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].

  • Starting over and accepting where you are.

    I have a routine for each day of the week, but sometimes I say "Oh, screw this" and blow it all off for a few hours.

    I am not one of those magazine people who says "Plans?  Schedule?  What-EV" and instead of doing math or hauling everyone to music lessons or folding all the laundry, spontaneously curls up on the couch with a lapful of children and reads stories all morning, or goes to the park and plays tag, or bakes charmingly unkempt cookies, smiling knowingly as she checks herself in the mirror and removes a dab of frosting from her cheek.

    I'm more apt to throw out the schedule so I can work on some intense project I've been putting off, not so much because the project needs to be done, or needs to be done by me, but because I miss concentrating intently on something that requires concentration.

    It's all about me.  It's about the pleasure I get from that kind of work.  

    I get to say to the children, "Go away.  I'm working."

    + + +

    But after it's over I usually have a sort of bad taste in my mouth, because I don't have the same things to show for my morning that I would have had if I had stuck to the plan.  

    We have lunch.  I make the kids help me clean up.  I put on a pot of coffee.  I breathe a sigh of relief.  Sanity has been restored to my environment:

    Photo-23

    … here too, at the desk…

    Photo on 2-22-13 at 1.29 PM

    … ahh.

     

    + + +

    I would be a better parent and teacher if I didn't need quiet, tidiness, and silence for some scrap of time in the middle of the day.   Undoubtedly. 

    But I would be a worse parent and teacher if I didn't recognize that need and make it happen.

    + + +

    We have lunch around 12:30, finish cleaning up around 1:15, and I try to start up again around 2.  A lot of homeschoolers manage to be done by two, but not us.  It isn't that I'm not a morning person.  I am a morning person.  

    That's exactly why I hate to spend my morning homeschooling the kids.

    + + + 

    Anyway — I feel a lot better at two o'clock, starting from the freshly-tidied first floor.  If I get the chance to tidy before bed — so that I come downstairs to a similar scene, first thing in the morning — so much the better.  When all that distracting clutter is cleared away, I can blog, or write letters, or plan — I feel like I can get so much done before the coffee pot is empty.

    I try, but it doesn't always happen.  Instead of sweeping up, I sit and have a beer with my husband after the kids go to bed.  Or I read a bedtime story.  Or I try to get the three-year-old to go to sleep first, and I fall asleep next to him.

    None of these things are bad, of course.  One choice is not better or worse than the other.   They all have their merits.  

    So hard, sometimes, to be serene about choices.   I want all the benefits of all the possible things I could do with my time.  I hate letting go of any of them.  I always long for the things that were incompatible with the choice I made.

    I can see why meaningless, circular affirmations like "It is what it is" are popular.  What they really mean is a sort of "Oh, well" — a refusal to be bothered by the way things turned out.  It all comes down to acceptance —

    — a strange word that I've blogged about before —

    — a word that has many different meanings, depending on its object, all of which come down to "receiving willingly or agreeably."

    My time is a gift; I've chosen to use it a certain way; I've received a certain set of circumstances as a direct result of my choices — so I've received circumstances I've chosen; I acknowledge a truth, that I can't have the might-have-beens.

    + + +

    Here's the deal.  I had a jumbly sort of morning because we left the kitchen in disarray before going to bed last night.  

    (Don't tell me that I don't have to let kitchen disarray jumble my morning.  It's what happens.)

    We left the kitchen in disarray because we stayed up late, chatting over doppelbock, after the kids had gone to bed.  Even the little one had fallen asleep, nursing, in my lap.

    We stayed up late because we started late, and we started late because I spent almost two hours that evening going to the gym.  I went because I wanted to say that I made it to the gym three times this week, instead of the two times that's been far more common lately.   And because skiing last week hurt my legs more than it did when I was exercising more.  And because Mark offered to deal with dishes and bedtime snack so I could go.  I went for that long because I wanted to feel the ache that comes from swimming a mile in forty-five minutes.  

    I chose all those good things instead of a distraction-free morning, and I need to be thankful for them — accept them graciously — rather than complain.

    + + +

    And now that I've finished my afternoon coffee — and taken time to think clear thoughts — it's time for me to get up and call the kids for math.  I think I'm ready now.  Are you?

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  • More crosses for the comfortable.

    A couple of days ago I quoted some material from The Imitation of Christ, Bk. 2, Ch. 12, “On the Royal Road of the Cross,” and used it to consider what “taking up one’s cross” might mean when one is healthy, happy, relatively wealthy, and secure.

    Whatever suffering must be borne is the cross.

    Even if it’s very small.

    The small crosses can be the hardest to bear correctly, because we can brush them off so easily without thinking… and when we do, they — since they must be borne — land on someone else….

    If we imagine that we don’t have any “real” crosses, and wonder why we’ve been so lucky as to do without them — disabilities, bereavements, chronic pains — we can fail to take up the cross we’ve been sent.

    • Does your body feel bad or painful in any way, or are you sick or injured? If you can’t make the suffering go away entirely, that can be the cross — whether you know why you’re sick, or whether you don’t.
    • Is there any kind of “tribulation of spirit in your soul” — any sort of interior turbulence, depression, grouchiness, fear, or any other discomfort, whether from an identifiable cause or whether it seems to come from nowhere? If you can’t quite shake it even after reasonable effort — trying to gain perspective, count your blessings, cheer yourself up, take your meds — that can be the cross.
    • Do you lack spiritual consolation? Does your prayer seem to do nothing? Does your meditation yield no fruits? That, too, can be the cross.
    • Do your kids drive you crazy? Do your parents bug you? Does your spouse annoy you? Is your co-worker chewing his gum too loudly in the next cubicle? Is anybody anywhere getting on your nerves? That, too, can be the cross.
    • Finally, don’t you get on your own nerves sometimes? Don’t you ever say to yourself, “Self, you’re an idiot?”

    …If it must be borne by somebody, it’s the Cross.

    Because I was interrupted, I ended that meditation abruptly, and I am kind of unsatisfied with it — especially with the bit about shrugging off your cross and making someone else bear it. I am worried that I implied that you cannot simultaneously bear your cross and allow someone else to help you bear it.

