Archive for June, 2009

Afterthought

June 30, 2009 at 12:57 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , ,

I know, two posts in under 24 hours, I must be going crazy or something, right?  Hehe.

I realized after I posted that last entry that my Ancient Greek text had arrived in the mail today.  I’ve spent the last hour reading through it and I realized something–one of the biggest reasons I procrastinate is not only that I set unreasonable goals for myself, but also because I keep score against myself.  This is a really bad way to go about self-motivation.

I guess this just reaffirms the scary thought of the evening–that I do have a career trajectory, and it will involve a lot of hard work, and I may very well not be good at some things right away (or *shudder* ever, at all).  It’s that last bit that I have to get used to.

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Career Thoughts

June 29, 2009 at 11:00 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

I try not to angst too much.  It’s something I’m prone to do, and I recognize it can be rather annoying for those around me since it does slow me down considerably.  But I try not to do it.  I’ve never been very good at that where my “career” is concerned though.  For some reason from a very young age, I have been very distracted and angsty about my career, and I haven’t really been able to settle much on anything.

I know I mentioned a few months ago that I was debating over what to do with my Linguistics degree and my career, and lest you think I’ve completely forgotten about that angst, I wanted to post this just remind you that I have not.  I’ve merely been refraining from sharing it with you just so I didn’t run the risk of driving you crazy as well.

What it’s come around to though was a little surprising to me.  You know how if you worry about something a LOT, a big problem, something that seems unsolvable, and then suddenly you know exactly what to do, but it will take time, and you’re excited about doing it and getting it done, but you want it done NOW?  That’s how I feel.  Like an impatient, but unusually decisive two year old.

I think I figured out what I want to be when I grow up.  (How weird is that!)  I’m 26, and I think I’m just now figuring it all out.  Turns out my mother was right about part of it though.  How do mothers know these things?

So what I’m considering is becoming a Latin teacher.  I think I’m going to go for a second MA in Classics and become a Latin teacher.  I’m uncertain about the job prospects, but since all the options in the field of Classics are basically set in academic environments, with few exceptions, I think even if it doesn’t turn out exactly as expected, I will nonetheless be happy.

So is it any surprise that I just want to get it done now?

The one thing that really stuck out to me during this whole process is the fact that when I bought the books on Greek & Latin to prepare for this little adventure, I did with a lot of guilt.  Why?  Because I’ve bought materials to do a lot of projects and left them unfinished.  I’m the queen of leaving things unfinished.  But I felt guilty, preemptively it seemed, for failing to finish this project, even though it hasn’t really even begun yet.

Maybe this is God giving me the answer to my prayers for a solid career path that’s right for me and for what He wants me to do, right at the moment when he knows I’m working on those faults that have prevented me from finishing so many other things in the past….  Do prayers sometimes work that way?  I don’t think I ever really understood how much hard work was involved in the opportunities given by God.

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Conversion Story: Part I (Atheism to Belief)

June 28, 2009 at 5:04 am · Filed under Conversion Story ·Tagged , , , , ,

A couple weeks ago when I had that meeting with Sister M. where we discussed my answer to the question “What is God asking of you at this time?” the metaphor of a journey, or more specifically a path came up.  I prayed for awhile, repeatedly, about this question, and the very clear answer that I got back (that’s weird to say, but I don’t know how else to phrase that) was “stay the course.”  So quite clearly, I knew that although I was not certain how this path toward conversion would end, I knew I must follow it anyhow.

We mostly just talked about what God wants of me now, but what about further back on this path?  I started on this path as a curious atheist, but I must emphasize here that I was not atheist via reason in the beginning, I was atheist by default, through a complete lack of religious instruction from my parents.  And so when I was old enough to start asking questions, my experience to that point had led me to believe that the evidence was in favor of science.

I still believe in science.  The scientific study of the universe and everything in it is, in my opinion, one of the truest forms of devotion to the God who created this humble but awe-inspiring little universe of ours.  It takes special skill and attention to derive the laws of physics from nothing but our own experience, and as a human society we have begun to do so over many generations.

