bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Like an atlatl.

    MJ (9mo) is sporting a new bandage today.  Yesterday I asked Hannah to keep an eye on the kids while I went outside to fiddle with the carseat; I was almost done when I heard the screen door slam and Hannah was calling me to come take my baby.  "Is she sad?" I asked, emerging from the van, and then I saw the blood all over Hannah’s shirt.

    MJ was already cleaned up, her right eye caught as if in mid-blink with a band-aid over the lid and brow.  Hannah explained that Milo (3) had come into the room brandishing a long-handled toy with a small metal bucket rattling upturned over the end of the handle.  He’d announced "I’m going to throw this at the baby!" and then ("like a trebuchet, no, like an atlatl," explained Hannah) had flung the bucket across the room.

    The edge hit MJ in the face before Hannah could do anything.  She had picked her up and seen the baby’s eye was a mass of blood (an image that still makes me cringe in horror), but didn’t panic and dabbed away the blood to reveal that the cut was just above MJ’s eye, between the lid and the brow.   MJ didn’t want to have anything to do with a cold compress and was much happier with a band-aid.  As soon as the bleeding had stopped Hannah had brought her out to me.

    I took her in to the doctor just in case (there being an eye nearby and all) and he pronounced the 2-cm laceration "superficial."  I declined glue for the cut; the nurse helped me put a fresh bandage on her; we went home, where dinner was waiting.

    I didn’t go out of my way to punish Milo.  Coming up against a three-year-old, even one with wrathful intent, is kind of like walking into a door or tree branch:  it’s more a force of nature than anything else.  Besides, all my energy was directed towards comforting MJ and then getting her to the doctor (I dropped the boys off at Mark’s office on the way).  When I got home I took Milo on my lap and we talked about how I often tell him that throwing hard toys is dangerous, and today he had seen why. 

    I asked him just now:  If someone asks what happened to MJ’s face, what will you say?

    A bucket hit her in the face.

    Did the bucket jump up and hit her in the face all by itself?

    Yeeeeeeesssss….

    Come on.  (I smile slyly.) Do buckets jump up and hit people?

    He grins.  Noooooooo.

    How did the bucket hit her?

    Very hard so that she was bleeding.

    No, I mean, who made the bucket fly through the air to hit her?

    I did.

    Why did you throw the bucket?

    Because I wanted to.

    Is it a good idea to throw a bucket?

    No.

    Why not?

    Because it might be hurt.

    Because somebody might be hurt.  Is that what you mean?

    Right.

    Are you going to do it again?

    Nope.

    Well.  We’ll see if that sank in at all.

    I got home and told Mark what had happened.  "It was like a trebuchet!" I said.

    "No," he corrected me, "like an atlatl."

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  • Shame.

    The priest who officiated at my wedding has been laicized by the Vatican because of sexual misconduct — specifically, the sexual exploitation of teenage boys.

    Yuck.  H/t Rich Leonardi, source of all my Cincinnati Archdiocese info.

    UPDATE.  No, this is not grounds for an annulment. 

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  • Sex education.

    My 6-y-o suddenly asked me yesterday one of the corollaries to the "where babies come from" question.  I posted about his question and my answer on HMS Blog.

    I do not think we can consider too carefully our answers to these questions.  When our kids ask us questions about sexuality, we have to be candid without revealing details of anyone’s private life; we have to be accurate without overloading a child with facts they’re too young to process.  And given our culture’s confusion and outright rejection of morality surrounding sexuality we must ground everything we say in Christian love.  We may have to provide biological details, and when it comes time to provide them we shouldn’t fear them; but we can’t ever let a richness in clinical details take the place of a richness in moral context.

    Nor can we pretend that babies "are made" in a moral context.  There have always been kids who came from abnormal families.  When I was a child, that chiefly meant broken homes:  friends whose parents were divorced, who lived with mom and mom’s boyfriend, who had older stepsiblings they saw on weekends.  Now there are even more examples.  Sooner or later our kids will befriend a child who has two moms or two dads, or a child whose never-married mom paid someone to inseminate her, or a child chosen for her good genes to be the sole survivor out of all her embryonic siblings.  Later on our teenager may have a pregnant friend who struggles with the decision to abort, adopt, or to raise a child; face it, our own child may make such a decision.   

