7 Quick Takes Friday #55

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

It is so nice to have my computer back and to start catching up on so much that I could do with an old, borrowed one. I seem to have missed the 7 QT last week so I will combine them for this week.

1. A while back I reported on allegations of sexual misconduct made against our priest. The police have exonerated him, and in spite of repeated, highly publicized pleadings from SNAP for others to come forth with their own allegations, no one has. Fortunately, the rest of the people in the two parishes involved are honest. Now, however, the accuser, who hired a big-city lawyer used to squeezing money from the Church whether or not the claims were factual (one research report indicated that 50% of the claims made by this firm were false allegations and one cardinal actually sued for false claims and won) and mistakenly clearly thought that this would be a dandy way to get some money from a small-town Catholic diocese that was assumed to be easy to frighten, has filed a civil suit, not having got one penny from our bishop. He has included the bishop in the lawsuit (I assume because the bishop did not "pay up" as he expected) and the police department, too. Talk about a world gone crazy! I built a website about our priest's situation for our parish where efforts to help, latest information, and research information on false allegations in general can be shared: www.in-support-of-fr-ed.com. As I told our bishop, having been extensively abused myself, I would be the last person to support a real perpetrator of such atrocities (and I know that sometimes it is the least likely person who does such things), but this case is clear. (It helps that I know something about the accuser's real motive but cannot share that until it comes out in court.) The accuser needs prayers, not money, and the anger being expressed by SNAP about this situation does not come from God; it is a selfish and vengeful anger, directed at a hurt that members of SNAP experienced from priests other than our priest. SNAP, too, needs prayers.

2. We closed on a neat house at the end of February and moved last week, the only week I have been home since closing -- I was not even present for the closing. The house overlooks our valley. It has five bedrooms, which is larger than anything we have ever owned. After the kids grew up, I never thought I would want to take care of a large house again, but it was really the view and the fact that it is nonetheless walking distance from the mission that sold me on the house.

3. We had a strange interaction with a rooster when we moved out of our old house. (A reminder here: roosters have the right of way in San Ignatio and are protected by law.) He followed us up onto our deck, pecked at our door, making it sound like he was knocking, and then beat on the window. (You might have to make the picture larger to see him.) He remained there for as long as we were cleaning and even after we left. We wonder if he might have made friends with our cats and wondered where they had gone. In any event, it was a Hitchcock-like experience.

4. Before we could finish unpacking, I headed out on a fascinating business trip to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Now, Fayetteville is not fascinating. In fact, I commented to someone that it looked like it had fallen on hard times, but he laughed and said that it has looked this way for as long as he can remember.

5. We are holding a reverse evaluation (something I introduced) for our southeastern branches. This is where workers get to tell their managers (anonymously through representatives from the various branches) what they do or don't do that make it difficult for them to do good work. It is a very effective way to improve organizations.

6. Tonight I had dinner with the son of friends from Army days. He is now in the Army, a captain, serving at Ft. Bragg. We went to the Mash House and had a great steak meal and even better conversation, catching up on years and years. The last time I saw him, he was in elementary school and was visiting us in California with his parents (whom I have seen since). He immediately crawled behind our sofa and refused to come out for hours. He says that he remembers that. He also remembers that while back there, he found some things under the couch to try putting into the light socket back there. Really?? There are times that, as parents, one prefers not to know what is going on if one does not have the opportunity to intervene. This must have been a case of divine protection because we had no idea what mischief he was up to.

7. Nikolina has been making progress as she approaches her second birthday. She is not walking yet -- still working on learning how to use her braces. Savvy, though, she is. Shane reports that she has figured out how to navigate his iPhone. He gave it to her for a little toddler game with sheep and chickens jumping around, and she pushed the home key and was able to navigate two screens over, click into a specific folder and then open the Netflix app so she could play her favorite movie(s). Just wait until she is three years old!

Tomorrow I head out for Qatar -- some international meetings there at which I need to present. I have no idea whether or not someone will be picking me up at the airport when I arrive at 1:00 in the morning, but I am hoping for the best. Will report on what actually happens next week. In the interim, I wish all a great weekend and good week.

