Please pray for the repose of the soul of a recently departed kinsman, and the consolation of his family. The deceased is the grandson (30-something) of the older gentleman whose soul you prayed for earlier this year. Long year of grief for their family.
***
Kids are bringing along history and religion to read during downtime at the funeral, and I’m putting off a few self-imposed deadlines. So if you’re wondering why it takes so long for me to _____________________, this is why.
If you subscribe to all the right diocesan newspapers, you might have seen this advertisement: 09052013 St Francis Shop ad.
Summary: You should attend On Fire with Faith. Not to hear me speak, but to watch me listen to the likes of this guy. Who is way smarter than me. And thus I quote him in my book, which you could get signed in between workshops, when I wander over to indulge my preponderant vice, spending too much money on books*.
Sheesh – get it signed by both of us, and get Christian’s book** signed, too. I’m not speaking. I’m listening. Good slate of presentations.
*People have figured this out about me. Remember that birthday party situation? I didn’t plan it this way, but it turns out large numbers of people figured the best solution to their penance problem was to spend alms getting me gift certificates for the local Catholic bookstore***. Smart friends! So now, to shop. Must make self wish list.
**Christian’s book is at least as good as mine.
***A few people picked up on some of my other vices — coffee, tea, chocolate, scotch, wine, alternative book-buying locations, etc. I had no idea you got presents at grown-up birthday parties. Kind of overwhelming. I have the coolest friends.
Since we’ve been speaking of wealth ’round here lately . . . a limerick for today’s feast:
When faced with a room full of clutter,
I’ve been known to piously utter,
“Help me to know,
what should stay, what should go?
Oh blessed Teresa of Calcutta!”
Your house is 25% cleaner, Jennifer. Don’t stop now.
In other news: Chris Tollefsen writes brilliantly at Public Discourse today. I’m a shameless Chris T. fan, so no surprise that I like the message. But I don’t get to say it as often as I’d like: This is far and away his best piece ever. That I’ve seen, anyhow. Go take a look.
In places NOT to look: Front Porch Republic, which I subscribe to but very rarely read, because publishing just a snippet for the feed reader is a very effective way to discourage me from reading your work, recently ran a piece about liturgy and limericks. The idea was spot on, unfortunately the chosen limericks were dreadfully lewd. Really? Was that necessary? No it was not.
To which end, perhaps not the most incisive wit, but making the same point as the FPR piece:
The rabbit who traveled by plane
said, “Security can be such a pain.
They opened my baggage,
and out fell my cabbage,
and I had to re-pack it again.”
The point FPR was making? A good genre, delightful in its context, is not necessarily the right genre for the holy liturgy. And another example, same rabbit theme, we have quite the collection growing*:
To my door came a poor little bunny,
who needed to earn some money,
“I’ll cut your grass for a dime,
one bite at a time–“
But in the end, the lawn looked quite funny.
See? Perfectly moral, g-rated limericks. It can be done. And the argument FPR wants to make is stronger when you acknowledge the genre isn’t used soley for smut. Show tunes are wrong at Mass not because Hollywood’s a den of sin, or because the cabaret / jazz / pop sound is always and everywhere associated with immorality. It’s because these types of music are about something else — something that can be beautiful and true and good and inspiring — but it’s something other than the worship of God.
And thus a final contribution for today:
On the feast of Teresa of Calcutta,
this pundit is likely to mutter,
“You’re housed and you’re fed,
but your brain is half dead,
’till you rescue your wit from the gutter.”
Happy Feast Day. Straighten up and fly right, FPR.
*The limerick fest began because, to my genuine shock and surprise, no irony there, my teenage boy does not love his poetry course for literature. I was stunned. A teenager? Not like poetry? Really? It’s all about love, death and self-centered dramatizing . . . that should be just the thing! Certainly was for me at that age. SuperHusband wisely suggested we begin with something a little lighter. And thus I succeeded, not in converting my skeptical teen, but in launching a festival of animal-themed verse among the the two youngest.
I’ll take my victories where I can.
Meanwhile, any poetry recommendations for less-romantic, very modern boys, who mostly read Dr. Boli?
