Seven Quick Takes: Christmas Edition

1. We actually had a real, legitimate white Christmas this year. It started Christmas Eve, continued off and on through the night, was sunny Christmas morning, and then started snowing again in the afternoon through the night. Altogether not a huge amount of snow, but certainly more than adequate to make for a delightful Christmas. The paper said that the last time we had a white Christmas in the Springs was 1987, and my family didn't move out here until 1989 so it was the first time for us! I was pretty thrilled.

2. It was altogether a lovely Christmas. The whole family was here, we had a good time together, no one's tempers flared up (we all love each other but sometimes things are said that rub people the wrong way. That's family for you!), and it was just fun.

Yes, I knit this for my sister's dog. Yes, it is a lion outfit.

3. One of the best things about this break and its unexpected snowiness is that I've been able to go on a couple of nighttime snowy walks with the dogs. I don't like to take the dogs for a walk once the sun is down and it's dark outside, but on the nights when it's snowing, the world is so much more bright and beautiful than usual so it's my favorite time to take them. Plus, it's cold, and I love being outside in the cold. And I tend to see more deer and whatnot then, too, which always makes me happy (though when my brother's dog is with me, as he usually is, I can't really enjoy the deer sightings as much as I'd like to because he's too busy screaming at them, sounding like a dog who's being beaten to an inch of his life). I don't really have a good park area in my neighborhood up in Denver like I have here at my parents', so I never get to take advantage of those snowy nights up there. I'm grateful I got a couple while I'm home!

4. It's been an interesting few days, life-wise. Sometimes you just need to hit a point at which point you realize...things that need to change. I'm not sure what it all means, or what's going to happen, but I think there are changes afoot...but of course, as always, it's all up to God. And I'm quite sure that whatever's coming is going to draw me out of my comfort zone. I'm pretty sure I'm ok with that, too. I know it needs to happen.

5. I found an extremely awesome baby blanket pattern that I really want to make. I'm deep in baby-blanket knitting mode now. Too many things to knit! How awesome would it be to have three sets of hands to knit three things at once. Man. That'd be so amazing. Though sometimes when I think about what that would be like (which is probably more often than a normal person would think about having six hands), I wonder if my brain would be able to think and follow three different patterns at the same time. I'm pretty good at multitasking so I bet my brain could handle it. I doubt I'll ever get the chance to try though.

6. I'm only one movie into my annual Lord of the Rings viewing. And I'm not sure when (or if) I'll see the Hobbit before I have to go back to work. And I do think I'd be ok if I didn't. I'm sure it's good, but I also think it might be disappointing when considering what it could have been. And I still can't believe they made three movies. Three? That's just dumb. My family's going to see Les Mis today, though, which I'm excited about. I doubt that'll be disappointing. I just saw a version of it for the first time ever, and it was the non-musical Liam Neeson version which was pretty good. It'll be interesting to see it with the songs, though, many of which I do know from...life, I guess.

7. I've been feeling particularly thankful for my family and friends lately. I love my family so much, and I'm so grateful we all get along so well these days. That's one of the biggest blessings in my life. We all have our differences, obviously, but we're all awesomely nerdy in some similar ways which always makes get-togethers fun. And even though most of my best and closest friends live far far away from me, I'm grateful for the times I do get to spend with them or talk to them. They get me. Some more than others, but they're all such great blessings. I do often curse geography and my lack of teleportation abilities, but at least I have them and they're in my life. And thank God for that!

Saturday Six?

Remember last week how I said I was wearing gloves at night to keep cracks from appearing on my poor, dry hands? Yeah, as I should have expected, one showed up this week just after that. Oh well. I still think it's helping at least a bit. :-)

Since I didn't post quick takes yesterday, here are a few random Saturday thoughts.

1. I stopped by the grocery store after work last night to pick up a few things, and the woman of a couple who had walked in right after I did stopped me as I was picking up a basket and complimented my skirt/tights/boots combo. She said she's been trying to figure out how to do it and make it look cute, and that I had done what she wanted to do. It was quite surprising and nice to hear, especially considering I didn't feel particularly cute (and I was wearing my fake Uggs which always make me sort of self-conscious, though I love them and they're super comfy. I just don't want people thinking I'm an...Uggs girl, I guess, whatever that means).

2. I also got a text on my way home from one of my friends/former roommate who I went to grad school with. She got married this summer and I, as I do, knit them a blanket. This one.