    Our answers have to leave us room to explain these situations, to provide a context for understanding them.  Above all, we must get across the point that every child is good, every child is worthy of love, whatever the circumstances that brought him into life.  And we must get across the simultaneous point that (precisely because a child is worthy of love!) deliberately choosing, or choosing to risk, certain circumstances for a child is wrong.  That the reason for sexual restraint, and now sometimes for technological restraint, is love. 

    The answers we give a six-year-old lay the foundation for the answers we can give a ten-, a twelve-, a sixteen-year-old.   

    It is so helpful to remember that we do not have to answer everything at once.  The conventional wisdom about sex education when I was a child attending public school was, "Give them all the biological details good and early so that they don’t learn the wrong things on the playground."  Said biological details included lots of information about birth control and some outright falsehoods (I distinctly remember being taught that girls could get pregnant at any time and there was no way to know a time when you would be safe from getting pregnant; I also remember in a sex-ed session that our Girl Scout troop attended, a girl asking, "Does sexual intercourse hurt?" and the instructor answering that it would certainly hurt if you did it in the back of a car.  There went her credibility.  We were eleven, not stupid.)

    I digress. We have time to let the story unfold.  I’m not going to start my kids’ physics education with the Schrodinger equation; Newtonian physics is a fine place to start.  And I’m not going to start my kids’ sex education either with intense explanation of the details of sexual intercourse or with an intricate description of the moral theology of contraception.  This conversation will recur and recur over a period of years.

    But we still have to be vigilant — some things may have to be explained sooner than we’d like, because of particular situations we come up against.  It’s a little bit easier when we homeschool, because then there’s not the problem of the school deciding to introduce a subject before our particular child is mature enough to handle it (a problem that Catholic schools aren’t exempt from).

    Anyway, if your child hasn’t asked The Big Question yet — or if there’s any question at all you expect to have to answer with confidence and delicacy — do yourself a favor and write out your answer ahead of time, so you can be ready when the time comes. 

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  • Toe the line.

    Before I encountered the Internet, I occasionally used the phrase "to toe the line" to mean "to conform," and never thought anything about it.

    Once I entered the world of Usenet, back in the Middle Ages (I wish I could lay claim to having been there during the Dark Ages), I started questioning myself, because I occasionally saw the phrase spelled "to tow the line."  Which is it?  Both sort of make sense:  to line up with many others behind a mark, or to take one’s part in dragging the burden behind you.

    A little Google work convinced me I was right before.  "toe the line"

    Searching for "tow the line," however, turns up nearly a third as many references.  It’s an up-and-coming eggcorn!

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  • In which I brainstorm a list of things to occupy the three-year-old while I work with the six-year-old on school.

    Yes, some of these things are messy, but at least it will be the mess I have chosen.  In parentheses:  the necessary supplies for each activity.

    • Watercolor painting (paintbox, cup, water, cookie tray, several towels)
    • Playdough (playdough, cookie cutters, rolling pin, knife, toothpicks)
    • Practice with training chopsticks (cheerios or small candies, trainer chopsticks, tray, bowl)
    • Lacing (lacing board, strings)
    • New building toy that will hold interest more than old, familiar Duplos (gotta buy one)
    • Making mayonnaise sandwiches  (loaf of cheap bread, butter knife, jar of cheap mayonnaise — yes, it’s wasteful of food, but it doesn’t cost any more than letting him cut up whole packs of construction paper.  Thanks to Melissa for the idea)
    • Cutting construction paper (scissors, tray, paper)
    • Sticking stickers to paper (one of those packs of a thousand stickers, paper)
    • Water pouring (pitchers, cups, dish tub, tray, a whole lot of towels)
    • Mixing his own play dough (a few no-cook recipes here).

    More?

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  • Yep. Me too.

    Julie has posted a quote at Happy Catholic that hit home, about the prayer God, show me a sign that You exist.

    I wonder how many people have tried this prayer and received no response that satisfied them.  I wonder how many people have tried it and been satisfied.  I think I’ve heard more testimony from people who believe their request was satisfied, but then, that would stand to reason.

    Of course, there are many believers who never prayed such a prayer because they have possessed faith all their lives.  What do they think of such testimony?

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  • Star Tribune? What’s that?

    Some business moves are so jaw-droppingly short-sighted, you wonder why the place doesn’t just save time and fold now.

