The View Up Here

I just finished a marvelous week with my family in Massachusetts and would be feeling refreshed if I weren't so tired. Actually, I do feel refreshed. My mind is clear and my spirit is refreshed, even if I need to go to bed earlier than my grand nephews' and grand niece's bedtime. However, I feel the need to blog since a couple things hit me during the past week that deserve airing. A close family member of mine is asking the tough questions about God, including, "If he's all-loving, why does God allow suffering of innocents?" The question was asked not as a philosophical exercise, but with righteous anger. Appropriately so. We should be angry at injustice and suffering. If we're not, we need to take Human lessons. Tonight as I was washing dishes in a daze, the answer rose up in my mind in a phrase: God allows suffering so that we can love. Allow me to 'splain. God has given humanity free will to either love each other or hurt each other. Thro...

Thank you for those who sent in more questions! Here are my best attempts at answering them. 1. "Anonymous" asked about celibacy , especially for a person who had led a sexually active life in the past. It's one thing to enter a celibate lifestyle as a virgin, it's another to have been married, etc. and then choose a life of consecrated celibacy. What about the aspect of being "best friends" with your husband - the emotional intimacy, private jokes, etc. How does one give that up or explain to a younger woman that she is giving all that up if she wants to be a nun? These are excellent points and questions, and they speak to a few truths about living the celibate life.  The celibate life is only a good thing if you are called to it! This is part of what is discerned by the woman and the proposed community. If someone who is called to live married life tries to live a celibate life, she probably will become bitter and won't be best able to liv...

Over the past few months, I've had many interactions with friends of mine that go way back - 20, 25, even 35 years - and they have asked some very good questions about this whole "discerning a vocation" business. I also picked up that a few of them had some concerns, which is a natural reaction, I think, if the process and the spiritual life inherent in the process is unfamiliar to them. Not to mention the actual concept of monastic or religious life. And for some, me returning to the Catholic faith and wanting to live a life within that context has been troubling. With all this in mind, I figured it might be good to do an FAQ.  Please click on the links I've provided for more info on specific topics and experiences. If you have any other questions, please send me a comment. Thanks for reading! 1.   I have been discerning a religious vocation (to become a sister or a nun) for almost four years, now. In that time, I have met with several and very different re...

As you know if you read this blog, I am discerning a religious vocation, which means that I feel the call to become a religious sister. A nun, actually, meaning that I am called to contemplative life. Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent DePaul http://stpatricksconventschool.blogspot.com /2012/03/three-nuns-at-ball-game.html Some folks, well many folks, still think of nuns as circa 1955 with flying buttresses on their heads, vows of silence, self-flagellation, and other eerie and dysfunctional behaviors. For certain, there were some practices that have been done away with. Others never really existed in the first place.  Active apostolate sisters have been out in the world with and without modified habits for longer than you think. But contemplatives are still out there too, in monasteries both rural and urban. I encourage you to look around in your local diocese or archdiocese for women's monastic orders and get to know them by going to Mass there, or even staying ove...

I promised in my last post that my next post (that is, this post) wouldn't be three months away. See? In certain circles, the term "discernment," as in "I'm trying to discern God's will for me," or "I'm in discernment," is used frequently. I have no problem with that. If you are struggling to find the "whys" of your life, you're discerning. It doesn't mean you have to be thinking about becoming a priest or a monk or a nun. You may already be living your vocation, but you could be unsure as to the why or the how of living that vocation fully and with joy. You might have the feeling inside that there is still something more, something elusive calling you... where? If this is the case, what you're feeling is the pull and tug of a God who loves you and wants you to live more deeply in God's life and peace. So you enter into discernment, and that's a good thing! But I've noticed with people that sometimes mo...

If you've looked at the news in the last two weeks, besides Putin, Syria, Obamacare's deadline, the missing Malaysian jet and ocean full of garbage, the horrific mudslide in Washington, the Twitter campaign for #CancelColbert , and other important items, you may have noticed that California's earthquake "drought" is over. If only it were the water drought that's over. In all fairness, it's better to have several smaller earthquakes to release pressure than to have it all pop at once. Even so... I'm sure there's some post-modern theory as to why humans created a theme park ride about "The Big One." (Universal Studios "Earthquake!" ride) The three moderate earthquakes of the last 2 weeks are more than enough for yours truly. There is something surreal and wrong  about the earth and the building you're in moving under your feet. The violent shaking, creaking, swinging, rumbling is the most horrific experience of my ...

Kind of like the commercials with the buff dude who says "I'm on a horse," only I'm not buff, nor a dude, and the metaphor I'm working with is locomotive, not equestrian. I'll get around to explaining this, don't worry. Time to get real:  I've been having a hard time in the last few weeks. I've been feeling pretty ragged, emotionally, spiritually, physically. I'm working two jobs, driving 200 miles a week to and from said jobs, and trying to coax all the moving parts of my life to work in harmony (financial parts, discernment parts, writing parts, teaching parts, etc.). It's a lot. And I miss my sweet little Spaz kitteh, who's been gone almost two months, now.  I'm better off than I was last year, because I'm doing things that I love, but I've still been obsessed with the gaping maw of "what am I really doing with my life?" It is, after all, a journey of discernment. And it's a sacred journey, as the subtit...

I know I said in my last post that I'd be writing about Aldi vs Wegman's today, but I've got something else I want to get into. I'll save that juicy morsel for later. I often teach character development in screenwriting with the following instruction: What does the character want? What does s/he need? The tension between those two answers will provide the inner conflict line throughout the film. Over the last couple of days, it's occurred to me that I am struggling with the same couple of questions in my own life. I have Wants. Lots of 'em. Some of them very secretive, very sexy, very selfish, very, well, "wanty." Sometimes Wanting drifts into Longing, which results in listening to too much Tori Amos (but is there really such a thing?) and feeling like a 19-year-old girl/woman with an achey breaky heart. Oftentimes, Wanting devolves into Wishing, and Wishing has an implied sense of Wanting the Impossible, and is therefore a big fat waste of time and ...

I really wish my house were clean right now. But I don’t have the energy or the stomach to clean it. This is my perpetual dissonance. Wanting a clean apartment – wall-to-wall carpeting vacuumed, kitchen floor swept and mopped, dishes washed, counter tops cleared and spotless, cupboards organized and easy to access, furniture dusted, cobwebs whisked away, laundry folded and put away, winter turtlenecks and sweaters swapped for spring tops and summer shorts in the dressers, kitty litter changed, garbage all collected and tossed into the dumpster, patio swept, bathroom swept, mopped, scrubbed, disinfected, polished, bed linens changed, windows cleaned, desks organized, books rearranged. Now really – would I expect anyone to do that in one day? Of course not. But do I feel like shit because I can’t do it in one day? Naturally! I think I have this superhero image of my mother in the eyes of a six-year-old doing all this work in one day. Saturday, to be exact. The day that eve...