I sort of love it. A lot. It was fun to knit, the pattern is fabulous, and I loved the edging I added, not to mention that the yarn was enjoyable to work with as well. And, though she's expressed her thanks before, last night my friend sent another text reiterating how much she loves it, too. There is nothing that makes a knitter more happy and grateful than hearing that the things they spend so much time and energy on, infusing it with love, are welcomed and appreciated and loved in turn. I don't do it so people will tell me how much they like what I give them, but it sure does make it all worth it. I was so thankful to receive that text. And so thankful that I had put the time and energy into it so she would know how much I love her.

3. Texts like that get me through times like this when I have lots I need to knit, and not enough time to do it all in time...thankfully most of the things I want to finish for Christmas are small items and it shouldn't be too big of a problem. The bigger item I'm working on, I've already given up having it done in time for Christmas. (It's another blanket, which kept getting pushed aside to finish other things and other blankets, one of which I finished up and washed today to send out on Monday...that's the way it goes when there is so much to knit and so many to knit for!) I have no plans tomorrow other than church, and I picked up Downton Abbey season 1 at Redbox today, and a few videos at the library as well - including one season each of a couple of shows I enjoy - so I should be all good to go for a day of knitting. I'll just have to stay off the computer, because I inevitably get sucked into this, that, and the other thing if I get online to check one thing "really quickly." (aka, I have no self control sometimes.) I'm excited to get all this Christmas knitting done because then I can start on baby knitting for the dozens of babies (sliiiight exaggeration) that seem to be due all in February-ish. It's been a while since I've done anything baby, and I love working with baby yarn, and I have a lot of it.

4. I'm going to start reading Quo Vadis tonight. I've had it for a while but haven't so much as read the first page. I did see the movie earlier this year, and quite enjoyed it, so I'm sure I'll like the book. That time period is pretty fascinating to me. I'm especially looking forward to it after seeing the Pompeii exhibit at the museum today, which included a lot about the culture of the times. I watched most of the Rome series back in college, though it did somewhat scandalize me, being a Showtime show which included lots of gratuitous violence and rather more nudity and sex than I prefer in what I watch. But the historical parts, costumes, music, etc were all quite interesting. Anyway. I'm looking forward to reading it.

5. I'm fairly itching to go snowshoeing. I've never been, but I've been wanting to since last winter, and I hope we start getting lots of snow so there's good snowshoeing conditions. (I don't really know what makes for good snowshoeing conditions, but I'd imagine a good layer of snow is a good way to start.) I'm really excited to go check out Rocky Mountain in the winter. I was up in Estes on Sunday and we drove in for about ten minutes (ah, so nice to have a year-long pass and come and go as I please), and it was the first time I've been there in the winter with snow on the mountains and everything. It's such a sight to see. I'm excited to go back and drive further in. I just love it there.

6. I recently found a Groupon for a digital photography class. I debated whether or not to get it, because I don't know...well, I don't know anything. But that's the point of the class. I guess I just usually prefer to research things like this before I spend money on them. It seems like it's a pretty legit place, though, and it's just an online class that I can start any time in the next year or so. It'd be nice to know how to use a camera more than just the basics. The only problem is that I currently only have my little point-and-shoot, and it's a class more for SLRs. I've been wanting to get one of those, though, and this might be a good push for me to do it. Though I do still have to save up the money. But, like I said, I have a year to use it, and it really wasn't expensive, so I think (I hope) it'll be worth it. I do really want to be able to take better pictures. I'd also like to be able to edit pictures I do take, which I cannot currently do since I have no editing software. I used to have something that would at least allow me to mess with settings and lighting and whatnot to some extent, but maybe that was when I used to have Office on my computer. I should see if there's some free editing software I can download.

Anyway. Life is stressful, and far from perfect, but there are a lot of bright spots to be found. Lord knows we need all the bright spots we can get right now.

Yet Another

I had planned tonight to sit down and write my (now) weekly 7 Quick Takes, since I hadn't gotten to it by last night and was on an office-wide Advent reflection retreat today. It was a silent retreat, with three talks, lots of silent/prayer time, adoration, and Mass. Just before the third talk, which proceeded an hour of adoration and then Mass, the priest who had been leading it told us all that there had been a shooting in Connecticut. My first thought was that I'm so tired of these becoming so frequent that they're almost normal now. Terribly sad, but no longer shocking. But then he continued, and said it was at an elementary school. And 18-20 children were dead. I wanted to be sick. It's one thing when it's in a mall or something; I'm not sure why, but that just doesn't strike me the same. My heart still goes out to victims and their families, but...I don't know. Children, though? An elementary school? 18-20 children? That's just too much to bear. And another awful thing about this one is that, unlike other school shootings, the shooter wasn't a fellow student. He was almost old enough to be another teacher. As adults we have something innate that drives us to protect the youngest, the innocent, and he violated that to the extreme. Every aspect of this one hurts in a different way than others have. It's left us all broken. When will our country say "enough" and decide things need to change?

