Category Archives: My Lenten Journey

Things I’ve learned in 2023…

Things I’ve learned in 2023…

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Friends, I know I’m looking backwards. But Mel Robbins has told us all in her recent podcasts that in order to move forward in 2024 we need to look back at where we’ve been. So this is what I’ve come up with in my own life.  I do hope you will share some of your own lessons learned in the comments. 

  • I can’t be perfect.  Oh, shucks.  I’m learning that there is room for chaos in my life.  Instead of making my bed I can take a morning walk. Instead of cleaning my kitchen I can marvel at the speck of tabouli still stuck to the backsplash since last summer.  As my wonderful “first” husband once told me.. “Rosemarie, the house looks so good and organized.  But the drawers are a mess!” Such a metaphor for me.  My insides are chaotic but the towel hanging on the oven is perfectly folded and squared.
  • A woman “my age” needs to eat more protein! This presents quite the challenge due to my current recoiling to large pieces of animals like turkeys and prime rib roasts. The 2023 holiday dinners just about made me want to join an ashram and go vegan! My current podcast gurus proclaim aging powerfully– not gracefully! Eat your weight in grams of protein! Yikes! Did I hear someone say pass the hummus? How do you like your tofu? Medium rare? Well done?
  • I will never again take a writing class. September of 2022, I traveled to the Omega Institute in New York to take a weeklong class and get my writing game reestablished. I felt like I was back at St. Philip Neri Catholic School with Mrs. Richards telling me to describe an apple in a paragraph on control paper. I learned that I don’t like people telling me how or what to write.  It has to come organically for me.
  • I worry too much. As Shel Silverstein said in his poem “The Whatifs”… Last night while I lay thinking here… some Whatifs crawled inside my ear. Worry solves nothing. I want to practice turning my worry into prayer and meditation.
  • I miss riding my bike.  When I’m on it it’s like flying. The world slows down and looks different to me. I like riding alone with my thoughts.
  • Social media overwhelms me.  Years ago, before Facebook and Instagram, I had a full-time job, wrote a column for both Presentation and Bellarmine’s Monthly Newsletter and kept up in my journal. Â Was its youth or was it the absence of social media? Of course this blog will go on Facebook. Â So I’ve also learned that I can be a hypocrite!
  • I love yoga. It feeds my soul. It gives me time away from the riff raff of life. My mat is my magic carpet, and I am transported.  I love my yoga community- The Morgan Hill Yoga Collective- and my new yoga companions on the journey. It connects me also with my son, Peter, who is a fellow yogi. Jenn, my favorite instructor, says “leave it on the mat”. I do. I leave my angst, my worry, my regrets and my discontent.
  • Fr. Richard Rohr O.F.M. says this- The body cannot live without food. The soul cannot live without meaning. I’m in search of more soul in my life.  Less social media. More yoga. More flying on my bike. More prayer and meditation. Less worry. More writing. More meaning. Fr. Rohr says that most of our politicians are soulless. How do you lead a country when you are soulless?
  • And lastly, I miss God. I grew up Catholic. I married in the Catholic Church. I raised my sons Catholic.  I cantered at Mass, attended bible studies, ran women’s groups and worked for 22 years at a Catholic High School. In 2022 I cut bait, retired, stopped going to Mass, and went cold turkey. As I was putting my Christmas decorations out last year I unwrapped Jesus, Mary and Joseph and wondered for the first time if it all really happened in a manger in the middle of winter. Â the star, the three wise men, and the whole shebang. I suddenly felt like someone had just told me that there was no Santa Claus all over again. I felt hollowed out and bereft.

I need the mystery. I need the unknowing. My life lessons have all hinged-on faith, hope and love. I need the ashes on Ash Wednesday.  I need the meditation and the prayer. I need to let go of my worries.  I need to write and do yoga. I need to feed my body with protein and feed my soul with meaning.

2024 holds for me a daunting challenge.  What changes do I need to make in my life in order to consummate the lessons learned in 2023? What lessons will 2024 present?

What lessons did you learn in 2023?

