In the love and service of God

Here's a great quote from St. Francis de Sales that speaks to the idea of prophetic attachments. It's from his Introduction to the Devout Life:

"In the creation God commanded the plants to bring forth their fruit, each one after its kind. Even so, he commands Christians, who are the living plants of his church, to bring forth fruits of devotion - each one according to his kind and vocation. Devotion should be practiced differently, then, by the gentleman, servant, prince, widow, daughter, wife, and the practice of devotion must be accommodated to the strength, work, and duties of each individual. I ask you, Philothes, would it be proper for a bishop to wish to be solitary like the Carthusians? If the married wished to save no more than the poor Capuchins, the artisan in church all day like the religious, and the religious exposed to all sorts of interrruptions for the service of neighbor like the bishop - would not such devotion be ridiculous, disorderly and intolerable? Nevertheless this fault is very common, and the world - which cannot or will not distinguish between true devotion and the indiscretion of those who imagine themselves to be devout - murmurs and blames devotion, which is not reasonable as devotion is not responsible for these disorders.

"No, Philothes, devotion when it is true never spoils anything but rather perfects all things, and when it becomes inconsistent with anyone's lawful vocation it is, without doubt, false. The care of a family is rendered peaceable thereby, the love of husband and wife more sincere, the service of the prince more faithful. and every kind of occupation more pleasant and agreeable.

"It is an error, no, rather a heresy, to wish to banish the devout life from the army, workshop, courts of princesand households of married folk." (Devout Life, I,3)

We as laity, as married persons, are called to live a devout life just as are clergy and members of religious communities. No one escapes the universal call to holiness. It's only in the way we answer the call that we differ. Therefore the little prophets that show up in our daily lives will differ, as will the messages they hold for us.

What NOT to do

I'm taking a little break in our ongoing dialogue about the spirituality of marriage to draw attention to a critical issue that faces not only Catholic couples but all of humanity. Stanford University recently announced that a team of researchers has discovered a way to coax stem cells will into becoming eggs and sperm. On the surface this could seem like an awesome discovery for couples who are infertile. In reality, what we have is the created disassociating themselves from the Creator. With this new technology it will no longer be necessary to have either a man or a woman for the conception of a human person.

This is completely mechanistic thinking and threatens not only the sanctity of marriage but the sacredness of all human beings. It began decades ago when we separated the marital act from the God willed procreation of children through the use of contraception. The marital act became an "it" that human beings had a right to for the sake of their own selfish gratification. This turned people into objects rather than instruments in God's divine plan. With the Stanford discovery, man and woman are no longer even objects; they're simply... inconsequential. We have separated ourselves from our own humanity.

Think about the implications of having a society in which couples bear no responsibility or participation in the "creation" of their own children other than signing the check for the laboratory. Doesn't seem a whole lot different from signing a check for Wal-Mart, does it?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1223617/No-men-OR-women-needed-artificial-sperm-eggs-created-time.html

Little prophets

Where ever we go, we're surrounded by the little profits that God has put in our lives to remind us of his power and his love for us. It's easy to see this in nature when we can observe the beauty and magnificence of God's design. Saints throughout the ages have written about this and it's no wonder that we so often find retreat centers built on land that is spacious and filled with flowers, trees, ponds, and paths that wind their way through the gorgeous solitude.

It's a bit more difficult to spot the little profits in our daily lives. Consider this little story of the saintly brother:

There was once a saintly brother who said his daily prayers but had little time at his disposal since he was busy in the kitchen cooking for the community day after day. Asked how he could cultivate union with God when he had so little time for spiritual reading he replied, "Look, here I have a very good teacher to whom I listen all day long! This glowing fire always speaks to me of the love of God -- telling me never to let my love grow cold. In the morning when I light the fire, I ask God to allow me to remain always in the first fervor of my love for him. When the heat begins to die down I put some more wood on, saying a brief prayer for the thousand graces of which I stand in need, thinking of the fires of purgatory or hell. When the fire burns steadily I am aglow with the love of God. When the fire burns out at night I am then reminded of my own death." When he had given them this explanation, his companions understood why he was considered such a saintly man. They realized that, in spite of the continual hard work in the kitchen, he remained constantly in the presence of God -- listening to his voice.

