7 Quick Takes Friday #7

Although it has been a week full of events, I cannot believe that it is Friday again already and time to contribute to the 7 Quick Takes Friday meme hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary. I am grateful to Jennifer for coming up with this meme; it is about the only time I truly look back on the near events of my life and take stock, which is a bit easier to do, sitting quietly in a hotel room in Georgia than in a corner of a frenetic room at home (the center of frenetic activity these days being our cats).

1. The week started out with lots of fun. Saturday night we held a joint birthday party at our local pizza parlor for Donnie and Doah, whose birthdays are two weeks apart, so we split the difference. The party began right after mass. Doah, Donnie, and I were there, of course, and some of our friends from church. Shane, Lemony, Nathaniel, and Nikolina showed up. Nathaniel was a tad hyper; after all, he was surrounded by game machines and lots of people, so he kept darting back and forth betwixt and between. Fr. Ed came -- it took him a bit longer to get there because he had to greet parishioners after mass; we did not. This was his first chance to meet little Nikolina who has been on the parish prayer list for months. He was delighted to see how happy she was -- until he got really close, making her bawl. (He said he has that effect on all babies!) Also part of the group were friends and their kids from Morocco. The Muslims and the Catholic priest hit it off quite well, and the two kids charmed Fr. Ed, and he charmed them. Doah took lots of pictures, but he seems to have taken his camera back with him without downloading them to our computer. If I come up with any, I will add them to the pictures on the post about Doah at Clan of Mahlou (and announce in the sidebar). Fr. Ed is very good to Doah, and Doah was pleased as punch when Fr. Ed announced Doah's birthday to the parish at the end of mass.

2. Sunday ended in calm splendor. A friend and I attend a contemplative prayer group, followed by mass, both conducted by Fr. Kevin Joyce at St. Lucy Church, quite some distance from us, but the once-monthly experience is always worth the drive. We are reading Christian Mystics by Ursula King, and that is informative. More important, the lectures and teachings of Fr. Kevin are formative, highly so. I wish it could be every week. No, let's be honest. I wish it could be every day! But life goes on, and we don't get those kinds of wishes. What we do get every day, though, is the opportunity for lectio divina, for contemplative prayer, and for spending time in the presence of God. God is never too busy for us; it is we who are too busy for Him.

3. On Monday nights, my prayer group from Old Mission meets. This Monday was our first film night. There are so many good Christian films that have come out in the last ten years that we cannot possibly see them all. After complaining about the fact that we just don't have time to watch even a few, we decided to do something about it and turn the second Monday of every month into a film night. We meet at my house -- Donnie got a good deal on a huge flat screen television last year -- where we can crowd around the TV on the sofa, chairs, bean bag, and floor of our small living room (the television takes up the entire wall, not because it is that gigantic but because our living room is small). Physical closeness makes for good comradeship, or emotional closeness. We watched Faith Like Potatoes. I would recommend it to anyone who has not seen it. Donnie, who is still agnostic but leaning ever more slightly toward believing, joined us. Yes! Then, when the movie had finished and we settled down to prayer, he retired to his office. Our group leader, a spiritual director, gave everyone a little book of advent readings and prayers. He left one for Donnie, too, and yesterday I noticed that Donnie had been reading it. Yes! Oh, my, God is patient, and in this respect, so am I. I know that the two of them will one day meet.

