Ignorance is bliss?

When my Christian, evangelical buddies rip on Catholicism, or dismiss it entirely (which is sometimes even worse), I get incredibly annoyed because often they (like me, before I became a volunteer in nearly the Catholic capital of the Midwest) are speaking out of ignorance.  I am reminded tonight of my friend Katie’s frustration, in that society has made her faith out to be a freak show of idolization and rigidity.   Now, this doesn’t make me off the hook: I admit that I passed tremendous judgment on my Catholic brothers and sisters before I became a part of this program and lived with nuns.  I definitely hated on some traditional practices that seemed like blatant absurdity or narrow-mindedness.

God has taken these past four months and used them to open my heart and mind, sometimes taking me places I’d rather not go in order to show me that I am way too prideful of my Protestantism instead of finding my pride in Him and only Him.  He has revealed Himself to me while in Mass, while participating in traditionally Catholic prayers or services, and that shouldn’t shock me or my evangelical friends.  I am beginning to understand my roommate’s frustration in my junior year when she decided to become Catholic and no one understood, and Campus Crusade for Christ practically shunned her for it.  She left Crusade feeling bruised by her family in Christ and rejected them, and me, in return because of it.  I admit that my response to her desire was less than graceful.  I had just pursued a sincere knowledge of God that previous summer, or was “reborn” so to speak, so I was rejuvenated with strictly evangelical ideals and so I could not, at the time, understand even her desire to become a Catholic.  I didn’t get it and I judged her for it.  Right now my heart breaks for how terrible she must have felt because of me and my dismissive attitude about it all.

Now I am on the other side of the fence; I have been exposed to some beautiful Catholics, even apart from the nuns I live with, and learned about the tradition and the reasoning behind the devotion, the Saints, the iconography and the liturgy.  I get it now.  I don’t agree with all of it, for sure.  But a slew of my Protestant friends still don’t get it and don’t seem to even want to.  Like it is irrelevant, or something.  I’m not even Catholic but because I have grown to cherish the tradition as a part of their community, I’m finding that my friends’ comments can be downright hurtful, and their dismissive tones hit me square in the face.

I want them to be aware of the gems that Catholicism has to offer, like I have experienced.  I feel like until real community is experienced within a tradition – or any belief system for that matter – a person is still going to be ignorant in some way or form.  I can read texts on Islam until my eyes fall out, but I feel I will never really understand or sympathize unless in put myself in their community, make friends with Muslims in the neighborhood or experience their traditions first hand.  How else would I begin to see the similarities between our faiths?  Or begin to look at a Muslim as a potential brother in Christ, let alone one of God’s cherished beings?  The same applies within the Christian faith, between Protestants and Catholics, and I can say that because God has allowed me to experience this first hand.  I believe that God wants me and you to be informed.

My initial ignorance may have been judgmental bliss to me, but it certainly wasn’t bliss to God.

At last, at last!

Praise God Almighty, I am home at last!

Okay, stealing a well-known catch phrase from the period of emancipation might be a little overkill.  But still, I am overwhelmingly happy to be home, with my family, dog and warm weather.  I’ll get to see some good friends in the next week or so and I’m grateful.  I’ve been looking forward to this time for a few weeks now, and I can’t describe how good it feels to see everyone.  Not necessarily to be home, or here in Calvert County.  It doesn’t hold many fantastic memories for me and I’m not wholly fond of it to put things mildly!  Although since I lived here it seems the entire place has changed multiple times  - with my mom’s consistent distaste with the state of things like the wall coloring or sofa arrangements – it is still a place that holds bitter thoughts and lack of growth.  Maybe that’s for another post.  BUT I am giving my thanksgiving to God for the precious moments from the past 24 hours, like walking out of the airport to a balmy near-40 degrees, seeing Dad and Rachel across the lobby at the security gate for the first time, Rachel and I running in slow motion to collide in a very poetic hug in the middle of said lobby, our pup Jasmine being ridiculously pumped to see me in our driveway, and my first sleep in my warm, familiar bed.

