bearing blog

Obedience in dissent, with cultural notes.

Simcha has a great post today.  

(Beginning to think I should just have a category called DIRECT LINKS TO SIMCHA FISHER AND MARK BARNES.)

A reader asks her, 

I feel that I am a faithful Catholic- attend Mass, pray regularly, try to follow the Church in all things. But I fall short on this with one issue- I do disagree about the Church’s stance on homosexuality and gay marriage. My beloved sister is a lesbian...I cannot/ do not look at what my sister is doing as wrong. I’m happy she found someone she loves to spend her life with. I love her children, and I’m so happy that they exist. My sister and her partner are raising them wonderfully...

Sometimes conservative Catholic bloggers will talk about how they struggled with a Church teaching, but the post always ends with how they changed, and saw the light, and saw the truth and beauty in the Church’s teachings. But what are you supposed to do when that doesn’t happen?

There's more than one question wrapped up in that post, of course.  Let me pick one excerpt from Simcha's answer:

Sometimes people think that the Church requires us all to be prophets with bullhorns, or prissy grand inquisitors — that the only way we can ally ourselves with the Church is to be thoroughly obnoxious.

Or perhaps we believe that believing something means feeling good about believing it.  These ideas are actually very handy temptations, courtesy of the devil.  They make excellent obstacles to obedience.

So what is the reader supposed to do?  Certainly not shun or treat her sister, the partner, or the children with disdain; certainly not wish them misery, wish that they hadn’t been born.  Certainly not pick over their house, hunting for evidence of degeneracy.  Depending on the situation, the Church may or may not want the reader to even speak to the sister about her lifestyle, now that it’s so firmly established.

Read the whole thing.  The main thrust of the post is that we are all dissenters about something or other, to one degree or another, and because of that this is really a universal problem of the human heart.  If we value obedience --to legitimate authority within its legitimate sphere, of course -- sooner or later we must come up against some principle we haven't taken to heart.  How do we deal with that?  How do we recognize it?

But there's also another question here:  The question of how faithful Catholics are to live in a world, and sometimes in families, with a broader definition of "marriage" than we can parrot back.  It is still an open and vague one.  

For the time being, the official work of the Church in this area is to work to preserve, one way or another, our freedom to assert what we believe to be true about it.  The Church hasn't quite given up the hope that the larger culture can be steered back to an acceptance of something closer to that same truth.

Now, I don't wish to question the wisdom of this approach heavily, because I am not an expert in pastoral techniques of any kind, let alone large-scale culture-steering.  Cynicism is a fault of mine.  

But:  I tend to believe that this particular horse has already left the barn, and that it was my fellow heterosexuals who drove it out foaming at the mouth.  I think we are already in dire need for pastoral assistance in dealing charitably and truthfully with the world around us here.  It is NOT easy, as Simcha's reader's situation (and countless others) demonstrate.

 In many ways it's not new:  Families everywhere have always hosted an endless stream of intra- and inter-familial messages along the lines of "If you do not take steps to demonstrate your approval of my actions, that is the same to me as a demonstration that you do not love me."  If there is any difference now, it's that much more often the "approval" runs against values that transcend the merely cultural or habitual.   We expect family members to get used to a "black sheep" who merely dressed embarrassingly unconventionally, or pursued a career different from the expected one, or joined the "wrong" political party, or married a person from a different class or ethnic group, or wanted to move too far away or stay too close to home.   But -- and this is still a strong, widely held value in the United States -- it's entirely different to expect people to "get used to" being asked to deny, explicitly or implicitly, publically or privately, their religious beliefs.  

Don't we all get impatient with the bishops sometimes?  I think we're long overdue for some real pastoral advice on how to live, and how to love others, in a world where regular denial of our religious beliefs is expected of us -- both through public economic acts and through ordinary social rituals.

It's love and truth.  They are never in conflict -- not really.  One without the other is impossible.  But we ordinary, foolish humans can screw it up royally, trying to carry them both like a burden, and end up delivering neither.

Choosing peace, or something like peace, anyway.

ChristyP sent me a link at just the right time for me yesterday.  The post, from a blog I'd not seen before (Steady Mom:  On the Journey toward Intentional, Professional Motherhood) is short enough that I'm just going to repost it.  Here you go (permalink here):

A few days ago I sat down in the morning, per my usual routine, to make my daily to-do list. As often happens, there were more items to do that day than there was time for the doing. 