It was science that I believed in as an atheist until I realized something rather troubling–science explains to us how the universe works and what it contains, but it does not have an explanation for why. At first I accepted that old “it’s all meaningless” adage that atheists put forth, but it just kept bothering me.  How do we really know that it’s all meaningless?  Was there evidence that this universe just formed randomly?  Not really.  This is highly contentious subject matter I’m treading upon here, and while I did take a great deal of physics as an undergraduate, I am not a professional physicist.  But I never felt the need to become one once I realized that even highly respected physicists disagreed on whether there was meaning to be found in the universe.

This was my first glimpse at what it really meant to “have faith” in something.  I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could spend an entire lifetime collecting evidence and never really be able to answer the question.  At that stage I’d met several physicists who had already spent what would likely be the majority of their lives pursuing that question, and the general consensus was that they still needed more data.  So, that was it.  This was a question of faith, whether I wanted to accept it or not.  Faith in meaninglessness or faith in meaning, it didn’t matter which I picked, I couldn’t escape the call to faith in something.

But like I was trained to do, I couldn’t just leap in without more data.  (Yes, this is where I usually laugh at myself.)  The first thing I wanted to know were the benefits of being scientific versus the benefits of being religious or spiritual.  It wasn’t hard to find the data on that.  Though I can’t find the study I read at the time, this is a slightly more recent version of the same thing, a Pew Study on Happiness.  There were also studies on the practical health benefits of religion.  Basically, there was scientifically-gathered data supporting the case for the benefit of religion in the life of an individual.

I couldn’t help but ask then, what about the benefits of religion in the life of a community, or in the life of a nation, or of the whole world?  I started looking closer then at the role that religion and religious people have played in the world, and I discovered something very interesting to me at the time.  I discovered that for all the bad things that happened, and for all the good things that happened, the catalysts were always people.  Fallible human people.

It was like a lightning bolt had hit me at the moment I realized that, because suddenly the stark difference between religion and religious people became so clear.  For a person who doesn’t believe in God, the difference is hard to understand.  For a person who does not believe in God, there is no aspect of religion that is not human, and therefore the actions of religious people are synonymous with the religion itself.  Those of us who have tried to live up to the very difficult standards that God has set forth for us can attest to the fact that what we believe and what we do are often not actually synonymous.  We do stupid, reckless, and sinful things all the time, but that doesn’t mean that our standards are any lower.  We just really struggle to meet those standards.

Atheists seem to enjoy pointing out that Christians in particular (why always Christians? why not other religions sometimes?) so often do fail to live up to those standards, and they use this as evidence that religion will not make you perfect.  I suspect that the intended implication here is that if religion can’t make an individual perfect in spite of themselves, that it must not be worth it.  Even worse, it may even be dangerous.  After all, it wasn’t able to prevent people from doing evil things to the world.  This is particularly compelling if you are a person who doesn’t believe in God and so does not separate religion from religious people, because then you find an abundance of people in history who were religious and still did evil things (some far worse than others).  It’s not a far leap for an atheist to just blame all the ills of the world on religion since so often it’s religious people who fall short in such catastrophic ways.

But after turning left at that fork in the road, going down the path of faith, eyes wide open and curious, I could not help but look at that line of thought and know that if there were a God, it certainly couldn’t be His fault that humans made bad choices.  If the Christians were correct and He gave us free will, he certainly didn’t make us choose to be bad.  He simply gave us the option, an option that many people find to their liking.  Even the civil law, a law we all can agree is made by humans, is not something we all can live up to every day, and sometimes to catastrophic effect.  This does not logically mean that it’s the law’s fault that someone does something evil.  The only logical conclusion was that they acted of their own free will and did it anyway, even though they may have claimed to be otherwise law-abiding and law-believing citizens.

And so all my arguments against religion as an institution fell to the wayside.  I had no reason not to believe anymore.

But this entry is long enough–maybe too long–so I’m going to save the journey from initial faith in the existence of God to actual conversion for another entry.  It’s much juicier, and far less cerebral.  I promise.