Dear Pope Francis,
You have vastly simplified the menu for my birthday party. Thanks!
Jennifer.
PS: I suppose you will not be amused if I get medieval, and suggest a beer fast? To combine both events into one?
PPS: Another possibility: Since I invited everyone I know, most of whom are not Catholic . . . Maybe I’ll put out food, and put a sign up that it’s for non-Catholics only?
PPPS: Or we could get canon-lawish, and excuse ourselves. But then what would that say about us? Other than, “sent out invitations before day was announced”?
PPPPS: How about if I quick invite some people I *don’t* like, and thus convert it into a penitential event that way?
PPPPPS: Having a hard time thinking of many. Plus, would they even come? Or would dread alone make it penitential enough?
PPPPPPS: Or what if I plan to host a children’s birthday party in the morning, prior to my party in the evening? For two children? Yes? How would that be? The parents coming are all Catholic, so we’d be set, then? A morning of penance about the time you’re busy praying in Rome? Yes?
PPPPPPPS: Yes, you caught me. We’re cheating by hosting the kids’ party off-site, so someone else has to sweep after. Plus, tiny event, just a few friends. It would have been commendable to host both parties at my house on the same day, with the usual massive number of guests, instead of just a couple. I’m not so commendable. Hence my note.
PPPPPPPPS: It not necessary to call and chat about this. I’ll figure it out.
1. First of all, a warm welcome to the many readers who have popped in from Fr. L’s blog (or elsewhere). Make yourself at home!
2. Secondly, The home you’re making yourself comfortable in is mine. Let me remind you, I wrote a book on classroom management. I don’t put up with a whole lotta nonsense. I will happily tackle thorny issues on this blog. I will not mince words. I will take on the honest opponent, and skewer what ideas need skewering. But we don’t skewer people, and we don’t post rude personal attacks that are contrary to the dignity of the human being.
Period.
If I’ve tossed your comment into the trash, I haven’t banned you, you are always welcome to try again with better behavior.
And I do try to stick to my own rule, and will apologize and retract if you catch me crossing the line from vigorous debate to disrespect and ad hominem attacks. Because sure, I’m human, I can get carried away just like anyone else.
3. Look, I wrote something! My review of Sam Rocha’s book A Primer of Philosophy and Education, with favorite quotes and my personal thoughts on how Sam’s ideas relate to catechesis is up in two places:
Whichever you prefer. It fit both spots, so I stuck it at both, and only the titles are different. (So hey, click both links, so that you can be amazed by my incredible versatility in title-composing.)
4. Over at Catholic Writers Guild, I put up my latest update on the state of affairs at the CWG, VP-edition. The coolest part is this photo:
I love Wikimedia Commons.
Serious answer this time. As it happens, pay for evangelists works the same way as for anyone else.
If you have any choice about it, don’t accept less than what is needed to provide for the essentials of life for yourself and your dependents. Sure, living martyrdom is glamorous and all, but it’s an exceptional calling. For most people, choosing to live in squalor just makes you a pain someone’s rear in the long run. If you have the option, go for decent work that pays the bills every time.
If your employer offers you more than you strictly need, graciously accept. Use what you need, then direct the remainder towards some worthy cause. If your employer is foolishly overpaying you, save your excess diligently, because you’ll soon be looking for other employment.
If you’re the boss, pay people in this order:
Of course you’re going to do this badly. It’s the rare person who strikes that perfect balance between generosity and prudence. Keep working on it. If you tend to be miserly, commit acts of wanton generosity. If you tend to be wasteful, discipline yourself with acts of self-denial. If you tend to be scrupulous, find a sensible person to talk you off your ledge. If you tend to worry too little about your almsgiving and stewardship, feed yourself a steady diet of questions and better examples to kick yourself back on the right path.
It’s not complicated. Difficult, because you have to battle the just-a-bit-more demon at every turn. But not complicated.
Here’s my take on the evangelist’s pay scale:
If you work for free you’re just a volunteer. You must not be very qualified, and anyway, what you’re doing isn’t work, it’s just a hobby. It’s okay to impinge on your work hours. It’s also okay to make you feel guilty for not doing more of it.