This week will be filled with cleaning, cooking, decorating (Mom left the whole tree for me to decorate… how nice), and buying Christmas gifts.  Oh, and sending out super late Christmas cards to my friends because I’m a huge bum and kept putting it off.  Joy and her beau, Jack, are coming up from SC on Christmas Eve.  We’re getting a family portrait taken, even with Jack, even though he’s not part of the family… but he and Joy have been talking about marriage, so I suppose it’s okay.

I am missing Minnesota, the nuns and my new friends terribly already.  Sister Clara gave me a call to make sure all was okay and to say that they were all thinking of me!  She left a sweet message blessing me and my family and I shared it with my folks.   I may not have made it to the coast if it weren’t for their prayer all day yesterday; there were lots of complications thanks to the blizzard over the weekend.

I’m so joyful to be home!

Homeward Bound

It is incredibly ironic to me, how my travel plans have worked out this holiday season.  For weeks I’ve been pretty overwhelmed with the cold here in the Midwest, not to mention the hectic Christmas season at the Children’s Home that feels more like 72 hours than just 40 hours a week – all of it adds up to a lot of holiday ho-hums, and about two weeks ago I was more ready than ever to hop on a plan and fly back to the east coast.  When we got our second blizzard, I started longing for Southern Maryland, where entire school systems shut down with the tiniest threat of rainfall.  Seriously.  It’s wonderful.  I began referring to home as the “tropics”.

Now, fast forward a week or two:

That is a picture I found of some undisclosed location on the east coast.  Even North Cackalacki got feet of snow in some places. Ridiculous!

It seems I can’t get away from this white, fluffy crap.  No offense, Minnesota.  I’m just not used to your Wintry Wonderlandy ways.  But oh, was I hoping to go home to some warmth and green grass!

Oh well, at least it’ll be a white Christmas.

Holiday ups and downs

It’s been nearly four months since I first stepped foot on Minnesota soil. (Or airport carpet, if you want to get technical.)  I can’t believe it.  I look back on these 100+ days and marvel at how far we’ve come as a community, the things I’ve learned from the nuns, the priceless experiences I’ve had with the youth at my placement, and the ups and downs.

The holidays thus far have been different than any I’ve experienced.  Usually around this time I am losing hair over final exams, replacing about 43% of the water in my system with Starbucks’ dirty chai lattes (chai with a shot of espresso… try it, now!), and fretting about getting gifts for everyone that I can’t afford.  I drink A LOT less coffee these days, maybe a smidgen more than the Sisters do, but I’m good after two cups.  A total one-eighty from my old, naive, over-caffeinated self.  I’m not nearly as worried about gifts this year.  Something about being Franciscan has changed the things I obsess over, and being the young radical I am, I’ve been particularly disgusted with commercialism.  Most of my gifts this year have been hand made and I’m proud of that.  And, the friendships.  I’ve had some beautiful friendships blossom since I’ve been here and I’ve met some really solid people.  So, I would say that less coffee and commercialism and more genuine friendships are good things, definitely holiday “uppers”.

Segue to a couple “downers”… The Christmas season here at the Children’s Home is an exciting, yet somber time for most of the kids.  Many have never had a holiday to celebrate, or many other reasons to celebrate anyway.  This is perhaps the best Christmas they’ve ever had – as I’ve heard from a former treatment student – and the staff/faculty make sure the holidays are as festive and joyful as possible.  Every other day there is some sort of event, service or decorating party for the kids to be a part of.  Last Wednesday I got to be a part of the “Tree Lighting” ceremony.  All of the kids came and they indulged in cookies and cocoa; poems were read; children were blessed with a sprinkling of real holy water from a sprig of spruce branches (complete with lots of wet/giggly kids); skits were performed.  I got to be one of the “lucky” volunteers chosen from the audience to act out one of the skits.  My character?  Priscilla, a curly blond with Harry Potter glasses and a red feather boa ’round my neck.  I was all alone on Christmas Eve, until my long-lost love, Josh, shows up on my doorstep, and we proceed to do the Macarena around the Christmas tree.

Me, being totally out of my comfort zone. It's for the kids... it's for the kids.