God's Inscrutable Timing

As promised in the Quick Takes two weeks ago, here are the details on the "medical event" that took place with Fr. D. It happened partially during and then after the daily Mass in San Ignatio.

I had taken the day off from work, but that does not mean that the day was quiet. In the middle of running around, I acquired a modicum of quiet, at least initially, by taking time out to attend noon Mass.

Fr. Ed was out of town, so Fr. D, who is assigned to a parish in a town about 15 miles away, came to celebrate Mass. When Fr. D came into Mass, he seemed to be having some difficulties moving and breathing, but since he has some kind of impairment (from childhood polio, I think), we did not pay much attention to it until he could not hold the wine still. Sr. Maria was present and went forward to help him. He apologized for not feeling well, and let Sr. Maria and one of the parishioners finish the Eucharist.

He then finished Mass and disappeared into the sacristy. Two people followed him in. One was an out-of-towner who had attended Mass with a group of school children visiting the mission. It turned out that he was an EMT. He was concerned, but not local, and when Fr. D insisted he was okay, the EMT emerged from the sacristy, saying that Fr. D did not want help. He left.

Theresa was right behind him, and I was right behind her. Two mothers. They are more difficult to push away than an EMT. Theresa offered to take Fr. D to Hollister to the hospital. He declined her offer, saying that he felt okay, that it was just a pinched nerve or something that was causing the left side of his body to be temporarily paralyzed. (That is "feeling okay"???!!!)

Theresa was about to leave when I spoke up, saying that I would take his car back to his parish if he let her take him to the hospital. He said that he did not want to be a bother. Well, mothers don't listen to those kinds of answers. They have heard them lots of times before with their little boys (and big boys). "That's why you have a parish," I objected.

He hesitated at my words, and I knew I had him. I held out my hand. "Please, let me have your keys," I insisted as only a mother can. He dutifully handed them over to me, explained what his car looked like and how to work it. I left to go home to get Donnie, so that he could drive Fr. D's car and I could follow in our car so that I had a way to get home. When we got back to the mission, the ambulance had arrived for Fr. D. Apparently, he had had another episode. As it turned out, he needed surgery.

I shudder to think what would have happened if he had driven back on his own. The chances of him making it back safely were pretty close to nil. Thank God I was off work and was there to help. (Oh, that was probably God's plan all along!)

I was off because Noelle was having surgery. The surgery had been planned for Thursday, the day that all of this happened. However, the surgery had been done successfully on Wednesday (details can be found at Clan of Mahlou), so I had time to attend Mass and then visit Noelle -- and Donnie and I did, after helping out with Fr. D's needs (something we would not have been able to do had the surgery taken place on the day planned).

That kind of remarkable timing is something I have seen on many occasions. Sometimes it is on a far grander scale for God's time is not our time. His timing, however, is impeccable. This is something I have tried to explain to the teens in my catechism class who figure that a prayer not answered five minutes after it has been made is an unanswered prayer. I like to use the real life example of Shura to help them understand the scope upon which God works. (Of course, they are only teens with an even more limited understanding of time than adults, so it is difficult for them to grasp the concept of limitless and unboundaried time, but some do).

Fifteen years ago I became aware of the needs of Shura, a dying child artist in Siberia. He had spina bifida, which could not be cared for in there. So, through the intercession of many people, I brought him to live with me in the USA and found a billionaire to pay for his medical care. (Easier said than done, as you can probably imagine -- lots of miracles along the way made it possible.)

I was able to open my home to Shura because I understood spina bifida and spoke Russian. That is because fifteen years before Shura came to live us, my daughter Noelle was born with spina bifida, and ten years before that I had been somehow "drawn" to begin studying Russian, becoming quite fluent by the time Shura came into our lives.