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Seven Quick Takes, the gelatinous glutinous edition

June 26, 2009 at 3:48 am · Filed under Quick Takes

Seven Quick Takes hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary

— 1 —

1158911_wheat_fieldsI love chocolate soy milk, but it always has these little gelatinous lumps in the bottom of the cartons.  We get those single-serve cartons because otherwise we just gorge on chocolate milk for a week and then are completely sick of it for a long time.  This is not good.  The only problem is, we have a stash of single-serve chocolate soy milks (which stay good FOREVER by the way, they’re shelf-stable), and I drink them so rarely now that every time I do I can’t remember if they have gluten in them or not.  This happens a lot, it seems.

Like today, for instance.  I got a bag of chips out of the vending machine at school in the middle of class because I was really hungry.  Class runs from 4PM – 8PM, so you can see why I might end up hungry mid-way through class.  I did take a gluten-free protein bar with me, but it just didn’t do it for me since I actually walked into class already hungry.  Well, I ate the whole bag thinking they must be gluten-free since they’re made of potatoes, right?  Well, then I started feeling that familiar cramping in my gut and I turned the bag over and there it was, right between the potatoes and the oil and the cheese flavor: monosodium glutamate.  Urgh.  So I’ve been feeling a little headachy and crampy tonight, which makes me naturally a bit… off.

Feeling off makes me want some chocolate, so I grabbed one of my chocolate soymilks out of the fridge thinking “well, I keep a gluten-free household, I’m sure I’ve checked this already,” and so I start sipping happily content in my chocolate consumption when I get to the gelatinous goop at the bottom.  It used to be that gelatinous soy milk goop just made me go “ewww,” but now any sort of gelatinous goop makes me panic.  If it’s thickened at the bottom that means there’s thickener in it.  And thickener is EVIL when made from wheat starch.  I may exaggerate slightly.  I’m sure the Bible says nothing specific against wheat consumption, but my gut doesn’t know that.  My gut is convinced that gluten (a protein in wheat) is EVIL and feels that the best way to alert me to this fact is extreme physical discomfort and the occasional migraine.  So naturally I panic.  Evil thick goop might be evil wheat goop.

So in my panic, I just turned over the canister to look at the ingredients and nearly got a lapful of gelatinous soymilk goop.  I managed to avoid it, but still, I’m feeling silly now.  I should never ever EVER skip checking an ingredients list if I do not have a distinct memory of doing so previously.  And even then, I should still check.

— 2 —

In relation to the gluten issues, I still haven’t had my blood work done up for it.  I just don’t want to get the blood drawn.  I hate having blood drawn.  I don’t have time to have blood drawn.  When I get blood drawn, I’m out for a good while.  As in I go home and sleep.  The last time I had blood drawn I slept for somewhere around 16 hours.  I kid you not.  My mother’s theory about this reaction is that I always sleep when I’m stressed out, it’s my natural coping mechanism.  And it’s possible—after all getting blood drawn does stress the body out quite a lot, especially when it’s already dealing with the stress of having ingested gluten when it doesn’t like gluten.  Hmph.  (I had a picture of a nurse taking blood right here, by the way, but I decided to take it out since it’s possible someone someday may decide to read my blog over breakfast.)

— 3 —

1029014_stripedglasI’ve been getting these mystery holes in my t-shirts right around the belly-button area, for over a year now.  I had no idea what was causing it but I’ve tried everything I could think of.  After one quick google search it turns out that it’s not bugs of any variety (thank God!), it’s my countertops.  I did the test today to see if that was right—I put one of my torn on shirts on backwards right before going in there to do dishes.  The back, of course, did not have holes prior to my entering the kitchen, but it most certainly DID have holes when I left the kitchen.  Doh!  Okay, so I need to get an apron.  This is more daunting a task than you’d imagine since I’m rather… er… well-endowed.  Most aprons don’t cover all the parts that need covering.  I find this is often the case with women’s clothes, but especially so with aprons.  I need more than a small sliver of the front of my shirt covered, thankyouverymuch.