    Let’s review:  (1) More and more people are getting their national news and commentary from various outlets on the Internet, not to mention other alternative media.  (2) The circulation rates of local newspapers are falling.   (3) The one advantage that the local paper has over national papers is its coverage of local news and the talent of its local columnists and cartoonists, who supply the local point of view on national issues, commentary on local issues, and (perhaps most importantly) a locus of brand loyalty from readers who want to know what their favorite columnist has to say.

    Well, there’s always the Daily Jumble, too, I suppose.

    Here we go:  The Star Tribune is killing its columnists’ columns and re-assigning them to be — reporters.

    Straight news!  Yes, reporters.  On news beats.  No kidding.

    Among those who are going to be reassigned:  apparently, Nick Coleman, Doug Grow, Cheryl "C.J." Johnson, Katherine Kersten, and — unbelievable! — James Lileks.

    (As far as I know only Lileks has confirmed publicly that his column has been canceled.)

    The entire blogosphere has stirred into life at the news of Lileks’ job being transferred, probably because it confirms what we all believe about Old Media.  Lileks has symbolic value, because what distinguishes him as a newspaper employee (besides his sheer talent as a humorous and his flawless execution of the turn-of-phrase) is his embrace of the new media.   They should be asking to show them the way.   Now how do you use this here flibbertigibbet, boy?  But instead they’ve got him behind a desk.  (A real one — he’s not even allowed to telecommute anymore!)

    Lileks is the star, of course, and he’s getting all of the attention; but the other columnists serve niches at the paper, too.  Nick Coleman and Doug Grow write tirelessly about local issues, mainly from a liberal point of view, often telling a personal story that puts a human face on some local controversy.  Johnson’s is the gossip column, and while I can’t stand it, surely somebody out there loves to read about who was seen wearing what where and with whom — and they’re not going to get Minnesota gossip at the NYT online site, trust me.  Katherine Kersten is the local conservative columnist, again writing about local issues and the impact of national issues on Minnesotans.

    These columns (except the gossip one) are just about all that’s left to read at the paper.  I still get the Sunday paper — I don’t have time to read it every day — in part so I can read about Minnesota stuff in one handy, portable, all-contained format. 

    I guess I could start getting the Pioneer Press.

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  • Past, present, and future.

    Today while driving, I heard a bit of Fr. Corapi’s radio show.  He was explaining how Catholics don’t believe that each Mass is a repetition of Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary or that Christ dies anew at each Mass (a charge often leveled at us by Protestants), but rather that the Mass is one with Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary. 

    I knew that, but I don’t remember hearing it put the way he did on that show — that at Mass, God "makes the sacrifice of Jesus present" to us.

    Or maybe I did, but I had always thought of "present" in the sense of "in our presence."  I guess that is true, but now I see there’s something more to it.

    Fr. Corapi went on to explain to his audience that Christ did the same thing at the Last Supper — made his sacrifice on Calvary "present" to those in the room.  The sacrifice on Calvary hadn’t happened yet.  Obviously that wasn’t a repetition!  Obviously then Jesus didn’t "die anew!"  And, of course, we believe that at Mass, God through the priest does the same thing that He did at the Last Supper.

    What He did then was make that sacrifice on Calvary "present" — instead of future.  And today at Mass He makes it "present" — instead of past.

    Yes, here instead of there, but also now instead of then.  God transcends time.   Past, present, and future are one to Him.  And so He can do this for us.

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  • Evangelical group carefully words a “statement of faith” specifically to exclude Catholics, and then manages to word it in a way that doesn’t actually exclude Catholics.

    Jimmy Akin has a post describing the conversion to Catholicism of a high-profile evangelical.  The post contains this interesting tidbit as a side note about the Evangelical Theology Society’s statement of faith, which reads as follows:

    "The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory."

    Another evangelical blogger, James White, had written,

    In 1998 I attended the national meeting of the ETS in Orlando, Florida. At one of the sessions some of the founding members were being asked questions about why they did certain things, why they wrote the statement of faith as they did, etc. A woman asked a question of the panel. "Why did you write ‘the Bible alone’ in the statement of faith?"

    …Roger Nicole [a panel member] rose, slowly, and made his way to the podium. He looked out at the lady and said, "Because we didn’t want any Roman Catholics in the group." He then turned around and went back to his seat. While most sat in stunned silence, I and a friend with me broke into wild applause.