It's not about gun control, though. If someone is crazy enough to walk into an elementary school and look these children in the eye and shoot them, over and over, I don't think that he's going to care whether or not his gun is illegal. But that's not the point. The point is that we have to change how we do things. We have to change ourselves. This guy's sin is out there for the world to see, tragically, horrifically. The effects are devastating, widespread, and extremely obvious. It's easy for us to say "We should have seen, we should have stopped him, we should have made it harder to obtain guns," etc etc. It goes so much farther back, though. It's about a devaluation of life in our society. It's about romanticizing violence. It's about rampant individualism that doesn't want to look too closely at another's life, worries, problems. It's about sin being in the world, and us not wanting to give it the weight it deserves. It's about evil existing, and us turning a blind eye to it. Or, even worse, becoming lukewarm to it.

I don't have any answers. No one does, really. All we can do in times like this is turn to Jesus. I was so grateful that after I found out I had the opportunity to go sit in front of Jesus and pour my heart out, pour out my sadness to him and ask him to be with all those little children, their families, and everyone affected by this horrific event. And pray for our country. How sad it is that I've become so numb to these shootings that I was actually almost surprised to cry today. Of course, that's also partly just me being me; it takes a lot to make me cry. And innocent children being slaughtered in their classrooms by someone who obviously had serious issues is a lot. I think it makes us all cry. It was refreshing to see even President Obama showing deep emotion today while speaking about the shootings - I think sometimes people who have to talk about, report, deal with tragedy all the time probably get good at masking their emotions. I specifically remember on 9/11, Peter Jennings was reporting toward the end of the day after having been there for hours on end, and he choked up when he mentioned finally being able to talk to his kids at one point, and he told parents to call their kids and make sure to tell their children they love them. Seeing that, seeing Obama struggle through his words today, it's a powerful reminder that at our core, we're not a specific party, or a specific belief, or a specific ideology. Our first and fundamental basic identity is that we are human. We're all part of this race called human beings, and days like today remind us not of our differences (debates about gun control aside), but of our humanity that we all share. When we're faced with the fact that one human being killed his own mother, and then went into an elementary school - a place that should be as far removed from this kind of violence as anything - and killed 20 small children and their teachers, it's impossible for us not to react to that. We all know inherently that this is something that should disturb us. It should bring us to tears.

The fact that it does, and that even the leader of our country is brought to tears over this, is a great sign of hope. It means we still care. It means there is still good in the world. While we are on this earth, evil is inevitable. Evil, though, allows the goodness to shine even more brightly in contrast, in big things and little things. In the teachers who read stories to their students knowing at any moment someone could burst into the room and shoot them all, and in the teacher who got all her students into a cramped bathroom and told them that she loved them and that it would all be ok, because she thought they were all going to die and she wanted that to be the last thing they heard, not the sounds of violence. There is goodness in the people who have to run into that building, putting their lives at danger for others, people who have to tend to the wounded and dead, who see sights every day that would probably haunt most of us forever. There is good in everyone who heard about this tragedy today, and have reached a breaking point in realizing that something has to be changed. There are inevitable disagreements on how best to effect this change, but both sides are doing it out of good, knowing that our hearts can't take another tragedy like this one.

The problem, though, is that there are so many other crimes that go on every day, just as heinous as this though not as attention-grabbing, that should also bring us to tears and bring us to our knees in sorrow and repentance and go largely unnoticed. Violent attacks like happened today aren't ultimately about gun control. There are obviously dozens of reasons, but at its heart it's almost a natural result of our selfish, individualistic culture that greatly devalues life. And that's going to be a lot more difficult to change than making guns harder to buy.

For now, we just grieve. We ask God to pour his mercy and grace and love upon us, upon our country, and especially upon those whose homes have empty beds tonight. They were just little kids. My nephews' ages. And so close to Christmas; those poor families are going to need our prayers a lot. All we can do tonight is pray. Pray, and love each other.