One of the people to help Shura was the then-overseer of the INS, who just happened to show up at a pre-surgery moleibin (special Russian Orthodox prayer service) and was subsequently able to help us in some times of definite need. He was there because many years earlier (30 or so), his son's blindness was miraculously cured on the spot by a weeping icon and the whole family converted to Orthodoxy.

Now, exactly 15 years after Zhenya came into our lives, the director of Orphan Cry, an American organization helping orphans in Russia, learned about Shura's story from stumbling across it when he did a search for my name on the Internet. Now, that does not typically happen. I tried the same search and finally found the article on the 40th page of results! The director had found it right off. Odd? As it turned out, Katya, a 19-year-old orphan, was losing her eyesight to brain tumors and wanted to die with her brothers who had been adopted by a family in New Hampshire. I was able to provide some help with getting a visa -- again, miraculous timing with all key players being in Moscow on the same day in August without any one of us conferring with the others in advance -- and the director was able to find medical care for free; the doctors involved, after looking at Katya's CT scans, confidently told the director that they were pretty sure that they could operate successfully on the tumors and Katya would be coming here to live, not to die. This plan is now being put into place one step at a time.

Analyzing all those amazingly interlocked actions and people numbs the mind. If any one of them had been out of place, either or both of these two Russian teens might well have died.

And then there was today. Everyone in the right place at the right time with the right skills to take care of people God whom is watching after. What human being could ever organize such microcosmic elements on such a macrocosmic scale?

Sister M

Yesterday, when I blogged about being a broken vessel, I mentioned how easy it is to fall into the trap of comparing oneself with others, and some readers commented on how I am not the only one who does that, agreeing that we should not although sometimes there are people who can be models for us in their holiness.

For me, there is indeed one: Sister Maria. I am fortunate to have come to know Sister quite well. She lives in the Franciscan Sisters of Atonement convent in the woods overlooking the valley (quite a view from their living room) next to our parish offices and is the nun in charge of keeping everything in order there, something she is very good at. Like most of my other friends, and I do consider Sister a friend, she is considerably older than me: mid-seventies. Sister comes regularly to the prayer group and Bible study group to which I belong, and I benefit from her experience and wisdom. She also teaches catechism, as do I, so I see her (actually, I room with her) at the religious education conferences that we attend for our continued faith formation.

In addition to being a model for me in all her quiet ways, Sister, because of her accepting nature, is the one person in whom I have confided nearly all of my spiritual experiences for which I need greater understanding: the times that Evil seems to attack, the miraculous help and clearly God-sent healings that enter my life from time to time, understanding of prayer (especially contemplation which was my entry point into Catholicism -- Sister says I started backwards from most, who begin with ordinary prayer and work through meditation into contemplation whereas I was hit on the head and surrounded by the presence of God for two full weeks and had to learn later, through RCIA, how to pray the ordinary types of prayer such as thanksgiving and repentance), and more.

The "more" includes those early days when an interim diocesan priest who took over our RCIA group from Fr. Barry, visiting priest and director of St. Francis Retreat Center, waved aside any of my spiritual sensations and interventions as "nonsense." While Fr. Barry was and is always available to me, God bless him, he has been highly occupied with rebuilding the retreat center that had burned down. Valuing his time, I go to him only with the thorny issues. Over 80 years old and having already celebrated 50 years of Franciscan priesthood, he is never surprised -- he has seen it all in his 50+ years of ministry in the Franciscan tradition. Nor does he make me feel awkward or embarrassed. He understands, accepts, and gently guides in a way that has made him my de facto spiritual advisor.

Still, because of the demands on Fr. Barry's time and the abundance of my spiritual encounters and experiences, it is Sister Maria to whom I generally go for interpretation. She not only has time and wisdom for me, but like a true friend and counselor, when she sees that I need reproving, she does not hesitate to speak out. In some difficult moments, when I have not understood what it is God is trying to tell me, she has taken me into the chapel and prayed together with me. Now, there is a true friend! You can probably tell that I love Sister very much. I am highly grateful to God that He has not only surrounded me with priests, each of which has brought something special into my life, but also that He put me in Sister's path and led her to scoop me up and take me along for frequent intervals of her journey. Sometimes she is gone for long periods of time, taking care of God's business and her own ailing sisters, but other times we get long moments together through local religious social events which we attend in tandem with other friends. In addition, a triad of Sr. M, Robert (a spiritual director), and I (the most unlikely of choices except for my extroversion) share responsibility for the leadership of our local prayer group.