    But as Jimmy points out, any Catholic could (and should!) sign on to that statement of faith.  We do believe that there are no errors in Scripture, as do the ETS, even though the evangelicals there probably interpret many passages differently from us (and indeed from each other).  We do believe that the Bible is "the Word of God written."  We do indeed believe that there is nothing else but the Bible that is "the Word of God written."  (That word "written" is key.)  IOW, "Bible alone" in that context doesn’t sway us.   And, of course, we are Trinitarians.

    I wonder why the ETS thought that would exclude us?  Do they think we have some other documents that we call "the Word of God?"  (We do, of course, have a Savior whom we call by that name, but He’s not "written," now, is He?)  It certainly doesn’t speak well about their comprehension of the differences between them and us.  Couldn’t they have found something else that was actually different to put in their statement of faith, if the intent was merely to keep us out?

    UPDATE:  Predictably, the comment boxes over there have begun to devolve into an argument about grammar.  What do they teach them in these schools?

    UPDATE II:  Ah, I see.  The problem was that the founders of the ETS wrote a text that later got misinterpreted.  Father Al Kimel thinks maybe they need a magisterium.

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  • I so need a visit from Latte Lad.

    Desperate Irish Housewife is dreaming of superheroes. 

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  • Bittersweet?

    I’ve been testing Milo’s limits over the past few days, with respect to nursing, and I think I’m going to start weaning him.   (Milo is three years six months old, and his baby sister is nearly nine months old.)  Since I got back from my trip 11 days ago, it has been pretty easy to put him off till later— he asks for milk, I say I’ll nurse him later, and most of the time he accepts this and wanders off.  I think I’ve nursed him about once every other day, without much complaining, since then.   

    But I do not want to "test his limits" any more —  I think I’m just going to try to lengthen the time between nursings, gradually.  I’ll start where we are, nursing about every other day, and after a while I will try to push that to two days between nursings.  Will let you know what happens.

    This is different from how I decided to do it with Oscar, who weaned around his 4th birthday.  (Also when the baby, i.e. Milo, was nine months old.)  Although I had weaned Oscar from nighttime nursing and from nursing in public places long before then, I didn’t ever deliberately decrease his nursing frequency in other situations and especially at home.  I said no when I didn’t feel like nursing, of course, but I never made an effort to systematically  lengthen his time between nursings.  He did that himself, and got up to three or four days between nursings until he nursed for the last time (to comfort himself after whacking his head on something) and then just never came back.

    Why now?  I guess the easy answer is "because it seems like I can, with not too much distress."   A couple of months ago, nursing Milo went from "occasionally unpleasant and draining" to "almost never anything BUT unpleasant and draining."  I remember that happening with Oscar too.  It seems to be something that happens within myself, not a change in how the older child is nursing.   

    Of course, now, with the kids all asleep and me sitting here at my computer, the prospect of weaning my second child is bittersweet.   Poor little guy!  And poor us, moving on past that lovely connection, someday never to enjoy it again!  But the next time I nurse him, I’ll remember how much I’m looking forward to never ever ever ever ever doing it again.  Motherhood is weird.

    ADDED FOR REFERENCE:  My two most popular posts, on situational weaning, are here and here.

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  • Deus Caritas Est in the streetcorner beggars.

    I’ve had a bit of an epiphany.  It’s time to try a new experiment:  one where I look people in the eye, and exchange a sincere word with them, if I can.   

    Let me explain:  I finally got around to reading Deus Caritas Est.   I kept promising myself I was going to read it, and I kept opening up browser windows at www.vatican.va and then wandering away from them to get a cup of coffee or fold laundry and then never coming back.  Finally I printed a copy, stapled it together and put it on my bedside table; I finished it in one day.   What an immediately accessible, immediately applicable piece of writing.   

    I am used to JPII’s theology, which I’ve related to very cerebrally.  I enjoy thinking about it, making connections in my head, and being pleased when it all fits together well.   I was already married and "with the program" by the time I really started reading JPII’s work, so even his extensive writings on marital sexuality — though they’re very relevant — have taught me far more about how to think, what kind of attitude to have, than about how to modify my behavior.   Maybe that would be different if I’d discovered it a few years earlier! 

