Sula, the Cat, Came to Confession

Tonight Fr. E arranged for six priests to be available for confession prior to entering the Christmas season. Our prayer group met briefly, then went to confession as a group. Sr. Maria and I helped Ruby, the disabled wife of our recently deceased Bible Studies director, get into the church for confession; it took some work, for which Ruby was very appreciative for it was the first time she had been to confession in a year, she told us. Our prayer group, which Ruby recently joined, is faithful about going to Christmas and Easter Pennance services, which are blessed by an abundance of priests, unlike some parishes.

I felt bad because while six priests were there, quite a wealth, considering that we have only two parish priest (Fr. E who celebrates the English Masses and Fr. M who celebrates the Spanish and Latin Masses), the other priests coming from a nearby parish and the local retreat center/monastery, only a small number of parishioners showed up. We hear so much about a dearth of priests. Yet, when we are blessed with them in abundance, we take that fact for granted. I am pleased that our prayer group, at least, always shows up in force.

Sula, our parish cat, shown above in a photo from an Easter Mass since I had no camera with me tonight, also always shows up. She was there tonight, taking care of the parishioners. She would sit beside one until he or she went up for confession to one of the priests, at which point she would look around, spot someone waiting, and move on to sit beside that parishioner. Since Ruby went before me, she had to wait for me. When I finished, I found Sula sitting on the pew beside her.

If the Holy Spirit resides in cats, then, for sure, the Holy Spirit is in Sula. If only we all were as faithful as she!

7 Quick Takes Friday #47

See more 7 Quick Takes Contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.

It must have been a really full week, and yet it did not seem so. However, as I sit here, trying to remember what I did, I cannot remember a thing except eating turkey yesterday at Old Mission and cleaning BIG pots and pans afterward. Oh, well, I will start with that and perhaps the rest of the week will pop back into my memory. Senior moments already? Or, just an overfilled memory?? (Ooh, I hope the latter...)

1. So, okay, yesterday. Old Mission Church puts on a feast for the entire town with donated goods. It looks like we fed about 400 yesterday, which, counting kids, would be 25% of the town. It is a good place and time for everyone to get together. The mission is the center of the town's life, and Fr. E is pretty much considered the town's father. (I think he looks at it that way, too.) Doah and Noelle came; Shane and his family had their own event in a nearby town with Lemony's family. I was able to snatch a couple of pictures. On the left is Donnie, Noelle, and Doah with a family friend, Bennie, who was working the serving line. On the right is Sr. Delores, who lives at the local convent for Sisters of the Atonement (Franciscan order) along with Sr. Maria, whom I have mentioned before. Sr. Maria was not in town; she went to the central valley to be with her biological sisters. It was, however, nice to have Sr. Delores, Sr. Catherine, and Sr. Mary Catherine with us at the feast. I believe some of the friars came down from the monastery at the retreat center since they usually do, but I missed the first wave this year -- had to pick up Noelle and Doah -- and so may have missed them. Saw some folks from there at Mass earlier in the morning, though.

2. Ah, now I remember Wednesday. It was a day of rubbing elbows with all the folks who work with me, which is really great. Too often I am at meetings at headquarters or at meetings in other cities. Being in Seaside the entire day of Wednesday and in and out of my office gave a different color to the day. All morning, the junior managers presented their programs to all the senior managers and some visitors, telling us of their accomplishments during the last quarter and their concerns for the next. That was a good discussion. The day ended with an all-staff meeting to welcome new faces and say goodbye to old friends moving on to other jobs through promotion or new positions.

3. It's working! Now I remember Tuesday! Tuesday was hell day. I had no less than THREE meetings scheduled at the same time for every hour of the day. None of them were my meetings, i.e. none that I had scheduled for my staff and could therefore postpone or cancel. Some were at headquarters (a 20-minute drive) and some in my building. Some were mandatory financial and personnel meetings; others were entertaining high-level visitors. I passed to my deputy all the visitors. That took me down to two meetings simultaneously, and I found other senior managers to take over those. Whew! Talk about exhaustion! (My sister says that she really likes the idea of triple-scheduled meetings because it gets them out of the way faster!)

4. Monday was a meeting day, as well, but also one of crisis resolution. My boss was grumpy, which did not help because he was trying to solve problems in ways that I knew were not supported by regulation. So, I had to maneuver around that approach. Also, one of my best and most essential senior managers had his pay level (which is about 50% of what he could make elsewhere) attacked by the head of the personnel office who is trying to remove the retention bonus I gave him when he was offered a job elsewhere at double his currently embarrassingly low salary. It seems to be a personal vendetta, and I am still working on trying to fend that off. I was really happy when time came for our prayer group.