4. On Tuesday, I participated in a Veterans' Day ceremony that involved hanging a beautiful wreath at the "Berlin Wall" at work. (We were gifted years ago with actual slabs from the Berlin Wall after it was torn down; those slabs now stand on our campus as a memorial.) Since I am a veteran (Vietnam War era), the ceremony was very meaningful to me although originally it came about to honor the vets from WWI (the so-called "War To End All Wars" -- if only! We are still only dreaming about world peace and keeping the only home we have, i.e. planet earth, safe.) After the ceremony, I returned to work and found that one of the senior managers had offered a junior manager position to someone who worked in another of our directorates, someone with whom I have had an ongoing monthly lunch and discussion of spiritual matters for quite some time. She wanted to know whether we would have to give up that colleague/friend relationship and activity up if she were to take a job two echelons down from me in my directorate because if that were the case, she would turn down the job offer. "Don't be silly," I assured her. Our directorate is pretty flat, and I have these kinds of relationships with everyone from the senior managers to the rank-and-file. Moreover, we are a happy group of people, and spirituality, while we are supposed to separate religion and work, infuses our directorate. I think that is because we don't put up any barriers to God coming to work with us and helping us out.

5. Wednesday, wonderfully, was a holiday, the real Veterans' Day. While errands crowded in on me -- with all my traveling recent and upcoming, I had many things to catch up on and put in order at home -- I had a moment of peace at my oasis, Guadalupe Chapel. Daily mass is celebrated not inside the mission church but inside Guadalupe Chapel, a much smaller and more intimate place. Whenever I have a holiday or can play hooky from work, I come to the chapel for mass. The chapel is old; the aged, open-beam wooden ceiling tells the age. The cracked stucco walls tell the age. The rough-hewn cross on the wall tells the age. The lack of heat (we bring coats) tells the age. Built by the local Indians about the same time as the rest of the mission and the mission church under the direction of the Franciscan friars, in particular Bl. Junipero Serra, Guadalupe Chapel served as the primary church for some years until the mission was completed. It is peaceful there. Fr. Ed's homily touched home, Sr. M was back from out of town, and a friend from our prayer group who generally does not attend daily mass was able to make it, too. It was a small gathering of about a dozen people -- typical for the daily mass -- and a special half-hour: the oasis between a busy morning and a busier afternoon, a wonderful interlude with God. I wish I could have more of them.

6. I definitely doubled my pleasure on Wednesday. First, there was the noon mass, and then there was the weekly evening Bible study with an elderly member of our parish and Secular Franciscan from the chapter where I am a candidate. It is an interesting gathering and includes some teenage girls, their parents whose first language is Spanish, Sr. M, some other members of the English-speaking part of our parish, and a couple of non-Catholic outsiders. (Once, when we were discussing some aspects of the Hebrew scriptures in depth, one of my assistants, who is an recent Orthodox Jewish immigrant from Israel who studies daily with a leading rabbi in New York [I allow him to come a little late to work and work into the evening so that he can do this] came to our Bible study group and answered questions on interpretation of the same scriptures from the original Hebrew.) As a result, we end up reading the same texts in multiple versions: American Catholic Bible in several versions, Santa Biblia in several versions, the King James translation, and some other Protestant translations, and, on the one occasion, the original Hebrew. One does not come planning to relax but to study in the meaning of the word associated with the religious universities of Old Europe and the Middle East of yesteryear. What a blessing to have this opportunity in our tiny little town! Oh, but it is a mission town; that makes such a difference!

7. Down to the last day of the week: Friday. It is here, and I am here. Here is Georgia. I left early Thursday morning and arrived just a few hours ago. I was here in August, visiting one of our branches. They have some new things that they want me to see, so on the plane I hopped and here I stopped. It is more exciting to be here now, though, because in August my daughter and son-in-law, Lizzie and Blaine, moved to a city in South Carolina near the Georgia border where I am right now, she from New York and he from Illinois. Finally, they are working in the same state again! Funny how kids follow in their parents' footsteps. Donnie and I have spent a lot of time in our nearly 40 years together working in different cities, different states, and even different countries. I understand the stress of separation all too well. So, I look forward to seeing them back under one roof, along with recently "repaired" Princesse, the cat from Tunis, and her sidekick, Woods -- a huge Siberian woods cat who was found stranded in Illinois years ago. Yep, just like her mother, Lizzie is a cat rescuer!

And now I need to take a breath and get on with the rest of Friday. I wish you as good a day and weekend as I plan to have! :)