On Wendell Berry, Rom-Coms, and Community

At some point during my grad school career, I read a fabulous article: "Wendell Berry on Marriage: Marriage in the Membership" from a 2007 edition of Communio. Wendell Berry is not quite Catholic, and yet so many of his ideas and beliefs are absolutely Catholic at their core, particularly where he talks about marriage and community. Marriage, to Wendell Berry - as well as the Catholic Church - is fundamental for the community, and the community is likewise fundamental for marriage. The two need each other absolutely. "Marriage is based on fidelity, and fidelity is the foundation of all relationships, civil and domestic... Fidelity is the word of love without which none of us would find life worth living." (524) The American culture no longer values community like it once did. We're all just a bunch of individuals, willing to move hither, thither, and yon in order to pursue our dream career but at the expense of putting down roots and knowing what it's like to be accountable to others, to be depended on by and dependent on others. We have smart phones, texts, Skype, and think that's good enough to deepen the relationships we build along the way. Sometimes that's the only way, obviously, but it's certainly not the best way. Better than nothing, but a poor substitute for chats in person.

We need a complete reordering of our understanding of what it means to be human - part of a community, not simply a bunch of independent individuals. We need a renewed understanding of what love is, and what marriage is. Hint: it's not just a way to say to the world that these two people love each other and want you to know it. We need a better understanding of what sex is, what it does, why it's important - and why it's not. At Janet Smith's talk I went to early this year, she brought up the example of a couple whose wife had kidney problems that would make pregnancy very dangerous. So she told her husband they'd have to be very careful with NFP until it cleared up. His response? He basically told her she was crazy to suggest he'd put her life in danger even the smallest bit by having sex, and so they abstained. For four years. That's love. Janet Smith's counterpart at that debate brought up the example of a couple who got permission from a priest to start using contraception when they couldn't enjoy a birthday dinner and evening together because they'd be too tempted, and at that time didn't want (couldn't afford?) another child. One of these examples seems to exude true, deep, selfless love and one...does not.

It's a sad mark of our culture that it's no longer wedding proposals girls dream about and long for, but they settle instead for invitations to move in together. Something that struck me earlier this year when I saw The Vow is that, though the central couple are married, in the flashbacks we don't see a proposal. We see the guy arranging blueberries on a plate to read "Move in?" Cue music. Women should demand more. If a man is willing to ask the woman he loves to move in with him, what's stopping him from making her his wife while he's at it? Moving in isn't a commitment at all, and that's the problem.

I started watching You've Got Mail recently. I've become far too sensitive to this stuff, I think, but I can't stand how devalued marriage is in that movie (and many others). The two central characters are both living with other people while falling in love online with each other. Tom Hanks' character comes from a line of uncommitted men with multiple marriages and long-term live-in relationships. But we're supposed to buy the central relationship, the one we all root for throughout the movie and cheer about at the end, as true and lasting - and hey, it's not like either of those two were married before (or when) they met each other, right? And conveniently enough, both of their non-spouses fell out of love, too, so it's a win for everyone!

Except then what happens after the credits role and these two people are forced to face the reality that maybe someday they'll both grow bored of each other, or one or the other will, and find themselves online again, allowing themselves to connect deeply and emotionally with some new person.

One of the reasons I love the movie Return to Me so much is that it doesn't have any of this. It has a couple who are together for years - until death do they part, and not even totally then. The best friend is in a solid, happy - if not perfect - marriage with lots of happy, loud kids. The main character herself is sweet, innocent, and modest. It's a refreshing movie in a genre filled with sex, shallow understandings of what love really is, and uncommitted relationships that only exist so long as they're convenient and passion/emotion-filled.

I sort of got off the subject of Wendell Berry and his amazingness and instead started talking about movies, but movies are indicative of our culture to a great extent and reflect the "community" that we live in. Unfortunately, the community we seem to live in now is one that highly values individualism, following your heart's desire (regardless of who that might affect or hurt), and, let's face it, sex whenever and wherever and however we want it. Fidelity, so highly valued in Wendell Berry's world, is at best nearly nonexistent, if not outright derided, in our culture. As Berry says, "In an intact community, the marriage vows are given before the membership. The couple doesn't just exchange them with one another. The vows are given before witnesses, who are there partly because they are party to the contract. This young couple is pledging from now on to be to a certain extent predictable in their behavior...Something like that ought to be witnessed by people who will acknowledge that it happened and that these awe-full things were said." (525) This is why community is so important for marriage - community that will remind the couple of those vows they said, and what they mean. I've heard lots of people say that they knew one couple who got divorced, and then it was like divorce became acceptable and swept through their friends' relationships. "The shattering fact of a series of divorces is death to the membership." Marriage is hard, and it's especially so when that marriage is isolated from any kind of real community. At the same time, the community needs marriages to survive.