    Also, I want to highlight a couple of other crosses that commonly afflict the comfortable.

    To do this, I want to turn away from the Imitation’s chapter and look at, instead, another via crucis: the fourteen Stations. As a refresher, here is the traditional set, likely to be the one depicted in your parish church:

    1. Jesus is condemned to death
    2. Jesus carries His cross
    3. Jesus falls the first time
    4. Jesus meets His mother
    5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry the cross
    6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
    7. Jesus falls the second time
    8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
    9. Jesus falls the third time
    10. Jesus is stripped of his garments
    11. Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross
    12. Jesus dies on the cross
    13. Jesus is taken down from the cross (Deposition or Lamentation)
    14. Jesus is laid in the tomb.

    Only a handful of these refer to Jesus actually bearing the cross alone — number 2, when He’s “made to carry” it, and then the three falls at stations 3, 7, and 9. Let’s take a look at some of the other stations.

    In the first station, “Jesus is condemned to death.” This station could be taken as the anticipation of a coming cross — and fearful anticipation itself is a significant cross. I remember a bit from The Screwtape Letters about this, about failing to recognize that fear of the possibilities, and not the possibilities themselves, are the cross:

    We want [your patient] to be in the maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with contradictory images of the future, every one of which arouses hope or fear. There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy…

    Your patient will, of course, have picked up the notion that he must submit with patience to the Enemy’s will…. It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross, but only of the things he is afraid of. Let him regard them as his crosses; let him forget that, since they are incompatible, they cannot all happen to him…

    The fourth station is a mysterious encounter: “Jesus meets his mother.” Our theology teaches us that Mary is permitted, through the merits of her Son, to participate somehow in the Redemption; at the very least, by her initial fiat, but also that the fiat is bigger than just that moment. So this moment is her cross too, and it is a kind of cross that we can also share: accompanying a loved one on their way of the cross. It is surely a cross to watch someone we love struggle with a burden that we cannot take away, or may even have helped to bring about.

    The fifth station is strange, too: it is a bearing-of-the-cross that is not fully bearing it, because Simon the Cyrenian is helping. Jesus said, “Take up your cross” — but here he allows another man to take up Jesus’s own cross. I love this station because through it, Jesus gives us permission, so to speak, to allow others to help us bear our crosses, and in fact this allowing is a way to bear a cross — the cross of relinquishing a cross to someone else — and that can be hard, a different kind of suffering, because so many of us hate to admit that we cannot bear it alone, or are unwilling to “be a burden” to someone else. But if we are not to regard the people around us only as potential burdens, we also must not regard ourselves as only potential burdens — even when we are at our most burdensome.

    (You know the notion that we should unite our burdens to the cross of Christ? Simon went about his days doing his duties and suffering whatever troubles came to him, all the days before and all the days after — but on Good Friday Simon’s duty and burden became, for a time, literally united to the cross of Christ — they were one and the same. Something to meditate on.)

    The traditional sixth station may be apocryphal, and is certainly not explicit in the Gospels, but I am comfortable with the notion that the Church has given it to us for a reason. Veronica snatches her veil from her hair, and wipes Jesus’s face. She would have been left bareheaded, and indeed a true icon of Christ would have been left on her veil, written in sweat, tears, vomit, drool, snot, blood. This is a human connection, and a humiliating one — the cross of accepting intimate bodily care. In Veronica I see the sickbed nurse, the midwife or doula, the elder-care provider — the mother, the spouse, the grown daughter or son — I think of people who held my hair while I vomited, who’ve cleaned up the bathroom after I was violently ill. It is hard not to be able to take care of yourself and have to entrust your personal care to others. You may wish they will forget that they have seen that side of you — but you will leave your mark on them.

    I am going to stop here and leave the remainder of the stations as an exercise for the reader. Leave your ideas in the combox.

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  • If you are looking for spiritual reading during Lent…

    …may I suggest you try Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales?

    I blogged about it at great length a couple of years ago, and I still think it is wonderful — astonishingly modern, given when it was written. I particularly recommend the “Everyman’s Library” edition that is translated by Father Michael Day. You should look for a translation with a contemporary and conversational tone, because the advice is contemporary and conversational — avoid a translation that sounds stilted and archaic. If you cannot wait, you can find it online, but believe me, it is worth it to get a contemporary and friendly-sounding translation. St. Francis really deserves it — he needs to sound as contemporary to us as he would have sounded to the people he spoke with in person.

    I recommend, too, either reading the whole thing swiftly (without following any of the advice) to get an overview of the “program” before turning back to digest it more slowly; or else, following the chapters somewhat out of order. There is a clear structure to the book, but a sort of rearrangement of the chapters rings better to the modern ear that is used to self-help books.

    Here’s my suggestion:

