The Vanishing Man

In spite of many obstacles, my brother is getting married in a few short days.  As such, he has been moving his things to the house where he and his fiancé will live.  It feels like my brother has always been around.  He is seven years older than me, and I can almost count on one hand the number of years during my lifetime that we have not lived in the same house.

We weren’t what I would call “close” when we were growing up.  Seven years is a BIG difference when you are a kid.  But as I reached my teens and he, his twenties, we started to get closer to one another.  We joke that we were raised on the same source material, so we have the same sort of sense of humor, and it annoys our dad to no end when we get going.

I think it’s really going to hit hard next week when he’s no longer around all the time.

And in thinking about all this, it strikes me how much our liturgical year and the scriptures assigned to it can speak to us in our day-to-day lives.  Jesus has ascended into heaven.  He left his disciples, but he did not leave them, or us, orphans.  He sends the Holy Spirit to us to be our comforter, advocate, and guide.  Just so, in my family’s current situation, my brother is not abandoning us.  On the contrary, he is giving us a new family member for us to love and who loves us in return.  (Having never had a sister, I am super excited!) 

It will mean changes for all of us, as we adapt to new habits, for the better.  It will be an adjustment to another aspect of our “new normal”.  In that sense, maybe it is helpful that it is happening now, when we are, necessarily, making other adjustments to our lifestyle.  Moving forward will be an adventure, and one that we will hopefully welcome with open arms.

Working through Changes

Life very rarely stays the same, which is a good thing.  Just imagine if nothing ever changed.  How boring would life be then?  But often in our lives, we can be resistant to change.  Adapting to changes, rolling with the punches, is a skill we have to learn as human beings.

Change often accompanies “milestone” life events – births, marriages, deaths, etc.  When my grandmother died, my parents spent almost nine months in California, getting her house ready to rent.  Truckloads of her possessions made the nearly thousand-mile trek from Santa Barbara to Salt Lake City.  We are still going through bits of it, almost nine years later.  In the act of going through her things, it brings back memories of her life, her mannerisms, her accent, and it brings a smile to our faces, so the change is not all bad.

Another big milestone is on the horizon for my family.  My brother will be getting married in May, and moving out of our family home.  He’s moved out before, when he went to college and then vocational school, but it wasn’t permanent.  There is a significant age gap between us, and to me, he’s always been my big brother, across the hall or just downstairs.  I can always depend on him to be there for me and for our parents.  Now, he will still be “there,” just not physically.  Again, this change won’t be all bad – I get a sister out of it, after all – but it will still be difficult.

Life will go on.  We will adapt.  And we will find a new normal.

When things change in your life, when you find it difficult to accept change, ask yourself:  How am I going to grow because of this change?  How can I be joyful through this change?  Do I need God’s help?  Have I asked for it?

Is Summer Vacation a Good Thing?

This will be the second summer that I have worked a job straight through the summer.  I was very lucky growing up that I did not need to have a summer job.  In fact, almost every summer after I graduated from high school, I was involved in some sort of summer course through various colleges.

It has always helped me to have some sort of continuing structure to my summers, similar to what I had during the school year, whether I was a student or a teacher.  When I didn’t have something to do, my days became tedious and almost wasted, so for me, it was better to keep busy and mentally stimulated.

Studies of human development indicate that it is necessary for children to have a “break” from academics so that they can process what they have learned and get ready to learn new things.  Different studies contend that while breaks are necessary and good, perhaps long breaks, such as the two and a half to three months of summer vacation are in fact too long.  This is the stance of advocates of a year-round school model.

For students who attend Catholic schools, summer vacation might also mean a break from church.  Mr. Timothy Carr, principal at Cosgriff from 1993 to 1997, used to tell us at the end of the last school Mass of the year, “Don’t let this be the last time you’re in church until August.”  In other words, don’t take a vacation from God.

So yes, summer vacation is a good thing, but like all good things, you can have too much of it.  Be mindful of that when making your summer plans, and remember to keep God in your summer.

Keeping the Faith as an "In-Betweener"

It is challenging being an “in-betweener” Catholic.  I don’t really fit with the “young adult” crowd anymore, and I don’t fit with the more mature crowd yet.  Luckily, Catholic Utah, co-founded last year by some of our parishioners right here at St. Ambrose, exists to help meet the needs of “in-between” Catholics like me.

It seems most of the people I went to school with at Judge Memorial have fallen away from the Catholic faith (if they were very faithful to begin with), and I feel like this is a phenomenon that affects most youth and young adults.  It can be hard to ignore the impulse to rebel against authority, in this case, one’s parents and their lifestyles.  But every once in awhile I get a boost of hope for my generation when I see a familiar name cross my desk as a parent or godparent at a baptism, or as a sponsor for Confirmation.  I grew up in the parish, and it is definitely interesting to be working here now, to see the many ways in which it has changed and evolved, and the comforting ways in which it has stayed the same.

