Going to the Ball

As I emulate Cinderella and head off to this year's ball, I will leave a post for the sharing in my absence. First, let me say that I am not the ball type. I would rather be hiking mountains than sipping tea. But, I do not always get to choose. As one of the more visible leaders of our organization (combination of high post and big mouth), I cannot ditch the annual ball, much as I would like to.

Last year I wrote a post that garnered a fair amount of comments and discussion about my dilemma in what to wear. (I had actually been able to avoid earlier balls for acceptable reasons, but I had no acceptable reason last year, and so I appeared upon demand.) I could not bring myself to spend hundreds (or dozens) of dollars on the required attire: tuxedo or gown. There was so much more I could do of value with that kind of money, and there was also that Franciscan vow of poverty. So, I decided to wear a dress from Jordan that I had purchased there for $5 and that would look dressy in the USA although I had some serious doubts when I arrived and started to mix in among the tuxedos and ball gowns. (You can read the post here: VIP or VOP or Both? It includes a larger discussion of the decision-making process and results).

The most evident result was the reputation I gained by wearing ethnic dress. Everyone who did not attend the ball heard about it. This year, a few weeks ago, several people who had been to their home countries in the last few months brought me local dresses, asking me to wear them in honor of their culture. (I ensured that they had bought them for $25 or less, the ethical limit our organization places on gifts from employees to supervisors.) I understood the intent. They were not bribes; they just wanted to feel that their senior supervisor respected and even liked their cultures. Of course, I do. I have been to most of their countries and speak most of their languages. Wherever I am, I try to blend and often succeed. I felt honored by the requests. The situation, however, contains its own dilemma: which of the six ethnic dresses and four ethnic shawls should I wear?

Actually, I have decided on none of them. I will wear that $5 Jordanian dress again. Then, I will find other occasions to honor all those who have requested it through the gift of their ethnic attire.

Interestingly, I may have started something. This year's ball announcement again listed tuxedos and gowns as acceptable attire but added "or culturally appropriate attire." Never think that one person cannot create change!

[Note: Image above drawn by Tom Dubois -- click here to see more of his beautiful art work, which is for sale.]

7 Quick Takes Friday #28

Oh, my, it is time already for some quick takes to share with you and with Jennifer Futwiler, who hosts this meme over at Conversion Diary. Rather than share the events of my life this week, I thought, given that the events were rather sporadically clustered, that I would introduce the people in my life who were associated with the events of the week. Most of them pop up periodically in my life. So, here goes, in alphabetical (sort of) order:

Anne is my neighbor in San Ignatio. She is a retired high school English teacher with a a master's degree in theology, among other things. She is also a good cook, who knows her way around my kitchen better than I do! When she is part of any group we are entertaining, Donnie typically cooks and Anne serves. (I am spoiled.) I don't remember how Anne and I first met, but it was through Old Mission somehow. We are both members of the Old Mission prayer group, and she, like me, is a candidate in the SFO (Secular Franciscan Order). The SFO was on our minds on Sunday because we had the regular monthly fraternity meeting at our local St. Francis Retreat Center, as well as breakfast at a local cafe with two members of the Council prior to their Council meeting. There are some difficult issues that Anne and I -- and the Council -- are dealing with in recent months. Rather than give full details here, I will refer you to a series of posts I wrote about the events from a spiritual perspective and uploaded to my Modern Mysticism site: Tasked.

Doah has developed an allergy to cats this past year. Or, perhaps more accurately described, we discovered this year that he has an allergy to cats; he may have had it for a long time. Since we have three of that kind of critter, instead of bringing Doah to San Ignatio for the weekend, we have been going to visit him where he lives in Santa Clara. This weekend was no different. Late Saturday afternoon, we drove up to spend some time with Doah at his favorite restaurant: KFC. (He is a cheap date.) Then we took him on a mini-shopping trip at the local CVS (yep, cheap date). Happy to have had at least a few hours with us, he returned to his group home with a smile and a bag of recyclables (we save them for him) in one hand and his just-purchased goodies in the other.