    • First, see my post on the overall structure of the book.
    • Then, if you like, bookmark my chapter by chapter blog series on it.
    • Read part 1, chapters 1 through 3. (One short chapter a day is fine if you want to spread it out.)
    • You can skip part 1, chapter 4, unless you are considering getting a spiritual director.
    • Read part 1, chapters 5-7. These are more introductory remarks.
    • Stop before going on to part 1, chapter 8. Beginning there, you will prepare for a novena of sorts — nine days, ten meditations. Before reading and especially before trying to follow the advice, I recommend turning ahead to part 2 and going carefully through chapters 1 through 8 in that chapter, taking notes and marking pages. Part 2, chapters 1-8, is a primer on how to pray and meditate, and it will be extremely useful to have read it before beginning the program of prayer that is described in the rest of part 1.
    • Now you’re going to embark on what I call “St. Francis’s Three-Step Program For Getting Rid of Mortal Sin And Attachment To It.”
    • Step one is to attain perfect contrition. Do this by reading part 1, chapter 8, and then use the ten meditations that follow as a nine-day novena: one meditation per day on the first eight days, and then on the ninth day do the ninth and tenth meditations. While you are doing this, refer to the chapters you have already from part 2 (that is, chapters 1-8 of part 2) if you need to be reminded of St. Francis’s method of prayer and meditation.
    • Step two is to prepare for, and make, a good confession: a general confession, if possible. (You might want to make an appointment if you think it will be a quite thorough general confession). Prepare for the confession a couple of days ahead with these readings: Part 1, chapter 19; then part 2, chapter 19; then part 1, chapters 20 and 21. (Again, if you are making a thorough general confession, it may be wise to write out the results of your examination of conscience so you can refer to it in the confessional.). Bookmark part 2, chapter 19 for reference in future confessions. Write out a solemn resolution as described in part 1, chapter 20, and bring the resolution with you into the confessional. Make a good confession, accusing yourself directly, simply, and specifically as directed in part 1, chapter 19, and part 2, chapter 19.
    • Step three: While still in the confessional, making your Act of Contrition — in the part where you resolve to amend your life — refer specifically to that solemn resolution that you wrote out and brought with you. Then, as directed in part 1, chapter 21, receive absolution and then go immediately to an appropriate place of prayer in the church. There, sign and date the resolution, then carry out the penance prescribed for you by the priest in the confessional.
    • Finish reading part 1.
    • Read the rest of part 2, one bit at a time, and trying to apply his advice in one chapter before moving on to the next: baby steps. These chapters are about everyday prayer and reception of the sacraments. After reading his advice about morning prayer in chapter 10, for example, you might compose a short morning prayer after his method (or choose a traditional formula); write it out; keep it by your bedside; and attempt to pray it for at least a few days before moving on to try the advice about evening prayer in chapter 11. When you get to the chapters about Communion, you might bookmark them and return to them regularly prior to receiving Communion for a while.
    • Now you are going to choose just one or two virtues to work on developing in yourself. To discern which virtue you need to work on, first carefully reread part 1, chapters 22-24; then Part 3, chapters 1 and 2.
    • Then, quickly and without trying to follow any of the advice in the chapters, read the remaining chapters in part 3 to get an overview of possible virtues that you could choose. I recommend reading the chapters in this order:
    • First, a quick reread of chapters 1 and 2, along with 37, 23, and 24. All these deal with how to discern which virtues to focus on, and how to practice the virtues prudently, not to excess.
    • Then, the chapters on practicing virtue in everyday life, in this order, taking it in chunks. Again, you are trying to discern which virtue you need to focus on, so don’t follow the advice yet, just take it in and consider it. While reading Chapter 3 consider whether you need patience most. While reading chapters 4-7, consider whether you need to strengthen virtue when others are finding fault with you. While reading chapters 8-9, consider whether you need to develop these virtues that help you when faced with faults and frailties in yourself and others. Read chapters 10, 11, and — note this — 35, then consider whether you need to develop these virtues concerned with the performance of your duties. Skip to chapters 14-16 and consider whether you need to develop virtues that help you in times of material riches or material poverty. Read chapters 17-22 and consider the role of virtue in your friendships. Return to chapters 12 and 13, then read chapters 38-41, and consider the role of virtues in sexual matters. Finally, read the following chapters that give advice in dealings with society: chapter 25 on dressing attractively, chapters 26-30 on speaking honestly and respectfully, chapters 31-34 on having fun and recreation, and chapter 36 on fairness and reasonableness.
    • Choose a virtue, return to the relevant chapter or chapters from part 3, and follow the advice relevant to that virtue alone while continuing to practice the skills taught in part 2 about prayer, meditation, and the sacraments. Do this for as long as it seems to be helping you to develop the virtue and grow in devotion. Give it a little bit of time if you seem to hit a plateau. But when you hit a plateau that seems permanent move on to part 4.
    • Part 4 is the “troubleshooting guide” to the devout life. Read it through once quickly, without following any advice, before deciding how to proceed. It might be that you will find one or two chapters somewhere in it that specifically address a problem that you are specifically having, and you can go straight to them and begin following the instructions therein. Or you might decide to go back to the beginning of part 4 and slowly advance through it chapter by chapter, applying the advice in each chapter before moving on to the next, and continuing to try to follow the advice in the chosen chapters of part 3 (not ALL of part 3! Just the ones focused on your specifically chosen virtue!) and the general advice about prayer, meditation, and the sacraments from the chapters of part 2.

    I don’t include Part 5 in my bulleted list above, because all of Part 5 is an “annual review.” You won’t need to read it until approximately one year after the date of your signed resolution, or any time you want a “refresher” in the devout life. Or, if you have already gone through the method of the Introduction to the Devout Life, part 5 would make a good study for a spiritual retreat — or for your Lenten renewal.

     

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  • Vacation fast.

    An odd thing happened to us this year: we accidentally scheduled our roughly-yearly family winter vacation to coincide with the start of Lent.

    Technically, there’s nothing wrong with this, but it does feel a little bit weird. I am blogging this on Fat Tuesday evening from a charming but wobbly little breakfast table in the kitchen of a ski-vacation condominium that is literally larger than my house, with more yard.

    (This is one of the side benefits of deliberately living in a smaller-footprint home: camper cabins, vacation condos, even hotel rooms sometimes feel decadently luxurious.)

    On the other side of the great room my three oldest children are playing cards with my husband’s parents, who joined us in Montana for a week in the mountains. Mark booked the condo “the same week as last year,” remembering the perfect snow conditions and empty trails, and forgetting that Easter is a moveable feast and consequently that Ash Wednesday is a moveable fast. I don’t know that we would have done it differently anyway; we have little flexibility in travel plans sometimes, now that business travel has stepped up so much for him, and since we planned to coordinate with the grandparents’ schedule too.

    I think it worked out, though. Mark and I are the only ones of an age that binds us to the fasting obligation, so nobody else is affected. I can’t possibly do any vigorous skiing and touring — neither of which are necessary duties — and still keep a meaningful fast. Therefore I must fast from those activities, too, but I don’t want to put a damper on the rest of the family. I volunteered to stay in the condo and take care of our 3-year-old, freeing everybody else to do something less toddler-friendly.