If you work for a pittance you must not be very good at it, or you’d be earning more. Also, shame on you for accepting financial assistance from the government. You should go out and get a real job.
If you work for a modest living wage, you probably couldn’t do any better in the private sector, anyway. Also, how are your kids going to pay for college? You should get a real job.
If you work for a respectable middle- to upper-middle class income, you’re in it for the money. Don’t you know immigrants are living ten to a single-bedroom apartment? Don’t you care about people? Despicable professional Catholics. Also, you probably don’t care about the Gospel, just your paycheck.
If you work for a professional salary, commensurate with your skill and experience, you’re a sleazy money-grubbing con artist. It would be okay to work as an engineer, or an accountant, or a doctor, or even as a professor or an advertising guy, for that kind of money. But you absolutely must not accept a professional salary for doing professional work of the top caliber, if that work is related to the Catholic faith.
If you run a vast and highly accomplished organization, and accept a salary that vaguely approaches something sort of like a shadow of what senior managers and CEO’s in the private sector earn, you’re working your way straight to Hell, one paycheck at a time. Good Christians run car dealerships if they want that kind of money. Also, even though you’ve essentially walked away from millions of dollars in would-have-been wages had you worked with the same diligence in the private sector, you can’t be trusted to be generous and intelligent about how you spend your spare income. You might be able to sneak into purgatory if you pay enough taxes (leftist critic) or contribute to the pundit’s cause (right wing critic).
So, how much should an evangelist earn? About 25% less than the pundit.
So now what? That’s the question Sarah R. poses for us as we wrap up the summer-long study of Forming Intentional Disciples. You read this book. Is it going to change anything?
In answer, here’s my timeline:
2012 – People keep telling me I need to read this book. But wait. Book budget blown.
Fall 2012 – Acquire book via Catholic Company review program. Yay.
Jan 2012 – Write book review. Yep. It was that good.
Meanwhile . . . Fall 2012: Friend across town has been steadfastly organizing Little Flowers Lite one Sunday a month. Handful of Catholic moms hanging out in the living room while girls learn a virtue and do a craft in the dining room. Yay faithful friend.
More Fall 2012: Neophyte Dads Who Don’t Know Better do the Good Married Man thing and turn out with ladies for LFL. Bored. Feeling like third wheel.
More Fall 2012: It’s our turn to host LFL. SuperHusband is making his escape, when Neophyte Dads show up, observe Mr. Boy preparing for AirSoft battle with neighborhood hooligans friends. Mr. Boy gamely provides training and opportunities to suffer. Neophyte Dads get grass stains all over good church clothes. –> “Stinging Nettles”, the testosterone wing of Little Flowers Lite is born. Boys and Dads suddenly very gung ho about spiritual development of little girls.
Spring 2013: Monthly Sunday afternoon get-together of Catholic families => tiny stable Catholic community. Dads start doing crazy stuff like leading everyone in a Rosary before pot-luck supper.
More Spring 2013: Celebrity Internet Priest gives inspiring talk about What’s Killing American Catholicism. SuperHusband listens to wife talk about talk. Nods vigorously. Says, “E-mail Internet Priest. Our friends need to hear this.” Internet priest replies*, “Your friends need to read this book. You may have heard of it. Forming Intentional Disciples.”
May 2013: Jen mentions in e-mail to Sarah R. that forming book club is on now on to-do list. Sarah R. decides the whole internet should join in. Persuades Lisa H. at CatholicMom.com to be the host site. OSV happy, very accomodating.
June 2013: Real life book club forms. Invite a combination of LFL / Stinging Nettles Families and a few other likely candidates from parish and around town.
Meanwhile . . . May 2013, Homeschooling Moms get together to look at favorite text books, get ideas for coming school year. Friend from LFL/SN shows Jen program Jen wants to try. Jen knows she is too undisciplined to succeed on own. Says, “Could we maybe form a teeny-tiny co-op to meet every other week as we start the new chapter? Just enough to keep me honest?” Friend hesitates. She’s really quite busy. Jen makes puppy eyes. Friend says she’ll think about it.**
Early June: Handful of Homeschool moms meet at home of hesitant friend to get ideas for a co-op. Massive list of desired classes emerges. Pray for host parish to appear out of nowhere. Because there’s no Mass at the public library.