God can speak to us through any means, whether it be a kitchen fire, a keyboard, or even a broken window. What if your son was throwing his baseball around and broke one of the windows on your house? Initially you might be a little miffed and perhaps you might need to discipline him.

But if you would pause for a moment, you might find that the broken glass of the window is a reminder of the brokenness of human nature and how easy it is for us to fall from God's grace. Perhaps this would then urge you to pray for moral strength for your family or for the souls of the faithful departed. It might even remind you that God in his power and might could meld the glass of the window back together instantaneously should he desire to do so. He doesn't, however, because he wishes us to be instruments in healing the brokenness on this earth.

The spirituality of marriage -- prophetic attachments

When we hear the word "prophetic", we might think of the Old Testament prophets who time and again tried to bring the people of Israel back to God and thus paving the way for the coming of the Savior.

Isn't that still true in our world today? We continue to try to open our hearts wider and wider for God to enter and preparing ourselves time and again for the coming of the Savior, whether that be in the Holy Eucharist or at the end of our lives. Therefore, we look to the prophets to guide us.

We can find prophets everywhere around us. The created world in and of itself has intrinsic value but also a symbolic significance; it can bring us messages about God's perfection and plans. St. Augustine called these the Nutus Dei, or greetings from God. St. Bonaventure called them Manutergium Dei, suggesting that through the created world God lovingly takes us by the hand and shows us his footprints, thereby leading us to his fatherly heart.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it this way:

The universe, created in and by the eternal Word, the "image of the invisible God," is destined for and addressed to man, himself created in the "image of God" and called to a personal relationship with God. Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of his creation, Though not without great effort and only in the spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and his work. (CCC 299)

Obviously, it isn't easy to immediately comprehend the messages of the "little prophets" that surround us throughout the day!

Let's take our feisty little dog, Daisy, for example. We got her from a shelter and are guessing that she is a little over one year old. She's a 16-pound mix of lhasa apso and poodle who never, ever, tires of playing. When she wants to play, she does this crazy little dance while pumping her paws pathetically in the air. If that doesn't work, she'll thumb her head down on our laps, claw at us or jab us with her nose. As a last resort, she'll bark at us.

Now, to anyone else this might seem pretty cute. But I don't find it one bit amusing when I'm working on a deadline! In fact, I find it quite annoying, especially since her prime time for wanting to play seems always to come when I'm in the middle of a big project. Nonetheless, Daisy is one of the little prophets in my life. On the surface, I might see an energetic little dog needing some playtime. But looking deeper, I might realize that God is using Daisy to urge me to maintain a spirit of joy and playfulness in my own self.

Perhaps you've had a similar experience. How has God spoken to you through the created world today?

The spirituality of marriage - attachments

As married people living in the world, we have the principal role to help one another -- especially our spouses and children -- to learn to love the material world correctly. This is part of our call to holiness as described by the documents of Vatican II Council.

The faithful, therefore, must learn the deepest meaning and the value of all creation, as well as its role in the harmonious praise of God. They must assist each other to live holier lives even in their daily occupations. In this way the world may be permeated by the spirit of Christ and it may more effectively fulfill its purpose in justice, charity and peace. The laity have the principal role in the overall fulfillment of this duty. (Lumen Gentium, #36.)

Finally all Christ's faithful, whatever be the conditions, duties and circumstances of their lives-and indeed through all these, will daily increase in holiness, if they receive all things with faith from the hand of their heavenly Father and if they cooperate with the divine will. In this temporal service, they will manifest to all men the love with which God loved the world. (Lumen Gentium, #41)

The Church asks us to permeate our world by the spirit of Christ and we can begin by fostering an ordered attachment to create things. If we do this, then the material world will become a source of inspiration for us and a means of expressing our love for God. This attachment can be lived out in three ways: prophetically, priestly, and heroically. We'll talk about these three ways in future posts.

