Questions and Answers

"Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."~Rainer Maria Rilke

So. Despite my best intentions, I didn't pen a line of a blog post in the past three months, because, (drumroll) I've begun my freshman year at university!! Transitioning from high school to college has been a highly rewarding, exponentially beautiful, and occasionally distressing journey. Thus, my days(and nights) have been consumed with study and homework (and Sporcle. And talking. And procrastinating. *guilty face*) College may be an overused, unsatisfactory excuse to neglect writing here for so long, but it conveniently segues into my topic.

I think one of the greatest sources of stress and soul-searching these past months has been the desire to live life to the fullest. Let me explain. Frosh-O weekend, (that's freshman orientation weekend in Notre Dame lingo), we were constantly encouraged to find our full potential and to take advantage of every opportunity. However, at the time, I was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of possibilities and opportunities that had been opened up to me. I was afraid that I would miss wonderful opportunities, and I guess I assumed that meant that dire consequences would ensue. It seems like a silly fear now that I realize I have four years here to take advantage of every marvelous opportunity, but at the time, it was stressing me out.

However, that stage passed (hallelujah) but, more questions arise. What activities should I do? What clubs should I join? What service opportunities should I participate in? What shows should I do? What shows shouldn't I do? What classes should I take? Should I get coffee or tea? (answer: coffee) When should I go to Mass? What should I wear today? What should I do with my life? What does God want me to do?

That's a lot of questions. And I didn't have the answers.

Thankfully, God has put two amazing people in my life. One is Mother Teresa, the other is a friend/mentor/director/rolemodel who sent me the above Rainer Maria Rilke quote. That quote made me realize that God doesn't expect me to have all the answers. In fact, He doesn't need me to have all the answers. What He needs is for me to trust Him. If I had all the answers, then I'd never have to trust Him. And what fun would that be? No fun, that's what. Life would be insanely boring if we had all the answers to the million questions that we encounter. We just have to keep asking the questions and God will send us answers.

But what are we to do in the meantime? We can't just pray for answers and then sit back and wait for God to send them. We have to act. Move forward. Live. But what do you do when you don't know what you're supposed to be doing? The answer is simple. Love. Live each day focusing on others. Mother Teresa's writings are a constant inspiration and reminder of that. Her simple yet profound example of love and complete giving of herself is rousing-I feel like dashing off into the Great Unknown and single-handedly change the world. I may not know what I'm supposed to do after I graduate, what my vocation is, or what I should wear to the dance, but I do know that I can offer a prayer for someone I pass by, or hold open the door for someone, or help someone with their laundry, or bake them brownies when they're feeling blue or just smile. These simple acts of love are what life's all about. A life lived in love is a life lived in God. And God's got the answers. He is the answer.

"I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?"

— Til We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis

Yes! Writer's block=Removed!!

The first two months of college have flown by, along with the time to post on this blog. However, I have a few seconds to share some God moments with you.

1. I started praying about health (ok, I will humbly state) weight. It was probably on my mind way too much, but there it was anyway. That night I ended up going to some prayer group meeting (which I did not plan on going to and haven't been to since) and guess what the reading was all about? The Body of Christ. So, I realized that my body is completely in His hands. Alleluia.

2. Today at breakfast my roommate and I made the Sign of the Cross and prayed before eating. Afterward, some of the alumni here for a reunion thanked us for doing this.

3. The best part of sitting at a football game is when you sit in the same section as the seminarians. They have the loudest and least cheesy cheers of the whole croud.

No, We're Not Dead. Yet

It's just been crazy busy lately. Normal posting might resume sometime soon. In the meantime, I give you this random picture of an adorable little kitten.




And remember, Jesus loves you very, very much!

This Madcap Existence We Call Life

How do you quantify the unquantifiable, and reduce the unexplainable to a rational equation?

Martha Beck is Harvard-educated, brilliant, and married to an equally Harvard- educated and brilliant man. At the outset Expecting Adam, neither Martha nor her husband are religious, although both were raised as Mormons. They had agreed that "it was a very good idea to abort fetuses with birth defects." But when Martha becomes pregnant with a Down's Syndrome baby, whom she names Adam, she's not so sure about things. It doesn't help that her entire world has been turned upside-down with inexplicable events and miracles large and small since Adam's conception.

Precisely because Beck refuses to be pigeon-holed by either right or left, Expecting Adam continually turned me on my head while I was reading it. Beck can write (when describing her complete lethargy and weakness at one point in time, she compares herself to "Popeye during the Great Spinach Shortage"). Simple statement. I enjoy, I tremendously enjoy, reading the work of people who can write. Beck is witty, sharp, and sarcastic. When she experiences any negative or shallow reaction to Adam's existence in this world, she roars with all of the fury of a mother bear. Yet she makes it abundantly clear that it is Adam who has taught her what life really consists in: the ability to slow down and enjoy the world, not to be caught up in what society classifies as the necessities of life, to truly appreciate the wonder of this mad existence that we lead.