Community requires a kind of responsibility on the part of the couple, who are so integral to its health and well-being that they're given a strong reason to keep going even when they want to give up. This is particularly true when children are involved (or, at least, it should be). Marriage doesn't take place in a vacuum. It's not about two singular individuals who join together for some amount of time, intertwining their lives to whatever extent they desire. It's about the death of two people who come together and become reborn as one within two bodies. And they do so within their community, whatever community that might be. It is an utterly profound thing, and so much beyond just "a piece of paper." We don't know how to take marriage seriously anymore. The popular understanding of marriage today seems to be something you do when you love someone. But since we have sch a profound misunderstanding of what love itself is, we don't quite know what we're doing when we get married. People think of it as just another step to take at some point, if the relationship has gone on long enough and you've lived together long enough. (Or, sometimes, people rush into it far too quickly and then are surprised to find they don't actually know their spouse very well.) After all, divorce has become so common, that it's an easy back-up in case the marriage doesn't work. We've lost the understanding of the sacredness involved in marriage. It's not just a statement of love. It's a statement that these two people are ready to die to themselves, to become new people inherently and inextricably tied together, ready to take on all the pain and sacrifices that necessarily come with marriage, ready to put someone else's needs and desires ahead of their own, ready to accept the new life that is a natural outcome of such deep and profound love.

Emotions have become the ruling force of society today. This whole past election was based on emotion - and unfortunately, the other side is good at appealing to the emotions of what many people see as loving, logical choices. The things that I believe in, the things that the Church teaches, aren't as easy to sell based on emotions - at least, not on the surface. It seems hateful to many people to say that two people can't get married just because they're the same gender. It seems illogical to say that maybe free contraception for everyone isn't the best idea; it seems unloving and misogynistic to say that sometimes, women shouldn't get to chose if their choice includes a death. Romantic comedies are all about the emotions, but rarely do they get to the deeper stuff. And that's where we need to go. Life can't be sustained running on emotions alone. It's like eating ice cream or Twinkies all the time. Sometimes we have to stay and deal with the harder stuff while our emotions are screaming "run away!" Elections can be won on emotion, but then we have to get back to business and realize that some of those emotion-based promises aren't actually feasible. Society tells us that we should get out of relationships when we stop feeling love, regardless of how many years we've been married, how many kids we have, or how we might be harming the community. We are no longer challenged to be the best versions of ourselves, to put the good of another person or of the community ahead of our own desires, to stick it out and make things better instead of leaving when things are hard. And we're all suffering the effects, and probably will for years to come.

But you know what? I still have hope. Our world is a little bit crazy right now, but I think things will get better. One way or another. Somehow. Eventually. Things will swing back the other way (whether that happens because of a cataclysmic collapse, or just the quiet example of people living good lives, only time will tell). Jesus can't be ignored forever, and he's the perfect example of absolute selfless love that we should all aspire to have and to live out, regardless of our vocation, where we are in life, or what we're doing. Everything we do here on earth is all about God in the end, anyway. We'd do well to remember that.

Seven Quick Takes: Skip to the End Edition

1. A few weeks back, I was at Target and needed some coffee. I was just going to get my typical-for-the-season pumpkin spice flavored coffee, but saw a candy cane (peppermint) flavored coffee and on impulse decided to try it. I'm pretty much in love with peppermint tea, and I greatly enjoy peppermint hot chocolate, so I figured it was probably a pretty safe bet. And I was right. I first had it yesterday, and it is delightful! It's been a long week, so I'm thankful for even that little bit of goodness.

2. I was at Target tonight (I promise I don't actually go there that often), and was looking at their active wear. I have a pair of loungey pants that I got when I was just starting college, which was over eight years ago if you're keeping track, and I love them. I've loved them well over the last eight years, and it's showing. I don't think they're going to last much longer. The problem is that I am rather taller than the average woman, and typical regular-length pants don't exactly fit me. These well-loved pants I have are longs, and they're amazing. Do you know how difficult it is to find long pants, particularly if they're not jeans? But tonight at Target, one of the racks of workout pants advertised short, regular, and long lengths, and I almost got excited. Years of shopping held my excitement at bay, though, and sure enough, as I looked through the entire rack, I found maybe two pairs that were longs. And they were XS (unlike me). Nuts to you, McGillicutty!

(Someday, I'll find a suitable replacement. I finally just found a navy blue cardigan for which I've been looking for months. You can't hurry love.)