Anxiety and overwhelm began to threaten me, though I tried to ignore their taunts.

Still the nagging thought kept creeping back, "How exactly am I going to get all this done?"

Suddenly God whispered to my heart. What He said surprised me, changed my outlook, and altered the entire direction of my day--of all my days. He said,

"Choose peace over productivity."

Peace is the goal of our days.

Peace is THE goal of our days.

At the top of your to-do list, write it - Peace.

If anything tries to threaten your goal, it gets crossed off immediately. Don't worship at the altar of busyness and allow the very heartbeat of your family to suffer.

Let me spell it out as a reminder for us all:

Laundry isn't more important than peace.

Cleaning isn't more important than peace.

Homeschooling isn't more important than peace.

The family budget isn't more important than peace.

We're better off getting only one thing done in an atmosphere of peace than crossing off multiple tasks weighing fretfully on our shoulders. I know, because just this morning I forgot the lesson already, and paid the price by handing over the mood of our home. It wasn't worth it.

What will our children remember when they leave our homes--how busy Mom was or how joyful she made them feel?

Choose peace over productivity.

Yes, this is nothing new.  Yes, this is absolutely a message I've heard before in one form or another and attempted to assimilate.  Something about the way it's put, though, makes me want to tape it to my bathroom mirror.  Well, I'll do the next best thing and stick the blog in my RSS reader for a probationary period to see if she says anything else I like!

She has a followup post, on What Choosing Peace Does NOT Mean:

Here's what choosing peace does NOT mean:

- staying in your pajamas all day

- reading blogs when you should be playing with your kids

- feeding your children chicken nuggets every night

- spreading piles of laundry around the house

- leaving dishes to pile up in the sink all day

- ignoring your children because you just can't take the bickering anymore

[cough, erm, yeah]

- letting mess accumulate while you chant "I'm peaceful, I'm peaceful."

...

Choosing peace does mean:

- That people are more important than tasks

- That you have adequate expectations of yourself, depending on what season of life you're in

- That you try to stop what you're doing to look your children in the eye when they interrupt you...

We will not find peace at the end of our to-do list. That effort has a name: striving. It promises peace, but in the effort required it steals the very promise away.

This is one of those things that I, personally, need to be reminded of again and again and again.  

Once for a friend's wedding shower I gave her a little hanging tile, made up of mosaic bits that spelled out, "Peace begins at home."  I was thinking mainly of raising children "peacefully" at the time -- I think my oldest couldn't have been more than two -- I was still developing my style of discipline (aw heck, aren't I still?) and I'm sure that's what I was thinking about, about raising kids nonviolently in an atmosphere of love so that they wouldn't grow up to perpetuate senseless violence.  I wasn't at all thinking about serenity in the home in the moment.  Only about somehow engendering "peace" there and sending it out into the world to do its work.

Even at the time, I'm not sure that "peace" is the word I would have used, precisely, to mean what I sought then and what I still wish I had.  (I thought it was a good choice of word for what my friend would want, though.)  It is too worn from overuse, especially in world affairs; connotes too much the relationships between and among large groups of people, and not quite enough the relationships between individuals.  Connotes for me, too much, the state of avoiding conflict rather than the state of dealing productively with conflict or even the state of living blissfully without conflict.

"Peace" isn't, I think, the name of the thing that is the goal of my days.  However, either Steady Mom and I are both longing for the same thing, to which we choose to give different names, or else her reminders are bound to produce both peace and the thing that I want.

I'm still not sure what word would be better.  Maybe I am just looking for "love" in its active sense.

Anyway, I'm going to mark this blog and read more.

UPDATE:  Melanie responds with a very insightful post.  Go read!

How does she do it?!?

Arwen has a reflection up at F&FL that I found was a good reminder:

“A mom with four kids five and under does not have time to bake her own bread.”

If someone had told me that before I was a mother, I would have agreed emphatically. That woman must be so worn out! She doesn’t need extra work. She should buy bread.

Well, guess what? I have four kids; the oldest is barely five; the youngest two are twins, for heaven’s sake. I am worn out and I don’t need extra work.

I still bake my own bread. (Not always, but regularly.)

If I find myself with ten minutes where both babies are calm and the older kids are busy, I pull out the mixer and dump in yeast, water, flour, salt. I keep an eye on it as kneading happens, add more flour as necessary, prep the dough-proofing container. Later I carve minutes out of my day to de-gas the dough, to form it into loaves, to bake it.