Be careful what you wish for…

Be careful what you wish for…

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I’ve had this bumper sticker posted on my electrical box for a couple years now.  New stainless steel refrigerators are no longer magnetized, sadly.  It’s been a motto for me in my personal life and in my work life as well.  I have one on the door of my office for students to see when they come for appointments. But no one has seen this message this year.

This year has been different.  Is this what I was longing for?  Not exactly..

I’m planning a small get together for my son’s 40th birthday and I’m totally out of my wheel house!  I don’t know how to entertain more than three people at a time anymore and the thought of it overwhelms me. Life has become so simple and slow with the onset of Covid19 and a world pandemic.

My days consist of jumping on zoom and meeting with teenaged girls and sitting through sleep inducing zoom faculty meetings.  I clean the house. I put food in the bird feeder outside.  I go to the market.  I read books.  Cook dinner.  Take hikes.  Have a glass of wine and watch episode after episode of Schitt’s Creek.

From sun up to sun down the pattern repeats.  The world has slowed down.

Yesterday I got my second vaccine.  I stood in line in the hot sun for two hours contemplating the plight we’ve all been through- examining the various shapes and sizes of people waiting in line with me- wondering what their year has been like.  As I sat in the after vaccine area for the required 15 minutes, I began to cry- the significance of the event weighing heavy on me- my humanity, my sense of community and how it’s been said over and over “We are all in this together”.

But we were not.  In my work with my students, beginning last March, I heard about parents being laid off.  About food insecurity and financial stressors.  One student and her siblings were helping their parents shop and deliver Instacart  on the weekends in order to make ends meet.  A teacher lost both her parents in the early days of covid before treatment was honed.  The news showed bodies being transported to refrigerated trucks juxtaposed to our then President claiming that the virus was all going to disappear magically.

What a mind fuck…

Today I hiked my favorite loop and contemplated the past year.  I love this hike because it is a four mile trek and it’s impossible for me to get lost.  So I can get lost in my thoughts.  It’s my meditation.  My labyrinth.  I walk and things become clearer.  I walk and I let go of my stress and worries.  I walk and I pray.

Going forward, what do I want to take with me as I emerge from my personal cloud of isolation?

My weekly zoom with my brothers.

More home cooking and less eating out.

Less bullshit and more authenticity with the people I love.

An appreciation for everything I have- not the material things but the intangibles- family, a home, enough to eat, friends and an able body to move forward as I emerge from the quarantine gingerly and carefully.

Next year will be different.  Kinder.  Not so busy.  More intentional.  Let’s continue to remind one another about where we have been and what it was like.  Let’s hold each other accountable to appreciate everything that makes life wonderful or at least bearable.  Let’s not forget what this year has been like for many who didn’t make it through as easily as others.

Let’s continue to meet outdoors for hikes and picnics.  Let’s keep in touch with our now perfected zoom skills.  Let’s remember to quell our busyness and balance our lives with personal relationships and meaningful conversations.  Let’s listen more and talk less.

As we watch Schitt’s Creek episode after episode, my son says to me “Mom, the whole point of this show is that they lost everything and now they live in this shit hole hotel together.  But it’s bringing them together as a family!”  He’s watched all of the seasons already but he’s rewatching them with me.  And we are laughing together out loud!

So apropo and relevant.

Easter Sunday has snuck up on me and instead of traditional Catholic Mass followed by salty ham and a food coma we will be taking an early morning hike and feasting on some fresh eggs from the One Acre Farm in Morgan Hill.  My spiritual life has been less contingent on the church calendar since I’ve been working remotely at my Catholic high school position as a counselor.  There are fewer reminders of Lent and fasting and abstinence, hair shirts and self-flagellation.  I do miss the music and the community.  But I’ve gone inward and found a personal sanctuary of peace and tranquility that has little to do with the rituals of organized religion.

And I like it here.  I think I’ll stay.  I kind of like this slowed down world.  How about you?

 

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Craving God 🔥

Craving God 🔥

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Dale and I were on a hike yesterday and as usual, when I am in motion, I get loose lips.  “I feel guilty.  I’m working from home.  No makeup.  No dress up.  No gas expenditures.  And I’m pulling in a good salary.  So are you.  This shelter in place has been sort of nice for us.  But not for others.  I feel guilty.”