    Unlike me, Mark can manage outdoor activities and fasting — his body appears to be perfectly happy to switch over to burning itself for fuel any time he feels like going on a climbing tour, living on the occasional bolus of chocolate-espresso flavored energy gel. So tomorrow, the rest of the family will all drive down to Yellowstone for a snow-coach tour, and I will cocoon with my littlest guy.

    I am a little bummed that we won’t manage to get to a service with the distribution of ashes, but I have my breviary; I will deal.

    I learned over the past few Lents, after my weight loss and after reconfiguring my eating habits, that the “one full meal and two smaller meals that don’t add up to a full meal” formula messes with my head too much. (And it’s kind of a made-up guideline anyway; that formula doesn’t appear in canon law.) It messes with my head because I usually eat that way: my breakfast, lunch and snacks generally add up to less than my dinner. So I switched to having just the one meal in late afternoon, and the rest of the day I sip vegetable broth and hot, milky coffee as needed. As far as I can tell, the law of fasting allows for one meal, and it allows for liquids of any kind, and that is enough to keep my blood sugar to a level where I can, at least, care for my children.

    (But not where I can go on a snow-coach tour with my children in Yellowstone National Park.)

    So I am going to stay back with one child, and make a pot of soup to feed the family when they return tomorrow evening, but I will probably have mine in the afternoon. And I am going to start a pot of vegetable stock in the morning, to simmer reassuringly all day. And I am going to set an alarm, and pray the Hours, and read stories to the little one who stays with me, and ponder the welcome absurdity of ski-in/ski-out penitence with a hot tub and concierge service, and enjoy some solitude. The boom of the avalanche control teams setting off explosions on the ridge will have to stand in for bells, but I see no reason why I cannot make a sort of retreat anyway.

    And if it’s possible here, it’s possible anywhere.

    My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit. A humble and contrite heart you will not spurn.

    Rend your hearts, not your garments.

    Wherever we are — even in the lap of luxury, in the midst of riches beyond the reach of most human beings, in the comfortable stability of good health and good friendships and good marriage and good family — wherever we are, we can still crave change within, and we can begin it from the very center. Sometimes it makes sense to transform from the outside in: to wear the ashes, and hope that they soak into the soul. Other times, we have to transform from the inside out: to look like nothing has changed, smooth and clear and implacable as ever, accepting a burden that no one else can see; but still to be changed interiorly, a scrap of flesh born, liberated, from the heart of the stone.

     

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  • Coming up on Lent.

    One weekend left, and in a few days it'll be Ash Wednesday.  

    All this spring I've been coming back again and again to this passage from The Imitation of Christ (Book 2, Chapter 12, "On the Royal Road of the Cross").   

    What I like about it is that it answers a question I have often had:  But my life is actually pretty good; so many people are suffering so much more than I am; what does it mean to carry my cross when things are going so well for me?

     There is no other way to life and to true inward peace than the way of the holy cross and daily mortification. Go where you will, seek what you will, you will not find a higher way, nor a less exalted but safer way, than the way of the holy cross.

    Arrange and order everything to suit your will and judgment, and still you will find that some suffering must always be borne, willingly or unwillingly, and thus you will always find the cross.

    • Either you will experience bodily pain
    • or you will undergo tribulation of spirit in your soul.
    • At times you will be forsaken by God,
    • at times troubled by those about you
    • and, what is worse, you will often grow weary of yourself.

    You cannot escape, you cannot be relieved by any remedy or comfort but must bear with it as long as God wills.

    I think this passage kind of functions very similarly to the famous passage from First Corinthians about love ("Love is patient, love is kind…") which we heard in the readings last Sunday.  It's a description that can be thought of as a definition.

    Just as "Love is patient, love is kind" can be thought of as implying a definition of love ("Love is that which is patient, love is that which is kind, etc.") or as setting the boundaries of love ("What isn't patient, can't be loving.  What isn't kind, can't be loving, etc.") — so this can be a sort of description of the cross.

    Whatever suffering must be borne is the cross.

    Even if it's very small.

    The small crosses can be the hardest to bear correctly, because we can brush them off so easily without thinking… and when we do, they — since they must be borne – land on someone else.  

    Because I was grumbling about some little inconvenience, I've snapped at some poor cashier and ruined her day.   Because I'd failed to plan ahead, I've dragged cranky, tired, hungry preschoolers to the grocery store.  Because I was feeling too tired to cheerfully do the dishes, I've sneaked upstairs and left them for my spouse.

    Somebody had to bear a cross here, and in each case it wasn't me.

    If we imagine that we don't have any "real" crosses, and wonder why we've been so lucky as to do without them — disabilities, bereavements, chronic pains — we can fail to take up the cross we've been sent.

    Does your body feel bad or painful in any way, or are you sick or injured?  If you can't make the suffering go away entirely, that can be the cross — whether you know why you're sick, or whether you don't.

    Is there any kind of "tribulation of spirit in your soul" — any sort of interior turbulence, depression, grouchiness, fear, or any other discomfort, whether from an identifiable cause or whether it seems to come from nowhere?  If you can't quite shake it even after reasonable effort — trying to gain perspective, count your blessings, cheer yourself up, take your meds — that can be the cross.

    Do you lack spiritual consolation?  Does your prayer seem to do nothing?  Does your meditation yield no fruits?  That, too, can be the cross.

    Do your kids drive you crazy?  Do your parents bug you?  Does your spouse annoy you?  Is your co-worker chewing his gum too loudly in the next cubicle?  Is anybody anywhere getting on your nerves?   That, too, can be the cross.

    Finally, don't you get on your own nerves sometimes?  Don't you ever say to yourself, "Self, you're an idiot?"

     (This is, in my opinion, the single wisest point in the whole Imitation.  Go read No Exit again:  Sartre didn't get it completely right.  It should have been "Hell is other people.  And yourself too.") 

    If it must be borne by somebody, it's the Cross.

    The cross, therefore, 

    • is always ready; 
    • it awaits you everywhere. 
    • No matter where you may go, you cannot escape it, for wherever you go you take yourself with you and shall always find yourself. 
    • Turn where you will–above, below, without, or within–you will find a cross in everything, 
    • and everywhere you must have patience 

    if you would have peace within and merit an eternal crown.