I do it because, as strange and possibly cheesy as this might sound, it soothes me. 

Remember:  One person's "OMG how can you possibly find time to do that, you must be insane" is another person's "thing that keeps me sane."

 

Vocation story.

I'm continuing under a bout of blogger's block, so let's try paying forward a bit.

I've been following a fascinating blog for the last few weeks, even though I know it's coming to an end on August 28th.  On that date, Meris Chaumont is scheduled to enter the Ann Arbor convent of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.  She's been blogging the last few months on the outside:

• as she scrapes together her Nun Wishlist (including items like "Beige Twin Bedspread w/Fringe, Not Quilted and Not a Comforter"), 
• road-trips to visit friends
• searches for "nun shoes" 
• stitches "Sr. Meris" labels into her clothing with hot-pink thread
• models her brand-new mom-stitched navy blue vests over a zebra-print tank top
• enjoys the Nun Shower thrown for her by family and friends, complete with the traditional game of "make a Dominican habit out of toilet paper"

Oh yes, and asks for help.

This video has been making the rounds, but I thought I'd repost it and do my part:

Meris Chaumont, like many young men and women who aspire to religious life, has to take care of her undergraduate college debt before she can enter.  She and the other sisters entering with her (Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan) are encouraged to beg for the money.  She enters August 28th.  

Youtube and Paypal, it seems, are the modern-day begging bowl.

If you feel moved to send Meris some help, but by the time you get around to it she's reached her goal -- which looks promising -- perhaps you can help out some of her new sisters-to-be.

 (photo grabbed from Meris Wants to Be a Nun)

They're selling rosaries and T-shirts to raise money to discharge their outstanding debts.

Anyway, even if donating isn't your bag, check out Meris Wants to Be a Nun and read her blog.  It's fun and interesting and hopeful -- and there isn't very much of it, and there won't be any more after August 28th. 

More on Benedict for families: Prayer, work, and study.

I'm totally buried in school planning this week, so blogging has gone to the back burner.

 Scratch that:  I'm immersed in school planning.  Planning is absolutely my favorite part of homeschooling.  It's summer, I only have to teach a little bit of "remedial" stuff (or let them teach themselves; for example, my 10-y-o's special summer subject is intensive typing practice with Mavis Beacon), and to top it all off, two of my kids are visiting Grandma and Grandpa for two or three weeks right now, so I have tons of time.  And I'm pouring most of it into lesson planning NOW so I won't wake up some morning in February 2012 and say "I don't know what I'm going to do today so I guess we'll just watch movies."

So speaking of being immersed in work, did any of you go and read Fr. Longenecker's Saint Benedict for Busy Parents that I recommended a few posts ago?*

I found myself unable to stop myself from creating a three-by-three matrix:

	Prayer	Work	Study
Obedience
Stability
Conversion of Life

...and trying to fill in all the cells, or at least some of them.  Do I practice obedience with regard to prayer, etc.

Because that's the kind of response a girl like me has to a piece of spiritual reading.  (You should have seen my notebook after I finished The Interior Castle.)

Of course, I immediately ran into another question, because while some of the stuff I do every day is undoubtedly prayer, and some of it is surely work, and some of it is arguably study, there's a lot of other stuff that isn't clearly any of them.   It's not hard to classify, for example, driving to the grocery store as "work."  What about going for a swim?  What about eating dinner?  And for that matter:  what about hanging out with friends or just sitting down with a cup of coffee in the morning getting ready to face the day?  I noticed a distinct lack of "just chillin'" in St. Benedict's trinity of how you spend your time.  And yet the monks were expected to have recreation time.   So do you suppose St. Benedict thought of the free time the monks had as part of prayer, part of work, part of study?  Or is free time some kind of fourth thing outside of prayer, work, and study?  Or is free time spent doing things that all can get classified as either prayer or work or study?  (If scrubbing the floor can be a form of prayer if it is done with love, I suppose finally getting that cup of coffee can be prayer if it is done with gratitude.  "If?"  Who isn't grateful for that cup of coffee?)    

Or maybe there really is no such thing as free time and the reality is that whatever we're doing, we are working, or studying, or praying, whether we realize it or not, and maybe we should sit up and pay attention to what it is we're making, or learning, or saying to God.

But anyway, I made a stab at classifying all the things I do as either "prayer," "work," or "study."  