Dale’s response? “It’s the Catholic in you.”

I was grateful for his comment.  He noticed.  Even though my Sunday Mass attendance has been abysmal and at times I can cuss like a sailor.  You can take the girl out of the Catholic but you can’t take the Catholic out of the girl.  Maybe I’m still going to heaven.  Who knows.

On the downhill, Dale wants to run.  I say go ahead.  I’d rather walk.  And walk in silence with this beautiful sky.  It’s Holy Thursday and I am craving God.

It’s true.  I do Catholic everyday.  I work for a Catholic high school.  We pray.  We sing.  We work on being in community.  All the things that are meaningful for me.  But with all the controversy in the Catholic church and my growing concern that women will never be priests- it’s all caught up with me.  Some despair.  Some dissatisfaction.  Some disbelief.  Did Jesus really wash the feet of the apostles?  Did they really nail him to a cross?  Did he really rise from the dead?

I do like to believe that the women were the first to see that the stone had been rolled away at the tomb.  That might be my favorite part of the Easter story.  And Veronica.. how she wiped the face of Jesus and it left an impression of his face on her veil.  I love that..

Later, over a home cooked meal of pot roast and salad with Dale’s favorite dressing, blue cheese, we agree on a news station to watch.  (That’s a challenge for us.. )  PBS is covering how people are practicing their faith during this holy week.  There is a spotlight on the Muslim religion and how they celebrate Ramadan- fasting from dawn till sunset- it’s a time of prayer, giving, and self evaluation.  Prayer together is so essential to this community and not being able to be together in prayer at the mosque is very sad for Muslims.  When they break the fast, there is much celebration and food and people who are not as fortunate are invited and included.  And there is so much joy.

I’m thinking of my own Catholic traditions.  Tonight at 7pm, Holy Thursday services will be streamed from Bellarmine College Prep, the high school my three sons attended.  Regardless of my doubts and my reservations, I want to be on the other side of that screen.

I feel spiritually depleted.

I am craving God 🔥

 

 

 

My Easter Confession

My Easter Confession

 

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Bless me Father for I have sinned.  It has been so long that I can’t even remember when I last went to confession and these are my sins.

Or at least the latest ones.

Or the ones I can remember.  BTW are we responsible for the ones we can’t remember?

Oh Lordy.  Well here goes.

I did not attend any Easter services this season.  Not Holy Thursday.  Not Good Friday.  Not Easter Vigil.

Zero, zip, nada.

I did this intentionally so now you know why I’m here today.

Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.

Instead..

I cleaned my house and did my Target, TJMaxx and Trader Joes shopping. I worked in my garden, fertilized all of my succulents and marveled at the first spring flowers on my Cecile Brunner Rose. I cooked a bit and squeezed lemons to freeze for future Lebanese delicacies.  I went to dinner and a movie with a good friend. I finished a novel and started a new one.  Took a morning hike and photographed several cows with their calves.

For the grand finale, Easter, I shared a meal with my wonderful family, chased toddlers around the house and played with my little grandson.

For these and all my sins I am sorry.

Now, Father, I’m sure you want to know why this cradle Catholic defied all of the rules.

My reasoning?  I wanted to see what it was like to live in a secular world without the sacred.  I wanted to see what it’s like to not believe, to not have my Catholic community, to not sing and pray for my loved ones and the world at large.  I wanted to see if God in nature was enough for me.

All in all it was a very spiritual experience.  But here is what I discovered.

I realized that I missed the incense, the chanting, the candles and the ancient scripture.  I missed the washing of the feet and the opportunity to meditate on service and being a woman for others. I missed the veneration of the cross and the church bells and the bowed heads. I missed the experience of humility that comes from believing in something that is beyond myself and out of my control.  I missed the celebration and the lilies filling the sanctuary.  I missed the Alleluia and the joy that comes after the sacrifices of Lent.

