At mass on Tuesday morning I heard this reading:
He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said,
“Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Whoever becomes humble like this child
is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.
Two pews in front of me, a three year old girl stared at me while picking her nose.
Lillian stood all by her self tonight. I was lying down on the living room floor at the in-law’s house. Lillian crawled over to me, puller herself up by grabbing my hips, let go. She stood for about half a second, then plopped down on her baby bottom.
I got excited, and maybe I got a little too loud, because I think I scared her. She had a worried look on her face and just sat there staring at me. I guess an 8 month old can’t tell the difference between a happy loud voice and an angry loud voice.
Laughter helps.
Last Friday, we decided that on Sunday we would go out with the in-laws for our Sunday Night Dinner. I was thrilled because Ci Ci’s is one of my favorite buffet pizza places. I looked forward to that meal all weekend. I went to bed dreaming about the pizza buffet, and woke up smelling pepperoni. I even tweeted about it.
Sunday evening finally arrived and I drove down Providence toward joy (pizza is synonymous with joy). At a stoplight, my enthusiasm bubbled over and I rolled down the window and shouted “I love pizza!” The cop in the car next to me gave me the evil eye. I rolled up my window, locked the door, and hunched down as if I were driving through the projects.
My wife pointed to the light, which had turned green. “We’re going to C.C’ Broilers, not Ci Ci’s Pizza.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
“C.C’s” sounds exactly like “Ci Ci’s”
My heart was heavier, and my wallet lighter.
That’s the motto of my family’s finances. It means we try to live as humbly as possible because it forces us to trust God more. . . and that is a beautiful way of saying I’m a tight-wad.
One of the reasons I was excited about moving into a house, was I thought we could save money on car maintenance; our new house has a garage where I could do minor repairs.
When I was at the auto parts store picking out oil and a filter, I noticed one of the sales people watching me. He smiled (in retrospect, I think I remember saliva dribbling out of the corner of his mouth). “You doing an oil change?”
“Yep.”
He handed me a mountain of coupons. “We’ve got a special.”
I was flattered by his thoughtfulness (that’s probably why I ignored the saliva). He even helped me carry my oil out to my car.
On the way home, I started thinking. (I’m not much of an in-the-moment thinker. I’m more of an after-the-fact thinker, and my thought is almost always “Good grief, what did I just do?”)
I just spent $15 on oil and filter.
For the last 10 years I’ve paid the quick oil change places $17 to do the work for me. Plus, they would top off my other fluids, dispose of the oil for me, and once in a while you can find a $5 off coupon and get an oil change for $12. But wait, this deal gets better. While your waiting, you can read a couple chapters of a good book rather than getting covered in oil. Granted, you have to put up with the sales pitch where they try to talk you into flushing your transmission fluid, radiator fluid, and changing the air in your tires, but if you’re strong (or cheap, like me) you’ll be able to say no.
Oh well. I’ve got my work clothes on, so I’m off to get covered in oil . . . my wife just cleaned our bathroom, so pray for me.
Post Oil Change UPDATE
Good grief, what did I just do? I could have returned the oil.
I just bought some new shoes and they are ridiculously white.
There should be a paint called shoe white, and that would be the standard by which all other whiteness is measured; there could be a shoe white, and off-shoe white, and a country shoe white.
To slow down Global Warming we could build a huge barge, fill it with new white shoes, and float it to the North Pole to replace the melting ice caps.
I don’t know when different language skills are supposed to develop, but I”m constantly amazed by my son. Lately he’s been using similes.
» He bit the front leg off an animal cracker and said, “It’s like a drill.”
» I blew a raspberry on his belly and he said, “It’s like a lawnmower.”
» He crumpled his napkin and said, “It’s like a shovel.”
Okay, I don’t know what that last one meant, but 2 out of 3 is pretty good for a 25 month old.
Lillian has started waving and clapping. She says something like “Hi Da Da.” Which sounds a lot like “Bye Da Da.” So that’s what she does every time I leave the house and every time I come home.
She’s also finally over her “I only love mommy” phase, so I get to play with her a lot more now.
I’m embarrassed by the broken “Categories” image. I’ll fix it when I can.
I like this wordpress theme, but I’ve had to rewrite almost all the HTML & CSS. I didn’t mess with the left sidebar because the theme author made it pretty complicated, and I didn’t want to dig in there and straighten it out . . .
My tire didn’t just go flat, it exploded. No hope for repair, no future as a tire swing.
I’m a handy guy, so I thought I’d change the tire myself. After my last flat, I even bought a 2-ton jack that I keep in the trunk of my car, most of the time. The only time I take the jack out is if I need the trunk space to haul stuff. For example, if I had just moved into a new house . . .
Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it), I still had the scissor jack with the spare. So, I loosened the lug nuts, jacked the car into the air, took one lug nut off. That’s when I noticed the car shifting.
This was one of those slow-motion experiences. I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what. I glanced back towards the trunk with my angry face–that’s the natural expression my face reverts to when I don’t understand what’s happening–then I realized the car was falling, and did a weird flop/hop backwards out of the way.
