7 Quick Takes Friday #20

This week has been little more than a blur of planes and hotels and meetings. I would not say that it has been an easy week -- and I ended it with a broken Lenten pledge, as you will see from this week's contribution to the Quick Takes Friday meme hosted by Jennifer Futwiler at Conversion Diary.

1. The week started out with our Saturday retreat for the kids from my catechism class. I always find it interesting that Jennifer’s choice of Friday as the quick takes day throws me into treating Saturday as the first day of the week. It is, actually, in Bahrain, where I have spent considerable time, so Jennifer has me working a Middle Eastern schedule again. I discussed the retreat a little in yesterday’s blog about Bart, an atheist in our catechism class. To summarize beyond Bart, I would say that the retreat, for the most part, was both bonding and spiritually fulfilling for teens and teachers alike. (in photo, teens from first-year confirmation class and others walking through the mission garden behind the church enroute to Mass)

2. Sunday was a stuffed day in more than one sense because I broke my diet – twice – and simply stuffed myself with good food, gaining three pounds in the process! (Yowie, how can one bad day undo a week of good days? It’s not fair!) It may not be fair, but it was worth it. We started Sunday at Mission Café in San Ignatio, following early morning Mass. A place that hearkens back to the 1950s/1960s, Mission Café charmed our guest, a Jordanian colleague currently living and working in Egypt who had come to my organization in mid-January to organize a new project for us. When he is in town, he comes to Mass with me, and upon occasion he, I, and Fr. Ed (and once, Donnie) have gone to dinner together. In Jordan, he lives at the foot of Mt. Nebo, and all of us enjoy his stories of growing up in the Holy Land. On the wall at Mission Café hangs a world map, and people put pins in the locations from which they have traveled to San Ignatio. No pins were in Jordan or Egypt, so we added both.

3. In the afternoon, a friend from our Old Mission Monday night prayer group and I drove to San Jose, where we attended Fr. Kevin’s monthly contemplative prayer session. I finally found someone to whom I could give my last vial of water from the baptismal site in Jordan: Fr. Kevin. It turns out that he does not have access to the Jordan River, and so I was pleased to carry (carefully) a vial of water to him for his congregation. Sometimes my friend and I stay for the 6:00 Mass there, but not this time since between Saturday night and Sunday morning, we had been adequately Massed. Two interesting topics came up at the meeting that I am still thinking about: the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous applied to “soft” addictions (perfectionism, workaholism, and the like). I had not thought of those things as addictions, but, of course, they are, especially when they interfere with time that could be spent in prayer but is put aside for some worldly goal that, in the long run, does not really matter. Second, Fr. Kevin, who is an assistant exorcist for the diocese (mostly involved with delivering people from demonic oppression, not possession), has made a CD on angels, demons, and exorcisms that is absolutely fascinating. The topic interests me because of the angels that I (and Lizzie) have run into and the negative beings that have upon occasionally appeared in my car, on my path, or in nightmares (the latter ceasing to be a problem once I started asking God every night to guard me in my dreams and let them focus on only Him and positive beings). I know that I am fortunate (or, more likely, protected) because I have been attacked far less often than many others.

4. Sunday ended with my picking up hamburgers at JJ’s Burgers for Donnie and me for dinner. JJ is a fixture in town. When we serve community dinners at the Old Mission, JJ donates the hamburgers, hot dogs, and cooking oil and even comes to flip the burgers himself. JJ’s mother-in-law is the formation director for our religious education classes. It’s a small town! The burgers are delicious, but I am sure they added to that extra three pounds!

5. Monday morning in San Jose I boarded a plane bound for Maryland, where I had a three-day summit to attend for directors of our branch offices who report to me. I flew through Los Angeles, and then had a wonderfully direct (read that: non-stop) flight to Baltimore. To get that direct flight meant spending a two-hour wait at the LA airport, not a bad “sentence” since I am a member of the Red Carpet Club (United Airlines), where I can unwind or work, depending upon the mood. On Monday, I did both. Seated beside me on the flight to LA and flying out with me, just one row apart on the LA-Baltimore leg, was a young lady who, like I, slept most of the way to LA. We first started talking as we got off the plane, and when I learned that she would be on my next flight, I invited her to the Red Carpet Club with me since I am allowed to bring in a guest. As we talked, I learned that she was a tax auditor for the IRS. Ah, hah! That’s my kind of luck – bring in a tax auditor with me. Regardless of her profession, she was a nice enough person and very grateful for the comfortable chairs and ability to hook up electronically. On many occasions, the Red Carpet Club has salvaged business dilemmas for me since I can get and send emails from there, as well as take care of any business-related requirement and re-charge my equipment. It is not a major expense since I have the option to get membership for frequent flier miles, and I have plenty of those. The last thing I want to do is get on another plane, so I give those away in the form of tickets to family and friends. A couple of days ago, Lizzie got online, using my ID information, to get a ticket for herself to attend the wedding of a friend in Indiana. She sent me my balance, with a comment. “I used 25,000 miles of your 175,000 miles. That’s an insane number of miles, Mom!” Yeah, tell me about it!

6. Thursday was a day of Doah, Donnie, and I heading for Los Angeles, but from different starting points. I flew in from Baltimore in time to be picked up by Doah and Donnie, who drove down from San Ignatio. It is about a six hour drive, so they had some time together, including stopping at the California state poppy reserve. That stop was a bit disappointing for them since none of the poppies were out yet. Even though it seems like California is eternal spring, apparently the poppies do not agree: they have their own season.

7. The reason we all headed to Los Angeles is that I am attending a religious education conference here for catechists. I had totally forgotten about that when I booked a retreat for our anniversary, and I had forgotten about our anniversary when I arranged to give the students in Lithuania a review class and their final exam on Friday and Saturday evenings (my time). In short, I quadrupled-booked myself, a first even for multi-tasking me. So we had to give up the retreat and donate the deposit as a scholarship to someone else. (Well, I did not have to do that, but it seemed only fair since the center counts on certain numbers of participants.)I should have known that all of this mis-scheduling was bound to lead to trouble, and it did. The first hotel, the one near the convention center, had poor Internet access, and I cannot give an exam to students in Lithuania while sitting in California if I cannot have good Internet access and the simultaneous ability to ship files back and forth and answer questions via Skype. In any event, Doah will be my proxy for much of our anniversary. Donnie reminded me that Doah was also my proxy for our Valentine's dinner this year. Oops! Probably not the best habit to cultivate although Doah does not mind!

I hope that your evening and weekend will be smoother than what I have encountered so far in Los Angeles. I admit it: I did get frustrated. Now I have to start the Lenten pledge anew!