I missed the good old fashioned Catholic aerobics… standing for a half hour gospel and then springing up and down and up and down to the rhythm of the rituals and the liturgy.

I missed it all.  And now I feel an indescribable void.

So, Father, I guess you can take the girl out of the Catholic but you can’t take the Catholic out of the girl.  I’m sure you have an appropriate penance for me?  10 Hail Marys and a Glory Be?  100 continuous genuflections?  A Novena with my head covered?

You missed it, my dear.  Penance done.  Amen.  Hallelujah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Loved!

Loved!

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Today we celebrated Ash Wednesday at Presentation High School.  To non-Catholics, this must be the weirdest cult practice that one has ever experienced!  Being doused with ashes in the shape of a cross and being told to turn from sin and live the gospel.  The scriptures proclaimed at Mass today told us that we are forgiven and loved and invited to be our best selves!  These students certainly look happy, don’t they?

I’m so proud of my Catholic faith.  It has really emerged as a positive force in this troubled world.  Our Pope has taken great pains in living a simple life and rejecting the pomp and circumstances of Vatican City.  We are encouraged, during the season of Lent- the forty days and nights before Easter- to do something positive in our lives rather than give something up.

Be kind.  Serve the poor.  Love your neighbor.

When I was in high school I practiced all the Catholic rituals without understanding them.  These students are doing the same.  They have no idea how this gospel message will come to nest in their souls and take fruit in their lives.  God bless them!  They are beautiful young women with the whole world at their feet.

I pray that they go forth and make a difference.  That they love tenderly and serve with open hearts.  That they become women of God with lives that impact others in a positive way.

I feel so blessed to be able to witness their transformation to womanhood and support them as they look forward to all of life’s blessings.

Amen

Blessed

Blessed

Hail Mary, full of grace

At a Lenten overnight retreat with 65 adolescent girls.

The Lord is with thee

Yoga pants, push up bras, still trying to make sense of their bodies and their souls, clear skinned and broken complexioned, immature and seeking- all seen and heard and embraced by a higher power.

Blessed are you among women

You are precious and perfect in God’s eyes, a temple of the Holy Spirit, hope for the world.  Don’t ever underestimate what lies yet dormant within you.  You are destined for goodness and prosperity.

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus

Co-creators with God, the capacity to bring forth life both literally and figuratively.  Nurturer, dreamer, lover, sanctuary.  You have so much to give.  I wish you could see what I see when I look at you.

Holy Mary, mother of God

Look within yourself for inspiration and strength.  Look outside yourself and see your journey unfold.  Reach out and make a holy connection with all of human kind.   You are never alone in this world.

Pray for us sinners

Let Mary be your spiritual mother.  Let her life and her sacrifice inform your every decision.  You are loved and forgiven.  Again and again and again.

Now and at the hour of our death

Live like there is no tomorrow.  Take joy in this day.  Be the woman you are destined to be.  Start now.  Don’t dilly dally.  Your life is precious and you are already on the path.  Be kind.  Be in solidarity with the poor and the poor in spirit.  Be the womb that gives forth life.

Be a woman of God.

Amen



 

Getting my ash in gear…

Getting my ash in gear…

 

Yesterday’s Ash Wednesday Liturgy at Presentation High School was a beautiful thing.  Eight hundred young women in formal dress uniform exuberantly singing an old Protestant hymn, Amazing Grace.  The gym was filled to capacity- standing room only.   The homily was delivered by a woman- our own resident bible scholar, Claire Foley.  Peer ministers doused their fellow students with ashes.  A slide show highlighted one of our Sisters of Presentation, Sr. Rachel Pinal, who works as a missionary in Somotillo, Nicaragua.  The liturgy kicked off our Mission Drive month, raising money to support our Sisters of Presentation working for peace and justice in South America.

No wonder Pope Benedict is resigning.  This old church ain’t what it used to be!

However, in the faculty room over lunch one would never have known that we have progressed this far as Catholics.  People were still talking about “giving something up” for Lent.  I assumed we were a more enlightened and progressive Catholic faculty.  Is it really that simple?