It is definitely a challenge being Catholic in Utah, but I don’t know that it is any more or less of a challenge than it would be anywhere else in the United States.  Yes, our LDS neighbors heavily influence the predominant culture here, but secularism is becoming a huge factor in society these days on a global scale.  That affects all of us, regardless of our faith or lack thereof.

It is crucial that we continue to find ways to hold on to our faith and recognize the importance and the value of passing it on to others.

How do you keep your faith alive and strong?  How do you pass it on to your children and/or those around you who are seeking a relationship with God?

Christmas Traditions

As of tomorrow, we will officially be five days away from Christmas.  This might set off alarm bells in your head or it might trigger great feelings of excitement.  The former is probably more to do with the secular expectations that accompany the celebration of Christmas.  The latter would stem from a child-like delight in Christmas and/or from a deeper understanding of why we are celebrating – Jesus is born for us!

We are lucky here at St. Ambrose to be exposed to multiple cultures.  The students at Cosgriff will take part in a school-wide Posada tomorrow (the Hispanic tradition of traveling from house to house – or in this case, room to room – seeking shelter, as a re-enactment of Mary and Joseph entering Bethlehem and finding no place to stay other than the stable).  On Saturday, St. Ambrose will host the Filipino community for Simbang Gabi, a novena of Masses leading up to Christmas.  We host the Polish-speaking community for Mass twice a month.  Each community celebrates Christmas a little differently.

My family is a blend of European cultures.  My mother is Hungarian and my father is of English descent.  As such, we have a blended Christmas tradition.  We celebrate “European Christmas” on the 24^th.  We celebrate “American Christmas” on the 25^th.  This gives us the opportunity to experience the best of both worlds, as it were.

Our Christmas tree rarely goes up before the Fourth Week of Advent, not because we are too lazy or too busy to put it up before then, but because in Hungarian tradition, the tree wouldn’t go up until the 24^th.  Jesus and the angels (in the guise of the “grown-ups” in the family) bring the tree and the gifts.

We abstain from meat on Christmas Eve, following Catholic tradition, but we usually have a family dinner.  At the end of dinner, we read the Christmas story from the Bible, taken from the readings for Mass at Midnight and Mass at Dawn, and then the angels (in the guise of one of the “kids” in the family) ring bells to let us know that the tree and gifts are ready for us.  We sing some Christmas carols together, and then we open gifts.  On Christmas Day, we celebrate the more “American” way, with Christmas stockings and a larger family gathering.

Of course, we also attend Mass either or both days.  In recent years, due to involvement in the choir, we have mostly attended Mass or Masses on Christmas Eve and skipped going to church on Christmas Day.

I like my family’s traditions, partly because I grew up with them, so they are familiar to me, but also because they keep Jesus Christ in Christmas.  I may come from a blended family (both in terms of cultures and religious backgrounds), but Christmas for me has been always truly “Christ”mas.

Winnie the Pooh and the Value of Being Child-Like

In Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians he says, “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11).  It is important though to make a distinction between “childish” and “child-like.”  After all, Jesus said, “unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).  The new film, Christopher Robin, in theaters now, illustrates this distinction very well.

WARNING:  SPOILERS AHEAD!  If you would like to see the movie without spoilers, please skip the next two paragraphs.

The film brings back beloved characters from childhood:  Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Rabbit, Owl, Kanga, and Roo.  It first presents Christopher Robin as a boy getting ready to go away to boarding school.  The majority of the film shows him as an adult (played by Ewan Mcgregor), with all the worries and responsibilities of a grown up.  Pooh finds his way to London because he has lost his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood and needs Christopher Robin’s help to find them.  Christopher Robin is facing a daunting time at work during which his boss expects him to do some restructuring of staff.  He has needed to cancel a family outing with his wife Evelyn and daughter Madeline in order to work.  Pooh’s timing could not be worse!  Grudgingly, Christopher Robin takes Pooh back to the Hundred Acre Wood, defeats a “woozle,” and saves his childhood friends.  But, when he returns to the “real world”, he unknowingly leaves behind all of his important work papers. 

The inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood embark on a mission to return the papers to Christopher Robin, enlisting the help of Madeline.  Madeline goes off with them to try to find her father in London, resulting in her mother thinking she has gone off on her own.  Christopher and Evelyn find Madeline in London, and Christopher finds a way to resolve his staffing issues in a manner beneficial to all.  In the process, Christopher Robin realizes he is trying to make his daughter grow up too fast.  He discovers that there is more to life than working all the time.  He finds a solution, both to his work problem and the problem of missing time with his family.  And, in the grand tradition of Disney films, they live happily ever after.

So, what does this have to do with the scripture passages I included earlier?  Christopher Robin “put aside childish things,” but he also lost his child-like wonder.  It took a significant intervention from his childhood friends to help him find it again, and he was a happier person because of it.  He found himself again, and he was able to allow his daughter to be a child instead of growing up too fast as he had to do.

