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My Commencement Speech to My Children by Sherry Antonetti

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:00:09 +0000

Parents don’t often get to give their children commencement speeches at graduation, but they do have the benefit of having produced a 18 year essay for their children revealing what they hope their children will hold in their hearts when they pack off for college. Most of parenting involves leaving the equivalent of mental post-it notes on how to study, how to organize, how to write, how to act and what is and is not important. We just hope as parents, most of those little memos stick.

For the fun of it, I started crafting my own commencement speech for the kids for when they finally leave home.

Children, for you will always be our children, we hope you will treasure your innocence. It is often not recognized as the gift it is until it has been eroded entirely. It came with you when you were born and we have shepherded you to this point as best we could, knowing that this lightness was important and beautiful and easily blown out by the world.

We hope you will recognize that your life is sacred. We have known this since before you were born. When you were small, we wrapped you in blankets and kept you warm, fed you good food and took delight in exposing you to beauty and truth and joy. Now you are grown. You must shepherd your own faith, mind and body. Do not abuse your body, mind or spirit. To protect yourself, pray daily. Be kind. Stay close to the sacraments; they will keep you strong.

Recognize that every second we draw breath, is a gift for each of us. Recognize that we are called to be examples to each other in all that we speak, write, think and do, but that because no one looks as good under a microscope or viewed through a magnifying glass, be charitable to others when they are being scruitinized. It is better to be kind than to appear clever.

Be engaged in your own life. The memories you cherish about adulthood and growing up won’t be the times you spent playing video games or watching television or surfing the net. They will contain stories about people and places and doing things; fishing and getting skunked, or eating an extra ice cream cone, watching the fireworks on top of a car or hiking into the mountains and seeing an eagle, snake or just the world differently. Real live involves seeing family and feasting with others. It’s hard and fattening and bubbling over and messy. The computer world is very pristine, neat, easy and controllable, but a life filled with virtual victories and face book only friends is a virtual life, ephemeral and wasting.

Try things that are hard, that you are not naturally good at doing. Take on challenges, then do what is expected and more. Be enthusiastic. People will appreciate and remember your energy even more than your competency. Take classes from people in love with their subjects. Read everything you can. Vote. Volunteer in some capacity somewhere on a weekly basis. Avoid becoming seduced by your own talent. You can do this if you laugh well, laugh often, and most of all, are able to laugh at yourself.

Be unafraid to taste new things, to listen to new music and to go new places. Welcome new people into your life and listen to others. They often have fine ideas worth hearing. Seek out friends that will build you up and be honest at the same time. Just remember, if you want astonishingly good friends, you have to be one. If you wish to live a life without regrets, you must govern your mind, heart, body and spirit now, and seek all that is good. You must also know what is good and if you don’t know, start asking. Say when your heart is troubled or your spirit is low, those that love you will hear and provide comfort. Be ready to return the favor.

When a child asks you to play, say yes. When dessert is offered, take it and say thanks. When you see someone needs help, give it. When someone asks for prayers, pray. These are the hallmarks of a well feasted life.

You are entering adulthood. You have and always have had, our permanent love and prayers. Don’t forget that when you leave, you will take part of us with you and we miss that part that is you, so call home.

Finally, if you want an extraordinary life, you can’t give a mediocre effort. A full life involves a fully invested heart. Be open to God with your whole life and I promise your life will be overflowingly full.

The Virtue of Routine Prayer by Sherry Antonetti

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:00:32 +0000

For the past year, my husband and I have engaged in a variant of the discipline of Saint Bridgette, saying 15 Our Fathers and 15 Hail Mary’s every day. It is designed to encourage souls to pray for the souls in Purgatory. What the addition of a formal discipline has done for our lives is require us to make it part of every day. There have been marathons when we were behind –“How many do you have to do today?” one would gently chide, followed by light hearted banter about being finished for the day or getting a head start on the next while the other was playing catch up. “Got to make it around the last seven of yesterday before I can start today.” It’s happened, but less and less often. It has become so much a part of the day that I find myself muttering the prayers when I’m not thinking of anything in particular.

