you haven’t been able to in your work now. I was about to have two babies under two and move to a new state. I remember thinking, Interesting… I have no idea what that would look like.
Almost two years later, I’m seeing that this stay-at-home mom, Notre Dame grad-wife life has given me the chance to flex old muscles. Two months after we arrived, I started campaigning with brand-new friends and neighbors for family student housing to continue after the demolition of University Village – that was a wild ride that I got surprisingly fired up over (hello, eight wing of this enneagram nine). And little opportunities have popped up since then, that have tapped into my love for writing and public speaking, and have been doable with young kids and have just felt right.
Along the way, I’ve been learning more about myself. About what gives me energy and life, and finding the courage to say yes to those things. In the fall, I got connected with a very flexible, part-time editing job, helping students with undergrad and grad school application essays. I started this, my own lil blog, and have really enjoyed having a space to share some of my thoughts and reflections (with my ten followers, lol). And most recently, I wrote a post for the McGrath Institute’s new blog about interruptions.
There have been other opportunities that I’ve gotten really excited about, but the timing just hasn’t been right (like this new Catholic literary journal I found on Instagram that was accepting fiction and poetry submissions that week). I’m learning to be patient and trust God’s timing with this stuff more, rather than try to force things to happen, or be all angsty about it. And mostly it’s just been a cool journey of becoming more confident that yes, I do have gifts and strengths, and yes, there will be opportunities to use them, even in this season.
A new mom friend from Evangeline’s preschool shared this essay with me (thanks, Rose!) and I loved this part especially.
“But at my most hopeful I think that writing and art are essential to motherhood and vice versa. Each accesses the most ancient, the most universal, the most complex emotions. Each requires the nurturing of a new consciousness, a new being, a new way of seeing. Each is endlessly different and endlessly dull, endlessly challenging and spiked with constant disappointment and beauty.”
I need this reminder in the monotony of winter. As the newness of the new year lessens and January presses on with long dark mornings and gray skies. Each day is spiked with beauty, and each moment with my girls is endlessly different and endlessly dull. I marvel over the little sentences Zelie is putting together and how she plays independently with her toys when Evangeline is at school. I find myself surprised at the pictures Evangeline is drawing these days, the shapes she now makes, the colors she puts together. And I die with frustration when Zelie wakes up in the middle of the night and then naps through the morning spin class I have come to count on with near-obsession. Or when Evangeline needs to be dragged to the potty before she pees her pants. And something about the gray and the cold makes it harder for me to recover from these attacks of extreme grumpiness.
creativity, but not where I appreciate it.
All the while, I am looking for ways to create. To write, to share my thoughts. To add beauty to our home. To try a new craft or baking project. Winter lends itself to this, with all the time spent inside and inside my own head. And most of the time I’m not even thinking about my biggest winter project, which is constantly growing, without any conscious effort on my part. Week after week I am surprised to see how big she is and how my belly is growing. It’s just happening. Ordinary, ancient, and amazing.
One. Chris finished finals and we did our 2018 inaugural beach trip! Grandma got the girls super cute suits. We found a playground and had a chill time. Evangeline had fun running in and out of the very cold water until she fell over and got soaked and that was the end of that. Zelie was content climbing on Chris and eating sticks and being just way too stinking cute.
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Two. Chris’s roommate and best man from Stanford has been staying with us for the last week and a half. For Chris, it’s meant a buddy to watch the playoffs with. For me, it’s been a taste of living in community and I’m reminded that I like it. It’s nice having someone else with us for dinner and to play with the girls (and Kevin does the dishes while we do bedtime – praise!) We’re planning to rent a room to one of Chris’s fellow M.Div’s next year and I’m looking forward to that more now.
Three. Kevin got us tickets to Hamilton! I think as a thank you for letting him stay? Setting the bar high for future guests! JK, JK. JOKES. But it was awesome. Even the phenomenon that is Hamilton aside, I was struck by how amazing live performances are. We were asked (ushers yelled at people during the first song) to put our phones away and just sit and enjoy being present to these men and women who are brilliant at their craft. Refreshing. And a treat for me to be away from the girls and in Chicago for a day. I’m super grateful to my friends who watched them – when Kevin first told us he wanted to buy tix I thought, there’s no way we can go, but I asked anyway and ROSE AND KATHERINE ARE THE BOMB. #FRIENDSHIP
Four. I’m reading this and I see a lot of my own conversion story in his, and he reminds me of a lot of my friends. It got me working on a post on my conversion, which is fun to write, but still in my drafts.
Five. My friend Julia requested that our local library buy this new book that we both want to read (didn’t know you could do that!) and I’m next in line when she’s done. I spent some time journaling through a free ebook of Jennifer Fulwiler’s called A Guide to Your Gifts and it was so great. Her new book is about pursuing your passions while having a family and I was like, hm, I love the sound of that, but … what are my passions again? (Classic Enneagram 9, lol). So, this ebook was great for that and it got me all fired up. I have passions to pursue! I want to write a book! I want to get better at handlettering! I want to change the world! And then I felt like I kind of hit a wall. (I want to learn how to edit photos of my handlettering, but Photoshop/Illustrator/Whatever is so expensive! If you know how to do this for free, can you tell me how?) But I took a small step and committed to write each day for one week, not blogging, but seeing what came out (it was mostly poems). I missed some days and don’t know if I even made it a whole week, but it was something! Finding community with writing is something I would really love … waiting for that.
Six. One of the questions in that ebook was, “who are you jealous of?”Because we’re often jealous of people we see fully living out their gifts. And it got me thinking, man, IG often feeds my jealously/envy. And envy is the least fun sin. If you have any tips on combatting that, please share. I usually want to throw my phone away until I have a cute pic to post, which is terrible.
Seven. Inspired by Sarah and also Julia telling me that they can survive the winter here, I think I’m thinking about backyard chickens?? Part of me is like, ugh, chickens are gross. And the other part is like, we have this giant backyard, why not jump on that homesteading bandwagon and learn a lot and get some eggs out of it? #LAURAINGALLSWILDER4EVA #livingthedream
But, we shall see. Maybe I’ll wait til next spring. Oh and the seeds in our garden are growing!! So cool.
Glimpses of Joy 