3. One of my lovely roommates and I are planning on a trip to Estes Park on Sunday, to enjoy its Christmasyness and for potential Christmas gifts. It's supposed to snow on Sunday. (Almost) even more exciting than that is that the high is 20 at most. I know I'm lucky in that I have warm clothes, a house to come home to, and I don't have to experience cold like that unless I want to, but I am so happy when it's freezing out. I'm a knitter; I think it's part of the package deal to like cold weather. (At the very least, it's a lot more comfortable knitting a blanket during the winter than, say, in the middle of one of the hottest Julys DC has ever seen.) I love being bundled, cozily wrapped up in scarves, hats, sweaters, coats, blankets, etc. Going for walks on cold snowy winter nights is one of my favorite things. And we've had weeks of unseasonably warm (and dry) weather. It's all conspiring to make me exceedingly giddy about the possibility of walking around Estes Park on Sunday in the cold and (with any luck) snow.

4. Speaking of knitting, boy, did you know Christmas is fewer than 20 days away? It's one thing if you're a procrastinator when it comes to buying Christmas gifts. It's another when your knitting time and speed just aren't cutting it to get everything planned done in time for Christmas. (A couple blankets, one almost done another maybe halfway, a miscellaneous item, and a couple things I'd like to do but just might not get to. And then there are multiple babies I know being born in the couple months after Christmas, which I'm wanting to start already too.) Alas. Maybe I should cut out all socializing, all internet, all anything-not-knitting from now until Christmas. I suppose I'll continue going to work, though. Especially on Thursdays - a few of us have started a "crafternoon" thing where we meet up during the lunch hour and knit/crochet (or do other crafts, though so far it's just been knitting and crocheting). Yesterday, one of my coworkers said that she thinks we should have a knitting class sometime in January, where I teach everyone who wants to how to knit something. At first I was a little bit taken aback, but it's kind of fun to think about, perusing patterns to see what might work for multiple levels of knitters (since some would be super beginners and some know at least the basics), and figuring out how the heck to teach knitting. I more or less taught myself through books and youtube videos, and it always just makes sense to me, so it's hard for me to break it down to someone who can't quite grasp it yet. (I always had this problem in high school when my friends would ask me for help with math homework. Math was my best subject, though not necessarily my favorite, and it just...made sense to me. Figuring out themes and symbolism and "deeper meanings" in English? Not so much.) But I'm excited to try!

5. One of the things I'm looking forward to about Christmas week, in addition to, you know, Christmas, and family time, and all that is my annual viewing of Lord of the Rings. I'm not sure when it started, but the first time I saw them was during Christmas break my senior year of high school, when the last movie came out. I had previously thought they looked dumb, and people who went to see them were nerds and whatnot, but for some reason I got caught up in it when the third one came out. My brother had the first two movies, so I watched them and then about a week after Christmas my mom and I went to see the third one in the theater. I must have just decided after that year that Christmas break is a good time to watch them, since they're so long and you need to cut out a good chunk of time to watch them. Anyway, now Christmas is pretty much the only time I watch them, and I'm very much looking forward to it. This year it'll probably also be accompanied by a viewing of The Hobbit, too. Cautiously looking forward to that one. (Also looking forward to Les Miserables. But that's rather unrelated.)

6. I usually have really bad dry hands by this time of year. Need-bandaid-so-I-don't-bleed-on-things bad, sometimes. It's annoying, but it's the way it is. (Even years when I was in Indiana or DC, where it's not quite as dry as Colorado, sometimes it felt like the minute the wheels touched down in Colorado my knuckles would spontaneously start itching and cracking.) Except this year, about a month ago I decided to take my mom's longtime advice and start wearing gloves when I go to bed. (Though I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be cotton to be really effective, and mine are just the crappy cheap kind.) I moisturize up, put the glove on my left hand, which is always worst, and then put a little bit more on that hand before I put on the right hand. My hands are better than they were even this summer! It's crazy, but also pretty delightful. Wearing gloves at night is pretty annoying, but for the most part I don't notice it since, you know, I'm asleep. And it's worth it.

7. Everyone I know is either getting married or getting pregnant or getting promoted, and I'm getting coffee. And it's not even for me!

(That is a quote from Friends. In case you didn't recognize it. But it so accurately describes my life, except substitute "processing money" for "getting coffee".)

(Life is funny. Maybe someday I'll get to be in on the joke.)

Because this was so boring (and boy, hard to come up with seven things today), I'm gonna leave you all with a nice video. One of my favorite Christmas albums - I have approximately 23 favorite Christmas albums - is my ND Glee Club album, and this is one of my favorite songs on that album. This and five or six others (but most of them aren't on youtube). :-) I really love this version of Ave Maria, though. Especially when these guys sing it.