I am the biggest introvert I know, and this was so hard for me to do.  One of the (very extroverted) teachers was reading off the script for us as we went.  Lots of mandatory jumping up and down, screaming, and general  ridiculousness.  This job takes me more and more out of what I think is my comfort zone every new week.  But, as I was reminded before and after my little performance, it’s all about the kids, and it did make them laugh a whole lot.  I suppose that even though my face turns beet red when the kids yell “Heeey Priscilla!” to me down the hall, it’s all worth it.

I’ve also been able to continue developing relationships with the children here.  It is obvious that they’re more and more comfortable with me, and I with them.  One of the girls who’s been in treatment here for over a year, we’ll call her Janet, has a special place in my heart.  I’ve gotten to know her over the past four months, and when we first met she wouldn’t talk to me.  She had lots of self-esteem issues and always talked down about herself, and tried to heal those insecurities with a myriad of inappropriate things.  I have tried to be a positive energy in her life, and my prayer is that God has encouraged her through me, and let her know that she is precious because she is His beloved and beautiful work of art.  She’s gone from being hurtful and negative to sassy and confident.  It’s been a miracle to see her transform before my eyes!  We went out to lunch this week (McDonalds, her favorite because of their milkshakes) and had a good chat and general good time together.  She shared her anxieties with me, a little of her past and her exciting plans for the future.  She wants to be an LPN and get a nursing degree like her mom.  This morning, Janet was discharged from the Children’s Home.  I got up at the butt-crack of dawn to say good bye to her; we hugged about five times and I gave her a card.

It’s enormously bittersweet to say goodbye to Janet and others.  She still has a lot of growing to do, and she isn’t going to the best situation back home.  But she has changed hugely since I first met her, she is so much more cheery, more outgoing, more satisfied.  I’m happy for her.  Definitely a holiday “upper”!

Joyful moments at my placement!

Lately I adore being at the Children’s Home, but if you’ve been reading my updates from the beginning, my feelings weren’t always that way.  It’s amazing how differently I feel about it, really.  At first, I was bitter because it seemed like the most imperfect match for me and my experience/skillz, and every day I would question God’s direction.

Now, there are aspects of my service here that ebb and flow.  For example, sometimes I love that I have to walk to and from work everyday because it can be peaceful, contemplative and good exercise; but sometimes being outside in the harsh, MN chill can be a bitter experience and not peaceful at all.  Or in my relationships with my coworkers, the work I’m given to do, and so on.  All of these aspects of my job seem to roller coaster within my service experience, some give me joy and some get me down at different times…

But where I see consistent joy is in my daily interactions with the students.  These are precious moments.  Where I could barely look a child in the eye before I can now stare them down triumphantly and more importantly have sincere conversations with them.  It’s a trip when a child not only stays to hear what you have to say to them, but looks you in the eyes, too.  Even if our interaction lasts for all of 30 seconds, if it is a successful one, that is all the encouragement I need for the day.  I worry that this might become a pride thing and I’m praying that God would guard my heart, though for now it is purely a joyful thing.  By why have I begun to feel this way?  I think it simply reveals how relational we are, that as God’s creation we are made to reflect the Trinity’s perfect community, in the smallest sense at least by being talked to, encouraged, understood and known by other people.  My time with the children is so sweet and seeing them change during their treatment here fills my heart with happiness.  What was once my most fearful experience is now my joy.

I can’t help but get a lil’ teary eyed.  Thank you, God, for helping me continue to pursue these relationships even though I wanted to give up and run away so many times.  God is breaking my heart for children in ways I’ve never known. Might this open up some crazy new opportunity, one I’ve never considered before?  Like, uh, teaching?? Could reaching out to children be in my future now?  The idea is definitely not as far off as it was to me just a handful of months ago.  I can’t help but wonder with all these brand new appeals to my heart and mind.

Holiday spirit?

Today was fun.  I slept in after a razzle dazzle night with new friends (sorry to the poor waitress who had to deal with us for three hours.  But don’t think we didn’t see your stink eye in our direction all night) and trudged over to the Volunteer House with a few left over decorations around one o’clock to start our scheduled, self-proclaimed Christmas Extravaganza.  It took Spencer and I a while to get started, but we were determined, I think, to have our house filled with holiday spirit.  I baked cookies for our Open House next weekend, strung up some lazy, tinsel-y garland over the door frames (very tacky but very appropriate) and set up our precious, Charlie Brown tree in front of the window.  Spencer put on some tunes and lit the candles on our Advent wreath.  All the while it was lightly snowing outside.  Check out my new Flickr photos in the sidebar!