5. Our prayer group is as much a faith formation as a time for prayer. We include both, as well as singing. We have just finished reading and discussing Richard Rohr's Things Hidden, from the point of spiritual direction (the co-leader of the group is a trained spiritual director which is likely why we have moved in this direction). We liked doing that so much that we decided to try out another book for the next few months, Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life. Has anyone read this book? It turned out that everyone in the group had the book at home, but no one had read it yet. Good candidate for our meetings! On Monday, we had a new member show up who was really hurting because of very recent trauma in the family. We spent most of the time, then, in prayer with and for her. It was appropriate timing and probably not a coincidence.

6. Sunday -- yes, I am remembering now -- we had a meeting of the Secular Franciscan Order at the St. Francis Retreat Center nearby (well, nearby for me -- I could almost walk the distance, but most members come from much farther away). I brought some sugar-free baklava (yes, there is such a thing -- order it from shilla.com), which everyone liked, especially the thought that it was not causing bad things for diabetic systems. Sr. Delores (yes, the same person pictured with Doah above) is our relatively new spiritual advisor, and she led a beautiful prayer service at the beginning of our meeting before we got into the experience sharing, Franciscan rule discussion, and baklava eating.

7. And then there is Saturday, and I am still pulling a blank. It would have been great had I stayed home and vegged out, but that is not me. Staying home is a vacation; the only time I get to do it is when I take a stay-cation. There is no better place in the world to be than in San Ignatio Since where I really was remains a mystery, at least for now, I am giving you a couple of pictures of San Ignatio to enjoy.

Wishing you a pleasant week -- and one that you will remember!

7 Quick Takes Friday #18

My second week in a row at home! What pleasure! And now it is time for this week's contribution to the Quick Takes meme hosted by Jennifer Futwiler at Conversion Diary.

1. The saga of the friend that I had to "fire" on Friday continued this week. Last week I promised the ending, and here it is, but first, a recap from last week: "I have to fire a friend, currently working as a junior manager, for poor performance. (I did not hire her; my boss forced her on me against my better judgment. Now, he has some embarrassment, too.) Ugh! Unfortunately, this relatively new junior manager, in three months of training, was unable to learn even the basics of management. I had a team of six people mentoring her on various aspects of her job. All of them came to the conclusion in recent days that not only is she untrainable but also her pride and lack of self-awareness preclude anyone's ability to train her. So, the decision was made to fire." On Friday, she was supposed to see the senior manager, her supervisor, at 1:00. At that time, he would have given her the bad news. Well, instead, she sent him an enote, saying that she was ill and going home. Later in the day, she popped up in my boss's office on another matter, and he ended up being the one to tell her that she was being reassigned as a rank-and-file employee, that she did not have the skills at this time for being a manager. His involvement seemed like poetic justice. On Monday, she met with the senior manager and got the bad news -- again. (None of us knew what had transpired on Friday.) He said she was stoic, but it turns out that she was prepared. A little later, she wrote a note to all her employees, saying that she had decided to leave her position and had asked to be reassigned for reasons of health. Wow, she seemed to have taken it all very well, and if she wanted to save face by announcing that it was her decision and health-related, we were all willing to look the other way. I did not get a chance to talk to her on Monday, but Tuesday, before going home, I dropped by to say good-bye and was walking with her to go out the door when she started sobbing -- and sobbing and sobbing. So, I led her into my office and talked to her for more than two hours. She exhibited a complete inability to look at herself objectively, but I was able to bring her to peace with the decision to replace her. I don't know how I was able to do that, but it really helped that while talking to her I was very aware that God was with us and in her -- after all, a little piece of God is within all of us, that is what binds us as a body of believers, right? Clearly, guidance I had asked for was given, and I am very grateful to God for my sake and for hers.

2. I learned this week that my beloved Fr. Terry, whom I can consult for just about anything, is leaving the area. He will be working as a chaplain at a retirement colony for friars. I suppose it is an appropriate assignment since he is 82 years old, but he acts -- and clearly feels -- much younger and has been very active in our community, at Old Mission, and as director of the local retreat center. Everyone loves him; I cannot think of anyone who does not or who has not benefited from his years and years of experience in walking with God and advising God's people. When I called to say goodbye to him, he told me that I had been "a light" to him in the past three years he has been here." He certainly knows how to make someone feel happy. If these were more than kind words and this were really true, then I am infinitely grateful to God for allowing me to play this role!