— 4 —

I cleaned off my desk today.  I cleaned out my inbox.  I vacuumed yesterday.  I got an astonishing number of errands done Tuesday night (while skipping class).  I’ve even organized my To-Do list and managed to also check items off.  In other words I’ve been REALLY productive in comparison to how I was prior to reading Procrastination.  Seriously.  Get that book if you have a procrastination problem and various organization methods didn’t actually have an effect on your productivity.  If I learned nothing else from this book, it was just that I needed to ask myself continuously Why am I afraid of this task? and then do it anyway.  It’s hard to explain this to someone who doesn’t have a procrastination issue, but fear is often at the root of it.  This book just helped me understand where my own fear was coming from.

— 5 —

1145901_email_symbol_3Do any of you use Gmail?  Do you know that you can filter your incoming and outgoing mail?  Well, I knew that already, but I didn’t know exactly how powerful it could be when paired with the + feature that Gmail has that I never knew about.  What is this + feature?  It’s simply something you can append to your existing handle that will automatically get sent to your regular email address.  No setup necessary.  In other words I use username+SNS@gmail.com, where username is my regular handle.  SNS here stands for “social networking sites” and I use this email now on all the social networking sites I subscribe to.  So now instead of filtering all the email from all the different sites into one folder (that takes as many filters as websites), I just set one filter to take all mail addressed to “username+SNS@gmail.com” and label it “Social Networking” and auto-archive it (but not mark as read—this way new mail is enumerated in bold along the side of my inbox).  You can use ANYTHING after the ‘+’ sign, and you don’t have to tell Gmail in advance that you’re doing it.  If you don’t set up a filter, it will just go straight to your inbox.  This is a very powerful tool, now I just need to undo all that I did with my previous filtering system.

— 6 —

ringsI bought rings this week.  While I was supposed to be in class.  So I have an engagement ring now, and we have wedding rings waiting for us to use them.  I know we’ve gone really far around the traditional route to marriage, and while that story is a long one, I’m very glad to be able to say we’re finally here, so close to the destination.  The rings make it far more tangible.  They also kind of make me want to elope.  We won’t, though.  Because we’re good like that.  But the rings, they match, and they’re pretty, and they’re comfortable, and they’re heavy.  Well, the wedding bands are heavy, the engagement isn’t.  I don’t like heavy ostentatious rings, especially when I’m not planning on wearing it forever (you know… because it’s getting replaced by a wedding band).  (Those aren’t the real rings by the way–ours look an awful lot like that, only white gold.)

— 7 —

My wrist still hurts, so I’m going to make #7 a short one, by cheering about the fact that this short summer term is almost over.  Two more weeks I think.  I like this class… but I can’t wait.  I hate being in class during those times.  It tempts me far too often to eat all the glutinous things in the vending machine.  And even when I go for what I think isn’t glutinous, it turns out I’m wrong.  Also, the closer I am to done with this class, the closer I am to starting my other class, which is a philosophy class online.  I really can’t wait.  It’s going to fun.

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Catholocism and Work… meditation delayed

June 25, 2009 at 2:22 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about work and Catholicism and women, and while I’d love to sit and write a long post about it all, my right wrist is killing me–carpel tunnel.  So there’s a lack of typing very much for me today.

In lieu of giving you my own thoughts, I thought I’d link to the thoughts of someone else, a post that I found pretty interesting, from Historical Christian, entitled Some Thoughts on the Purpose of Work, Career, and Business.

This is a random thought that crossed my mind the other day, and just crossed it again: what work, jobs, earning a living, doing business, pursuing a career is for. We live in a world, at least here in the West, where pursuing a career, making money, looking good, succeeding and achieving in a material way is increasingly valued.  But that has actually taken the heart, the life, out of our culture, out of our very lives.

Some years ago I read an interesting critique of feminism by a female lawyer (and not from a religious perspective), Domestic Tranquility: a Brief Against Feminism, by F. Carolyn Graglia, in which she points out that prior to the feminist revolution not even men understood work as a way to self-fulfillment, an end in itself.  Men understood work not as an end, but as a means: a way to have a family, a home, a neighborhood, a place and a community to come home to and be a part of.  Work supported and enabled relationships, and it was in relationships, with family and community, that one found fulfillment.  Graglia thinks that feminists got the wrong idea about work and career as a means of self-fulfillment – and that their widespread ideas have been extremely damaging to culture.