As I have gotten older, I have begun to notice the “grown-up” messages in films meant for children.  This film was full of them.  It helps us to realize the value in being child-like.  Most importantly, it reminds us not to grow up too fast.

The Importance of Being a Good Example

On Sunday afternoon, my mom and I went for a walk around Silver Lake, in Big Cottonwood Canyon near Brighton.  This is one of our favorite places to go when we want to escape the heat of the valley in the summer.  As we were walking around the lake, we passed a man and what appeared to be his adult children.  Another passerby might not have noticed, but my mom saw the Hungarian emblem on this man’s shirt and asked him if he was Hungarian.  It turns out this man was born in New Jersey to Hungarian parents who came to the United States after the 1956 revolution in Hungary.  My mother was born in Hungary at the end of the Second World War and came to the US in 1960.  They started conversing in Hungarian, and I was amazed at how little of an accent this man had.  He didn’t sound Hungarian when speaking English, but he didn’t sound American when speaking Hungarian either.  He learned Hungarian as his first language, and English as his second.  As they spoke, I caught a word here and there that I understood, but it seemed his young adult children did not understand anything that was said.

This got me thinking.  In both my mother’s and this man’s case, the parents who lived through a culture shift and revolution kept the language of their homeland alive for their children who grew up in the US.  The next generation, however, did not learn the language.  Why?  Was it a simple matter of assimilation?  A lack of motivation on the parts of our first generation American parents?  Our own lack of interest as the children of native speakers?

I think this situation could apply to what is happening in the Church today, with more and more youth leaving as they get older.  Youth with parents who make church a priority and set a good example for their children may be more likely to continue attending church as they grow into adulthood.  Youth who grow up surrounded by traditions are more likely to keep those traditions and pass them on to future generations.

To bring it back to my own experience, I picked up most of the Hungarian I now recognize from repeated exposure as a child.  Similarly, I recall that I didn’t so much memorize the prayers we say at Mass through isolated practice but through repeated exposure at Mass.  My cousins, the children of my mother’s brother, on the other hand, who were raised in an environment where the use of Hungarian was less accepted, didn’t pick up as much of the language as I did.  These same cousins are not regular church goers as adults either.  The two are not related in any way, other than perhaps the example of my uncle was less effective than it could have been compared with my mother’s.

In order to keep a culture alive, people need an example to follow.  By the same token, in order to keep our churches and faith vibrant in the future, we need to first examine our own behaviors and attitudes.  What sort of example are we setting for the next generation?

In the comments, feel free to share your own ideas or experiences on this topic.

Lord, I Believe; but Help Me in My Times of Unbelief!

From my spot at the kitchen sink, I watched a car pull up to the house.  My son hopped out, raced through the kitchen door and back towards his bedroom on some unidentified mission.  A few moments later he ran back up the hall and through the kitchen, grabbing a piece of pizza from the counter as he passed.

“Hold it!,” I yelled, “Don’t you go out there with that pizza unless you are going to bring enough for your friends!  You know our  rule!…you don’t eat in front of friends.  If there isn’t enough to go around, you don’t eat it either.”

He laughed, waved goodbye with the pizza, and sprinted out the door, leaving me to wonder how I had managed to raise such heathen children.

At that point, Travis, who had been observing, looked at me seriously and asked, “Mom, would you ever treat your friends like that?” then after a moment’s pause, ‘If you had any friends?”

Now, I had to stop for a moment and think about that.  Truthfully, I am not a complete wench.  I have relatively good manners, I almost always say “please” and “thank you,” I clean up nicely, and I’m usually not an embarrassment in public.  I like people, I’m a peace maker, and I’m trying to get better at returning my phone messages.  I tell you this so you can believe that I really do have friends.

It’s just that in order to simplify things on my end, we usually meet during the day while Travis is in school, or in the evening, after he has gone to bed.  Since he hasn’t really seen my friends, he assumed I didn’t have any.

That’s not an uncommon phenomenon.  Remember in the Bible when Thomas didn’t believe Jesus had risen because he hadn’t seen Him?  When he finally did see Jesus, of course he believed.  And Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” 

We have it even tougher than Thomas, because we’ve never had the opportunity to sit down at the dinner table and talk with Jesus face to face.  We must rely entirely on our faith .

But here’s the thing—  it’s easy to believe when life is good.  It’s when things get tough that we can begin to doubt God’s love, or our worthiness.  But remember, faith is a gift, it’s not a feeling.  Just because you’re not feeling God’s love at the moment, does not mean He’s isn’t  there loving you.  Just because you have doubts doesn’t mean you don’t have faith.  It means you need to nourish your faith so will you have strength during difficult times 

Jesus promised us that if we believe in Him even though we have not seen, we will be blessed.   Seems to me like a benefit that’s worth the fight.

So when you doubt, resist it.  Journal, write a letter to God, talk to your friends,  to your pastor, or to a spiritual director.  And pray.  As Mark says in his gospel,  “Lord, I believe; but help me in my times of unbelief!”

What do you do when you begin to feel doubts?