Sister M is the most humble person I know and, as a Franciscan and true servant of God, would be quite surprised that I would think of her as a model. Now, if I, in my Franciscan walk as an SFO candidate, could only come close to that! My hope and goal is to some day come close enough to earn the right to profess in the third order. (Regulation-wise, I could have done it already. Spiritually, I need more study and greater humility. And, like most people, I need more time with God.)

God has blessed me beyond anything I have deserved, and my relationship with Sr. M is one of those blessings. May all of you be blessed with someone in your life like my friend, de facto counselor, and model, Sister M, beloved by many, not just by me.

Blest Guest Wednesday #1: Stand Back and Let God Work (Anne Bender)

Since early August, it has been difficult for me to post regularly although I have somehow managed not to let more than a few days go by between posts. Considering that my crazy travel schedule is definitely going to continue for a few more months, I have come up with an idea for bringing a little sanity to the blogging part of my life: ask for help. For that reason, I am asking some fellow bloggers to write posts for me on Wednesdays, hence the name "Blest Guest Wednesday." As today's "Blest Guest," I asked Anne Bender, who writes a blog that I follow closely: Imprisoned in My Bones - Releasing My Inner Jeremiah. As you will see here, she has several children; two of her sons are considering the priesthood. Her stories are uplifting and insightful, and I thank her for the touching one she wrote for today's post. (Oh, the image of a priest's hands is hers, too, and can be found on her blog.) Here is her post:

When things seem really bleak, and I feel full of worry and stress over little things, God always seems to find a way to pull me out of myself and remind me of the important and meaningful things in life. It seems to me, that his favorite way of doing that is through my children. When I’m aware of how He works in this way, I can only stand back and let the tears of astonishment overflow from my heart and fill my eyes.

Jack is ten years old, and will be eleven next month. He is in the 5th grade. But to me, I can’t ever imagine him as anything except a sweet and innocent little boy and I’m amazed every time I realize that he’s growing up so fast. He was born with developmental apraxia of speech, but we didn’t realize he had this disorder until he was two years old and wasn’t talking. The apraxia means that in his mind, he knows what to say, but something breaks down between his mind and his mouth, and the words don't come out, they stay kind of stuck in his head. It was extremely frustrating for him. So, just before he turned three years old, he began speech therapy, and he continues to require this weekly service. Of course, he really speaks very well now and most people can understand him and don’t even realize that he has this disorder. I am most aware of it when he is sick or tired and that's when his speech becomes more garbled and difficult to understand.

Jack works very hard to overcome this difficulty. Most of the time he is a very quiet boy and he easily disappears in our loud and unruly family. When he is stressed, he can barely express himself except through tears. But when he is relaxed and happy, he can turn into a real chatterbox, especially if he is talking about the current sport of the season. I always thought that God gave Jack the gift of athleticism to compensate for his speech difficulties. As he began his school career, I worried that he would be teased because of the robotic way he spoke and that friends would be few and far between. But Jack found a way around his speech difficulties by bringing a ball of some sort to school every day. Other children always gathered around him to play and he quickly became quite popular. Nobody cared about whether or not he spoke well because he was fun and kind. He included everyone in his games and shared well with others.

Whenever the talk of future careers would come up in our household, Jack always spoke of a career in sports that is typical for most boys. Whether the season was football, baseball or basketball that is the sport he wanted to play as a professional when he grew up.

Until last year, that is. Then Jack started expressing an interest in the priesthood. I didn’t pay too much attention thinking he was just copying his older brother John, who is feeling called in this direction. And when I would watch him fidget in church, constantly checking his watch to see how long the Mass lasted, I would completely disregard the possibility of priesthood for Jack.