It’s hard to get into the holiday spirit this season.  It comes and goes.  There are glimmers during especially Christmas-y days like today that I am particularly sentimental or nostalgic or have “happy feelings nothing in the world can buy”.  While I surveyed the end result of our work today I felt those priceless tingles in my belly.  But just for a moment.  Maybe I’m so lacking in spirit because I’m so far from my folks?  My family is more than a thousand miles away.  The decorations, though heartfelt, aren’t the same.  The cookies and peanut brittle I made today were more tedious a task than fun because I made them on my own.  Decorating today helped me realize that Christmas is not a time to enjoy without friends and family.  Even with all the Bing Crosby blaring, the cookie baking, and the tree donning, I felt lonely and not particularly Christmas-y.

All the ingredients for a lovely holiday were there, but I didn’t have much of a spirit.  It all makes me miss my family and I can’t wait to go home and be in a familiar place and see decorations that I recognize.  There’s a solidarity and familiarity I’m longing for.  When Sister Cordy notices I’m down in the dumps she’ll remind me that I get to fly home soon.  In just two more weeks I’ll be on a plane, homebound for Lusby-tuck!  Apart from my family, I’m excited about the balmy weather that awaits me (I hear it’s a sweaty 40 degrees over there) and a few childhood friends.  I can’t wait for a mug of my mom’s spiced tea, a bone-crushing hug from my little sister and a week or two of moving around the ornaments on our Christmas tree.  Familiarity.  What are you missing this Christmas season?

Way overdue for a new post

I am pretty sure I am breaking one of the rules for creating a super blog following by not updating in the past week, but I promise a lot has been happening.  Since I last posted I have partook in three Thanksgiving meals, taken a personal retreat day at the convent in Little Falls, had a roller coaster of a week at my volunteer placement – with the kids and the coworkers – and been pretty giggly through it all.  Or “squirrelly” as my supervisor Lana would call it.

A lot of ideas and reflections are swirling in my head, but I just need to sit down and take the time to write them.  Sorry for waiting so long, ya’ll.  Soon, I promise…

Peace, Alicia

Twitter woes…

…and just about every other communication technology, too. I log onto Gmail, Facebook or Twitter (and once upon a time, Myspace) and I feel utterly drained. I’m PJ-ed up, scrubbed and ready for my head to hit the pillow. It’s usually the only time I can make time for these things, being about 40% busier than I’ve ever been in my life.  All I know is by the end of the day, God and I have crammed in so many thoughts, actions, decisions, ideas, emotions, epiphanies, and so on that I am more than ever ready to say goodbye to the day and  make friends with my comforter.  I’m rarely moved to reply to a friend’s message or comment because the mere sight of any Facebook news feed is enough to make my head spin drowsily. I get overwhelmed when friends send me emails, simply asking me how I’m doing, because this is such a huge period of discernment in my life and I know I can’t just tell him/her that “I’m just fine, thanks.”  Those are hearty responses that, at 10:30 at night, I am so not ready to give.  I’m so far away from my friends that I feel burdened more than usual to keep in touch with them and yet I’m just always plumb tired when I have the time.  Oy.

Don’t get me started on Twitter, either.  I nearly black out when I see that I have to catch up on literally hundreds of Tweets from the persons that I follow. I never, ever make it.  So, sorry if I never got back to you about that great new hair cut you Tweeted about last week.  I’m not trying to be a negligent jerk.  Honestly.

I guess I’m turning into an elderly nun quicker than I’d thought. None of the Franciscan Sisters I live with are tech savvy or go to bed past 9:30. True story. You are who you surround yourself with!

Am I really looking to be changed?

Am I really? From the inside out?  Like I consistently proclaim on here, to my friends, to God?

I was stunned tonight when a friend told me that he’d been hurt by my seemingly judgmental and close-minded attitude about his preference for Catholicism.