Prayer wasn't too hard.  Attending Mass is prayer (even if I'm too busy attending to children to pay much attention to it, I decided).  Prayer is prayer.  Going to Confession or Adoration is prayer.  No problem.  

So you could say it was pretty easy to classify everything I do into "prayer" and "not-prayer."  (Subject to the caveat about all activities being a form of prayer if you do it in love, à la St. Thérèse.)  It was trickier to decide what to do with all the "not-prayer."   

In other forms of "what do you call what you do" classification, "work" is divided from other things, like "leisure," by monetary considerations.  Does it create wealth?  Can you get paid for it?  This won't work here.  It's more essential than that; it has to make sense whatever the context of economy.  And anyway, we're not distinguishing it from "leisure," but from "study."

So, in this system, "work" is something you do (I decided) that participates in creation:  remakes the physical world somehow.  It "co-operates with God in the redemption of the world," to quote Fr. Longenecker.  "Study" is something primarily interior that involves taking in the world as it is, and shaping it in the mind.   

With that in mind, I decided that teaching children is work; that preparing lessons is work.  That all the aspects of life that I could call "homemaking" is work.  For the purpose of dividing life up into this trinity, writing is work, even though I do it almost entirely for fun.  Traveling of all kinds is work, even driving to the grocery store.  Physically caring for other people, like nursing this child on my lap right now as I type, is work.  Physically caring for myself is work, too, and that includes getting the exercise I need and want.  And so having dinner with my family or friends is work.  Indeed, interacting with other people is almost always work, even just hanging out, because through our interactions with each other don't we remake the world in a small way?  Don't we have an opportunity to co-operate (if we are kind and prudent and open to the spirit) in redemption?

That leaves a number of things that can be called "study."  Scripture study and spiritual reading seem like they could be either "study" or "prayer," but fortunately, St. Benedict himself called them "study," and that is a bit of a guide to help us define the category.  All kinds of scholarship and research are "study."

Now, if you work as an academic, or a scientist, or a teacher in or out of the home, the distinction between "work" and "study" may be a little difficult to pinpoint; I, personally, make the classification based on whether I am remaking my own mind or something outside my own mind at the time.  When I skim through a stack of history books to decide what I will teach the children, I am studying.  When I put pen to paper to make a list of points I plan to teach, I am working.  

I have worked in laboratories, and I think I can figure out how I would classify as work or as study the various tasks: planning experiments, building apparatus, running experiments, collecting and analyzing data, writing up results and presenting them.  There is some prayer, of course, too:  I suspect that even if you include all the atheists, it's a rare researcher who hasn't uttered "OH PLEASE LET THIS THING WORK" at least once.  

Much leisure is study.  All reading for pleasure, and by extension all media consumption of any kind (this includes reading Facebook -- but not updating your status, which would be work, since you are creating content for others).   Developing skills of your own through reading or watching others  is study (although practicing them may be work).  Self-examination is study, even when prompted by prayer.

+ + +

Speaking of self-examination:  here is where I explain something about myself, because I can hear a voice asking "What's the point?"  The point is, I find a peculiar entertainment in continually examining my life, interior and exterior.  I find a meditative peace in the act of simplifying and filtering it.  Creating a blank table in a spreadsheet, all crisscross black lines, and empty  -- like the one above, before I started filling in the cells -- rakes the sand in my little mental Zen garden.

And I like the exercise of "What if I thought of --say-- getting to the gym as part of my work?  How would that change my attitude toward it?  Would it affect how I see it interrelating with the other things that are part of my work?"

Actually, the bit that felt most satisfying when it clicked into place was the concept that for me, hanging out with my friends, insofar as I am capable of "hanging out"  -- being with other people in general -- what I called "Fellowship" in my spreadsheet -- was to classify that as "work."  Because really, I am a classic introvert, and even though I enjoy other people, it wears me out.  Calling "fellowship" "work" lifted a bit of weight from my shoulders. 

The most useful insight for me, though, is that when you classify everything as either prayer, work, or study, no time is wasted.  It's either spent for good, or spent for ill.  

When I attend Mass, or pick up the breviary, or stand in line for confession, or even utter a voiceless "please!", I'm praying.  Am I referring to God or to myself?  Am I aligning my will with God's or against it?  Am I a channel for grace or an obstruction?  Am I opening my heart or trying to conceal it?

When I watch a video, or check comments on a news story, or listen to music, or read a book, I'm learning something.  Did I learn something true or something false?

