Thankful Thursday #11

I am thankful for the gifts God has given me, ones that I take too often for granted. The greater of these are tongues, music, words, and science.

1. The gift of tongues. Here I am talking about present-day languages, not about talking in tongues, a gift that would be problematic for me to accept, were it to be offered, because, as a linguist, whenever I hear someone talking in tongues, I begin to analyze the structure and lexemes of the utterances. One has to accept a gift without question, or as the American proverb goes, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth." Otherwise, it is lost as a gift. So, my gift is modern tongues, or as the common English word is today, languages. I am currently studying my 18th foreign language and acquiring it very rapidly, perhaps because I will need it soon for one of my upcoming tasks. (Never let it be said that only children can learn languages rapidly; that is an entrenched myth.) As I blogged last month (see post, Arrogance), being able to speak their language and interpret for them gave me the opportunity to relieve a good deal of stress for two Russians stranded at Dulles International Airport. In helping them, my own stress disappeared. And then, there is the Greek and Latin basis for the language that I will term, Medicalese, for lack of a better name. Being able to understand doctors and talk in "their language" often prompted them to share more information with me about my chidren's various conditions than otherwise they likely would have, including allowing me into some places that parents do not go (e.g., the echocardiogram back room).

2. The gift of music. On the last day of our retreat last month, Fr. Kevin, who had himself been playing most of the hymns we sang, needed someone to take over so that he could lead the adoration. I may not have been the only other piano player, but I was the only one who volunteered to play. It could have been that I was the only one with good skills at sight reading. I'm embarrassed to admit that this skill comes from years of trying, as a child, to trick my piano teacher into thinking I had actually practiced. Then, too, years of playing for various formal and informal situations have made me intrepid before a crowd. As a counterbalance to the child abuse Ma heaped on us children, she made sure that we could read books, sew (and crotchet, knit, tat, and embroider), play the piano, swim, and ice skate. (I'm not sure what advantage the latter was other than fun, except being able to swim exempted me from a college requirement and being able to ice skate got me an A in physical education in college -- where my teacher was the 1957 Olympic champion, whose name I have forgotten, but I could probably find it online if it mattered.)

3. The gift of words. I suppose there is not much to add to the obvious: no gift of words, no blogs. Nor would I have been able to write a dozen professional books, two of them considered seminal works in my professional field. Then, of course, there was that day when I was told, "I gave you the gift of words; use them for Me," that resulted in Blest Atheist and hopefully will result in two new books now in progress: Raising God's Rainbow Makers (which I am excerpting on Clan of Mahlou) and Angels of Abkhazeti (a first spiritual novel attempt, which I am excerpting on Mahlou Musings).

4. The gift of science. In high school, I had a decision to make: take a college major in physics or in linguistics. I chose linguistics because even though I held the highest grade in my physics class, had a solid score on the college-board physics exam, and had won top prize in physics in the school science fair, everyone from my teacher to my parents to my school counselor discouraged me from majoring in physics because "girls don't do that." I have never regretted majoring in linguistics, but one does always wonder. Seventeen year later, my younger sister, a carbon copy of me in many ways, graduated from Michigan State University with a 4.0 in nuclear physics. Times had changed! My ability to understand science became essential in a very different way: with three children and two grandchildren living with birth defects, being able to understand medicine and question doctors has made a considerable difference in the quality of the kids' lives, even to the point of saving Doah's life when my knowledge gave me the courage to steal him from the hospital.

Gifts have been coming to the fore in recent days, so it is certainly time for me to say thank you. What about you? For what is it time for you to say thank you?


More information about one of the Thankful Thursday memes can be found at the website of Grace Alone. This meme host is shared with other blogs so you will need to check to see which one is hosting any given month.

Link up with Greg's and Daryl's Thankful Thursday at Greg's General Store.

7 Quick Takes Friday #34

I'm ba-a-a-ck! I missed participating in last week's 7 Quick Takes Friday because I was at a four-day contemplative prayer retreat. Thanks to Jennifer Fulwiler for hosting the 7 Quick Takes meme at Conversion Diary.

1. The best part of this past week is the four-day contemplative prayer retreat on Franciscan spirituality that I attended at the St. Francis Retreat Center. I usually spend nights at home during retreats at the center since I am a local. However, Fr. Kevin, who led this retreat (my first retreat with Fr. Kevin, and I would certainly sign up right away for any others he might offer), wanted us all to spend our nights at the center even if we lived only five minutes away, like me. It was a wise request. Being there round-the-clock put me in a wonderful frame of mind, without being distracted by the various kinds of little (and sometimes not so little) things that come up at home.