For now it might be good to spend a few minutes here and there throughout the day examining the attachments that we have to the created things around us. What do they look like? Do they draw us closer or farther from God?

The spirituality of marriage -- a new outlook on life

This new outlook on life begins with our view of material things. How do we affect them and how do we let them affect us? In other words, do we control them or do they control us?

We have to learn how to do the following:

- to affirm material things
- to use material things
- to appreciate material things
- and to become holy through material things

How does this compare to our brothers and sisters in the monasteries?

Let's look first at some wrong views of the material world. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 285), we find an explanation of the varying views of the material world as defined throughout the history of the Church. Some philosophers claimed that the entire world is God and that development of the world is the development of God. That's Pantheism. Others believe that the world is locked in permanent conflict between two eternal principles: Good and Evil, and Light and Darkness. That's Dualism or Manichaeism. The Gnostics believe that the physical world is evil, a product of a fall, and must be rejected or left behind. Some would say that God made the world but then abandoned it to fend for itself. That's Deism. We aren't Pantheists, Dualists, Gnostics, or Deists. We are Catholics, and therefore we strive to live the Catholic view of the material world.

Now let's go back to our discussion of living monastic piety as married couples.

"People in monasteries should be removed from the world as much as possible, and we must go into the world. We must deal with material things. As lay people we were not created to run away from earthly things. Yes, we even have to learn anew to love material things, to love also money and possessions, to love the beauty of human nature, or to love the arts and sciences. We must deal with these things." Father Kentenich told the couples.

This might sound a bit materialistic at first, but we have to understand that the world around us is part of God's creation and for that reason we must love it, but we must love it correctly. What's more, we must teach others to use material things correctly.

How do we do this? We show through our being how we can love the world. Think about all of the new technology that has been introduced to us during the last few decades. As modern laypeople in the world, we can't avoid them but we can learn to reach God through them.

The spirituality of marriage

Would you agree that each community of religious and clergy are called to live a particular spirituality? I think most of us would. I wonder, however, if we have ever considered marriage in that same light. Do we realize that married persons also are called to live a particular spirituality?

For those of us called to the vocation of marriage, the sacrament of matrimony can be and should be a way to holiness with spirituality all its own -- the spirituality of marriage. Since we cannot separate ourselves from the world like some of our religious brothers and sisters, we must learn to become holy through earthly things.

"It is a master stroke to shape married life in such a manner that we will become holy through it", said Father Joseph Kentenich to a group of couples in 1961.

We can do this by imitating those in consecrated life and living a monastic piety. That doesn't mean that we scoop up our families and go off to live in a cave! It does mean that while living in the world, we resist the pull to become of the world.

"And we, if we want to become holy; although we live in the world -- it is a shame that we have to live in it -- have to try in spite of it to kick the world away with one foot and to strut with the other foot a little bit into monastic life," Father Kentenich said.

How is that done? It's done by adopting a new outlook on life. We'll dig deeper into that in my next post.

Heroic Love

"There will be an assault on the institution of marriage," Santorum promised his audience. "Why? Because the left knows that they can't really have government come in and take control of everything unless they destroy the family. Unless you destroy the family and destroy the Church they cannot ultimately be successful in getting socialism to be accepted in this country and that's what their objective is." --US Senator Rick Santorum, 17th International Week of Prayer and Fasting

The above quote from Sen. Rick Santorum offers us a dismal picture at best of what the future may hold for our country if things don't begin to turn around soon. Without strong families we'll begin to rot at our roots. Eventually, the entire tree will come tumbling down. Once that happens, everything will be lost because society can't stand if the institution of marriage and family is not intact.

There are many -- and thanks be to God for them -- who are working hard on the legislative level to secure the preservation of marriage as we know it in Scripture. We need to back up their efforts, but we also need to make some efforts on our own. We need to live our marriages in heroic love, a love so strong and pure that it will radiate all around us. The preservation of the institution of marriage begins not in a courtroom, not in a political rally, but in our hearts and homes. I truly believe that if we live and love heroically, if we tirelessly strive to be examples of holy marriages, holy families, others will begin not only to see and understand the sanctity of marriage but they also will want it for themselves. How can anyone fight for something they have never experienced?