I like to visit the Seminary Library, and when I’d take Jack with me, he began to ask the librarian for books about the priesthood. She would apologize to me because she didn’t have much on the subject for younger children. I always said, “It’s ok. He really doesn’t read much anyway, you’d just be wasting your time hunting some down. As soon as we get home, he’ll be outside playing instead of quietly reading, because that’s what Jack does best.”

But this week God had a surprise for me. Jack had an evening with a few hours unattended while the rest of the family was busy with other activities. He told me that he spent that time looking at our Seminary’s “Think Priest” website. I smiled and told him what a good boy he was and that I was glad that he was interested in that, and then sent him off to bed. I didn't give it another thought.

Last night I received a phone call from our Associate Pastor. Fr. Dennis asked me if I knew that Jack had sent him an email. (I didn’t.) He told me that Jack had complimented him on his All-School Mass Homily and then said that he wanted to be a priest. Fr. Dennis said the email surprised him because Jack never says a word to him in person, he won’t even crack a smile, but rather is always very serious.

I went outside to find Jack racing up and down the street on his scooter and told him that I wanted to talk to him. He immediately assumed he was in trouble for something and the tears began. I assured him that he was not in trouble, but that I just wanted to spend some time talking with him. He sat on my lap and I asked him about the email to Fr. Dennis as I wiped his tears away. He said yes, he had sent it. He also sent one to our Pastor, Fr. Dave, our friend Fr. Don, who is the Rector at the Seminary and to Mr. Wisniewski, the school principal. He said he established his own email address and told all of these men that he wanted to be a priest and was wondering if they had any tips for him. He took me to the computer screen and showed me his list of sent emails, and there they all were, just like he said.

Now it was my turn to cry. My mind raced with questions. Could God really be calling two of my four sons to the priesthood? What moved Jack to send these emails without telling me his intention? Will this desire for the priesthood last or is this just a phase that he is passing through? Does God really send the call to priesthood to such young boys?

I watched him closely at Mass this morning. I saw him fidgeting with the eraser that was in his pocket during the homily. I saw him looking intently at Fr. Dave during the consecration. I noticed him smile and wave at Fr. Dave during the sign of peace. My heart is pondering the wonder of it all, but I know that all I can do is stand back and let God work. After all, Jack has always been His child, long before he was my child. In the end, it will be God’s will that wins. It will always be God’s will.

From Blest Atheist to Blessed Believer

I have been come across a number of thoughtful blogs in recent days written by people who have left the church to find another path to God. All of them express cogent reasons for this. For example, Barb (A Former Leader's Journey) describes a painful discernment process that led her away from her role as a leader in a church that moved from mainstream into a pecking-order organized group that demanded conformity. Alex (Oikos Community) proposes the concept of an "organic" church (a term coined by T. Austin-Sparks), i.e. "a non-traditional church that is born out of spiritual life instead of being constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs." And D (Loving Jesus, Leaving Church) tells of growing up as a pastor's child, serving the church in many capacities, and ultimately becoming so busy with church that, in her opinion, she lost out on a relationship with Jesus.

In some ways, I can relate to these complaints and disaffections. As a teenage atheist forced to attend church by an abusive family (not abusive because of the church thing but scandalously physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive), I managed to get my entire family permanently expelled from our local Baptist Church. An award-winning public speaker in high school, I was asked to give the sermon on Youth Sunday, to which I agreed as long as I could write my own, not read someone else's. My sermon pointed out many of the things that those critical of the church have written in various blogs, as well as the specific "sins" of our church leaders such as which deacon was sleeping with someone else's wife and the like, and ended with the challenge to the parents in the congregation to be honest about life and raise their children in an atheist home. It was a small Maine community of 500 farm and village folk. You can imagine the uproar! It has never been forgotten and that was 40 years ago!