Beck writes quite frankly about Adam's existence as a person before his birth. Neither she nor her husband deny the humanity of the unborn. This, coupled with all of the incredible things that happen to her during her pregnancy beg the question -- why hadn't she become "pro-life" by the time of Adam's birth? She admits that she's come to believe in the existence of the spiritual realm (it's hard not to when someone pushes you out of a burning building and a picture shows absolutely no one behind you), whether it's God, angels, cosmic puppeteers or invisible gremlins. She does offer the explanation that "I myself had suspended my disbelief in a spiritual realm and was stumbling daily over more and more evidence that my world was full of things rationalist science could not explain. But this made me feel better, not worse, about the fate of those who die young, including those who die as fetuses. Why should people who believe that life exists outside of mortal bounds be the very same people who are so obsessed with a fetus's 'right to life' on this messy little planet?"

It is because Beck remains an "outsider" of the pro-life movement, that her memoir resonated with me in a way that similar stories, told by wonderful and fervent pro-lifers, have not. I am not accusing these people of propaganda (on the contrary, I agree with them on nearly every count), but because Beck remains as mystified at the end as at the beginning of her story as to why exactly she kept Adam in the first place, her words carry a raw honesty that is often lost in the charged rhetoric of the abortion/pro-life debate.

Beck's story provided me with much fodder for thought, but ultimately the lessons she learned from Adam touched me the most deeply. One thing that I've come to learn over this past summer is the importance of appreciating the wonder of life, and all the beauty and miraculousness that God has placed here for us. Beck does not hesitate to admit that her own obsession with achievements and the perfect life were entirely upended by Adam.

"I was afraid Adam would slow me down, and he has. Not because he has required more care and time than a "normal boy" (he is the most helpful and least demanding of my children) but because the immediacy and joy with which he lives his life make rapacious achievement, Harvard-style, look a lot like quiet desperation. Adam has slowed me down to the point where I notice what is in front of me, its mystery and beauty, instead of thrashing my way through a maze of difficult requirements toward labels and achievements that contain no joy in themselves. Adam takes his joy straight up, in purer form than most of us can handle. He was the person who, at two years of age, spent enough time experimenting to learn that his four-month-old sister was capable of laughter, and determining exactly what would make her laugh. He is the one who goes into transports of delight over clean sheets, or packaged waffles, or batteries. He is the one who taught me to appreciate rainbows -- not only in the sky but also in lawn sprinklers and dish-soap bubbles and patches of oil. He is the one who stops, and makes me stop, to smell the bushes."

(caveat emptor: Beck is extremely frank about her views on abortion and contraception, almost to point of rubbing the reader's face in them. She also swears on occasion, but I found it to be understandable, if not excusable. There are also some slightly, but not horrifically, graphic descriptions of various medical complications from her pregnancy.)

Helen Alvare article

I have not read Kirsten Lavansdatter, but this article makes me want to run back to MN, grab the book off the shelf and devour it and its sequels.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0007.html

Catholic Women of the World, Unite!

While spending too much time on the internet today, I ran across this interview with Harvard's 2010 Valedictorian, Mary Ann Marks, who entered the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist back in August. After spending the summer discussing femininity and our faith, she struck me as an example of both. It is also extremely interesting that, despite all the claims that the Church is misogynistic or that she stifles women, Marks is quite obviously a smart, well-educated woman who chose to accept her vocation -- she wasn't coerced or brainwashed.

The world could use more women like her. She is truly a strong woman of God.

(excerpt)

LOPEZ: You wanted to go to graduate school but discerned that God wanted something else. Why would you give up your free will like that?

MARKS: Part of the answer is that when Love asks you to be His spouse, you don’t quibble about the when and where. The other part is that anything worthwhile in life requires an ongoing, freely willed surrender of one’s freedom.

Surviving College

Prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas before Study

 O ineffable Creator,

Who, out of the treasure of Thy wisdom,

hast ordained three hierarchies of Angels,

and placed them in wonderful order above the heavens,

and hast most wisely distributed the parts of the world;

Thou, Who are called the true fountain of light and wisdom,

and the highest beginning,

vouchsafe to pour upon the darkness of my understanding,

in which I was born,

the double beam of Thy brightness,

removing from me all darkness of sin and ignorance.

Thou, Who makest eloquent the tongue of the dumb, 

instruct my tongue, 

and pour on my lips the grace of Thy blessing.

Give me quickness of understanding, 

capacity of retaining,

subtlety of interpreting,

facility in learning, 

and copious grace of speaking.

Guide my going in, 

direct my going forward, 

accomplish my going forth; 

through Christ our Lord. 

Amen.

September 11th

May we always hold our the memory of our departed in our hearts. Eternal peace grant unto them, Lord.

And, in a special way, one soul who was born on this day, but never lived to see the September 11th attacks.

Happy Birthday, Dylan. Rest in peace.

In the midst of passing bravery

In the face of our own injury

It's the constant generosity of grace

Friend, I know your heart is raw

But love is still a worthy cause

(Love is Still a Worthy Cause, by Sara Groves)

Love Never Fails.

Something to chew on...when you have time

The following article is very interesting. It made me think of the following points:

Here it is.

1. The last time the electricity went out my sister and I ran to the computer to Google what to do when the electricity goes out. Of course this did not work because the computer was down with the electricity.

2. I was not able to read the entire article without interuption. Why? I was jumping from place to place on the internet at the same time. Proves a point?

Hello Everyone,

I have officially moved into college and am starting classes tomorrow. Due to some technology problems, I have been unable to call or e-mail any of you. So...

No cell phone and no computer(I am in the library right now). Long story....

However, I am still alive, and kicking. Despite the technology problems, everything else is going perfectly! We have been staying up super late and having lots of fun.