    It's probably a good idea to look out for these things.

    If you carry the cross willingly, it will carry and lead you to the desired goal where indeed there shall be no more suffering, but here there shall be. If you carry it unwillingly, you create a burden for yourself and increase the load, though still you have to bear it. If you cast away one cross, you will find another and perhaps a heavier one. 

    It's also possible to choose voluntary crosses, which is part of the point of Lent:  to practice, so that we may better carry the involuntary ones.  

    Something to think about as we plan for the next few weeks.


     

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  • St. Giovanni (John) Bosco on discipline.

    A few days ago on January 31, the Church celebrated the memorial of St. John Bosco. I had known that he was a priest who had founded orphanages and schools, and also that he is a patron saint of educators, particularly educators of boys; but I had never read any of the saint’s own words before encountering them in the Office of Readings for that day. Here is an excerpt:

    It is easier to become angry than to restrain oneself, and to threaten a boy than to persuade him. Yes, indeed, it is more fitting to be persistent in punishing our own impatience and pride than to correct the boys. We must be firm but kind, and be patient with them…

    See that no one finds you motivated by impetuosity or wilfulness. It is difficult to keep calm when administering punishment, but this must be done…Let us place ourselves in their service. Let us be ashamed to assume an attitude of superiority. Let us not rule over them except for the purpose of serving them better.

    …[I]n correcting their mistakes we must lay aside all anger and restrain it so firmly that it is extinguished entirely.

    There must be no hostility in our minds, no contempt in our eyes, no insult on our lips. We must use mercy for the present and have hope for the future….In serious matters it is better to beg God humbly than to send forth a flood of words that will only offend the listeners and have no effect on those who are guilty.

    This all seemed so sensible that I wanted to know more. First I found this translation of an interview that a journalist did with Don Bosco in 1884:

    Reporter: Don Bosco, could you comment on your educational philosophy and the methods you use in your schools that are so much admired? How do you manage to maintain discipline when dealing with so many boys?

    Don Bosco: The Salesian way of educating the young is quite simple. Basically, I insist on letting boys be boys. Let them play and enjoy themselves as much as they want as long as God is not offended. But if I have a philosophy of education, it consists in discovering a boy’s best qualities and then exploiting them to his advantage. You must admit, sir, that any person is at his best when he is doing what he likes and does best. Children are the same. Promote their positive qualities and they will thrive. As for discipline—love and respect for the young is the answer. In the 46 years I have worked among children, never once have I had to resort to corporal punishment, which by the way is very much in vogue. And if I may say so, all those children who have come under my care have always continued to show me their love and respect.

    I am very much glad to file this one away for mental reference. In the Catholic circles I move in, spanking and harsher forms of corporal punishment are not held up as “biblical” requirements of good parenting, the way you sometimes find them in evangelical Protestantism; but I do occasionally encounter it and have seen more than one parish priest advocate it from the pulpit.

    Now, I am not saying I always live up to my ideals, but my ideal is never having to punish. And you know, I think if you go into parenting with the assumption that there’s always a way to teach and discipline without punishing — if you take the attitude that it’s your responsibility to teach and discipline, and that punishment is a sort of last resort for when you’ve failed — I think it’s possible to reduce your reliance on it.

    (The line between “punishment” and “teaching” is blurry, to be sure. For example, I don’t think of requiring a child to pay restitution as a punishment, but others would. I am going for a “know it when I see it” sort of distinction here.)

    Four kids in, and looking back, I have certainly learned humility in the “we don’t punish” department, because I do fail, from time to time, to proactively teach and set expectations; or I get lazy, or irritable, and I go for the short-term solution. Nor am I above rapping a kid on the head to get his attention — and if the child in question is a very physical, kinetic sort of child, I suspect that it may actually be an effective way to reach him. But my ideal hasn’t changed. And Don Bosco has expressed it very well — the idea is not to fail to punish, but to obviate the need for punishment.

    So maybe in the future, I can mention when I am faced with the “The problem with kids today is that parents don’t spank their kids anymore” attitude, I might mention my appreciation of St. John Bosco’s wisdom.

    Don Bosco once wrote a brief description of his philosophy of discipline, which he called “the Salesian Preventive Method” — after St. Francis de Sales. (The Salesians were not founded by St. Francis, but by Don Bosco.) You can read it here. This is the introduction:

    There are two systems which have been in use through all ages in the education of youth: the preventive and the repressive. The repressive system consists in making the law known to the subjects, and afterwards watching to discover the transgressors of these laws and inflicting, when necessary, the punishment deserved. According to this system, the words and looks of the superior must always be severe and even threatening, and he must avoid all familiarity with his dependents.

    In order to give weight to his authority the Rector must rarely be found among his subjects, and as a rule only when it is a question of punishing or threatening. This system is easy, less troublesome, and especially suitable in the army and in general among adults and the judicious, who ought of themselves to know and remember what the law and its regulations demand.

    Quite different from this and I might even say opposed to it, is the preventive system. It consists in making the laws and regulations of an institute known, and then watching carefully so that the pupils may at all times be under the vigilant eye of the Rector or the assistants, who like loving fathers can converse with them, take the lead in every movement and in a kindly way give advice and correction; in other words, this system places the pupils in the impossibility of committing faults.

    This system is based entirely on reason and religion, and above all on kindness; therefore it excludes all violent punishment, and tries to do without even the slightest chastisement…

    I may look a bit more closely at this later.

     

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    1 comment on St. Giovanni (John) Bosco on discipline.

  • The Goodreads 100-book meme.

    I'm borrowing this meme from DarwinCatholic, because I haven't managed to post in a couple of days and I feel bad about it.

    In the spirit of the 100 book meme, Goodreads has posted a fairly diverse group of novels for its members to rank, drawn from both the most popular and the most highly rated books from its readers' libraries. And in the true internet spirit of borrowing, I've typed up the list for the rest of us to pass around. Goodreads reports that its average user has read 27 out of the 100; I've read 58 (and Darwin has read 31), and I find that most of the ones I haven't are books I've seen around but haven't felt a great compulsion to take and read.