I used to worry that such prayer “doesn’t count,” but God doesn’t mind my stutter steps at prayer as long as I keep trying. Such false starts and automatic reflexes indicate the body trying to imitate the spirit and bring the spirit along when perhaps the spirit has forgotten. I’m grateful for the reminder and the assist. What routine prayer gives is the opportunity for us to pour ourselves into the prayer. We are shaped by the prayer rather than the shaper of it. By not engaging in free form stream of consciousness blogging to God, we are less self focused as we petition our Lord with our troubles and trials, our hurts and weaknesses, pains, passions and joys. Some days, the discipline has made me pray for people I know and love, and other days, for those with whom I struggle to keep civil. We have prayed for our children and extended family, for friends, for finances, for our country, for our leaders, for our enemies and for those we’ve never met but know through the internet and news, are struggling.

A routine established discipline of prayer, be it the Divine Chaplet, the Rosary, Saint Bridgette’s or any other method prescribed by the church or established via the Saints will change not simply how one prays, but why. Just as a exercise regimen at first is a trial and chore but if maintained, eventually becomes a sanctuary and a moment of pampering in the day, a stress reliever and method of maintaining more than weight and health, so also prayer if begun and held to as a daily regimen, will become that refuge from all that can gouge out the joy and energy of the every day.

How do we seek Christ when we have all that is in any given day to do? We add one more thing to the daily list; a daily obligation to pray. Some days you will be Martha when this takes place, others you will be like Mary but since both are saints, and that means, it is good either way. Try it. It will transform your day and your relationship with God and others.

Rare by Sherry Antonetti

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:00:30 +0000

Imagine a field of 50,000 flowers, all the same kind and all considered rare. Now imagine people deciding they didn’t like the flowers. Imagine whole crowds of people uprooting and burning and destroying all but 5000 one at a time. If one believes that we ought to be stewards of the Earth and ensure the bio-diversity of our planet in perpetuity, such willful actions would be condemned as wasteful, wanton and selfish. To destroy a harmless plant for the sake of more room, for the sake of convenience when these precious plants are so fragile and so rare, is the height of self indulgent indifference to the broader community and posterity.

Statistically, one in every 800 births worldwide is a child with Down syndrome but as Twain said; there are lies, damn lies and statistics. In the US, over 90% of all children diagnosed with Down syndrome are destroyed in utero. Meaning, there are a lot of children that aren’t, that should be; flowers that are rare by design but have been destroyed intentionally one at a time. These children are unique. They harm no one. Traditionally they have been described as more patient, more gentle and more trusting than the general population, a side effect of their distinctive genotype and chromosomal disorder. The world however allows that these children, being less than perfect, should be discarded willingly.

After all, the world doesn’t need to learn to slow down, to trust more, to be more patient, to be more accepting of the reality that we should love absent accomplishment. The world does’t think we should be willing to have our preconceptions about the value of any life, specifically, the quality of a life we do not yet know, challenged. These children go unnoticed to their grave by the world, discarded in clinics as so much human waste by the tens of thousands annually.

Down syndrome children may never win Nobel Prizes, but they won’t ever be starting wars or actively shooting. They may never clean up the ocean, but they won’t be exploiting the Earth either. Children with Trisomy 21 may not write the next great American novel, but then most of us won’t get to that project any time soon. Harvard and Yale and Notre Dame may be closed options for them, but these same people have full open hearts. This world needs a society peopled with more generous hearts. Think of the beauty they might inspire.

Now Down Syndrome children shall never die out entirely as long as one woman is willing to take on the challenge of caring for a child whose future is defined by the world as decidedly less valuable, (though no more known than any other human being’s), but something else is becoming extinct in the process of a whole race of people being destroyed sight unseen for personal reasons.

The world at large would be angry at the senseless destruction of 45,000 rare flowers. It would be outraged at the murder of a football stadium filled with people but it does not see these 45,000 lost this year in the United States alone. It says nothing about the complicit destruction of 92% around the world of those diagnosed with Down syndrome. Society as a whole is cheapened by its willful missing of a beauty it never allowed itself to witness. It has lost out on a whole field of flowers, whose scent is gentle, and whose ways are kind. Shame on our ignorance. Pity our impatience. Forgive us our waste. Mourn our world’s loss..