Vocatory

As I mentioned recently, I went on a vocation retreat a few weekends back. There's an abbey up in northern Colorado that I knew of, and some friends have visited, and I almost went on a retreat they had back in August. I've never really felt called to religious life, but I also haven't explored it much. I've always thought that I'm open to the idea should I feel called in that direction, but I don't know if I really have been open to it, or in a position where I'd hear a call should it come. Anyway. So off I went. I figured, at the very least, that it'd be quiet, relaxing, and pretty. And, bonus, they have cows! Everyone should know that I like cows. And pretty much any kind of farm animal. And then some. I got there after vespers on Friday evening (after a slightly harrowing drive up - since it gets dark so early now, it was dark most of the trip, and once I got past Fort Collins I was in absolutely unfamiliar territory, with very few signs of civilization. I knew there were hills and mountains around, but I couldn't see any of them. Upside to that is the great view of the stars from there. No light pollution, super bright stars. I love that), and was enchanted upon walking into the main building as I was greeted by the smell of wood. I love that smell. I want to live in a log cabin. Anyway, there was a talk, and then night prayer, and then off to bed at the late hour of 8:30. (Considering that's about 4 hours earlier than my sometimes-typical-but-trying-not-to-be bedtime, I did not go to sleep right away. It was lucky for me, though, that I was fighting a cold that weekend, because it made me actually ready for bed much earlier than I otherwise would have been and thus, despite early morning wakeups, was not at all sleep deprived on this retreat. Another lovely part of it.)

The first prayer of the morning is at 4:50, which they blessedly said we didn't have to go to. I had gone to bed pretty early (for me) the night before, but waking up to be IN the chapel at 4:50 is...tiring to think about. I got up at some point later than that, got ready, and walked from the guest house to the main house (they're about 3/4 mile away from each other). That walk in the early early morning is lovely. I secretly do love early mornings, but I don't love being tired, so I don't often experience much of them. I did that weekend, though, and got to see the sun first hit some of the hills around the place, and I got to enjoy the sight of the cows I hadn't noticed the night before. Their cows are furry! Well, some of them. With that plus their coloring, some of them reminded me of pandas. They made me pretty happy.

Saturday was filled with a lot of prayer. They're a contemplative Benedictine order, so their lives are pretty much ordered around saying the Divine Office. Seven times a day they're in the chapel (not including Mass), singing and praying to God. My in-the-world mindset kept thinking "Man, it must get annoying with all these chunks of time that interrupt everything else they have to do." We were kept pretty busy throughout the day - between prayer times in the chapel, we had to fit our meals, we helped a few of the sisters vaccinate some of their more stubborn cows (THAT was interesting) - and we got to feed their two llamas, and you'd better believe I loved that - and a few of the sisters gave us some talks, and we had adoration. It was actually not at all the quiet, relaxing weekend I had expected. It was so good, though. Even just experiencing it for two days, there's something really, really great about ordering life around prayer rather than prayer around life. People might think it seems unproductive, or not very practical for getting anything done. But...that's what they do. Everything else just fits around prayer. Sometimes, though it might not seem like it to the world, the most important thing we can do is pray. Sometimes that's all we can do. It's very counter-cultural to think like that, but it's exactly how we should think. Obviously everyone has different roles and is called to serve God best through different means, but these sisters (and religious like them), they're the heart of the Church. Nothing we do matters without prayer. Throughout the weekend, watching them during prayer and as they were talking to us at different points, it's clear how much they love Jesus - and it's obvious that they're incredibly special to him and that he absolutely loves them. (He loves us all, of course, but women religious like them have a very special place in his heart. Obviously they do - if you're a nun, you're literally married to Christ. And the spouse of Christ gets to occupy a pretty special place in his heart.) It was indescribably peaceful to be around them, and it's very easy for me to see how that would be an attractive life. Very hard, with a lot of sacrifice, of course, but how can being so close to Jesus not be attractive? Every time I would try to picture myself being part of that, and thinking of all the reasons I shouldn't feel called to it (ie, things I'm not sure I'd be able to give up, essentially), I just came back to the thought that Jesus is more important than all those things. If I'm not willing to give them up, wouldn't that mean I am choosing them above Jesus? Or that I love them more than I love him?

Of course, this would assume that I am called to that life. I have no doubt and no qualms with the idea that the religious life is higher than married life, in a sense anyway. Married life is good, very good, very beautiful, and very loved by God. (He gave the first human a wife, after all.) But religious life is...different. Anyway, I'm not trying to argue one over the other. What I'm trying to say is that, for me, if I'm called to the religious life then it comes down to choosing to love Jesus more than anything else. But if I'm not called to that, then choosing something else (ie, a husband, should he ever show up) won't mean I'm putting that ahead of Jesus, because the path God chose for me to best get to heaven will include another person with whom I'll grow closer to Jesus, together.