Middle of June: Jen phones Fr. Excellent, asks if maybe he’d consider perhaps possibly one day if it’s okay letting parish form homeschooling support group at parish. Fr. Excellent replies, “Don’t need to think about it. Yes. Go ahead.”
End of June: First real-life book club meeting for FID. One or two have read book or started to read book. Some have vaguely skimmed study guide. All get into lively discussion about WKAC.*** Decide to meet again, maybe even read book.
Beginning of July: Second real-life book club meeting for FID. A few more have read more pages. All agree need for evangelization is pressing. Conclusion: Wait a minute. Can’t really help others develop personal relationship with Jesus until my own is in half-decent shape. Determine that next meeting we should ditch book — goal accomplished — and go straight to becoming a discipleship group for ourselves.
Middle of July: Homeschool Moms meet to finalize proposed plans for co-op / support group.
More Middle of July: Pray Fr. Excellent will approve proposal.
More Middle of July: Fr. Excellent approves proposal in world’s shortest meeting, goes straight to helping us book rooms.
End of July: First discipleship meeting. Launch theme of loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind & strength, and neighbor as self. Because: Easy. Haha. SuperHusband displays his superness by preparing massive study for testosterone wing: Men and teen boys meet on screen porch, spend two hours studying theme of “love” in Scripture and in Deus Caritas Est. Ladies teach kids first few lines of the Latin Gloria, just ’cause, then do coloring sheet, chat and have snacks. Jen pleased with split format, allows SuperHusband to do research, Jen to borrow notes for ladies’ meeting following session.
August: The Month of Crazy. And yes, thank your prayers, the kick-off lunch for co-op went well. Catholic School folks turned out, and I really really like what I learned. What they are doing totally complements what we are doing. Thrilled to have established a means to channel young families towards the school.
Meanwhile, completely separately: Youth Ministry volunteer couple, now parents of several young children, realize parish needs ministry to young families. Starts hosting monthly event.
***
It’s beginning to look a lot like those multiple overlapping opportunities for finding a small group within the parish. We’ve got:
Do you understand how magnificent it is, to be able to say to someone you meet on the playground, “You might be interested in . . . ” and have a place to send them? Our parish was already doing good stuff. The usual complement of ministries – RCIA, religious ed, Legion of Mary, St. Vincent de Paul — you name it, doing things that need to be done, and giving folks an outlet for this or that part of the Christian life. But what has arisen over the summer fills some gaps. We had a big hole in the “parent of young children” department, and no way for our existing ministries to meet that need.
All these things are small. We’re talking a handful of families here or there. That’s how it should be. You can’t know 15,000 people well. You can’t listen to 15,000 people talk about what’s going in their life, or ask a burning question, or vent about this or that frustration in the Christian life. Lord help our priests, you can’t in 10 minutes on a Sunday say the one thing that all 15,000 people need to hear and know about in order to take their next step in building their relationship with the Lord. You can’t hear 15,000 confessions, or dispense sufficient pastoral ministry in the handshake line after Mass. It’s too much.
How does lay-run discipleship — the multiple overlapping opportunties — fit into this?
(A) Eucharist is the wellspring from which we ordinary lay Catholics draw our everything. That gives us the ability to create our little bits of lay discipleship about the parish.
(B) The Eucharist draws in people thirsty to God, like the sound of running water. A lot of times, people don’t even know why they’ve walked in the doors of the local parish. But they have. And you show them: Drink. They taste and they want more.
(C) Multiple overlapping opportunities for getting involved in small communities = chance to drink deeply of the Christian life. And make that climb towards the summit of Christian life . . .
(D) Which is the Eucharist. Foretaste of Heaven.
–> Where does Fr. Excellent and all those other sacraments fit in? If the Eucharist is the source and summit of the spiritual hike towards Heaven, the other sacraments are the outfitters, trail head, ranger station, and EMS. Or whatever you like. Fill out your analogy.
