7 Quick Takes Friday #22

Amazingly, two weeks have passed since I last posted Quick Takes. Where did they go? This week's 7 Quick Takes, a meme hosted by Jennifer Futwiler at Conversion Diary, will therefore include events from the past week as well as from last week.

(1) The week (not this past week, but last week, the one I did not blog about because I was taking a week off from blogging for Easter) began on Monday with a near-deja vu experience. As I drove into the parking lot in my office a parade of five wild turkeys marched across the intersection where I was stopped at a stop sign. As I patiently waited for them to finish crossing -- all of them proud males -- from the skies parachuted a flock of hens, like fans following movie stars. The females landed and landed, and then scampered and scampered, chasing after the handsomely attired males, who seductively spread their tails so expansively that all but their legs were hidden. The experience reminded me of the rooster in San Ignatio the previous week who had held me up for several minutes. In both cases, I was late to a meeting. I can certainly come up with unique excuses. More important, these kinds of things slow down my life, and that is a good thing.

(2) The highlight of the past two weeks was attending Good Friday Mass at Old Mission, where I belong. I was supposed to go to San Antonio on Maundy Thursday. On Friday, I was to attend Mass at San Fernando Cathedral. I was supposed to, and I was resigned to doing it. Somehow, though, my travel schedule had devolved into working on Good Friday. I was not happy about it, but, as I told the senior manager traveling with me, as long as I could get away for Good Friday Mass, I was willing to limit the amount of my complaints, or at least the volume of them.

That was before he was told by our local director that the only time she could gather staff to meet with me was during one or another Mass time. This was definitely not going to work, and I did not limit either the amount or volume of my complaints. “Look,” I told the senior manager, “you are going to be combining business and pleasure there, anyway, since your family lives there, so why don’t you do the briefing for me. That provides legitimacy to your trip, and it allows me to return Thursday night from Ohio and be home on Good Friday, where I can attend Mass at Old Mission.”

He agreed. He agreed! I knew the briefing would be difficult for him, and I, as his supervisor, may still have to go back to field questions that arose and to prove that I do care about the people at our satellite offices, but I got to spend Good Friday at Old Mission.

I felt so gifted! I wanted to lift up my eyes unto the green hills that surround San Ignatio. I want to hear the local roosters voluntarily participating in the passion play as they do every year, right on cue with their crowing. I wanted to kneel on the uneven floor of the 200-year-old mission with its paw-printed tiles that took so long to bake in the sun that foxes, bears, rabbits, and all manner of God’s animals scampered across them and were memorialized in the floor, as were a couple of people buried under the floor whose stories are no longer known but whose names and years are printed on special tiles inset into the floor. That’s where I wanted to be. Large, beautiful cathedrals with huge crowds do not attract me. Our simple church with our parish cat, Sula, sitting on a pew between parishioners (whichever ones she deigns to grace with her presence that day), the feeling of being in a place that has been soaked in prayer, and sharing the sorrow and exultancy of the Triduum with friends are what attracts me. And I was able, after all, to be there.

And there is always Phinean, Fr. Ed's adopted, previously feral, black cat. On Good Friday, as if on cue, Phinean appeared from nowhere, trotted down the aisle before anyone had a chance to stand up and move forward for the veneration of the cross, approached the cross and, really truly he did this, crouched beside it, as if he he were venerating it, then turned and faced the congregation. (People talked about that all weekend; obviously, we do not live in a high-crime or politically exciting area!) Fr. Ed did not say anything. He has come to expect such behavior from Phinean, who also spends entire days sleeping in the Christmas creche every December. He told us long ago that Phinean has a right to attend Mass because he is a Catholic cat! (Not to be outdone, Sula attended Easter vigil, sitting quietly and humbly in one of the back pews beside some chosen parishioners.)

(3) Last week, before Easter, I spent the week on a business trip at Ohio State University in Columbus. I was accompanied by two peers, my counterparts who direct other divisions in our organization. One of them, a woman about my age whom I will call Patricia (not her real name), was on the same flights with me, so we had the rare opportunity to pass the time in chatting, rather than involved in work tasks. She and I have known each other for 20 years but have never talked about anything of a spiritual nature. I guess the topic came up because of my refusal to travel to San Antonio, it being Good Friday. It turns out that she is also Catholic, but more than that, she is a Third Order Carmelite and Formation Director for the local Carmelites. Now, to understand how amazing this is, one needs to know that I have been in formation with the Secular Franciscan Order for three years but have not professed. My personal spiritual experiences have been more Theresian than Franciscan. Moreover, I had just come out of an intensive period of discernment and what I believe to be divine tasking with the Franciscans, a story that is too long to share here but about which I am preparing a post for my Modern Mysticism blog. Just two weeks earlier, I had achieved peace with the situation, deciding to leave the Franciscans -- thank God, I had not professed because any profession would have been my choice alone under the pressure of friends; I have not felt God leading me to profess -- and explore an association with the Carmelites. That is where I really think God is leading me in spite of my comfort with the modest Franciscan lifestyle. However, at first I had some doubts because I could not find any local Carmelites. I tracked down the coordinates of a group 20-30 minutes north. The phone numbers did not work out. So, it was quite extraordinary for me just to happen into this conversation with Patricia, whose group is located 30 minutes south of where I live and in the same place where I work. I should have learned by now that very little truly just "happens." I will be attending my first Carmelite meeting in two weeks!