Fr. Daniel is our parish priest. Although he has passed the age of 50, he still loves parties. I remember one time, when he returned from out of town, I told him after Mass that we had missed him the week before, and he asked, "Did I miss a party?" "No, Fr. Daniel," I replied. "You missed Mass." We can always count on him to celebrate with us. This time, though, he was the host. For Saturday mid-day, he put together a BBQ at the former restaurant that belongs to the church. The "casa" has a veranda and a patio area, both quite large, with wonderful views of the valley, as well as four indoor large seating areas. He wanted to bring together some folks who had contributed to an Old Mission project. By chance, Donnie and I were the fortunate ones to end up with Fr. Daniel as our table mate. However, it did put a crimp on our plan to eat and run off to another engagement prior to going to Santa Clara to see Doah. So, we ate. We did not run. The other engagement slipped past while we enjoyed our time with Fr. Daniel at the casa.

Jack is the leader of our Bible Studies group that meets at Old Mission. Somewhere in his 80s, he has been slowed down by all kinds of events in life, but his knowledge is the exercise in patient listening. His wife, Ruby, comes with him. She is wheelchair bound but otherwise an active participant. They have been married 50 years, and we have celebrated three of their anniversaries, leading up to this year's big 5-0, over the past three years that we have been studying together. Jack worked as some sort of scientist; I have long ago forgotten the details. They parented five children, who have seen a fair amount of trauma, including one being shot as a child (he survived) and another losing a child of her own (Jack's granddaughter) in a car accident. Through it all, Jack and Ruby have maintained a sense of peace. Jack, like me, is a former atheist who had a dramatic conversion experience, lasting for two weeks, as did mine. So, he is like a big brother in faith to me, and I like forward to our Wednesday evenings.

President Karzai and General McChrystal showed up on Friday, unexpected and unannounced, at my Kentucky branch. They wanted to observe the language and culture training that we were providing for people who will be going to Afghanistan. Truly, the US government's emphasis is turning toward the tongue as weapon of first choice, and given my background as a language teacher, this warms the proverbial cockles of my heart. (Anyone know what a cockle is?) The one day I take off, a rather important personage shows up, and I am not even around to hear about it until the end of the day when the email, having crawled through the chain from Kentucky to California, finally reached me. My boss was a bit taken aback, especially since no one, including our local manager, had any idea that this was going to happen. (I imagine that was intentional for security reasons.) The president expressed pleasure in being able to converse with our people in his own language. You know, sometimes it takes very little to make friends and create peace. Caring enough to step across the culture divide and communicate in the language of the other is all that it takes to initiate that process.

Marie I met when I enrolled in the RCIA. She was Fr. Terry's helper at our sessions. She has been the mainstay of all the priests who have led the RCIA. I still learn from her. A retired elementary school teacher, she has taught nearly all the adults in San Ignatio, their children, and grandchildren. She seemed to know more about the members of our RCIA group (except me since I am a new resident) than they knew or remembered about themselves. She read the pre-publication manuscript of my book, Blest Atheist, and continues to be a mentor to me. Although professed as a Third Order Carmelite, she appears at home among the Franciscans, our local community having been founded by the Franciscans and sporting a retreat center, convent, and monastery, all Franciscan. So, having taken Friday off work for some medical tests and attending noon Mass, I was not surprised to have Marie invite me to the rosary that a handful of retired residents who don't have to trot off to work like I do say after Mass 2-3 times a week. As a converted Catholic, there are things I am still learning, and Marie is gentle and instructive in guiding me through them. After the rosary, we relaxed with coffee for her and milk for me at the local bakery. Ah, a totally laid-back day! Not! That was the day that Karzai came to play!

Nathaniel is finishing up his baseball season. His last game will be tomorrow, but at that time I will be on a plane, winging my way to Jordan. So, on Monday, instead of going to prayer group, I watched him play for the penultimate time this year. Surprisingly, given his scientific proclivities and frequent oblivion to his surroundings, he played well at first base and actually hit the ball (well, once the T was brought out). It is progress, though, and more important, he enjoys the sport, which is really all that matters. I also like the side benefit of watching his games: I get to see Shane, Lemony, and always-laughing Nikolina more often.

And now I am going to go to bed. If you are already up, have a great day ahead!

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!

V. I. P. or V.O.P or Both?

How does a VIP (Very Important Person) take a VOP (Vow of Poverty)? This troubling non-equation plagues me on some rare occasions. Take Saturday night, for example. Our organization was having a formal ball. And "ball" was the appropriate title for that event, the required attire being tuxedos for men and gowns for women. Now, being a VIP in our organization (by position, not necessarily by self-view) meant that I could not avoid attending the ball, and indeed my VIP-ness evidenced itself several times throughout the evening by what I was called upon to do and where I was required to sit. That is the work side of me.