    I copied the list from MrsDarwin and highlighted according to my reading history.  Here's my key:

    Here's my key.  Note that if I've read it all the way through, it's bolded; if not, it's unbolded.

     

    Read it

    Read it, returned, re-read it at least once

     I have read it, but I barely remember it

    Never read it (asterisk means I started it but didn't finish)

    Interested in reading, based on what I know of it

    Don't know enough about it to know whether I want to read it or not


    • To Kill a Mockingbird
    • The Catcher in the Rye
    • Fellowship of the Ring
    • Pride and Prejudice*
    • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
    • Romeo and Juliet
    • Jane Eyre
    • 1984
    • Hamlet
    • The Hobbit
    • Brave New World
    • The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
    • The Great Gatsby
    • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    • Fahrenheit 451*
    • Wuthering Heights
    •  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    • The Secret Garden
    • Green Eggs and Ham
    • Little Women* (in process of rediscovering by reading to children!)
    • Of Mice and Men
    • The Handmaid's Tale
    • Lord of the Flies
    • The DaVinci Code
    • Frankenstein
    • Dune
    • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    • Gone With The Wind
    • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
    • A Wrinkle in Time
    • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    • Slaughterhouse Five
    • Anne of Green Gables
    • Twilight
    • Where the Sidewalk Ends
    • Le Petit Prince 
    • Memoirs of a Geisha
    • The Princess Bride
    • The Picture of Dorian Grey
    • The Hunger Games
    • Sense and Sensibility
    • The Golden Compass
    • Dracula
    • The Color Purple
    • The Kite Runner
    • The Odyssey* 
    • Anna Karenina*
    • And Then There Were None
    • Interview with the Vampire
    • The Book Thief
    • One Hundred Years of Solitude
    • The Count of Monte Cristo
    • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
    • The Joy Luck Club
    • Little House on the Prairie
    • The Giver
    • Life of Pi
    • Rebecca
    • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes*
    • Ender's Game
    • A Tale of Two Cities
    • L'Étranger
    • East of Eden
    • Les Miserables
    • The Bell Jar
    • Lolita
    • The Road
    • The Time Traveler's Wife
    • A Prayer for Owen Meany
    • The Stand
    • Catch-22
    • The Sun Also Rises
    • The Pillars of the Earth
    • Crime and Punishment
    • The Good Earth
    • The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    • The Help
    • Watchmen
    • Lonesome Dove
    • Water for Elephants
    • Outlander
    • American Gods
    • The Poisonwood Bible
    • My Sister's Keeper
    • The Master and Margarita*
    • The Notebook
    • Like Water for Chocolate
    • Beloved
    • Their Eyes Were Watching God
    • Invisible Man
    • A Game of Thrones
    • The Fountainhead
    • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
    • Ulysses
    • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
    • The Brothers Karamazov
    • The House of the Spirits
    • Fight Club
    • Middlesex
    • Interpreter of Maladies

     Any comments, arguments, or willingness to take a stab?

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    11 comments on The Goodreads 100-book meme.

  • Candlemas Saturday.

    Leila reminds us that Saturday is Candlemas.  If you want your candles blessed, you have a couple of days to get your ducks in a row (i.e. find candles, plan to get to Saturday's Mass).

    It so happens that Saturday is a First Saturday, and I usually hit those, so I'll be there without any extra work.  We don't use candles a lot in our house, but it occurred to me that I could

    (a) dig out my Advent candles and bring them!

    (b) buy a few packs of birthday candles.  Why not?  

     

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  • Vi Hart’s Guide to Comments.

    This is wonderful.

    /

    Enjoy.

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  • Babies mid-homeschool-year.

    All the birth discussion in the previous post and the other post that wasn't originally about birth brought on a reader question via email.

    …as a new homeschooler, I'd love to hear how you've dealt with homeschooling while both feeling terrible during pregnancy (I don't actually puke during my pregnancies but usually feel like I could and I sleep twice as much as usual) and then recuperating postpartum. 

    But your last baby was definitely mid-school year. Did you stop school entirely for a month and make it up early/late in the year? Did you plan curriculum in advance that didn't require much micromanaging so you could go on auto-pilot when things were rough?

    I feel like I've got a handle on homeschooling, planning meals, working a few hours a week …  and going to a gym regularly, but throwing a pregnancy in with everything seems like it would be tricky.

     

    I'm a control freak, so I get what you're saying.

    Tricky, yes.  So far for us, impossible, no.

    Since pregnancies and school years are the same length, if you are going to have a pregnancy in the middle of the school year, you know it with enough time to adapt your schedule. 

    When I was pregnant with my daughter, #3, my oldest son was 5.  She was born in the summer, but the morning sickness and fatigue was midyear.   

    If I was doing it over again I wouldn't even have worried about it (kindergarten!  sheesh!) but back then, since he was my very first homeschooled child, I felt some pressure to keep up the schedule.   I let the five- and two-year-old boys watch a lot of DVDs in the afternoon.  

    One thing I did during a period when I felt guilty about how much screen time the two-year-old boy was having was to lay in a supply of good educational or otherwise quality DVDs.  That two-year-old was fascinated by nature documentaries, so I bought this huge collection of BBC nature documentaries.  

    Yes, it was expensive — I remember the sticker price, $180 at Best Buy back then.  (Same price at Amazon today).  In retrospect, because that two-year-old watched every single disc many times, it was money very well spent.  We also invested in a lot of  Signing Time.