Consider this quote from a talk Father Joseph Kentenich, founder of The Apostolic Movement of Schoenstatt, gave to married couples in 1961:

"... If we think of modern married life, family life: Are there many happy marriages? We will always have to say: what is missing today, what is missing from the modern person is genuine, true love."

It seems that Father Kentenich could be talking about today, couldn't he? But, what does that look like on a practical level?

Twenty-seven years and counting

As of today, Mark and I have been married for 27 years. I find it somewhat amusing

in a not at all funny kind of way that things seem to have come full circle since the day we were married. Girls are back in bell bottomed hip-huggers, baby-doll tops, flip flop sandals, and long straight hair. Guys are wearing tossled hair and button-downs with T-shirts underneath. New graduates are out there competing for jobs that don't exist. The economy is in recession, and people are wondering what to do next. Sad to say, the preservation of the sanctity of marriage hasn't fared much better and we are in an unprecedented moral decline.

And how has our own marriage fared? Far, far better I'm happy to report. To be sure, it hasn't been a glee filled cruise - we've been through some really tough times. Three premature babies, job loss, economic hardship, bouts of poor health, and a variety of other obstacles to overcome. Obviously, our life together hasn't been a picnic. On the other hand, each adversity proved to strengthen us in our commitment to each other and in our faith. It's like St. Peter said:

"...so that the genuineness of your faith--being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." (1Pe 1:7)

Today I'll be thanking God not only for the good times but also for the difficult ones because I know that they are part of the fire testing process that will eventually result in praise and glory and honor for our Lord through our marriage.

I can only hope and pray that the same will happen for our nation and its people.

I must choose women to open to them My heart

No offense to my wonderful theologian friends...

St. Teresa once asked Jesus why He didn't tell some learned theologian to carry out the work He'd given her. He replied, "Theologians will do nothing to enter into personal communication with Me. Repulsed by them, I must choose women to open to them My Heart and speak of My affairs."

What an interesting insight into the heart of a woman! What our Lord is talking about here is motherliness, not in the sense of having born child but in the sense of having a heart that can be open to, perceive and tend to the needs of the other. This is something that men simply do not innately have. And it's because of women's motherliness, when it is a holy motherliness, that women can sometimes be more effective at communicating and opening hearts to God than men.

As I have so often told my daughter and the young women I've mentored, There is nothing as beautiful as a woman who walks in the Spirit or terrifying as one who does not."

Gruesome, I know

I'm in the middle of interviews and research for two stories I'm working on about human tragedy that have particularly touched my heart.

The first story is on the plight of albino people in Tanzania. I learned about it from a Tanzanian nun to whom I gave a ride one evening after the Mass at the Schoenstatt Marian Shrine in Milwaukee. She's working to raise funds to help these people and alerted me to the severity of their situation. You see, in Tanzania there's a superstition that albino body parts can be made into potions and other oddities that will bring health and good fortune to the bearer. So, vigilanty groups go around whacking off the body parts - arms, legs, heads - of any albinos they can get their hands on. This is done while the person is still alive. If this disgusts you, good. It should.

The other story is about the people who contracted Hansen's disease (leprosy) and were banished to a desolate area of the Hawaiian island of Molokai. The angle of the story is the upcoming canonization of Father Damien de Veuster, Belgian priest who gave his life in the service of these people during the latter half of the 1800s. Hansen's patients were considered unclean -yes, like in Biblical times - and sent to a secluded Molokai peninsula and kept there away from family, friends, civilization. Of those who married, some of them refrained from having children. For those who did have chilren, the child was taken immediately after birth and brought to the other side of the island where someone else raised him/her. Things have changed since the 1800s and we now know that the disease is curable and patients can lead normal lives within society. However, remnants of the original leprosy colony still reside on that remote side of Molokai and no one under the age of 16 is allowed to visit that area of the island. Childless seclusion has become a way of life for them.