The spiritual side of me is quite different. Usually that different spiritual side, with God's help and guidance, splashes out around me at work. I am a secular Franciscan (well, almost -- I have not yet professed but am entering my third year of candidacy), and as such I tend to follow St. Francis's model of giving away what I have and making do with very little. After all, I don't really need much now that the kids are grown. I do not feel compelled to live this way; I feel impelled to do so. It brings me great happiness to use my fairly decent salary (albeit less than it might be if I were not living in the "Land of Splat!") to help those who have no salary at all, to pay off God's credit card, and to contribute to divine projects such as rebuilding the St. Francis Retreat. Splurging on a fancy ball gown that I would wear only once, then, did not fit with my truly Franciscan lifestyle that, alas, at times conflicts with my truly secular life. I did not want to buy a gown; I wanted the gown money to help my kids with their medical bills, the orphans of Kaluga or Liberia with finding care and perhaps even homes, the children of Palomar with getting a school, the young mother in need of a home, the foreign handicapped child in need of an American doctor, and the strangers passing through my life in need of food. I find far more pleasure in helping them than in looking at a pretty dress. But this was a ball! And it was for my office where I was supposed to be some kind of role model!

I did have an alternative -- or so I thought. Since our foreign nationals were allowed, indeed encouraged, to wear their national dress, I figured that perhaps the Arabs would allow me to claim their ethnicity for a night since I had lived in Jordan for more than two years as a resident (equivalent to a green card holder in the USA). After all, on more than one occasion I had gotten away with wearing a pretty Arabic dress for a dress-up event. So, I donned a Jordanian dishdasha hashemiya (the kind of dress in the picture above) and, like Cinderella, left for the ball.

Yes, like Cinderella. Except for one thing -- no ball gown! The closer I approached the ball on my 45-minute drive there, the more concerned I became that I would be sitting at or near the head table where everyone would have on their fancy tuxes and gorgeous gowns, and there I would be in a pretty but everyday dress that I had picked up for $7.50 (yes, the period is in the right place) on the streets of Aqaba from a shopkeeper whose wife had probably done the hand embroidery. I started to squirm, well, at least, emotionally. What would people think? If I were sitting with the rank-and-file, it would be one thing, but at the head table in a Arabic dress, not a gown, and, in fact, in a dress that even the poorest of people in the Middle East could afford and would typically wear? What was I thinking? I could have afforded to buy a beautiful gown to show off for my employees and superiors. How dumb to have put my last dollar for this month in the church collection plate for this week's cause! If people who worked for me deserved to look pretty, so did I!

I was still squirming when I reached the ballroom. I should not have been. All my Arab national employees flocked to me, pleased as punch that I would dress as one of them. They wanted my picture taken with them. They introduced me to friends who had come with them. The other nationalities suggested that next time it was their turn to be so honored, that I should don their native attire. (I think I will -- I have some dresses from Russia, Uzbekistan, Brazil, and Turkmenistan in my closet, all of them gifts from friends and colleagues with whom I worked in those countries.) Needless to say, I enjoyed my gownless ball experience very much.

Driving home, I realized that my thoughts during the earlier drive to the ball had dramatically illustrated some Biblical precepts, like the man who asked Jesus what it would take to get to Heaven and to whom Jesus responded that he should give everything away and follow him (whether taken literally or figuratively, I was on the wrong side of that equation on my way to the ball). And how about that camel that could make it through an eye of a needle easier than a rich man can make it to Heaven? Well, thank God, I am not rich! But I was acting like it on the way in. Really, who cares what others think about what I am wearing physically? Is it not more important what I am wearing spiritually? Is not the armor of God far preferable to a pretty ball gown? I may have questioned that on the way to the ball but certainly not on the way from the ball.

God taught me a lesson that night about who is important, who is really a VIP. No VIP of God's was at the ball that night (at least, none that I was aware of, there being much of which none of us are aware). He also taught me a lesson about what is important. Certainly, not a gown.

God gives me everything I need. If I had needed a ball gown, He would have given me one. Instead, He showed me that my simple Jordanian dress was sufficient, just as His grace is sufficient. So, any dollars I have, extra or not, belong to God. Deep down, I think I knew that on the way to the ball, too. Just sometimes, God has to reach down and clunk me on the head again so that I remember just what kind of role model I am really supposed to be.