When I write a blog post, or clean up a mess, or assign work to the children, or go for a run, or go to sleep, or spend time chatting with my friends, I'm participating in the creation and redemption of the world.  Did I help it or hinder it?

 

 

________________

* I forgot to mention on that post that I owe a hat-tip to Rich Leonardi for linking to it.

Another look at St. Benedict's Rule in the family.

Are you, like me, one of the women who read Holly Pierlot's A Mother's Rule of Life, got all excited, ran with it for a while, went completely overboard, and never opened the book again?

(Bonus points if you still have a multicolored schedule spreadsheet stashed somewhere in a daily planner, one from two or three kids ago.)

(Extra bonus points if you have an old excited blog post about how it was going to change your life).

(Extra-extra bonus points if moldering in a cupboard somewhere -- that is, if organizational supplies can molder --are materials produced by the organization that I think of as the MOTH People.)

I don't want to dis Holly Pierlot too much.  There really are some good things in that book.  It's more that tendency in me to jump on the latest schedule-tweaking idea that comes along.  Nothing wrong with trying out new things, but after mothering for almost eleven years and homeschooling up to sixth grade I am starting to come to terms with the, shall we say, fluid nature of time-block expectations in this particular vocation.  Changing systems will not do away with this fundamental truth.

Anyway, a nice antidote to being a card-carrying member of Mother's Rule of Life Quitters Anonymous is this new little booklet by Fr. Dwight Longenecker, hosted at the Knights of Columbus national website:  Saint Benedict for Busy Parents.  (pdf file) It's about 25 pages long and is well worth a download-and-read. 

Where Pierlot drew inspiration from St. Benedict's Rule to create a well-prioritized schedule for herself and for her family, a sort of copycat version of the bells that mark the hours in monastic life, Fr. Longenecker encourages us to be centered not on the bells but on the principles of Benedictine spirituality.  Those principles are embodied in what Fr. Longenecker calls the "two holy trinities:" 

• The Benedictine monastic vows: 
  • obedience
  •  stability
  • conversion of life

 

• The daily pursuits of individuals living in a Benedictine community:
  • prayer
  • work
  • study

 

(Note that popular culture generally associates monastic vows or even, confusing it further, priest's vows, as being "poverty, chastity, and obedience."  That's the Franciscans, not the Benedictines; although it turns out that Benedictines are supposed to embrace chastity just like any Christian, and own nothing or very little as a consequence of obedience to their Rule, Benedictines do not vow poverty and chastity).

Fr. Longenecker considers each of these six principles and, without going out of his way to show us exactly how to apply them to the vocation of family life, explains their purpose, and tries to show where joy can be found in them.

On obedience:

We must remember...that Benedict portrays the Abbot... as a virtuous, wise and patient man, who never demands anything of his sons that is not for their best. He understands the weaknesses of human nature, and while he expects obedience, he never demands anything harsh or burdensome. In addition to this, he always wants the monks to engage with their obedience in the deepest, most curious and adventuresome way. The command of the abbot (and therefore the commands of parents) should be there to help the monk (and the child) to be intrigued by their spiritual path, and to obey with a sense of adventure and discovery rather than with blind and dull obedience alone.

On stability:

A famous writer on the Benedictine way has summed up the vow of stability. He says: “God is not elsewhere.” In literal terms the vow of stability means the monk makes a vow to remain part of one particular religious community for life. By taking a vow of stability, the monk is deciding that the path to heaven will begin exactly where he is and nowhere else. His love of neighbor must become incarnate in charity toward the members of the community, rather than allowed to become a vague benevolence toward no one in particular.

On work:

Work helps to incarnate the spiritual realities of the praying monk. When he works in the kitchen or in the fields; when he teaches in school or works in a hospital; when he works in a factory or shop, the monk applies the graces obtained through prayer to the real, physical world. In his Rule, Benedict instructs the monks in small ceremonies and prayers which they are to observe in their everyday work. For instance, when they set about their work in the kitchen, they preface their work with the words “O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.” This call for God’s help and grace in their work is the same prayer with which they begin the Divine Office in chapel. So their prayer life and their working life are intertwined.

The whole piece is worth sitting down and reading carefully and in full.  It makes me want to read Fr. Longenecker's  book on Sts. Benedict and Thérèse cited in the endnotes.

Incidentally, anyone of the "what does a Catholic priest know about family life" persuasion should note that Fr. Longenecker is one of those converted former Anglican priests; he is married with four kids...