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Callousness and prayer

June 24, 2009 at 2:01 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged

As a young co-ed I attended a VERY liberal institution with thousands of very liberal activist-types.  Now, I’m not one to choose a preference for either side of the political divide in America today for some reasons I’ll perhaps discuss in another post (why not? Religion and Politics, might as well get both taboos out of the way now, eh?), but by the time I graduated I wanted to go declare myself as one of George W. Bush’s best friends because my classmates were just driving me that crazy.

It’s not what you think though–it wasn’t their politics that bothered me so much, it was their whining all the time about how horrible they felt for all the many causes out there, and how that excessive guilt for being middle-class white kids was inhibiting their ability to be productive for any or all of their pet causes.  It seemed just so obvious to me that they needed to define their values a little more clearly and pick one or two causes to focus their energy in.  I mean it’s basic time management.

I think we both were wrong though, and while listening to a podcast today where an interview was being done of a writer/director team for a documentary about the Rwanda genocides, I realized how cold-hearted I’ve been about it all.  I mean, there’s nothing I can do to change any of it, so I thought “why bother learning about it?”  In addition to my inability to do anything, it’s also not my “cause”.  I have causes too–I think everyone does, no matter which side of the political divide you’re on.

But how is a person supposed to manage all the tragedy in the world?  No single one of us has the ability to take it all on ourselves, and often we just don’t have the perspective to even fully understand it or appreciate it.

Like I said before though, I think we both had it completely wrong.  They chose to try to feel it all, to give their attention and their time to it all, only to find themselves impotent to affect any real change.  I chose to close my heart off to it all, to only allow in the smallest amount so that I wouldn’t go through what they were going through.

But there was always a third option, I just didn’t want to see it, and I’m sure they didn’t either.  Prayer.  Since deciding to convert, the prayer requests and needs have been pouring in.  Sometimes that’s all someone will ask me for–just a prayer.  Sometimes someone needs more, but I’m not the one who can offer it–a prayer may not fill those needs in a tangible tracable way (not like handing someone something), but it certainly doesn’t hurt.  It’s much easier to open up my heart to others’ needs when I have something I can do with that awareness.  It’s so much easier to accept that others are hurting when I know that when there’s nothing I can do myself, I can go to God with that need instead, and He will be there.

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Rite of Acceptance

June 22, 2009 at 1:16 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

There are four of us in our group who went through the Rite of Acceptance yesterday. It was an interesting experience to be participants in the Mass today–at least sort of participating. We processed in with the rest of the people who perform the Mass, sat in the first pew, and spent a good deal of time up in front of everyone doing various things as part of the ceremony–sorry I’m not more descriptive here, I’m trying to fast forward a bit.

It was a beautiful ceremony, and even my protestant fiance agreed. Charlotte*, an elderly woman who helps out with RCIA went to sit with him during Mass so he wouldn’t be alone, and so he’d have a guide to help him get through Mass. I knew he’d like that quite a bit, and I really appreciated it too, knowing that he wasn’t alone and having to guess what was going on.

I think the part of this that’s most interesting to me, however, was how it felt to be up there in front of everyone, declaring my intention to convert blatantly in front of everyone. It’s not like I wasn’t in a friendly crowd. The congregation I go to is quite friendly and acceptance is exactly what happened there. It just felt very strange to not have to keep my religious convictions secret.

I think the lack of secrecy can be attributed to one big difference for me–they are actually religious convictions now rather than merely religious interests. That I feel convinced is a big source of strength for me right now, and making my commitment public doesn’t feel uncomfortable anymore (because I really *am* ready to commit).

However, I have no idea what to do when people confront me about my religion. When I was a teenager, I had several friends who were Catholic, and I felt desperately interested in seeing what that was all about, but I lacked the courage to tell my mother, and to ask my friends about it more directly. I think looking back on it they may have thought my interest was more of the “wow, what a weird religion, look at that!” variety than of actual interest, and perhaps they were right. I wasn’t ready then to accept in myself that I was interested in such a conventional and traditional religion.