    Deus Caritas Est also contained many gems to meditate on.  But besides that, I immediately saw in it a call for me to change the way I react to certain situations.  The most prominent one is the way I react to the sight of a street beggar.

    Living in the central city as I do, I frequentlyencounter people who are begging for money.  When the weather is not too cold, I see several beggars each day.  The ones that I see are usually standing at intersections, near freeway ramps, holding a cardboard sign with a predictable message:  "Homeless veteran, anything helps, God bless."   They are usually middle-aged, and maybe there are twice as many men as women.  I frequently see the same people in the same places.  I have heard that they stake out claims to the most lucrative intersections, and even charge each other fees to use the best spots.  I have heard that they stash the signs in the nearby foliage for the next person to use.  I do not know if these rumors are true.   

    I do not know anything about the people who stand there asking for money.  I do not know if they are ill or healthy.  I do not know if they are looking for work, unable to work, or if they really do have a job.   I do not know if the signs speak the truth: if that woman is really homeless, or if that man is really a veteran, or — and this is crucial — if "anything helps."  Does anything help?

    You know what goes through your mind — if I give him money, will he just use it for drugs?  If I give her money, will she turn most of it over to some exploiter?  An I just perpetuating "the system?"  I’ve handed over money and wondered whether I did something wrong.  I’ve kept granola bars in my car and handed those out, thinking to myself that at least it won’t hurt (but still had a nagging wondering if that person really deserved a granola bar.  Ouch.)   And lots of times I’ve changed lanes so as not to be obligated to open the window.   Lots of times, when I’ve known I wasn’t going to give, I’ve looked away, I’ve pretended not to see.  And I’ve wished there was a simple answer.

    Deus Caritas Est has answered.  Part II of the document is all about the service of charity, particularly as it interweaves with the question of social justice.  Charity and justice are not the same.  Are they in conflict?    Here are some quotes.

    …[A]n objection has been raised to the Church’s charitable activity…: the poor, it is claimed, do not need charity but justice. Works of charity—almsgiving—are in effect a way for the rich to shirk their obligation to work for justice and a means of soothing their consciences, while preserving their own status and robbing the poor of their rights. Instead of contributing through individual works of charity to maintaining the status quo, we need to build a just social order in which all receive their share of the world’s goods and no longer have to depend on charity. There is admittedly some truth to this argument, but also much that is mistaken. It is true that the pursuit of justice must be a fundamental norm of the State and that the aim of a just social order is to guarantee to each person, according to the principle of subsidiarity, his share of the community’s goods. …

    [T]wo fundamental situations need to be considered:

    a) The just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics… The Church’s social teaching argues on the basis of reason and natural law…. It recognizes that it is not the Church’s responsibility to make this teaching prevail in political life. Rather, the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life …

    b) Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love…. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable.

    …The Church can never be exempted from practising charity as an organized activity of believers, and on the other hand, there will never be a situation where the charity of each individual Christian is unnecessary, because in addition to justice man needs, and will always need, love.

    All that is to say, that individual acts of charity are good.   And that the Church’s social mission must always be centered in charitable work, not "justice" work, that it is the Church’s job to spur us laypeople on on to do the right thing so that we can build just social structures and respond with charity to individuals in need.

    But what is charity, and what exactly should I offer that unknown beggar at the intersection?   Is the question whether handouts will solve the problem of homelessness?  Ought I to write "Jesus loves you" on the granola wrappers?  Benedict spends most of the rest of the encyclical writing about charitable organizations, not individuals.  He begins by writing what charity is not:  it is not a means of improving "the world," and it is not a means of proselytism.

    It is not a means of changing the world ideologically, and it is not at the service of worldly stratagems, but it is a way of making present here and now the love which man always needs. … Part of Marxist strategy is the theory of impoverishment: in a situation of unjust power, it is claimed, anyone who engages in charitable initiatives is actually serving that unjust system, making it appear at least to some extent tolerable. …. Seen in this way, charity is rejected and attacked as a means of preserving the status quo. What we have here, though, is really an inhuman philosophy. People of the present are sacrificed to the moloch of the future…. One does not make the world more human by refusing to act humanely here and now….