Now, brought to God by God, I find myself in another small community, this time in California. Our small town has only 1700 people, at least 60% of which are children. Everyone knows everyone. We have no fast food joints, no malls or upscale stores, no doctors or vets (those are 10 miles away), no theaters, no roller rinks, and no youth activities (except catechism classes, which are filled to the brim perhaps in part because they are the only activity in town). We do have two small grocery stores, one on each side of town (within walking distance of each other), a one-room city hall, a one-truck fire department, one part-time sheriff, two statues (both commemorating saints, one of which the town is named for), an elementary school, and, among the outlying ranches, a regional high school. More essential to the nature and being of our town, in addition to several blocks of historic buildings maintained for the public by the state, is the mission, built in the expansive arches-and-garden tradition of the Mexican missions founded in California. Connected to the mission, in addition to the church and cemetery, is a monastery, convent, and Franciscan retreat center (which is also home to our Secular Franciscan Order), all very humble-looking places that contain vibrant life. Masses are held daily, and in more than 200 years this town has never missed a mass or been without a priest, which may be surprising when one considers that we have three kinds of masses: modern mass in the vernacular (English), Mexican style in Spanish (almost everyone here speaks Spanish), and high and low mass in Latin. It may be less surprising if one knows how blessed this tiny, historic community is with priests. We have four priests right now: a Franciscan mystic (always ready to interpret my spiritual "events" for me), a pre-Vatican II traditionalist, a post-Vatican II ecumenicalist from Ireland, and an immigrant from Spain (who, when necessary, is substituted by a fifth, visiting, priest from Colombia). Our priests range from young 30s to young 80s. Plus, we have some additional priests at the monastery and retreat center who step in, as needed. Perhaps because we have so many priests and so many different approaches to worship, there is an understanding that one's relationship with God is not dependent upon any particular clergyman but is a personal matter. For that reason, I have found a home in the church, not outside it, and in this town, which a Russian Orthodox visitor called "namolein" (soaked in prayer). Visitors do feel a special connectedness with the divine here. I consider myself extremely blessed to have become situated in this town, something that was a bit of an accident (if one wants to believe that it was really an accident). I would also note from my experience here that there can be good church experiences as well as bad ones.

Not long ago I read a joke, not sure where, probably on the Internet. It went something like this:

A man showed up at a fancy city church, dressed in jeans, dirt-encrusted boots, and a cowboy shirt. He would have fit right in with our local congregation, but at this church, where everyone was dressed in fancy clothes, he stood out. After the service, one of the deacons welcomed him and suggested that if he were to come again, he might consider dressing more appropriately. The man appeared the next Sunday, dressed the same way. The deacon spoke to him again and this time suggested that he discuss his dress code with God. The man came a third Sunday, dressed the same way. After the service, the deacon asked in exasperated tones whether the visitor had discussed his attire with God. The visitor responded, "Well, yes I did, but God did not know how to advise me. He said He does not come to this church!"

I know that God comes to our mission church. His presence is profoundly felt there by just about anyone in the congregation, including visitors. But then, given that many of them are ranchers, our parishioners are very apt to show up in jeans and cowboy boots!

I love my parish. The people are, in general, rather poor, but that is not uncomfortable for me. After all, I have spent most of my life in the Land of Splat! (although I have to admit that God has been very kind to me in recent days, and I have approached Splat!'s very border). Moreover, the priests here have considerably enriched my life. (I will write about them in another post because, for sure, they have been a gift from God.)

The other side of the matter is that I struggle with the spirituality vs. faith split. Yes, I admit that there does not need to be a split, but I see one frequently, and those living by faith and dogma, at least in my experience, far outnumber those experiencing spirituality. I find myself yearning for the company of people who have had the kinds of spiritual experiences that the desert fathers describe and that I encounter from somewhat frequently.

I would love to hear from others who have had good experiences with church for I believe that God wants His people to commune with him with each other ("where two are together..."), and a good church, it seems to me, is a great place to start. Further, do you sense a split between faith and spirituality within your church or am I being overly sensitive (and perhaps even greedy) in desiring the company of contemporary Saint Theresas of Avila and Saint Johns of the Cross?