Last Things

It's the end of the school year, the time for graduations, ceremonies, last things.  It's the last grand hurrah for the 8th graders at school.  They will attend Saul and Capa, St. Joe's Prep, Mt. St. Joseph.  Friends I began seminary with graduated last week, diplomas the size of my lap.  Our internship ended, the weekly meetings and supervisions have wound down.  And tomorrow, I will counsel there for the last time.

This is the same time last year when Maggie bought us matching hankies from Hob Nob for Calliope and Una's graduation from nursery school.  Calliope processed down the aisle wearing a spectator veil and I wept with a bursting heart.  Next week, she will have a ceremony to mark the end of kindergarten.  Why does it feel, every year, like we have arrived at this impossible moment, that once felt like it could never happen?  When I got the acceptance letter from CCEF last June, I jumped up and down and screamed in the second floor hallway until my voice hurt.  Tomorrow, I will descend the stairs from my bright but cozy garrett-office.  There will be the professional silence there always is, I will hear my footfall.  And that will be that.

In September, Calliope said that she didn't like school, that this school was not for her.  I told her she needed to make it through Christmas time and then we could revisit the question.  Now, though, she can finish her friends' sentences, writes with punctuation and will be reading the Responsorial Psalm for her graduation Mass.

This time of year tends to feel like we have come to a precipice, an uncomfortable, disquieting sense of finality and peril.  The end of the academic year leaves me raw and fragile.  I don't know why that is.  Why can't I see it as more of an uphill journey around the same mountain?  The circular, season-driven, climb up a mountain, though steep,  is mine.  When I was leaving for college, I felt a similar numbness and disbelief.  Days flowed into each other and then I saw that I was rolling forward with a certain momentum.  And when I told my Mom that basically I was just sad to leave her, I was comforted when she said, "I have had 18 years to prepare for this.  And I knew it was coming."

I want to have that sense, a composed preparedness for what is coming.

Keep Your Day Job

I found out tonight that the job I had worked all year for, the one I so badly wanted I could taste, I found out that I did not get. 

But that’s not what I want to remember in posterity.  What I want to document about the whole thing is the way that my kids carried this with me.  This great cosmic-emotional-transfer, this bearing of my burden that they in their youth and babyhood, took ---it is beyond any price.  

Picture us in the family room.  Me and the girls playing a slow and sneaky-spirited game of Uno.  Geoff and the boys playing Egyptian laser-chess. We are wrapping up and the phone rings.  It’s the director of counseling calling on our house line.  I have been waiting for this phone call since March, when the applications were due.  I take the call and am shocked at the reason I didn’t get the offer:  Not because of my evaluations, not because I still have a year til I graduate.  The reason is because I cannot work on Saturdays or evenings.  When I was asked for my availability, that was the one thing that would not budge for me.  After school and weekends are when I am with my kids.  There was and is no way I will flex on that. She said that I’ve grown in my work and am an excellent counselor.  The team that they are putting together at this time needs to respond to the demand for counselors in the evening and weekends.  

So there’s that.  

I quickly get off the phone and proceed to do an ugly cry into a towel.  Geoff has been sitting by my side the whole time and quietly shushing the kids to go back upstairs and asking them to wait for us to come up and explain.   Then, Clara, refusing to wait any longer, runs down and quietly asks me, “Mom, what’s wrong?”  I tell her that I didn’t get the job I wanted at CCEF.  And it goes like this:

“I thought you had a job at CCEF.”

“No, it’s been an internship.  You don’t get paid for an internship.”  

“Why didn’t you get it?  Maybe they’ll change their minds and call you back.  Let’s just see. . .” Then her eyes dart between the floor and my face, looking for a solution.  You can see, she’s thinking she can find one.  

Then I say, “No, Honey.  I didn’t get it.”  And she studies my face for a sec and it’s as if my grief and tears slide right onto her face and she starts crying painful sobs.  Geoff and I carry her upstairs where Benicio is with Calliope in her room.  

It is in that sweet moment, that I remember that being a mom is my real job and that they will only be this young once.  

last paper of 2012

I am trying to write my last paper for the semester.  It is on Proverbs.  I have to tie a case study to a passage in proverbs.  While I do that, I have to find the seam through which Jesus' death and resurrection and redemption runs.  Without prooftexting, which means, I can't begin with the case and then go to my concordance (Christmas from Shessy circa 1997) and look up depression or despair.  Very tricky, very tricky indeed.

Words I have badly wanted to use in a paper all year:

discourse
dialectical
sangfroid


Words I have badly wanted to have commented on my papers by my teachers:
cogent
pithy
lucid

Words I have actually received on my papers this semester:
solid
yes!
nice
well said
very good

Grad school teachers should have to use comment-words that are at least 2 syllables, I think.

from reading

"With his feet planted firmly on the ground, he raises his head aloft and casts his eye up in a vertical look.  He has knowledge of things that are visible and temporal, but he is also aware of things that are invisible and eternal.  His desire goes out to the earthly, sensuous, and transient, but it goes out also to heavenly, spiritual, and everlasting goods."

--Herman Bavinck

Forgive Me, It Was Finals

Oh, hi there. I was either in the library, at Shop Rite, or at one of the kids' schools. Or en route to these places in our minivan, listening to worship music or npr. Now it is officially my summer and here's what I've been up to: -not so much read as devoured Anne Lamott's new book -enjoyed a Jennifer Weiner book with Canis Lupus at my side -vacuumed the pantry. Ahh, yes it was very juicy. -got uninterrupted face time with friends -organized kid books Grades have not come in for the Spring Semester. They have not announced the CCEF interns. I am enjoying the settled feeling after the work is over. It's like when you make pancake batter, it has to rest for a sec while all the ingredients are suspended and sliding down the sides of the mixing bowl. Things are settling and coalescing. No verdict has come down, labeling my effort with some grade. Or accepting my application. It's just me and my sense of accomplishment. And for that as my pump teacher would say, "give myself a big ol' hug." I learned a lot last semester about ways of looking at Scripture. Instead of a big scrapbook of morality tales, it is a seamless redemptive narrative. It is a living text that proves that God is loving and longs to surprise us. Also-- how to look at relationships. To quote a friend, "Sleeping with a blanket that is ten inches too short for you." This is how I looked at everything. My eyes went right to the flaw, the shortfall. I am learning how to rest in God's strength, God's purpose. My favorite comment I got from EW, "You are growing. You are becoming more okay with weakness." This was my third class with him and I was thrilled for a comparative comment. And this comment reveals how high I hold expectations. Something that's not so fun for me, nor Geoff, nor our kids-- anyone really. Favorite comment I got from my advisor, "You need a better attitude" (regarding standardized testing about Bible or Confessional). Sorry, but I don't think I will ever be in favor of standardizing tests.

notes from today's work

I spent the day in the library and these are some of the treasures I found.



Everything, and I mean everything, is absurd. No matter what you do, you have ultimately nothing to show for it. You live and then you die. The only thing you have is the portion God gives you. And this is how God has set things up.

-Pete Enns on Qohlelet’s theology from Ecclesiastes


“Remember, the battle is good. When it feels like a battle, that’s a sign that something is right. Every disciple of Christ is in a battle, one that demands spiritual strength and ongoing vigilance. This is where the language of disease is weak.”

-Ed Welch on fighting sin and addiction


“We are not drops in the ocean. Rather we are the ocean, in drops.”
-Anne Lamott quoting someone else