During Lent, the forty days and forty nights culminating in the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, we are called to conversion, reconciliation, mercy, grace, self reflection and humility.  How do you get there by giving up candy?

I’m just sayin’….

But the most amusing thing for me as the Senior Class Counselor was one of my naughtiest students carefully tracing a cross of ashes on my forehead and advising me to “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel”.

Oh Lordy..

My life is plaid.

Beautiful Easter!

Beautiful Easter!

Nothing is more practical than finding God,

that is, than falling in love.

In a quite absolute, final way, what you are in love with,

what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.

It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning,

what you do with your evenings,

how you spend your weekend,

what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart,

and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

– Attributed to Pedro Arrupe. S.J.

 

It was a very Good Friday!

It was a very Good Friday!

I’ve had at least two people ask me in the past two days why it’s called Good Friday.  Funny… in all the years of being Catholic I’ve never asked that question.  It just goes to show how much we Catholics take in and accept as truth in faith.

I guess I could google it.  But I’d rather think that it’s “Good” because Jesus died and paid the price for our sins so that we can have eternal life.  Granted… I have never questioned that either!

Yesterday I attended Good Friday services at the Santa Clara Mission.  The lights were dimmed, the incense plentiful and the music was prayerful.  It was a solemn liturgy and I had some heavy things on my heart.  A good friend from high school recently died of a heart attack.   Another family’s 21 year old son was killed in an accident by a drunk driver.  A young teen has disappeared from Morgan Hill and has not been found.

I felt such solidarity with the congregation as we marched forward to venerate the cross singing “Were you there when they crucified my Lord”.  People knelt to kiss the cross.  Others bowed.   Ok.. I get emotional at these things.  I’m an N and an F on the Myers Briggs.  It doesn’t take much to make me weepy.

But just as I began to search for yet another tissue in my purse, the presiding priest asked us to join him in the Lord’s Prayer.  The somewhat feeble and elderly man standing next to me grabbed my hand firmly and raised it up in his and began to pray in earnest!  His strength and conviction shot through his hand into mine and straight to my heart.  I felt suddenly transformed by his faith and a presence of love.

Maybe it’s all hocus pocus.  Catholics were New Age before the New Agers were!  Beads and incense and smoke and mystery.  Death and resurrection.  I’ve bought it hook line and sinker my whole life.

I don’t need to explain it or google it.  I experienced it yesterday.  And it was certainly a “Good” Friday.

 

One last Lenten prayer…

One last Lenten prayer…

Lent officially ends tonight and I never really decided on what I was doing or not doing to observe the 40 days and 40 nights.  I guess I wanted to keep my options open!  So here we are at the solemn end and what do I have to show for it?

In hindsight I realize that I did get into a habit of praying.  I often feel like such a flake when I tell someone that I will pray for them and then it dissolves into the thin air of my best intentions.  So during Lent I kept a prayer list by my computer.

And I prayed in the morning when I got to work.

And I prayed in Savasana after hot yoga.

And I prayed when I was falling asleep at night.

As I prayed I put a line through the answered prayer… (like I do with my “to do” list).

Well Barbara who was suffering from cancer went to meet her maker in heaven.  Jen is pregnant.  Claire and her husband are in the process of adopting a baby.  Mounir got a job.  My friend Nancy’s husband got in to a special program at OHSU for his cancer treatments.  And my cousin Anna Marie looks beautiful in her facebook pictures even though I know she is in the midst of fighting breast cancer.   Prayer works!

But we’re not done yet God!  There is one more thing on my list!

I have tried every angle with my supplication.  I’ve consulted with my mother in heaven and asked her to go see what’s holding up the works.  I’ve held a painful pose in yoga and “offered it up” for a special intention.  It seems only fair that if I can hold standing bow pose for one full minute on a fake hip that God can grant this one wish!  I’ve worn this little cross as a good luck charm, rubbing it every few minutes to remind heaven that I haven’t given up the fight yet.  Today I posted my prayer request on www.prayerrequest.com!  (you can google anything you know..) Lastly I’ve told the whole world with this blog that I’m on my last nerve.

Lord have mercy!  Just one last thing…