Fr. Excellent brings the Jesus. The rest of us layfolk have the mission of getting ourselves to the Jesus.
***
So that’s my change report. Get the souls to the Jesus. Doesn’t happen in a big giant talk. It happens soul by soul, in these small initiatives that meet the particular needs of the particular souls who’ve walked through the parish doors. Favorite part:
No matter what our particular charism, doing our individual parts to bring the Lord to others is the one thing that’s going to get our own souls ready for Heaven.
Sheesh that’s a marvelous system.
__________________________________________________________________
*Not exact words.
**Not strictly sure whether Jen made puppy eyes. But something similarly desperate.
*** WKAC = What’s Killing American Catholicism.
I’m late to the game this week, but the topic is a big one: “Expect Conversion”.
Throughout the book, Sherry Weddell keeps mentioning the one thing so easily overlooked: God isn’t just a Person . . . He’s a Person Who Does Stuff. With Humans. He shows up and does His part.
One of the offshoots of faithy-ism is a tendency to act as if God is off in a distant bleacher somewhere, wanting us to put on this or that great ministry program, so He can wave and cheer and go grab Himself another beer at halftime. Which is why when the SuperHusband and I hosted a local book club for Forming Intentional Disciples, we were pretty alarmed when people kept coming back to our house for another round. And we kinda cheated — we started with people who were already gung-ho Catholic types. Still, it surprised.
Turns out God’s interested in this whole “evangelization” thing. Like it was His idea or something.
***
When people complain about asking the saints for help, or complain that Catholics take this free will thing a little too far, I pull out the analogy — not strictly speaking an analogy — of the four year old helping Mom in the kitchen. It’s not that God couldn’t bake the brownies without us, it’s that it pleases Him to let us measure the cocoa and mix the batter. And that it’s important enough for our own good that we turn out and do our part, however messy and incompetent and desperate for His watchful attention — that He’ll wait until we’re ready to put down the Barbies and get to work.
Working with God is part of our education as adopted children — recall we are not angels-in-training (as if that weren’t a big enough destiny) — but in fact co-heirs with Christ. Thus it’s important we learn the family business.
***
What’s weird is that God will let us play with our fake food in the play kitchen for a mighty long time. Allow me to be very blunt: Mandatory “volunteering”, signed bulletins as proof of Mass attendance . . . all these managerial fixes to the glitches in our sacrament mill system . . . they are symptoms of a very serious problem. They are symptoms that we’ve turned our parish religious education programs into a cotillion.
Well, cotillion is a popular thing, and Catholic cotillion is a bargain compared to the Junior League. And plus of course there’s the part about how people really do desperately want to know, love, and serve God, so your program is going to draw comers, even if those comers have no idea what they are really asking for.
But if you’ve got piles of students churning through the program, and they’ll even come to Mass if you threaten them with missing their debut . . . you’re playing with fake food.
***
Fake food is easier than real food. It doesn’t smush. Doesn’t sour. Doesn’t fall apart because you overbeat it. It’s plastic and you can’t live on it, but it looks good.
Real food is not as impressive-looking as fake food. It takes longer to prepare, and it never looks as good as that shellacked foam burger-style sculpture thing in the picture on the menu.
Real discipleship is more work. The results are not so predictable, because it’s humans using their free will to build a relationship worked out over time, and with all kinds of back story complicating that relationship. But it’s Mom in the kitchen making real brownies, even if they do end up with 4-year-old finger prints and all the pink sprinkles in one corner of the batch.
Because God never brings fake food to the party. And He is a party God, no two ways about it. Kingdom of Heaven = Party, the parables remind us. So you say, “Lord, I wanna work in your kitchen with You.” And He’s gonna show up. And start baking. So plan for that.
Over at New Evangelizers: The Case for Catholic Fiction. And more specifically . . . the case for middlebrow, readable, not-so-literary Catholic fiction.
–> Though I have no beef with the more artful stuff. Bring it on. It’s just that I don’t know those titles so well. But Christian LeBlanc does . . . he loaded the combox with all kinds of grown-up titles. Smart guy.
I read kids’ books. They’re short.