It’s also not hard to feel self-conscious about yourself when you’re 16, and one’s religious beliefs are not exempt from teen angst. But now it’s ten years later, and I’m on the other side of the fence, and I have no idea yet what to say when someone bluntly asks me what I believe, especially in a manner that’s ambiguous as to whether they’re genuinely curious or offended or just alarmed.

I generally subscribe to the “live your witness” school of thought when it comes to evangelizing, but sometimes living your witness involves being asked obnoxious questions regarding conversion, like “why in the world would you do that?” I am completely projecting my fears out here, since nobody has directly asked me that question, but it has felt in the last few days like that question has been hanging silently in the air between me and some of my friends.

The Rite of Acceptance for me lasted the whole weekend, and still going on, though the actual ceremony was pretty short. The Rite of Acceptance in my life hasn’t been merely a public Rite wherein the community accepts me, but also one in which I learn to accept myself and my new position as a Christian follower, and all the complications that that entails. This issue of communicating my “why and wherefore” of conversion is probably just the first on the list. But when I’m at the Church, with my Catholic friends (or soon-to-be Catholic friends), I feel at peace with the decision and the added complications, and I can’t help but look back and know that this was a big step for me.


*Obviously I’m not giving out real names here–the ethics of doing so are ambiguous at best, but I’d hate to invite strangers into the lives of those who may not even be aware that I’m blogging my conversion.

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Coming Out Catholic, or why my blog has this title

June 21, 2009 at 1:44 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged

I have this friend who’s been visiting in town on vacation for a week now.  He goes home Monday morning, so we were hanging out with him and another local couple that we like to spend a lot of time with as well.  The friend that’s visiting is someone we’ve all gotten to know online, but this was our first time meeting him in person.  With that comes a certain amount of social awkwardness, especially since there are things he knows about me that this local did not know.

Like the fact that I’m in the process of converting.

You see, he grew up Catholic and is a rather conservative fellow, so though he is a lapsed Catholic, he tends to be very supportive of religious pursuits and preferences.  The local couple I mentioned earlier are staunch atheists.  Neither are at all comfortable with organized religion and tend towards the antagonistic end of things, though both have always been careful sorts, keeping their opinions largely to themselves on such matters.  Suffice it to say, however, that though we are close to them in other areas of our lives, religion has been largely an off-limits topic when we share a table.

Well, tonight at dinner while we were nailing down our plans for tomorrow–breakfast before church, and other activities afterward–the topic of what exactly I was doing at church tomorrow that was such a big deal came up.  It came up in a rather direct moment of “Wait, are you Catholic?”  This of course was not something I could answer with a simple yes/no because in a sense, yes, I am a Catholic in that I will be next Easter and for all intents and purposes do identify as such now, but also no, in that I’m not officially a member of the Catholic Church yet.

This is the first time we’ve discussed this, and it felt very much like those conversations I had with gay friends growing up where they were telling me for the first time that they were gay, and I was realizing for the time that there was an area of their life that I hadn’t been entirely aware of previously.  Let’s just say it’s awkward.

Now I’m not attempting to imply that coming out Catholic is anywhere nearly as traumatizing as what some of my friends went through back then.  To do so would not be merely disrespectful, it would be cruel.  One friend was beaten by his father and thrown out to live on the street.  In rather sharp contrast to that, my mother is just mildly amused and somewhat mystified by the transition.  I only intend to allude to the fact that the conversations I have with friends who don’t know that about me “officially” tend towards that same variety of awkwardness that coming out has in the better of situations.

The other reason I named my blog Coming Out Catholic is less easy to articulate.  It’s a reflection of a question that runs through my mind often.  How do I tell the gay friends that I’m converting?  I mean it’s not like I can just say “well, I was raised that way, and my religion wasn’t my choice” or “it’s a cultural thing” like some people do.  The truth for me is a simple one, that the Catholic Church is the place where I feel most freed to love God and to love other humans.  But that truth probably rings rather hollow to a person whose experiences with the Catholic Church have likely been rather unpleasant.  Even if the topic never comes up, I know that I need to reconcile these two bits of myself, with my friendships that mean the world to me, and my relationship with God that means a great deal more.