These two stories keep playing over and over in my head. So deeply have they impacted me that last night I dreamed that a scourge had hit our country and children were dying left and right. A government agency was going around grinding the bodies into "hamburger" and forcing the parents to cook and eat it. Gruesome, I know. But it's a symptom of the effects these two stories have had on my soul. In reality, the abortion practices that are running rampant and the proposed health care reforms in this country aren't too far off from my dream. These should be affecting all of our souls deeply. We must never allow ourselves to become immune to tragedy.

Whenever I find myself overwhelmed by things I can't control, whenever I'm shaken by calamity or heartbreak, a verse from a prayer in my Schoenstatt prayerbook comes to mind:

"Whatever was too earthbound in our thinking

and too human in our giving of self

God desired to direct upwards

and anchor entirely in himself."

This was written by a holy priest - Father Joseph Kentenich - in the throes of the starvation, degredation, and inhumanity of the Dachau concentration camp during WWII. It's a reminder to me that we need to do two things even in the darkest of times. First, we must endlessly give of ourselves as Christ would give to sanctify the world around us. Second, we must direct all upwards to the Father, acknowledging him as the All-Powerful One and allowing him to exert that power even if it makes no sense to our human minds. Faithful prayer, heroic sacrifice, dependence on grace, and boundless trust. That's what it will take.

We can't let our own humanness trap us in "hamburger" dreams.

Spider Slayer!

Spider Slayer!

Sounds like a low-budget Hollywood flick, doesn't it? It could be...someday. Maybe I'll make a ton of money on it, too. Not too sure you could get me into one of those goofy strechy suits like other super heroes wear, though. Ew. Can you just imagine? A forty-something Midwestern housewife..never mind... Let's not even let our minds go there!

For now, Spider Slayer is the title I earned while in Ohio doing a six-day tour of When's God Gonna Show Up? Workshops. I had a free day and decided to take advantage of the freedom I had to roam the grounds behind the little cottage in which I was staying. The facility hosting my tour, Transfiguration Center, is located on 200 acres of gorgeous nature preserve, complete with prairie lands and wooded trails.

On this day, I decided to explore the prairie lands and then take to the woods. Of course, with woods you get spiders. Nice, big, brown, hairy spiders that like to build their webs right across the path. Okay. Their bodies were as big as dimes, but for me - a pathetic city girl - they were huge and scarey! The first one I ran into repulsed me (to put it mildly), so, I turned back (at advanced speed) and took a different fork in the path. Well, you might have already guessed that it wasn't long before I was face to face with another of these giant yucky things.

I was about to turn back again when something - probably sheer stubbornness - took hold of me. Why should I let some stupid spider (or lots of them for that matter), deter me from enjoying this beautiful piece of land that God had created in his goodness? So, I walked a bit into the woods and found a nice, long, straight tree branch. I stripped off all of the small branches down the sides and tried it out for size. Perfect! It was jsut a bit taller than me and had just the right feel to it when I held it in my hand. Plus, it was dry and light enough to swing to and fro at shoulder height.

I took to the path again, this time waving my weapon back and forth in front of me so as to get the spiders before they got me. Truly, I was grateful that there was no one else around and, thanks be to God, no cameras either! I'm sure I looked absolutely ridiculous. Add to that the fact that I was dressed a bit too warmly for the weather, so I had rolled the legs of my jeans up to my knees like some 50s middle-schooler. My goodness. But I was walking through those woods, by golly, having the time of my life. With my trusty-musty anti-spider repulsion stick in hand, I could conquer any trail I wanted!

After a while, I got a little tired (my weapon was light, but not that light), so I sat down to rest on one of the benches along the trails. As I was sitting there, I sensed a creepy brown hairy thing next to me, in between the slats of the bench. Argh! That was it! I know they are God's creatures, but I was not about to give up my hard-earned resting bench to a spider! As quickly and with as much mercy as I could muster, I took the skinny end of my weapon and smooshed the thing. I sat back down and went back to my quiet contemplation.