 

Taking liberties with Jeremiah on St. John's Day: For the mothers.

Do you ever feel like you are fighting your children, and your children are fighting you, all day long?

+ + +

From the Office of Readings for today, the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist:

Jeremiah 1:4-10, 17-19

The word of the Lord came to me thus:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you,a prophet to the nations I appointed you.

"Ah, Lord God!" I said, "I know not how to speak; I am too young."

Too young, too old, too tired, too busy, too faltering, too selfish, too confused, too inexperienced, too unprepared, too overwhelmed.

But the Lord answered me,

Say not, "I am too young."

Or whatever. 

To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak.  Have no fear before them, because I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

"To whomever I send you, you shall go." 

Because they come after us, we often think of the children as being sent to us.

But John turns this time-sequence on its head.  John testified:  He who is to come after me existed before me.

And though they didn't exist before us, this paradox recalls that, rather than them being sent to us, it's more true that we are sent -- to each child in turn, and at the same time.

"To whomever I send you you shall go."  

Then the Lord extended his hand and touched my mouth, saying,

See, I place my words in your mouth!

This day I set you over nations and over kingdoms,

(Or perhaps only over one family of children),

To root up and tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.

But do you gird your loins; 

Get out of your pajamas.  Put on your shoes and tie back your hair.  Wash your face.  Chin up.

stand up and tell them all that I command you.   

Be not crushed on their account, as though I would leave you crushed before them; 

And boy, don't I feel that way sometimes.

For it is I this day who have made you a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass, against the whole land; Against Judah's kings and princes, against its priests and its people.  

The Lord fortified Jeremiah against Judah.  He expected conflict.  (And got it.)  Conflict, however, was not the purpose of their relationship.  The purpose was guidance, correction, reconciliation, love.  

In Jeremiah on St. John's birthday we are to see the purpose of "preparing a way for Christ" as well.  A road into the heart.

They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

If you had told me a few years ago, when my children were fewer and smaller, that I would read this and immediately identify with Jeremiah (knowing to whom I am sent), I probably would be horrified at the language of antagonism and conflict and power struggle.  Isn't our ideal a little bit more... collaborative?   Shouldn't we turn to language that sounds a bit more... encouraging?  Warm nurturing welcoming nourishing protecting cuddling sheltering blah blah blah?

<ringing sound of sword being unsheathed>

The Lord made my tongue a sharp sword; he hid me in the shadow of his hand.

Both, perhaps?

I am the voice.  The voice of one crying.  The voice of one crying out.

I have placed my words in your mouth.

Do you gird your loins.

It is I who have made you a pillar.

Interruptions.

Sometimes I feel that I lack role models for my, er, role.  Here I am raising kids Catholic, for instance, when I wasn't a Catholic kid myself.   Daily I flounder in the unfamiliar waters of a happy marriage.  And I didn't grow up in a family with four kids, either.  So I never quite know if I'm doing all that stuff right.

Yesterday the five of us -- me and the four children -- 10, 7, 4, 1 -- went to the grocery store.  If I have to do the shopping, we go early in the morning when the store isn't crowded.  I think the kids are pretty well-behaved, but I always feel so noisy.  The four of them are constantly chattering at me (okay, the baby isn't exactly chattering, but he's not exactly quiet either) and I'm continuously barking orders.  You.  Go fetch me four lemons.  You.  Put this back, it's not on our list.  You.  Watch the cart for a minute.   You.  Hold this, er, thing.  No.  Don't give the baby a yogurt to hold, he'll peel the foil off with his teeth again.  You.  Run back to the produce section and find my grocery list, I think I left it on the tomatoes.

As I said, they are pretty well-behaved, and it goes fairly smoothly.  But it's not exactly fun for us all.  We are always in a hurry, because we are cutting into our school time, and I want to get home and get it all put away so we can buckle down and get our work done.  So I'm barking orders.  And they're running back and forth with lemons and tomatoes and boxes of pasta, and my seven-year-old has figured out exactly how to pick the moment when I will answer any request with "Yeah, yeah, right, whatever" and not remember what it is that he asked for.  At least I think so.  He says I told him yes.