    Charity, furthermore, cannot be used as a means of engaging in what is nowadays considered proselytism. Love is free; it is not practised as a way of achieving other ends.   But this does not mean that charitable activity must somehow leave God and Christ aside…. Often the deepest cause of suffering is the very absence of God. Those who practise charity in the Church’s name will never seek to impose the Church’s faith upon others. They realize that a pure and generous love is the best witness to the God in whom we believe and by whom we are driven to love. A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak.

    Sprinkled throughout the encyclical is this practical advice:

    1.  Before trying to give charity to others, draw it from Christ himself.  (It’s living water we want to give, after all):

    [Man] cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift. Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow (cf. Jn 7:37-38). Yet to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God (cf. Jn 19:34).

    2.  The parable of the Good Samaritan reminds all Christians that "Anyone who needs me, and whom I can help, is my neighbour":

    The concept of “neighbour” is now universalized, yet it remains concrete. Despite being extended to all mankind, it is not reduced to a generic, abstract and undemanding expression of love, but calls for my own practical commitment here and now.

    3.  Even if you don’t have any "feelings" for the stranger in need (you are not attached to the stranger!), you can encourage in yourself charitable feelings, a desire to help,  by contemplating that we are all the beloved of Jesus Christ — attached through him:

    Love of neighbour … consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend.

    4.  We must not avoid an encounter with a person in need because of fear of what he may demand or some other reason.  In all situations we can and must give what that is needed most:

    Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern. This I can offer them not only through the organizations intended for such purposes, accepting it perhaps as a political necessity. Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave.

    (So much for going out of my way to avoid looking the beggar in the eye, eh?)

    5.  Giving just to alleviate our consciences is no charity.  Give of yourself, not just from your things.  The anonymous passing out of dollars, or granola bars, won’t do. 

    My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them: if my gift is not to prove a source of humiliation, I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift.

    6.  And yet, don’t fear giving because you’re not humble enough; the humility that is necessary for your efforts to bear fruit will be given to you as a result of your attempts to give.

    This proper way of serving others also leads to humility. The one who serves does not consider himself superior to the one served, however miserable his situation at the moment may be. Christ took the lowest place in the world—the Cross—and by this radical humility he redeemed us and constantly comes to our aid. Those who are in a position to help others will realize that in doing so they themselves receive help; being able to help others is no merit or achievement of their own. This duty is a grace.

    7.  Pray regularly, and pray for the people whose needs you see:

    Prayer, as a means of drawing ever new strength from Christ, is concretely and urgently needed. People who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to call for action alone. Piety does not undermine the struggle against the poverty of our neighbours, however extreme. In the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta we have a clear illustration of the fact that time devoted to God in prayer not only does not detract from effective and loving service to our neighbour but is in fact the inexhaustible source of that service. In her letter for Lent 1996, Blessed Teresa wrote to her lay co-workers: “We need this deep connection with God in our daily life. How can we obtain it? By prayer”.

    8.  Do not be discouraged by the smallness of your first moves towards charity.  (I know I’ve often thought that my charity was no good because of the grudging feelings that I often harbor.)  Whatever your inadequacies, you are qualified to practice charity by the very fact of your humanness:

    Hope is practised through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God’s mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness. Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love!…Love is possible, and we are able to practise it because we are created in the image of God.

    So what have I learned?  I think perhaps I should worry less about the content of the "handout" and more about the content of the human connection that I could make with the strangers holding the cardboard signs.   What keeps me from looking that man in the eye and giving him a warm, generous smile?  Guilt that I’m not giving him some cash?  That’s a pitiful excuse.  What keeps me from rolling down the window and saying sincerely, "I hope you enjoy the beautiful weather we’re having?"  It’s sure not safety, because I have rolled down the window to hand out a snack.   

    Like I said at the beginning, it’s time to try a new experiment.  I think that the granola bars are (at this time) getting in the way of my making a real human connection, so I’m gonna put them away (for a while) and see what happens if the only thing I give to a person on the corner is "of myself. " 

    There are many other themes in Deus Caritas Est that catch my eye and draw me to contemplate more:  the starting point of the contemplation of charity is the pierced side of Christ; to understand Jesus’s parables, we must first understand that "love can be commanded because it has first been given;"  in divine love, as is not usual in imperfect human love, eros and agape are in perfect union.  But I’ve never before felt so stirred by a bit of theology into action, and I’m going to make that move the next time I have a chance.

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