Then I started to chuckle. I almost never go anywhere without Mark and/or at least one of the kids. I usually depend on them to clear the path ahead for me or to do away with anything that scares me. None of them were with me on this trip - I had to go it alone. Without them around to pick on, I had to learn to be my own defender. Because I was taken out of my comfort zone, I was forced to dig deep down and find resources within myself that I didn't know were there. It was just me and God out on that trail, and he wanted to show me that his grace is sufficient.

When I told Mark and John the story, they chuckled at the image in their heads of me walking along and swinging this log around in front of me. John's the one who gave me the title "Spider Slayer". At first, I thought it was funny, but now I'm starting to take it seriously because it's a reminder to me of what God did for me in those woods.

I hope that someday you, too, will become a Spider Slayer or a Whatever Slayer depending on your own irrational fear and that you can be blessed by that complete assurance that God's grace is sufficient.

Don't fall apart!

Below is an article written by Patrick Buchanan. He talks about America falling apart, and I will let you read it for yourselves. My point here is not to get into the political sphere, but instead to take a look at spiritual sphere. Whether or not America falls apart, and especially if it does fall apart, we must make certain that we do not fall apart.

And how do we do that? We do with that by trusting in Divine Providence, by fortifying our faith with spiritual exercises, daily prayer, and receiving the Eucharist as often as we possibly can. The way to keep America from falling apart, is by keeping our selves from falling apart spiritually. If we are firm in our faith, courageous in our morals, watch full against evil, deeply united to our Lord and his Blessed mother, we can be the glue that holds our country together.

Is America coming apart?

Posted: September 10, 20097:53 pm Eastern© 2009

Flying home from London, where the subject of formal debate on the 70th anniversary of World War II had been whether Winston Churchill was a liability or asset to the Free World, one arrives in the middle of a far more acrimonious national debate right here in the United States.
At issue: Should Barack Obama be allowed to address tens of millions of American children, inside their classrooms, during school hours?

Conservative talk-show hosts saw a White House scheme to turn public schools into indoctrination centers where the socialist ideology of Obama would be spoon-fed to captive audiences of children forced to listen to Big Brother -- and then do assignments on his sermon.
The liberal commentariat raged about right-wing paranoia.

Yet Byron York of the Washington Examiner dug back to 1991 to discover that, when George H.W. Bush went to Alice Deal Junior High to speak to America's school kids, the left lost it.
"The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props," railed the Washington Post. Education Secretary Lamar Alexander was called before a House committee. The National Education Association denounced Bush. And Congress ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate.

Obama's actual speech proved about as controversial as a Nancy Reagan appeal to eighth-graders to "Just say no!" to drugs.

Yet, the episode reveals the poisoned character of our politics.

We saw it earlier on display in August, when the crowds that came out for town hall meetings to oppose Obama's health-care plans were called "thugs," "fascists," "racists" and "evil-mongers" by national Democrats.

We see it as Rep. Joe Wilson shouts, "You lie!" at the president during his address to a joint session of Congress.

"You Lie!" Get the bumper sticker that immortalizes American opposition to Obama
We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others' throats.
One half of America sees abortion as the annual slaughter of a million unborn. The other half regards the right-to-life movement as tyrannical and sexist.

Proponents of gay marriage see its adversaries as homophobic bigots. Opponents see its champions as seeking to elevate unnatural and immoral relationships to the sacred state of traditional marriage.

The question invites itself. In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore? For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays and share the same music, poetry, art and literature?

Yet, today, Mexican-Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a skirmish in a French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing, which took place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg.

Christmas and Easter, the great holidays of Christendom, once united Americans in joy. Now we fight over whether they should even be mentioned, let alone celebrated, in our public schools.
Where we used to have classical, pop, country & Western and jazz music, now we have varieties tailored to specific generations, races and ethnic groups. Even our music seems designed to subdivide us.

One part of America loves her history, another reviles it as racist, imperialist and genocidal. Old heroes like Columbus, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are replaced by Dr. King and Cesar Chavez.

But the old holidays, heroes and icons endure, as the new have yet to put down roots in a recalcitrant Middle America.