The checkout line is the worst.  Around here the grocery store, unless it is a gratuitously fancy one, doesn't provide anyone to bag your groceries.  (If the baby is screaming by the time I am checking out, sometimes they call for one out of pity.  I do appreciate that.)  I have enough trouble navigating this when I'm all by myself:  unload cart, run to the end of the belt and bag groceries, keep one eye on the cashier so that when necessary I can pop up and say things like, "That?  Oh, that's jicama -- no, it's not a rutabaga,"  run back and swipe my credit card and then run forward again to bag more groceries before they back up on the belt, and so on.

When I have all four children with me, it does go slightly  more smoothly because they can help.  (And if the baby is screaming, sometimes the cashier calls for a bagger out of pity.)   The result is that the chattering and barking reach a peak.  I would really like to see my ten- and seven-year-old boys industriously opening bags and packing groceries while my four-year-old daughter and I unload the cart together and the baby makes faces at the people behind us.  This does happen, at least for a few moments at a time.  I have to keep reminding my seven-year-old that I need him to work.

Yesterday the baby was making faces at a young dad with one small girl ensconced in the little red plastic car that was attached to the front of the cart.  I had already sized him up as the type who was likely to make faces back at the baby, thus entertaining the baby and allowing me more time to help pack groceries, er, I mean, bark at the bigger children.  "Wow, you've got your hands full," he said as I rifled through my own wallet, and then corrected himself to, "...but I see that you also have a lot of help."  

I do, I do have a lot of help.  

I wish... I wish right now that I felt able to listen to each one of the children.  Sometimes it feels like no child can speak to me, offer to show me something, or ask me a question without interrupting me.

"Mom, can I--"

"Just a minute, I'm talking to your sister."

"Mom, let me show you --"

"Wait a minute, I have to change the baby's diaper."

"Mom, can I ask you a question?"

"Not right now, I'm in the middle of teaching your brother his math lesson."

This is one of those places I could use a role model.  I believe it's important to teach kids not to interrupt.  But some days it just feels like there is no time they could possibly ask me anything without interrupting.  One takes time from the other, all day long.  When am I going to listen to this one?  To this one?  To her?  To him?  When?

First Holy Communion. The second one, I mean. For me.

Kneelers on rehearsal day.

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Practicing the procession.

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He made it to the correct pew.  I guess he's ready.

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Enjoying the bubble wrap that his present from Mark was wrapped in

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Is it time to leave for church yet?

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The cherry tree cooperated for the day.

 

Even the first-communicant is pressed into service, taking a picture of his godparents and their children:

 

The redhead is my godson.  The two boys were baptized on the same day:

 

 

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Awful cute, aren't they?

These chairs will soon be full of first-communicants.

 

We love to watch girls in pretty dresses around here.

 

Party time.  Who needs a cake when you can have first dibs on an entire assortment of donuts from the GOOD grocery store?

 

I may have missed the shot of him receiving first Communion, but at least I got this one:

"Training for Motherhood."

Here's a ten-minute "functional fitness" strength-training workout for moms, designed to keep you strong enough to pick up your heavy kids, from Kara at Mama Sweat (and Ryan McDowell and Darcy Franklin of Crossfit Minnesota).  When Darcy demonstrates picking up an item like a medicine ball or a car seat and using its weight as resistance, she notes that you can use your child's weight instead.  I assume some of us would have to work up to that...

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I've been enjoying her blog so much, I'm really looking forward to when Kara's book comes out!

Kara explains what is "functional fitness:"

 

You've probably heard the term "functional fitness" being thrown around a lot the last few years. (It's listed at #9 on the American College of Sports Medicine's Top 20 Fitness Trends for 2011 and is the main reason why boot camp classes are so popular.) What I once considered the territory of an occupational or physical therapist--using exercises to rehabilitate and strengthen specific muscles involved in their patient's particular activities of daily living--is catching on to the fitness masses. And why not? Why not strengthen your muscles in ways you're going to actually USE them?

Since ditching 5-lb. dumbells (because really, do I ever do 25 reps of bicep curls with a soup can before serving it to my family?) for a 45-lb, 65-lb, 85-lb and beyond barbell I am training for motherhood: Carrying a sleeping 7-year-old from the car upstairs to her bed; lifting my 5-year-old from the ground after a fall; playing airplane with my 2-year-old high above my head.

No doubt about it, motherhood requires some heavy lifting.

Follow the link to Kara's post to see another video in which Ryan (the male trainer), who has small twin boys at home himself, explains what "functional fitness" means for a parent of small children.

(I took a running clinic from Darcy a few months ago, held at that same CrossFit facility.  I was really impressed by the CrossFit philosophy, and I was very pleased with my results!)