The line of questioning at dinner tonight ended very peacefully, by the way.  Though they are stubbornly atheist, they are respectful atheists, just as I am a respectful Catholic, and so we agree to disagree about some things, and try to find some common ground in others.  (As an aside, after introducing her religious stance as atheist, and after we’d talked for awhile about my journey, she reintroduced herself with the label “secular humanist” and commented that she preferred that label better because the group believes more in helping fellow human beings and being more of service.  Old labels die hard, apparently, even with those who wish to discard them.)

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7 Quick Takes

June 19, 2009 at 12:56 pm · Filed under Quick Takes

Hosted by Jennifer over at Conversion Diary.

— 1 —

I’m going through the Rite of Acceptance this Sunday and I don’t have a sponsor. Now, I do have a fill-in for the ceremony, but what in the world is a girl to when all the Catholics she knows are hundreds (or thousands) of miles away?  I guess I need to start working on making some local Catholic friends who aren’t in RCIA with me…  Any tips?  I mean do I just walk up to a random stranger at Mass and say “Hi, will you bill my sponsor?”  It feels far too silly to do.

— 2 —

tailorThis whole Rite of Acceptance thing has prompted me to go to the tailor and get my favorite skirt’s zipper repaired/replaced, only I realize now that it’s Friday and I don’t know if he can do it by Sunday.  Woops.  It’s prompted me to think about the vet’s office that is also on the same block as the tailor and the fact that my indoor-only cats are overdue for their checkups and booster shots.  I’d really rather take them to their old vet south of here 30 minutes, but the thought of 30 minutes on the freeway with no air conditioning just makes me want to gag, and I’m sure the cats would be far less happy about it than I am, so I keep putting it off.  Why not just get the AC fixed?  It’ll cost money I don’t have, and I’ve already gotten it “fixed” twice now.  Long story.  This is supposed to be quick.

— 3 —

All of this stuff in #1 and #2 is just making me think more of this book I’ve been reading called Procrastination.  Yes, I actually read it, much to the delight of my family.  My mother’s ever-predictable question: how long did you put off reading it before you finally got around to it?  I wanted to laugh, and she meant it good-naturedly, but the truth is, I’ve been meaning to send it to my brother to read too…. only I’ve procrastinated it.  On the positive side, between RCIA and this book, a lot in my life has changed.  I’ve some practical tools for dealing with my daily routine, though there are still some kinks to work out, and some spiritual tools when it doesn’t go the way I planned.

— 4 —

The book talks a lot about the role of fear in procrastination, and I realize that fear has been what’s held me back in a lot of areas of my life, including my academic and professional life.  A year ago, if I’d found out that there was a way to meld my religious research interests with my linguistic research interests and that it would require a LOT of work which might take me away from my husband-to-be for awhile, I might have just ignored that finding and gone about my not-so-merry way.  But today, I’m still terrified of what that means for us and our future, especially considering the fact that he’s entertaining a potential job offer here locally which might keep us here for awhile.  The program I’m looking at, however, is in DC.  I have no idea how our two careers will meld together into one life together, but where I used to just let that fear control me, I’m now praying about it instead and just letting what lies in the future stay in the future.  In other words, I’m taking Latin and Greek mythology this fall along with my linguistics commitments.  Am I crazy or just ambitious?

— 5 —

One thing that Steven and I agree on is our concern for the environment.  Though I approach my concern out of a sense of “stewardship” for the world that God has entrusted to us, and he approaches it from a more political angle, we both have agreed to begin “greening” in the areas of our personal products.  The only problem is that all the shampoos I’ve been able to find for reasonable amounts of money make my hair feel like straw.  Like greasy, soggy, straw.  Not pleasant.  Not pleasant at all.