3. A sad event took place on Sunday. The mother of Fr. E., our parish priest, died from breast cancer. Fortunately, Fr. E. was able to get home to Ireland before she died and be with her during her last hours. Today the funeral took place in Ireland, and concurrently we held a rosary for Fr. E's mother at Old Mission. People turned out in force, and various parishioners led the service. At the end, Fr. M, the Latin Mass priest, gave a final benediction. Sula, our parish feral cat, came in before the service, came up to me for some petting, then found herself a seat on the pew across from me between two men. Except for nestling on someone's coat during communion, she sat up proudly between the two of them during the entire service, just as if she fully understood what was going on and was participating. Fr. M went over at the end of the service to greet her. I love this parish! (Photo is of the statue of St. John the Baptist on the Old Mission grounds.)

4. I had very good news from my cardiologist today. I was down another two pounds, and he is happy with my rate of weight loss. I am down 13 pounds since mid-January. My blood pressure is also down, and he reneged on this threat to replace my very mild medication with a stronger one. He is also allowing me six weeks before my next visit. He is still concerned about my heart although I am certain all is fine. Anyway, I have never seen him quite so relaxed about it. Yes!

5. I also had a good Arabic lesson today. Since we have a visiting manager from Egypt, who is originally from Jordan and speaks the dialect of Arabic that I knew, I asked him to talk to me in Arabic for a half-hour each morning since I am losing my proficiency in it for lack of use. Often, it feels like pulling teeth to be able to communicate well. Today, however, I surprised him -- and myself -- by spending nearly the whole time, talking about the theology of St. Paul, in particular in regard to his propensity toward dialectic thinking (i.e. thesis, antithesis, synthesis). I was so pleased that I could actually handle a rather complex topic with my limited Arabic, which might become less limited if I had more opportunity to use it.

6. Shane, Lemony, and kids spent the weekend in San Francisco at the Chinese parade and other activities. They go there every year for this celebration and decided it might be okay this year, too. Things are looking up for them, and I will indeed soon get around to writing the Clan Rising post I promised for the Clan of Mahlou blog. It looks like Shane will have a job perhaps as soon as April. A former employer wants him back but cannot offer a job until he passes a security clearance. They have put the clearance process on the fast track and assume that it will be completed by some time in April. (Here is a good example of why it is never a good idea to burn bridges when leaving a job. Shane left under pleasant conditions, and so coming back was a possibility -- and, thank God, they just "happened" to have an opening.)

7. Well, I am going to have to wrap this up pretty quickly and get to bed before the midnight hour fully approaches. Tomorrow morning I have to get up at 5 a.m. in order to travel to north with a team of people from work to an all-day meeting in Los Altos Hills. Oh, joy! A bus ride! (I am packing dramamine!) I have no idea where Los Altos Hills is located other than in somewhat north of us, so I assumed that it must be somewhere around San Francisco (or perhaps closer, near San Jose). Since I am not driving, I suppose I don't need to know. That is good; I already have too much extraneous information in my little head!

Hoping that you have a great weekend and will get some more sleep than it seems that I am in for!

7 Quick Takes Friday #10

Time again already to contribute to the 7 Quick Takes Friday meme hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary! This time, I will not do a day-by-day review since the days were so full as to blur one into another in retrospect. So, instead, I will share the seven events that I best remember.

(1) Early in the flip between last week and this one, one of the most senior people from headquarters appeared in town without much notice. After an all-day meeting, he left behind a staggering new budget to manage and an overwhelming amount of work, including the need to set up three new branches next month and several more worldwide later in the year and to hire about 100 new people immediately and more later in the year. My head is still spinning; so are the heads of the senior managers to whom I will delegate much of this work. One is currently on Christmas break in Germany; he says he is glad he made it there before all this came down on us. Not to fear -- he will get to share our stress when he returns; we will be sure to save a fair amount for him!

(2) Nathaniel's birthday is Christmas day (December 25). Back in 2001, he was quite a Christmas present! To avoid dividing attention between the two events, Shane and Lemony celebrate his birthday earlier in the month, and he gets to choose the location. This year, we celebrated Nathaniel's birthday this past Saturday, and Nathaniel chose Sapporo Restaurant. He loves sushi and delights in the hibachi cooking.

(3) Sunday was such a restful day, and I needed it! Fr. Kevin, priest at a parish 45 miles north of where I live, teaches contemplative prayer "for busy people" once a month. His deep spirituality and talent at teaching has helped me understand much about my contemplative experiences. We use Ursula King's helpful book, Christian Mystics, but Fr. Kevin's ability to distill essential information from throughout the ages is even more helpful.