I don't think that the retreat exactly gave me any clarity on this subject. I think it made me more aware of the beauty of the life I've never really explored, and allowed me to see that, if I'm called to give up my desire for a husband and children, my desire for Jesus will fill up all the holes I might be worried I'd feel. I've gone from a place of "Oh, that's a nice thing, for other people, but I just really want to get married" to "I really want to be married, but if God has another plan for me, I think it could be really beautiful." Maybe I'll keep sliding down that side of the spectrum until I can't even remember what it feels like to want to get married. Who knows. I don't exactly see that happening, but I'm more open to the possibility. If God wants me, he's going to get me. He's going to have to do some work on me first to get me there, but he'll make it happen. And if that's not what he wants for me, then he'll make something else happen. What matters more is that I do my best to pursue his will, even if I discern incorrectly one way or the other. As the homily I heard today said, the process of discerning itself is what's important. It inevitably draws us closer to God, whatever the outcome, and that's ultimately what we're called to in this life. It's all about him, and growing deeper in love with him, regardless of what path we're on. I mean, I could pray and discern and pray and discern some more, and discern that I should pursue religious life, and start the process, but then the order turns me down (or something along those lines). Just because I have a crush on a guy doesn't mean he's going to ask me to marry him; just because I feel a pull to an order doesn't mean they'll feel the same about me. As we heard today at Mass, discernment doesn't mean predicting the future!

In any case, it was a great weekend, and it was so easy to pray there, and I might just go back, either for some more vocation-contemplation (ha! get it? because they're CONTEMPLATIVES!), or just to let myself sink into the peace of that place, so filled with prayer that there's no room for worry or anxiety. And to enjoy the great view of the stars for longer than I was able to last month. And the cows. OH. I didn't even tell you about their dog. They have a couple, but one of them is a HUGE great dane. I mean, huge. When he's on all four paws, his head almost comes up to my chest. I'm not exactly short, either. He's awesome.

This is all kind of silly, and kind of "duh" level stuff, but I feel more at peace. Not more clarity, but more peace. I do really, really want to get married. If it turns out I'm not called to that. God's going to have to do quite a bit of adjustment to my heart, but the good news is he's absolutely capable of that. It'll all work out, and I just need to be open to whatever "it" is. A lot easier said than done, sometimes, figuring out the line between God's will and my will. Ah, well, we're all works in progress. Thankfully, God's pretty patient, and he knows us pretty well, and gives a lot of points for effort.

Christmas isn't about giving, it's about receiving!

I have posts stewing in my head that really need to get out one of these days lest I esplode, but something's on my mind right now. I was driving back to Denver from my parents' tonight (second time in two days, because that's how I roll - and as an aside, it's amazing how much nicer the drive is later at night when not many people are out, I can flip on my cruise control and not worry about traffic at all, and get back up to Golden in just over an hour. It's awesome), and I happened to hear a commercial on the radio with a Christmas theme, which said something like "Let's get back to the true meaning of the season." It was about some sort of Christmas-wish-granting thing, helping people, giving to people with less. All wonderfully well and good, but...that's not really the true meaning of the season. It's not about giving to the less fortunate. In a sense, sure, but really what Christmas is about is celebrating the reason we have hope. It's about celebrating the moment when Jesus first breathed in our world, it's about celebrating OUR SAVIOR. Being kind and generous to the less fortunate and those around us is great, and makes Jesus happy, I'm sure. It just seems...hollow without the real meaning of the holiday. The holy day. Because that's what it is. It's the day Jesus entered our world so that he could die for us. It's not about giving each other presents, it's not about fulfilling a Christmas wish. It's about worshiping the baby that will grow up and give us all more than we could ever hope to dream for.

So, yes, be kind, be generous, give to others. But make sure you focus more on receiving Him whose purpose in coming to this world was to give to us, than on fighting the crowds for the cheapest deal on the latest electronic gadget. Even if it's for the person you love the most. The greatest gift isn't something you can buy - it's someone who's already there for the taking, no questions asked. It's not the people who won't receive any presents on Christmas morning that we should feel sorry for and try to help, it's the people who will wake up on Christmas morning and not know what it means to receive Jesus that we should feel sorry for and try to help. Jesus does want us to have generous hearts, to give of ourselves to others, but we need him first.

And that's what I think about that.