— 6 —

Since being told by my doctor over a month ago that I need to go gluten-free I’ve lost a few pounds.  It’s possible that it’s just because I’ve drastically changed my diet to things that are naturally gluten-free (vegetables, whole grains of the non-wheat/oats/barley/rye variety, meat, etc.), and that I don’t really have an issue with gluten, but according to my doctor it’s more likely that though the weight loss can be attributed to a healthier diet, the rest of the improvements I’ve seen can only be attributed to the lack of gluten in my system.  The fog is lifting, finally.  I sleep better, I have more energy, I can focus more, and best of all, I’ve survived this awful weather-changing time of year with NO MIGRAINES.  I haven’t gone a season-change since I was about 19 with no migraines, so this is a very big deal.  And if I’d listened to my doctor back then, I wouldn’t have had to suffer so much.  Lesson learned: when the doctor tells you weird things, like that your migrains might be caused by eating wheat, don’t just scoff and ignore her; she’s trying to help you!  So that’s two things I need to work on–my pride, and my procrastination.

— 7 —

IzzieSince I seem to be a health kick this edition of the Quick Takes, let me end this by telling you very quickly, my cat has just expressed her displeasure in our change of her food to an organic, healthier brand by scratching at my chair, and then trying to destroy my computer.  It’s been a week and she’s still going crazy, though she has finally figured out that it was not our guest’s doing, but rather Steven’s.  She’s become a little more focused in her temper tantrums now.  She will walk over to her food bowl when I’m in the kitchen, look at it, look at me longingly, sniff the food, and shake her head droopily, as if to say “yuck,  never mind” and then walk away and attack something.  The other cat, however, he’s happy as can be with the food change because he’s getting wet food now.  (He likes wet food, which is a good thing because it’s important to give your cats, males especially, plenty of water in their diets to prevent urinary tract infections, which can be fatal in male cats.)

The picture you see to the left here… yes, that’s my cat.  The one who’s angry about the food.  Doesn’t she just look so sweet?  She’s not.  Don’t be fooled.

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Sister, Sister

June 17, 2009 at 11:44 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Last Thursday I met with Sister M. who leads our RCIA – Inquirers class.  This was more or less our “exit interview” to “graduate” from the Inquirers class to the Catechumens/Candidates class next fall.  It was a great interview, although I had been a little nervous about it.  I’ve missed a great deal of RCIA in the last couple of months, and someone in class the night I returned asked if there was any reason someone would not be allowed to continue on—the answer of course was “well, yes, for instance if someone hasn’t attended class regularly.”

Ummm…. Yeah, that’s me.

Apparently it wasn’t a problem, since I had been sick, then had finals, then went off to visit my mother for awhile.

But our conversation was a good one, despite my nervousness.  The big question at this time is “What is God asking of me right now?”  At the time, I wasn’t very clear on the implications of this, but I knew that whatever I do, I must do it as part of following Christ.  Through prayer I’ve figured out that what God wants me to do is simply stay on the path I’m on, because it’s the path I’m meant to be on. (This doesn’t mean, of course, that I don’t still have doubts…)

So Sunday is the day my group of RCIAers and I are going to be officially accepted by the congregation as Catechumens/Candidates.

The conversation was interesting with Sr. M. for me mostly because she mentioned during our discussion her own feelings of doubt as a nun.  Conceptually I know that religious feel doubts too, that though something may be a “calling” or a vocation, committing yourself wholly to God makes you no less vulnerable to doubt, but it hadn’t really hit me so tangibly before what that actually means for a believer.

I believe and yet I doubt.

I am pursuing full conversion to the Catholic faith… and yet I still doubt.

I am ready to give myself over to Christ in the best way I know how… and yet I doubt.

But it’s okay, because we all have doubts.  I guess part of me thought I would be like one of those obnoxious Christians I always disliked so much when I was an atheist, so sure of Christ and God, so smug and self-righteous, and so pompous to boot.  Truth be told, it was fear of being like that which kept me for so long from exploring Christianity after I became convinced of the existence of God.  I need not have feared that, I hope (oh I really do hope I’m not like that).  And truth be told, most of the Christians I know today aren’t like that at all.  They’re like Sister M., who simply found the best way she knew to express her faith in Christ, who does occasionally have doubts, but who is nonetheless a believer.

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