We are not only more divided than ever on politics, faith and morality, but along the lines of class and ethnicity. Those who opposed Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court and stood by Sgt. Crowley in the face-off with Harvard's Henry Louis Gates were called racists. But this time they did not back down. They threw the same vile word right back in the face of their accusers, and Barack Obama.

Consider but a few issues on which Americans have lately been bitterly divided: school prayer, the Ten Commandments, evolution, the death penalty, abortion, homosexuality, assisted suicide, affirmative action, busing, the Confederate battle flag, the Duke rape case, Terri Schiavo, Iraq, amnesty, torture.

Now it is death panels, global warming, "birthers" and socialism. If a married couple disagreed as broadly and deeply as Americans do on such basic issues, they would have divorced and gone their separate ways long ago. What is it that still holds us together?

The European-Christian core of the country that once defined us is shrinking, as Christianity fades, the birth rate falls and Third World immigration surges. Globalism dissolves the economic bonds, while the cacophony of multiculturalism displaces the old American culture.

"E pluribus unum" – out of many, one - was the national motto the men of '76 settled upon. One sees the pluribus. But where is the unum? One sees the diversity. But where is the unity?
Is America, too, breaking up?


Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party's candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American Conservative. Now a political analyst for MSNBC and a syndicated columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV shows, and is the author of seven books.

A Marvelous Birthday

Today I attended the funeral of Mrs. Eleanor Yank, a woman I have known for nearly 3 decades. The Yank and Fenelon families have been close friends for nearly 50 years. They are so close that two of the Yank sisters married two of the Fenelon brothers and the families do so many things together that sometimes it's hard to tell who belongs to whom. Having married into the Fenelon family, I became part of that beautiful menagerie.

As I was sitting in the pew gazing at the coffin resting in the center aisle of the church, I began to think about all of the memories I have of Mrs. Yank, and I came to the realization that I have nearly as many memories of Mr. and Mrs. Yank as I do of my own father, who died when I was just 15 years old. I have always been grateful for the way the Yanks have opened their home and arms to me; they helped to replace the emptiness inside of me from the absence of my own parents. Their warm and gentle welcome was as soothing as the trickle of a cool mountain stream on a hot summer day.

Suddenly a deep ache came up inside me and a groaning of the heart that is more desperate than I think I have ever felt before; it was nearly uncontainable. I wondered what Dad might be like today if he were still alive and what we would talk about if we could have a conversation together. I wondered if we would sit down at the kitchen table with a steaming cup of coffee and talk about his orchard, politics, science, or my writing. I wondered what he would think of my new book, what he would say to me about it, and if he would be proud of what I have done with my talents. I wanted to see his face again; hear his voice once more...

When we got home from the funeral, I got a call from our son, Matt, in Iraq. It was such an excellent birthday gift! It made me so happy to be his mother and to be part of this fantastic extended family.

Just after I hung up from my conversation with Matt, the phone rang again. It was my Aunt Mary. Mary is my dad's youngest sister, and my godmother. She told me that during that morning an unusually vivid memory swept over her mind and kept relentlessly circling around her brain. It was the memory of my father sitting in his old International Harvester wagon, parked in her driveway. He had come to borrow some baby furniture for the new baby that he and my mom were expecting soon. He was telling my aunt how very much they were looking forward to the birth of the new baby and how badly they had wanted this child. They had had a hard time healing from the death of the previous child, a girl they named Rita, who was stillborn. My aunt said that my dad talked about the new baby with such amazing reverence; she had never heard him talk like that before. His tone and sentiment had deeply impressed her. The new baby he was talking about was me. Aunt Mary had no idea what brought that memory into her head today but it stayed with her.

Later in the day she saw an obituary for a nun, a Sr. Doris of the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi who is the biological sister of the best man at my dad and mom's wedding. The obituary said that the best man, Claude, is still living and so are his wife and children. Aunt Mary knows that I long to learn as much as I can about my dad's life and so she decided to give me a call. She thought that perhaps I might want to attend the funeral and meet my dad's best man. Perhaps he could tell me some things about my dad since he spent time in the Navy with him.