I was blindsided by the confrontation and nearly cried right in front of him.  I’ve come off as more judgmental and a lot less transformed than I thought.

I suppose it’s all good to blog about my struggles with judgment and feel alright about coming clean to the world wide web, but where is the transformation and change?  After tonight I wondered, am I really opening this part of my life to God for Him to change it?  I think I get too ahead of myself when I affirm my issues, over and over again, so much to the point that I believe that simply being honest about my sin struggle is enough.  But that’s silly.  Obviously I can’t simply write everything off and say, “Oh don’t worry – that’s just my struggle.  It’s just a dang thorn in my flesh.  What can I do?”

I can’t struggle with these thorns and not expect to change.  How can I intimately encounter Christ and not be changed, perfected into His likeness?

Yeah, it hurts. In one moment you think you’re doing mighty fine, and then in the other you have that security yanked out from under you when someone tells you that they blatantly see you in a way that suggests otherwise.  Not to mention the humility of realizing that you aren’t nearly as well off as you thought.

You’re not doing mighty fine, Alicia.  You’re coming off as self-righteous, close-minded and belittling.  I feel like my beliefs are invalid when I’m around you.

To hear that was, like I said, stunning, but I was immediately glad that it came out into the open.  As a human prone to repeated mistakes and general ridiculousness, I need that accountability.  I need people to call me out on that stuff.

Realizing this was a blow to my big fat ego, which really needs a healthy, roundhouse kick to the  face from time to time, if not every day.  Tonight I came to God more broken than I’ve been in the past three months, and sincerely begged Him to expose areas of my life that don’t please Him and to change me.  It’s a precious perspective I have tonight that I never want to lose.

Life wonderings

Here’s the latest thing weighing oh-so-heavy, and dangerously so, on my heart.  It’s teetering on the edge and I’m afraid that this is something that will cause a massive stumble.  Not the “epic” kind, either.

I wonder if God allows things to happen to me in order to truly know (deep down in my bowels) how depraved I really am.  Which seems silly to me sometimes, and positively aggravating, because I don’t feel like grasping my emptiness without Him is something I particularly struggle with.  I usually believe that I have an healthy understanding of my depravity, and my need for a Savior to have intimacy with God for eternity.  I get that.  But God doesn’t seem to see it that way; He doesn’t seem to think that I understand it quite enough.  I keep falling hard into sin, each time afterward feeling the dread only a sinner could feel, like a little girl showing her parents the vase she broke after horsing around in the living room, overwhelmed with a palpable sense of guilt.  Of course, if it weren’t for her parent’s forgiveness, her guilt/worry would never go away and her relationship with them would be forever altered for the worse.  Thankfully that’s how things work with my Heavenly Parent, who’s love and forgiveness will never run dry, but still…

There are times when, after God replaces the vase, I continually break it, over and over.  And over.  There are tons of times I sincerely believe that because I’ve already destroyed it millions of times before, there’s no way I’ll break it this time.  You know, I’ll start to steer clear of the vase, I’ll start to grasp the danger of all those sharp-edged, broken pieces… then I’ll get pretty pumped because I haven’t broken the vase for ages and I’ll brave going near it again, eventually believing that the vase really isn’t harmful at all and never really was – what was I so worried about??  Then… well, take a wild guess.

I see this cycle in my life.  It stretches back to when I first took note of my sinfulness and decided that the depraved route wasn’t the way to go, when I was already well into “breaking vases”, if you will.  There are things I’m still dealing with now, two and a half years after the fact, and at times I feel I’ve made no leeway in putting a wedge between those particular sins and me.  Oh boy.  It can get discouraging.

But I have to wonder, too… why does God keep putting the vase back in the first place?  I mean, dang.  I feel like I will never get out of these circumstances that tempt me so much, and I am frustrated, even angry when I think that God might be deliberately allowing me to fall prey to this crap in order to teach me something.  Well, God, it’s worked, because I’m no more aware of how stinking depraved I am than when I have just finished succumbing to temptation and immediately feel conviction as only the Holy Ghost can bring.  I just came across this notion today and couldn’t keep my mind off it.  I wonder though, if it’s even Scriptural.

Is this something I shouldn’t be believing?