(4) Another priest cusped my horizon this week. Fr. Terry called me to thank me for some Russian chocolates I dropped off for him for Christmas and mentioned that he would be leaving the St. Francis Retreat Center in January for a parish about three hours away. Having a big mouth, I spread the word to our prayer group, and, devastated to think that Fr. Terry, who has been a de facto spiritual advisor to many of us and who was instrumental in the establishment of our group a few years ago, would not be in our immediate environs for long, we planned a potluck at my house for him next week. As it turned out, I had misunderstood. (I need to practice speaking English more often.) Fr. Terry was only going to the central-state parish on an interim basis, to fill behind an ill priest. So, now we are all happy -- and we are going to have the potluck, anyway, because we will latch onto any opportunity to let Fr. Terry know we love him!

(5) Our prayer group meeting was curtailed by our parish's penitence service that began a half-hour later that same evening. So, we went to confession as a group. Fr. E had brought in several local priests, including two who speak multiple languages, a necessity in our community. I patiently waited my turn to confess to either Fr. E. or Fr. Terry, when they suddenly walked out, there being more priests than were needed. That left me with a choice of three priests whom I knew only on a hello-goodbye basis, with no idea of what kind of confessors they were. The first one who had an empty chair was Fr. M., our Latin priest. I approached with some trepidation because I barely know him at all but knew him to be traditional and strict. He generally prefers to use the screen, and it was set up in his corner of the church. However, he did not require that of me. (I am not a confessional/screen type.) In fact, he was so gentle and kind that I immediately felt comfortable with him -- and I saw him in a new light. I am so glad that I went and that I had the opportunity to confess to Fr. M.

(6) One evening this week we ran out to a Kohl's store in the nearest large town. We needed some mattress straps. Finding them seemed to be an easy enough task. However, we could find no sales person who spoke English, and I did not know the name of the item we wanted in Spanish. Donnie quickly became frustrated, commenting that this was America, so where were the English speakers?! I lamented the limits of my Spanish! (We are two very different people.) As we walked toward the exit, having given up, we passed a Mexican friend with excellent English. (How does that sort of thing happen just about every time I need it??) My friend told us the name of the item, and that ended that problem. However, along with improving my English, I think I need to improve my Spanish!

(7) Today, when I arrived home, I found a surprise: flowers. Now safely ensconced on a table in Donnie's office where Intrepid, our herbivore cat, cannot eat them, they had been sent from a professor in Michigan, whom I mentored through her dissertation-writing years. She just began a new position this year as an assistant professor, and she wanted to thank me for my support that she attributed to landing her current job. She would have gotten it without my help and with her talent, but expressions of gratitude are always pleasant.

And now, may you find your weekend strewn with flowers!

A Day Off? A Matter of Definition!

Many thanks to all of you who have wished me well and prayed me well! Finally, I seem to be coming back to life. Not that I have completely avoided living -- or working -- while feeling mostly dead! Anyway, I think the flu is behind me; just some stuffiness and little aches and pains reminding me that perhaps I am not in top condition yet. Still, I managed to drag myself onto the plane yesterday and reach my Maryland destination. Today I led a meeting with a major client, did some training for the local staff, put out a fire at our Georgia branch, raised a ruckus over a stupid decision back in my office in California, conferred with the director of the Maryland branch over lunch and in the afternoon had a joint conversation with his boss (my direct report) back in California about various issues, had dinner with my administrative assistant from the days when I worked in Jordan (quite a surprise -- she is visiting her children who are in graduate school here), talked to Julie in Virginia about a possible visit after the conference since Shura (the dying-child-artist-now-healthy-adult whom we rescued from a Siberian hospital 15 years ago) is in town from Russia (another surprise) and did some initial networking to set that up with others who would want to see him, and then went to the airport to welcome a professor/guest speaker from Jordan who will be at the conference I will be attending at the end of the week and got him settled in the hotel, after which I turned to email and the like. Oh, and some scattered moments for prayer -- wish I had more! I always wish I had more. Sometimes the best I can do is a frequently interrupted running dialogue throughout the day, especially the plea for "help" right before a major decision or the feeling that a gasket is about to blow -- it rarely does blow. God has a way of cooling off the gasket. So, anyway, I would have to say it was a pretty normal day.