2. Sunday afternoon, following the last Mass of the retreat, I hurried down the hill to lunch at Jardines, my favorite Mexican restaurant, with a friend who is an administrator at the University of California system (we have multiple universities here: Berkeley, UCLA, UC at San Diego, and more) and several of her colleagues. After lunch, we returned to my house to talk about a project that they are working on. Essentially, they wanted me to brainstorm next steps with them. It turned out that they had based their project in large part on one of my books, so brainstorming next steps was simple for me albeit not for them. Two days later I got a note from the admin assistant. They are paying me an honorarium for that afternoon. Wow! I had only thought that I was helping out my friend and was very happy to receive a free lunch as payment. I have no idea how much, but I am in need of some money to pay off God's credit card for recent use and, just like it always happens, here comes some money from out of nowhere to do that!

3. Ah, Monday! Back to work! A day stuffed with meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting. Yep, that would be about right -- four meetings. One of them, however, was very enjoyable. I conduct a leadership meeting for junior and senior leaders every other Monday. Right now, we are reading a fun book that reflects my management practices: First, Break All the Rules. If you are a manager or leader of any sort, I highly recommend the book to you. It is even fun to read. For me, even more enjoyable is listening to the discussions and watching especially the junior managers grow in wisdom and expertise. Mentoring the younger generation in this way is one of the perks of my job.

4. Monday night had an unexpectedly beautiful ending. I hurried home because I did not know if my prayer group co-leader was in town, and I did not want to be late. Of course, he had my key, but that did not matter because the convent always has an extra key. Sr. M came over just as I was driving up. Neither of us was present at the last meeting (I was in Washington, DC), so we did not know whom to expect. Well, no one showed up. So, after some minutes of catching up on each other's activities, Sr. Maria and I spent a long time in prayer together. It was one of those special moments, filled with grace, that one cannot plan but for which I am always grateful.

5. This has been a week of visitors. Some weeks are like that. They are often a nice break in the preparation of documents, answering of enotes, and scads of staff meetings. This week I was delighted to have a few minutes to welcome back one of our employees who works in Saudi Arabia and was back visiting family. We had two visits by teams from Washington-based organizations, both of which wanted to pick my brain and those of one or another of my center or division directors. Then, over came my boss's boss, who is rarely in my directorate, to rehearse for a very high-level visitor from Washington. He was very happy with what my directorate proposed to present. Whew! Then, less than two hours later, I received a call to tell me that the visitor would not be coming, at least not now. Even more whew! The best visitor, though, was a name that showed up on my calendar -- my admin keeps my calendar for me, so there are sometimes surprises for me -- at the last minute on Thursday for lunch. It was a colleague from another directorate. A native of Yemen, he has spent time in Jordan, and we meet periodically over lunch to reminisce about a place that is easily adopted as a second home. What a wonderful, relaxing interlude -- after which I hurried to the bank to wire transfer money to Lizzie who had accidentally overdrawn her account. I guess kids never grow up; they just get bigger! (To be fair, though, Lizzie usually does an excellent job of managing her limited finances.)

6. Recently, I started studying my 18th language. On Thursday, one of my employees who speaks that language natively, offered to give me a 30-minute lesson (and to continue with more lessons next week and in August). Now, I have three-and-a-half hours under my belt. We were able to communicate about myself, profession, and family. Today, she contacted me to change the time. We went back and forth several times and finally decided that we would have to wait until next week to meet. We did it all in her language. I was quite pleased at such progress, especially since the "research" (which I don't quite believe) insists that anyone over the age of 40 will have trouble learning a foreign language. I am well past that age, and I am learning in each hour the amount that textbooks expect most students to learn in a week. So, there, Mr. Researcher, put that in your pipe and smoke it! Don't count grandmothers out of any picture!!

7. I have recently discovered that Mass is offered twice a week at noon at a little, near-by chapel. Unfortunately, I have been too busy to attend on a regular basis. This week, however, perhaps under the influence of the retreat last weekend, I realized that this is not a condition, but a choice. I do not have to be too busy. So, I marked "do not schedule" at those hours on my calendar ad infinitum so that my admin assistant would not fill in anything and I could be "unbusy." I have been able to make both Masses this week (today, even, I ended up as lector), and those days have had a magical feel to them, likely because I had my priorities in order on those days.

I am looking forward to a great weekend, beginning with Shane's birthday celebration tomorrow. I hope your weekend will be exciting and enjoyable, as well!