    When you have a plan to use DVDs,  you can show a lot of DVDs while you are napping and still feel like you are Sticking To A Plan.  At that time, I felt okay in the morning, so we did math and reading first thing and then I put on DVDs while I slept in the afternoon.   Here is a blog post I wrote around that time:

    There is an unbelievable amount of stuff that has to get done around here.  My Ideal To-Do List is about twenty lines long.  My Real To-Do List is as follows:

    • Get dressed
    • Feed children
    • Do math or reading
    • Feed children again
    • Take nap while children dump toys on floor and watch DVDs they got for Christmas that I haven't had time to screen yet (please, someone tell me that Madagascar is not too objectionable, because they've already watched it four times and I haven't seen it yet)
    • Possibly make dinner

    That's all that happened today.  Laundry?  Nope.  Clean up after breakfast or lunch?  Nope.  Schoowork prep?  Nope.  Packing any boxes (supposedly we're moving on Saturday)?  Nope.  Blogging?  Okay, one entry (other than this one), made while we ate breakfast. 

     

    When I had my boy who is three years old today(!), the morning sicknessand fatigue came in the late spring, a time when I'm winding down anyway.  Once again I felt okay in the morning, so it did not cause too much trouble, as we could have easier afternoons.   Since he was to be born in late January, I planned my year to include an extra three-week break after the birth.   I started school on August 17th and my records seem to indicate that I stopped around June 14 or 15.   We always do sporadic lessons in the summer, so I never worry if I have to cut the regular school year short by a day or week here and there.

    I operated on a somewhat reduced schedule for the first couple of weeks back — my oldest was in fourth grade and could work pretty well from a to-do list, but I cut back to essentials (math, reading) for my boy who was in kindergarten.   H. and M. took good care of me on co-schooling days, which remained at my house for several weeks.

    I'm always helped by my drive to "get back to normal" after a birth — a few days in bed and I'm itching to get up.  Not so good for my pelvic floor, but good for schooling, I guess.

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  • Being prepared for precipitous labor.

    Yesterday I mentioned that commenter Jenny has a history of precipitous labor, and even though she typically gives birth in a hospital, she was interested in hearing suggestions for being ready in case of precipitous labor at home.

    Jenny writes,

    My general precipitous labor story is thus: my body dilates and effaces without me knowing it, i.e, no painful or regular contractions. My doctor watches the progression over the last few weeks of pregnancy. When I am a dilated to a 6, she schedules an induction for that night or the next day. I arrive at the hospital, have my water broken artificially, and deliver the baby in about an hour. It's a little crazy!


    IMO every woman preparing for birth, even in a hospital with an OB practice, should learn at least a little bit about home birth and about how birth unfolds when it's left alone.   It's not that uncommon for babies to come really fast when they decide to come, and once you pass a certain point it's much safer to stay home than to race to the hospital and risk giving birth in the car — or, as one woman I know did, next to a file cabinet in the fire station in her neighborhood.

    Wouldn't it be better to be prepared?

    Here's my suggestions.  

     

    Emergency Childbirth:  A Manual by Gregory White.   
    51zaP2SmzGL._SL500_AA300_ 

    My midwife would say that childbirth isn't an emergency unless you think it is, but she still recommends this slim handbook for all her birthing families. It was written mainly for people who might be expected to find themselves helping a mother who's giving birth outside the hospital — police, etc.  It has some advice that's pretty doctor-centric (advising that the mother be on her back, for example) but what it's really good for is telling the difference between normal birth and birth with complications, and how to handle some of the events that might be unnerving, including what to do if something serious happens.

     

     

     

     

     

    Double-make your bed.   You'll be glad you did this if your water breaks while you're sleeping.  This is one of the Great Secrets Of Home-Birthers.  It's also useful later if you have a chronically bed-wetting kid or someone's got a vomiting illness.

    Have an extra, waterproof mattress cover (a rubber sheet's cheap, but there are more comfortable, breathable options out there now.)   Make your bed once with mattress cover, bottom sheet, and top sheet well tucked in.  Then put the second, waterproof mattress cover on top and make your bed again with another set of sheets and your blankets.   If your water breaks all over everything, or you wind up giving birth squatting on top of your bed, zip!  it all comes off and there's a fresh newly made bed underneath.  You can go to sleep in it (maybe with your baby) and someone can wash the soiled sheets when it's convenient.

     

    Got a tub?  Clean it out.  Bathtubs are awesome.  Everybody should have one.  If you keep potted plants in your tub, take them out.  If your tub is gross, have someone clean it.  Or use some of that late pregnancy nesting energy to do it yourself.  There are worse places to give birth than a bathtub, and if you find yourself really WANTING to be in the tub, you'll be glad if it's all ready for you.  Skip the perfumed bubble bath.

     

    Have some clean towels.   If you're perpetually behind on the laundry, set some aside.  Three or four big ones should do.  

     

    Have a package of Depends-type underpads, a.k.a. "chux pads." This is another one of those magic tips for not having to clean up any mess, and they have utility later.   For the newborn period when I'm still resting a lot in bed and in chairs, I much prefer sitting/sleeping on one of these to wearing those damn postpartum pads.   I have been known to pull them out of my stash when the little one has their first bout of vomiting.

    How does the midwife use them?  When the bearing-down starts, someone puts one on the floor (or bed, or whatever — wherever you're squatting) between your feet.  From my POV, the chux pad magically appeared from nowhere just when I started to push — really the midwife put it there.  Although frankly, if you're having precipitous labor you might not care very much, it might give your husband something to do.  "Stay right there honey!  I will protect the carpet!"

     

    That newborn nose-suctioning bulb thing. 
    Images

     

    Some kind of heating pad.  For the afterpains.  They suck and you won't want to be without your heating pad.  I like a rice bag, myself.  Here's a fancy one, but you can just use a tube sock tied shut with a knot.

     

    Consider putting a flexible "telephone" shower head in your shower.  Well, I give this advice to every woman who is about to have a baby.

    + + +

    Since you are preparing for the possibility of precipitous labor — which is by definition fast — you don't have to do a lot of the things that home birthers prepare for.  Like always having your fridge and pantry stocked with the kind of food you want to eat when you've been in labor for 6 hours.   And you won't bother with a lot of the postpartum care stuff, because if you give birth at home, sooner or later you will probably be (unnecessarily and at great cost) transported to a medical facility where you will experience standard-ish hospital postpartum care.  