Thinking about the "normal" work day, I recalled recently taking a day off work to be available should my son Shane and his wife Lemony need my help in support of their daughter Nikolina's hospital visit (she has an appointment at Stanford about once every other week). I always look forward to babysitting Nathaniel; already at age 7 he is a little scientist and, like his father before him at approximately the same age, has declared me "eccentric."

As it turned out, Lemony did not need me, so I got a "real" day off, or at least the best version of a day off that I seem to be allowed. Lemony did not need me, but my office did. My assistant faxed some paperwork home, and I was off to the races. I finished that just in time for the daily noon mass. Fr. E was out of town, and at those times the priest at the noon mass is unpredictable except to those working in the parish office. To my delight, Fr. Terry had come down from the retreat center on the hill, where he is director. Mass with Fr. Terry is always special: intimate and personal, with lots of time devoted to silent prayer, even in places during the mass where one does not expect it. For that reason, Fr. Terry's masses are very spiritual in nature, constantly giving the congregation time to absorb the joy of being in the presence of God together. The undoing for me is always the way Fr. Terry asks everyone to circle the altar. I always feel God's presence more strongly the closer I draw to our humble altar. (Our mission church is old and made by the hands of Native Americans before the days of precision architecture; there are even animal paw prints in some of the floor tiles.) So there we stood, and I could feel the tears coming, the ones that well up in God's presence. They are good tears. One, however, might feel foolish for them except that among God's parishioners there is no need for embarrassment. That is why I love this community and this church. People understand and accept and love. Noon mass, when I can make it, is my psychological oasis during the day.

Then, quickly, I was back in the bramble bushes. One after another they rolled in, those pesky emails, about 200 all told, about par for my daily intake. Most of the issues I could send off to one of the senior managers, and having delegated them, I could go on to the other big issue of the day: a problem employee who had taken the first steps to filing a law suit against us for firing her. Of course, she had no grounds for filing, but that rarely stops aggrieved people who seem to enjoy watching us push aside everything else and pay attention to them. Sometimes, as in the case of this person, if the immediate supervisor had paid attention to her early on we would not have been facing a potential court case. Our lawyer called. I gave him all the details I had in my head. Then, a real surprise kicked in. My boss called with the news that another directorate wanted her. Well, that was a win-win. We released our claim on her, and she dropped her lawsuit. The last I heard she has been doing a good job. I like it when we can help even the people who seem to us not to deserve it. (Yep, problem employees are my specialty; I love them, literally!)

The rest of the day was routine, but full. Not one minute of the afternoon was a free one. And so that night, I went to the store, searching for some pleasure. I wanted my day off, even if it were only an ice cream cone.

As I took $20 from the ATM, I mentally added up the outstanding and incoming billpayer checks. The total was higher than cash available. Oops! Another one of those days! It reminded me of the time that Lizzie, then in the fourth grade, was asked by the teacher what she should immediately think upon seeing a problem that she had copied down as 24-36. The answer for fourth graders was, of course, that they had copied the problem wrong. Not for Lizzie! What, Lizzie give a traditional answer?! "I should think that I need to remember to include the negative sign in writing -12," she volunteered. That flustered the teacher who certainly did not want to get into negative numbers with fourth-graders. She hastily said that negative numbers do not exist. I suppose she wanted Lizzie to move back into fourth-grade math. But nothing doing! Lizzie was genuinely puzzled and innocently asked her teacher, "If there are no negative numbers, why does Mommy have them in her check book?" Sr. Beatrice, do you remember this? Thank you for not telling the principal -- St. Leo's would never have taken another check from me!

Well, I would have to find some money to change the color of my future checkbook from red into black, but I was not worried. All the outstanding billpayer checks were for donations of various sorts. So, since these were God's bills, I trusted that God would find me the money to pay them. (In case you are wondering, the money appeared, as it always does for good causes.)

As I walked into the store, my pocket buzzed with five more Blackberry messages. Argh! I sat down on one of the cafe chairs and answered each of them, then walked over to the ice cream counter. After all those enotes and a day off that had mostly turned out to be a day on, maybe, just maybe, I had earned some ice cream! And even if I had not, I was going to get some anyway -- and I did!

And that, folks, is how my days go and how my life meanders on. Well, perhaps "meander" is not the most appropriate word! That's why I do sincerely appreciate those noon-mass oases, scattered moments of prayer, surprises like seeing Fr. Terry, opportunities to lend a hand to those in need of any sort, and ice-cream cones whenever they come my way. Those are the important things, not the training and meetings and clients and business travel and supervisory tasks. I consider those things divine gifts, the most important of which is being surrounded by the Clan of Mahlou and God's love.