Small Sentiment Saturday

As you go through life,

Whatever may be your goal

Keep your eye upon the doughnut

And not upon the hole.

--Anonymous

The Little White Violet

Springtime (I think it is springtime now. All the signs point to it), is a lovely time for looking at flowers. Of course, most of the flowers around this time of year look like this:

One becomes very familiar with Taraxacum officinale subsp. vulgare when one has a little brother who thinks they are pretty flowers and consequently gathers huge bouquets of them, beaming proudly as he presents them to you. From a very early age, mine made the connection that flowers are things that you pick and give to girls you like, most notably (in his case) your mother and sisters. It's very sweet of him. I must admit, however, that in the last two years he has put together some very lovely bouquets with several different types of flowers carefully chosen to go together...usually with a dandelion thrown in there somewhere. But I digress.

Though dandelions are by far the most plentiful, I was convinced that they were not the only kind of flower to be found, so I went looking.

"There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something (or so Thorin said to the young dwarves). You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after."
--J. R. R. Tolkein, The Hobbit 
 

In my mother's garden I found some very picturesque bleeding hearts:

 They were not the something I was after. I wanted something smaller, rarer, more secret.

Then I found this:

It's a wild strawberry. They grow on the north side of the house and are very diminutive, but every year put forth their perennial effort boldly, even producing tiny fruit in June. The fruits are mostly seeds, but one must applaud the attempt. The wild strawberries also, cute in their miniature bravado (how many synonyms can I find for "small"?), were not the something I was looking for.

 

These were.

The white violets had hidden for years under a huge hydrangea bush, very secret, until once upon a time Dad decided that the bush was getting too big for its britches and cut it down. Several times. Only then did the white violets come out into general notice.

They never asked to be recognized. They were quite content to bloom completely hidden by the hydrangeas for a very long time, doing what they were made to do, being what they were made to be, whether anyone noticed or not. And that is what they still do. The only difference is that now their surroundings have changed so that we can fully see and appreciate their beauty.

I know a few very holy women like that. Do you?

 

 

Our Hearts Are Restless

Ever have a one-by-two moment? It’s like a two-by-four moment, only gentler. I hope I’m not the only one who gets these.

Once upon a time I went to Adoration on a retreat in the middle of a busy school year. There was a lot on my mind, and life was getting really crazy. Most of the time I’m excited about Adoration, but this time I really was not looking forward to that Holy Hour, because Adoration meant mental prayer, talking to God and listening for His answers, and that meant thinking, and I was tired of thinking.

I went into Adoration and knelt down, and suddenly an hour had passed and everyone was getting up. I don’t remember what, if anything, happened during that hour, but I noticed, strangely, that I felt rested and refreshed, and thinking didn’t hurt anymore. That was when I learned that Adoration does not always mean mental prayer, nor formal prayer, but sometimes it’s just resting in Jesus.

“Our hearts are restless, O God, until they rest in Thee.” –St. Augustine

Last weekend I was visiting my Twin Cousin (in actuality we are cousins, not twins. She is two months older than I am. But we grew up together, and were thick as thieves when we were younger (and still very close), so when the term was invented, in the hallways back at Community College when we were seventeen or so, it seemed appropriate), and she, being the good cousin that she is, took me to Adoration, because it was handy, so why not?

N. B. If you ever have the opportunity to visit the Adoration Chapel at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Fargo, ND, do it. You’ll be glad you did. It is lovely.

 

So there I was in Adoration, grateful to be there, since I don’t get many such opportunities since graduating, but I hadn’t been notified beforehand that such was our destination, so I was without my rosary, without my Bible, without my journal, all the usual things I take with me to Adoration. It was just me and Jesus. There was a lot on my mind, but somehow I couldn’t get it formed into words. So after a while I gave up and asked what He wanted to say to me.

“Rest in Me,” he said. And that was all. I didn’t want to rest. I didn’t feel I should be resting. Hadn’t I been resting for a long time? Wasn’t there a lot we needed to catch up on? Shouldn’t I be working through some of my problems in this precious time? But no, that was all He said.

It is not good to argue with Jesus. I have learned this. So, reluctantly, like a small child who has been told to go to bed in the middle of putting together a picture-puzzle, I composed myself to rest.

It was only after I got home and picked up Dr. Edward Sri’s book “A Biblical Walk Through the Mass” that I read these words: “John Paul II taught that when we rest in the Lord’s presence in the Eucharist it is as if we become like the beloved disciple who rested on Jesus’ breast during the Last Supper.”

And there was my little one-by-two moment. How often have I been busy with my own agenda in Jesus’ presence, trying to get things sorted out efficiently, when all He wanted me to do was be still and let Him love me? How often have I been busy trying to get things done in the presence of my family and friends, when love was all that was needed?

Beginning the Journey

Once upon a time (for thus begins all journeys), as I was driving down the winding, wooded roads to Mankato for another week of college classes, a song began forming itself in the back of my mind. I don't remember how it went, for I had no way of writing it down or recording it, but I remember that it somehow wove into words the strange thing that was happening to me; that somehow, when I was at home, I felt (and acted, I am afraid) like a little girl, but as soon as I went back to my apartment at college, I was a woman again.

College is reputed to be, beyond a place of learning, a place where teens grow up into respectable citizens, and I think to some extent this is true. When you live out on your own, you are forced to pay your own bills, buy your own groceries, form and maintain your own friendships and fulfill your own commitments, and all these things foster the sense of responsibility that distinguishes the stereotypical teenagers from the grownups.

But what happens after college? Most of us nowadays move back home, at least for a while. Not, as the culture assumes, because we are lazy, but because it is the most financially responsible thing to do while we are paying off the debt we accumulated in college. However, the feeling of being a little girl when I went home for a weekend didn't go away when I moved home for good, and it became very easy to let the responsible woman that had developed in college give way to the immature girl.

The question was this: If I couldn't be a woman around my family, had I really become a woman at all? Or was it just an illusion? Or was it that I had set out on my journey of becoming a woman, and climbed the foothills easily, but was now being faced with the high and daunting mountain?

Having decided upon the latter answer, I decided that no matter how high the mountain looked, I was going to tackle it.

"Be who you are meant to be, and you will set the world on fire."
--Saint Catherine of Siena
 

This blog is the story of my journey. In it I will talk a lot about family, quite a bit about friends, somewhat about vocations, relationships as the subject proves relevant, a bit about music, work, general happenings and probably a multitude of other stuff that I can't foresee, all with a general undercurrent of the good old Catholic faith. For the goal of this journey, ultimately, is heaven.

I am writing for myself, for I cannot claim to be an expert of any kind, but I am also writing for anyone else who might want to come with me. Perhaps we can help each other.

For the title of this blog, a subject over which I have deliberated long without success, I have to thank two philosophy majors from NDSU; the first (who also happens to be my cousin) for suggesting the title, and the second for kindly translating it into Latin for me. Benigne dicis.

Once upon a time there was a girl...