(4) Columbus was a great place for me to be because my brother Rollie and his family (three sons, two of them married with children) live there and in the outlying rural area around Columbus. My sister Victoria lives in nearby Michigan, so she brought her younger son and came to Columbus (the rural part) for a family cookout, hosted by one of my nephews. I met both nephews' wives for the first time and their children (two little boys and a girl). Both wives are named Jane! And they are both delightful people. My nephews chose well. My niece once removed, 5-year-old August, was delighted to meet a new, big-kid, relative, and we chased together around the house and yard, playing. I found interesting differences in political opinion with my brother and sister who represent middle America much better than I do, but we are the 8-pack. Those differences are unimportant. We laughed a lot, reminisced, and enjoyed each other's presence for the first time in, ulp!, seven years!

(5) On Easter Sunday, it was time with the immediate family. Shane and Lemony had already made plans to celebrate with Lemony's family, so Donnie and I gathered up Noelle and Doah, and off we went to Hometown Buffet in Salts for Easter brunch, which was bound to be a better deal than trying to eat something I might attempt to cook. Although we had not been there in two years, mainly because Doah, the most inveterate Hometown Buffet fan, moved to San Jose two years ago. Nonetheless, Doah and Donnie are unforgettable (compared to easily forgettable me who blends in with any group anywhere), and the manager very seriously told Doah that macaroni and cheese, Doah's downfall, had been removed from the menu. When he saw Doah's crestfallen face, he exclaimed, "April Fool's!" Doah carries April Fool jokes well into the ensuing next months, and the manager had remembered that. Needless to say, it was a pleasant experience, even for Noelle, who has been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster since Ray died. Of course, we killed our diets, but I am sure we will recover. Interestingly, we all take different approaches. Doah walks; I count calories; Lizzie (living and working now in South Carolina) spends hours at the gym with a trainer; Donnie does a lot of techno voodoo in determining foods and amounts; and Noelle just shakes her head in wonderment. However, all of us have lost weight, so we shall continue on our separate paths toward the same goal.

(6) Back at work on Monday (for one day before leaving for Hawaii), I confirmed that I had not been fired for refusing to go to San Antonio on Good Friday. I also found out that the world goes on without me. The presentation in San Antonio was fine without me. While I was out, we had to find three people to send to Afghanistan immediately to help with some work there. My assistants identified one already working for us who was willing to go and found two among applicants to work for us who would also be willing to go there. Actually, we all have to be willing to go there. One of my senior managers went there last month, and once we get an office in place there, I will also need to go there. I am not the one who sets up these things; my senior managers do that. However, I do have to provide quality control, so ultimately I get to travel (willingly or unwillingly) to all our remote locations. Actually, Afghanistan sounds interesting, and I have already started to learn a few Pashto words. (At least, I can read the alphabet; it is the Arabic alphabet plus three letters.)

(7) Now I write from Hawaii, where the rain has been playing havoc with the Internet. As the plane lifted off from San Francisco on Tuesday, we left behind the scalloped coastline of California, passed over a seemingly endless expanse of blue -- not sky but ocean, and then finally descended into thick mounds of white cotton candy, which turned into a white stew with whispy vapors and ultimately gave way to sparkling ground covered in and surrounded by water. Yes, we had landed on the currently wet island of Oahu. Given the rain that has had me stepping in a lot of puddles, a fickle Internet, and the fact that I left my briefing material back in California, I have had every right to be very frustrated, but something happened when I gave up frustration for Lent. I learned the triggers that cause me to become frustrated and for the most part I can now avoid them or refuse to let them be triggers. So, I did not become frustrated, but washed my shoes in puddles, took a long walk for health reasons while trying to find my way to my room and getting hopelessly lost, recalled how one briefed without powerpoint in the old days, and otherwise felt grateful for the opportunity to be more creative and more health-oriented. Yeah!