2008 – My life in review

Live life to the point of tears – Albert Camus

Highs & Lows

This year started with the purchase of an airline ticket to London and planning my first trip to Europe with my sister. As it does, life seems to move quickly from high to low and a few weeks later I was remembering the life of my dear friend’s mother. Questioning a faith that was intriguing to me I started searching deeper within the walls of The Church and my heart. My pride suffered a deep wound as I found myself drawn closer to my Savior during the season of Lent & Easter. I celebrated the marriage of another dear friend and caught her bouquet. (still waiting for that promise to pan out...) Shortly after I learned that the job I moved to Nashville seeking would be no longer. (On most days I still miss it very much although in all honesty there are things I don’t miss about it.) The high point of losing my job was an almost 5 month paid vacation which started with the trip I began the year planning. Hiking in the Peak District... walking in the places Jane Austin wrote about… Guinness at the Little John…Walking in the footsteps of the Fab 4 in Liverpool (and London)… and the footsteps of William Wallace in Stirling. Learning about scotch, where else but Scotland… Mass at Notre Dame… the top of the Eiffel Tower… looking at Paris from the steps of Sacre Coeur… Celebrating my birthday at the Louvre and later over wine out of a juice box with my sister in Paris. (Pretty much the best birthday EVER!)… Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe… eating Mr. Whippie’s ice cream with chocolate flake in the grass under the London Eye… listening to a string quartet while sitting on the hardwood floor at the National Gallery… Big Ben at noon… H&M… dinner at Yo! Sushi… The Wine Crucifix at the Tate Modern… The next four months was a mix of rest, peace, friends, babysitting, a lot of reading… and a bit of job searching. I fell deeper in love with CS Lewis and spent the months of July and August reading and rereading all of his fiction (and some of his non-fiction). At the end of August I started a new job. I also realized that my year long inquiry of the Catholic Church was going to end my journey as a protestant. I tackled starting a new job and eventually got the hang of it. I lost my Grandmother and with her my last blood connection to that generation. I became Catholic, I gave my first confession and received the Eucharist… Life Changing. I gave thanks with my friends and celebrated the Incarnation with my family. I can’t tell you if I’m still crying from sadness or joy as we watched a home video of our family Christmas 10 years ago that included the Grandma I lost 2 months later. Hearing her voice again after 10 years was bittersweet… both a high and a low.

Gains & Losses

losses

a dream… well a few of them

my job

my grandmother

gains

a passport, and two stamps in it!

knowing what my sad eyes look like

more amazing friends

reawakened love of reading and deep thinking

a different perspective on life, from my knees

Reconciliation & The Eucharist

learning deeper surrender to a God who knows so much more of who I am than I do myself.

So to 2009 I raise my glass… “Bring it on!”

God Help Us All

When sworn into office Obama will be using the same Bible used by President Lincoln on March 4, 1861. This is the oath he will say:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. [So help me God]"

He may or may not add the last sentence… we’ll just have to wait and see.

We’ve worked so hard to sanitize God and Religion out of government, how was this overlooked? Why the heck are we still using the Bible and asking God for help?

Not all, but most of our Presidents were sworn into office using a Bible. (Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in on a Roman Catholic missal!) So is using a Bible a personal preference? Is it the man that gives this Book meaning? I think not, but then what meaning does the Book have all on its own? It is Truth and acknowledgement of a higher power. What have we lost over the past 200 years that was present when Washington placed his hand on the Bible and made an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution? His actions point at an answer... The balance between Church and State.

Humanly speaking, the time of Advent must have been the happiest time in Our Lady’s life.
The world about her must have been informed with more than its habitual loveliness,
for she was gathering it all to the making of her Son…
It must have been a season of joy, and she must have longed for his birth,
but at the same time she knew that every step that she took, took her little Son nearer to the grave.
Each work of her hands prepared his hands a little more for the nails; each breath that she drew counted one more to his last.
In giving life to him she was giving him death.
All other children born must inevitably die; death belongs to fallen nature;
the mother’s gift to the child is life.
But Christ is life; death did not belong to him.
In fact, unless Mary would give him death, he could not die.
Unless she would give him the capacity for suffering, he could not suffer.
He could only feel cold and hunger and thirst if she gave him her vulnerability to cold and hunger and thirst.
He could not know the indifference of friends or treachery or the bitterness of being betrayed unless she gave him a human mind and a human heart.
That is what it meant to Mary to give Human nature to God.
He was invulnerable; he asked her for a body to be wounded.
He was joy itself; he asked her to give him tears.
He was God; he asked her to make him man.
He asked for hand and feet to be nailed.
He asked for flesh to be scourged.
He asked for blood to be shed.
He asked for a heart to be broken.
The stable at Bethlehem was the first Calvary.
The wooden manger was the first cross.
The swaddling bands were the first burial bands.
The passion had begun.
Christ was man.
This, too, was the first separation.
This was her Son, but now he was outside of her; He had a separate heart:
He looked at the world with the blind blue eyes of a baby, but they were his own eyes.
The description of his birth in the Gospel does not say that she held him in her arms but that she
“wrapped him up in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger”
As if her first act was to lay him on the cross.
She knew that this little Son of hers was God’s Son and that God had not given him to her for herself alone but for the whole world.

Caryll Houselander

advent

may i be so bold to ask You...

Please hurry.