Here’s the kicker. Are you sitting down? The jack sunk two inches into the pavement. If you drive past our local library you’ll notice a huge divot in the ground. That marks the spot where my life as a blogger almost ended (of course, I’d probably also be excused from changing any more poopy diapers . . . no, not worth it).
I’ve paid five bucks a month for the past five years for Road-Side Assistance, and this is the third time I’ve ever used them; I think I’m losing that gamble.
I walked over to the library and find a modern miracle–a working payphone. I called my insurance company, gave them all my info, got redirected to the Road-Side Assistance Phone company, gave them all my information, got redirected to the actual Road-Side Assistance company, only to discover the operator couldn’t hear me. Eventually, she realized I’d called from a pay phone and explained that there is some technological glitch with payphones that makes it difficult for her to hear people who call from them. . .apparently cell phones have better connections than land lines. That amazed me, but for some reason it also made me laugh and everything started going back uphill from there.
I was at the library so I checked out a book and found a nice place to read (that’s all I wanted to do anyway).
In about 20 minutes, someone from a local tow company pulled up next to my car with AC/DC blaring on the radio and I had a flash back to high school. The repairman was a great guy, and he changed my tire in about 5 seconds.
If you pay $60 a year for Road-Side Assistance, make sure you also pay $60 a month for a cell phone. Of, course that could probably all be avoided if you paid $260 a month for a new car. And while we’re spending money, let’s throw in $2600 a year for insurance that redirects you three times before sending someone else to do the work.
It’s good to be the middle-middle man.
On facebook.com there is a group titled “We Are Catholic!” The group has a discussion board where teens discuss various thoughts about our faith, and one teen posted a question about discerning her vocation. Dozens of people replied, including me; Here is what I posted.
I read somewhere that moving and changing jobs are two of the most stressful events in a person’s life. I don’t know who conducted that study, but I’m guessing they weren’t Catholic; Discerning a vocation is one of the most traumatic experiences a faithful young Catholic goes through. It is especially traumatic because it can go on for years, and includes dramatic shifts from one vocation to another. Shifts that are sometimes peaceful, sometimes passionate, often difficult, and occasionally angry.
However, there is something even more traumatic . . . that is, after fully committing to one vocation, you still have serious doubts about your choice.
I’ve read books by ex-priests and by divorced people who still struggled with their vocation after ordination or marriage (I won’t mention their books here because I don’t want to support their writings, which are often anti-Catholic, but if you send me an email I might share the authors with you).
I’m not talking about the occasional thought about what life would be like if a person had made a different choice. I am married, love being married, and have no doubt that this is the vocation God called me to. And even I occasionally wonder what life would be like if I had entered a monastery–that though usually pops up on days when I have to race a kid to the doctor, make sure my rent gets paid, fix the lawn mower . . . oh yeah, and find time to go to work, then get home and pass out only to be woken up at midnight to change a screaming baby’s diaper while I’m half asleep and accidentally put the diaper on the wrong end . . . on those days, sure, I do wonder what the monastic life would have been like. But wondering is different than doubting, and I’ve never doubted my vocation–there’s too much love here.
God has blessed me with a peaceful heart about my vocation, but I wonder why some people don’t find peace after they are married or ordained. After reading a few books by people who were unhappy about their vocation, I am willing to make a guess; their writings give me the impression that they struggled with Christ’s love. Feeling Christ’s love from others, understanding Christ’s love, and, most importantly, sharing Christ’s love by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
If you are discerning a vocation, the first thing you should do is surround yourself with people of deep faith who are capable of sharing Christ’s love with you; Start with your family (if possible), then with your church (if possible). Seek Christ’s love for the rest of your life. Share Christ’s love for the rest of your life.
“Prayer itself, born in Catholic families, nurtured by programs of Christian formation, strengthened by the grace of the sacraments, is the first means by which we come to know the Lord’s will for our lives. To the extent that we teach young people to pray, and to pray well, we will be cooperating with God’s call. Programs, plans and projects have their place; but the discernment of a vocation is above all the fruit of an intimate dialogue between the Lord and his disciples. Young people, if they know how to pray, can be trusted to know what to do with God’s call.” Pope Benedict XVI [emphasis mine]
For the rest of us, the best way for us to help someone discern their vocation is to fill their lives with love by listening to them and by praying with them. Listening to them is a key part of ministering to them; we must focus our ears so we can hear their hearts. Our goal is to help them filter out the noise the devil fills our lives with and to hear God inside.
“When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking” (CCC 1777).
And after the choice has been made, we should continue to love them the way Christ taught us.
St. Therese of Lisieux said, “My vocation is love.”
I’m trying to mow my lawn with a criss-cross pattern like a baseball field
A well mowed baseball field
My Lawn
It’s been a month, but I can’t make the criss-cross pattern stick.
Today, I tried mowing the lawn twice, once in both directions, but the second mowing pretty much erased all the lines from the first mowing. I’m ashamed of my failure, but I’m not giving up; I’m off to Google to see if I can find anyone else who has successfully turned their backyard into a baseball field . . . I do happen to know a professional baseball field maintenance worker (Dave do you think you can get me some base-line chalk?)
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August 14, 2008 