When Aunt Mary called my brother to get my phone number, he reminded her that today is my birthday. Then it clicked for her and she realized that much more was at work here besides a few interesting coincidences!

I was so happy to hear from Aunt Mary. She is the last surviving sibling of my dad's family and I'm sad to say that we don't keep in touch often enough. When she told me all that had occurred to her during the day I marveled because it so directly coincided with what had been occurring to me throughout the day. When I learned that the nun's funeral was to take place just a mile from my home, I too realized that more was at work here besides a few interesting coincidences!

Toward the end of the conversation Aunt Mary referred to my new book and expressed her admiration for my writing talents. She told me about how she enjoyed the book and made observations and remarks about some of the stories in it. She mentioned that it would be great to write more books like it and include some of the stories from my own family and childhood. She told me I should collect all of the memories that I can and record them for future use.

Then she told me something that sent a chill down my spine. She told me that she is absolutely sure that my dad is truly pleased with me, with who I am and what I've accomplished, that he admires my work and is so proud of me for what I have accomplished with my writing.

I was both stunned and touched, for the very thing for which I had been so longing during Mass this morning came to me through a phone line via my godmother's voice. Somehow I just knew that dad had heard my prayer and urged his sister to help him answer it.

After I hung up the phone, I sat down on my chair and chuckled. Then, I marveled. And then I cried.

Learning to do dishes again

I'm learning how to do dishes again. It's not like I had forgotten, because I don't think any mom could actually forget how to do dishes, although I'll bet a bunch of us wish we could forget. It's more like having forgotten the routine of doing dishes. I haven't had to do dishes on a regular basis for, oh, say, about 12 or 13 years. All these years the kids have been doing them, taking turns each night. I would either be taking care of the baby or perhaps doing some other chore; the dishes were always up to the kids.

Well now we are down to one last Mohican left at home and it's just not fair to expect him to do the dishes every night. Additionally at the age of 13 it's time for him to spend more time outside or around the house with Dad doing all that rough-tough cool guy stuff that young men should be learning how to do. So, I've taken up the dish washing batton.

I'm finding that I actually enjoy it. In a symbolic way it's like washing away all the day's worries and cares with a sponge. There is something so satisfactory about wiping the spaghetti sauce off a plate or scrubbing the daylights out of a cookie sheet. It's gratifying to see the pile of dirty dishes dwindle and the dish rack fill with sparkling clean ones. It gives me a sense of accomplishment even on days when I haven't been able to work through even a few of the items on my to-do list. It gives me a sense of order even when I'm surrounded by chaos. And there's nothing like stepping back and taking a look at a job well done.

Most days, I get so into it that I don't stop at just washing dishes. I find myself moving through the kitchen cleaning the stove, wiping out the microwave, washing the floor and shining up the cabinets. I have to admit this is getting kind of addictive. Mark keeps telling me, "Marge, go do something else and let John do that." But I really don't want him to. so I make up some lame excuse about why it's better that he goes off and does something else.

I think what I like most about doing dishes is that it reminds me of the good old days, like when the kids were little and I would be washing dishes while they were playing on the carpet or chasing their toys around. The problem is, there are no little kids anymore. My "little kids" are all grown up now and the house seems way too quiet and far too empty. Now when I do dishes, I spend the time reminiscing about days gone by, laughing at old jokes, awing at the cute antics of days gone by, and remembering the smell and feel of a pudgy, warm, kiddo snuggled into my lap.

I also think about what it's going to be like when it really is just Mark and I all alone in the house. I wonder what our children's vocations will be, who the might marry, and where they might live. I ruminate about what we might be like as an elderly couple - will we have any interesting hobbies? Will we live in a different house then? What will it be like growing old together? I realize that our lives will be very different in the future; different from what it was 12 years ago and different from what it is now. Whatever it will be, it will be great because it will be God's will for us - just as is the past and the present.

Yuppers. I'm learning to do dishes again, but in a new way.