    I usually buy a custom birth kit put together by In His Hands Birth Supply from a list that my midwife gives them.  It has things like antiseptic, gloves, cord clamps, peri bottles, baby hat, gauze pads, and underpads in it.  In fact, In His Hands sells an emergency birth kit for $12.  They also sell Emergency Childbirth along with some other literature.  

    + + +

    Add more thoughts in the comments – and if you have a story of precipitous labor of your own, please share!

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    14 comments on Being prepared for precipitous labor.

  • Understanding the mechanism.

    I think by now everybody's heard the canard:  "It takes 20 minutes to feel full after eating, so wait that long before you serve up a second helping."  I saw it again today, but with a twist on it I've rarely seen.

    As far as I can tell, the advice to eat slowly and wait between servings in order to prevent eating until overfull is backed up by research — I don't think anyone disputes that it probably helps and won't hurt.  What I think is interesting is the rationale.

      Usually, this advice is accompanied by a folk-theory explanation of why it supposedly takes 20 minutes to feel full after eating.    Here are a few I managed to scrape up from Google:

     

    "It takes your stomach about 20 minutes to produce the hormones that tell your brain that you are full. This process doesn’t start until your stomach begins to stretch."

    "Eating quickly doesn’t give the stomach enough time to communicate with the brain to send up the “I’m full” message, and missing that cue can cause overeating. Waiting 20 minutes gives the brain enough time to register the “full” or “still hungry” signal."

    "Remember that it takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that you're full."

     

    There's more like that out there.  The details vary but the gist of it is commonly "stomach talks to brain, 20 minutes required."

    Today, for the first time, I saw deviation from this folk tale in a soundbite-type article — the kind that takes you through a slideshow of stock images, one per "tip".  Tip number 6  in a WaPo slide show that starts here:  

    Wait 20 minutes for seconds:   Food must move 22 feet through your intestines from your stomach to peptide YY cells — the switch that says you are sated. 

    What's this?  Peptide YY cells?  The intestines are involved in the conversation?  How novel!

    The mechanism is apparently a bit more complex, though you wouldn't know it from the folktales.  I'm always particularly annoyed when the advice columnist, or whoever, suggests that satiety is primarily the feeling of your stomach "stretching" or some such thing, and that hunger is the feeling of the walls of the stomach touching each other or some such thing.   That's a theory from the early 1900s that's been well disproven.   (Have your stomach surgically removed and you'll still feel hunger and satiety.)

    Mostly, hunger and satiety are brought on by hormonal signals (even that is a vast oversimplification!), and if your stomach is straining to contain the food you've gobbled, chances are you've overshot it.  

    Peptide YY hormones (abbreviated PYY) are just one of several factors implicated in appetite regulation.  I'll borrow this brief explanation of PYY action in one set of mouse experiments from an abstract:  

    In response to food ingestion plasma [PYY] concentrations rise within 15 min and plateau by approximately 90 min. The peak [PYY] level achieved is proportional to the calories ingested, suggesting that [PYY] may signal food ingestion from the gut to appetite-regulating circuits within the brain.

    (I caution against taking single statements in reports of experiments, wherever published, as gospel.  I'm just quoting this here in order to borrow the wording, and emphasize that active research has moved beyond the "stomach walls rubbing together" thing.)

    + + +

    So why does it matter?  If the advice is good, who cares whether we understand the real mechanism or not?

    Maybe you can chalk it up to different types of people.  I for one find it easier to adhere to suggested behaviors if I have a mental model of what's really going on.

    Here's one example.  Like many folks, I get cravings for carbohydrates when I've had a busy morning dealing with the kids or a long shopping trip or a stressful afternoon.   I have had an easier time riding them out and solving them in better ways now that I understand a few things (the following does not apply to diabetics and prediabetics):  

        (1) they are physiological, not a sign of mental weakness;

        (2) they really do signal low blood glucose, and I really will be sluggish if I don't get fed;

        (3) eating carbs will feel great and deliver immediate relief, but might not last long;

        (4) eating protein-and-fat will deliver the same relief from the craving, because a protein snack really will raise your blood glucose; but the relief won't show up for 30 minutes or so, and sadly it will not deliver the rush of "oh thank God this cookie is the best thing I ever ate."  Still, it will solve the problem.

    How does this help with the carb cravings?

        (1) I know better than to try to ignore this signal.  It's a real message saying, "Either eat something, or quit doing anything mentally taxing until your next meal."

       (2) Even if the idea of a Coke and french fries and pie  is making me go yes yes yes, and the thought of a hardboiled egg or a handful of  almonds is making me go meh, I know that — in the end — the egg or the almonds will fix this problem.   

      (3) If I know this, I cannot fool myself into thinking, "But I really need a hit of sugar."  I don't.  But before I really understood the slower response to protein, I easily tricked myself into thinking that I did need the Coke or the cookies.

      (4)  If I can't stop what I'm doing and wait for the slower protein response, having a little bit of each might be a good compromise.  

    + + +

    I can't say for sure whether I'll be more or less likely to wait that 20 minutes if I know that one of the "you've eaten enough" signals is triggered by caloric food reaching the ileum.  (Or if I know that gastrointestinal transit is not simple either:  "Materials do not leave segments of the digestive tube in the same order that they arrive."

    One thing that does help me is knowing from experience how I've accidentally become overfull.  Can't count the times where "hm, I think I've got room for dessert!" has turned into "ooof, I guess I didn't really have room…" after, oh, twenty minutes or so.   I really have to almost feel like I've undereaten for a whole dessert not to make me all stuffed.

    We have a locally owned, family-style restaurant near our house that charges only a dollar for pie after 7 p.m.  I am a great fan of pie, and so this restaurant (kid's meals under $3 that include drinks and dessert!  No kidding!) has been a good training ground for "saving room for dessert."  I almost always take the kids there after swimming lessons when Mark goes out of town for a few days, and I almost always arrive thinking "At the end of this meal, I will have pie."  

    Keeping in mind the feeling of having eaten too much before the pie, and then added the pie onto that, really does help me remember not to order something big and then polish it off.   It's entirely mental — another kind of knowledge that makes a real difference.

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