Rewriting to get the Right Answer from the Heart by Sherry Antonetti

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:00:44 +0000

The other day a woman meeting my whole family for the first time asked, “So are you done?” I said Paul was my last one. Immediately after that, I felt a wrongness. Those words had revealed and rejected something. Was I done having children? I didn’t know. I knew I felt taxed and at times overwhelmed and certainly worried about having children in college and kids in diapers at the same time. I’d fully concede that having this many children is difficult and time consuming. It’s expensive and hard and there is always a task that needs doing but people have been asking, “Are you done?” since the blessing of my first being a son and my second, a daughter. Two minutes after aiding in delivery while sponging off my newborn girl, the nurse chirped, “Now you have the perfect family. Are you going to have any more?”

The expected answer was implied, “No.”

These days, the sight of nine children elicits this response and is usually followed before it can be answered with a proclamation either of “We’re done.” or “I’m done.” or other explanations of how children won’t be born in the future to the person asking the question.. The question “are you done?” has an expected answer of “Yes.”

Now I know that all families are gifts and that love is not measured by the number of children, but by the fullness of our hearts but there is something about that question, “Are you done?” that implies an impatience, an irritation at being offered a permanent perfect gift.. Sometimes I falter because I understand why someone would want to tell God, “Enough.” We are finite creatures, fearful of being asked to love infinitely. Original sin can make us cowards before the possibilities of permanent infinite bounty of God’s love.

But God likes to give us second chances to get to the right place, and so the question was put forth again three more times by a stranger, a professional acquaintance and a friend in that order. “I don’t know.” “We aren’t seeking or refusing anything we receive.” And “I still haven’t figured out how to respond to that question.” were my attempts to answer the question without answering or revealing too much. It still felt strained.

My sage husband suggested prayer.

The next day the question came again.. “This is our youngest son. Our latest.” I said to the woman in line who asked me as I pushed a three child stroller by her. She looked at them and beamed, “I think that’s wonderful.” The question stopped being asked. Thank goodness God gives us multiple chances. As a writer, I love rewrites to get just the right turn of phrase, to convey everything I hope to say in the fewest words possible. God apparently does too.

Copyright 2009 Sherry Antonetti

Post Partum ABC’s by Sherry Antonetti

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:52:01 +0000

As a mom of nine, who has had to fight to prevent the demon of post partum depression from entering into the equation, I crafted a formula I had to follow after each child. The following as the alphabet guide for surviving the transition into parenting and coming to terms with the vocation of motherhood.

a) Ask for help and accept it. Even Jesus had twelve apostles, what makes you think you should have to go it alone?

b) Wear Bright clothing. Joseph felt pretty darn special in his multi-colored coat, so why not you?

c) Call your friends when you feel like crying. Christ tried to tell his friends of his fears as he faced his coming crucifixion. Sharing your stories transforms suffering into struggling.

d) Have Date night 1 time a month minimum. Your marriage is a reflection of Christ’s love to your children. You need to maintain its health –healthy marriage =happy grown ups = more generous and happy parents =healthy happy family, even in the most difficult of situations.

e) Exercise daily (even one sit up or one push up counts). Your body is a temple that needs to be tended to, it is a healthy form of self love.

f) Food tips… Short cuts for good nutrition for you and your children

*ice cream = milk
*strawberries = brocolli
*french fries are a vegetable –so is ketchup

Eat a balanced diet but remember its okay to sometimes have a strawberry sundae with fries on the side with ketchup. Feasting is so common in the bible, it’s almost cliché. God wants us to be joyfully sustained spiritually and physically.

g) Mary gave us the rosary so we could tell God all our troubles –why do you think there are four sets of mysteries and all those decades? As the Mother of God, don’t you think she stressed about the little stuff occasionally?

h) Humor even in the form of canned jokes and bad puns can make even the worst moment of motherhood better. My favorite is my son’s first made up joke. Knock Knock. Who’s there? Car Wash! He thought it was hilarious and just remembering his joy as he told this joke to a friend who also thought it was the funniest thing she had ever heard, makes whatever it is I was brooding over, less overwhelming.

i) If you got dressed today,…give a cheer, some days, that’s all one can manage with small children. It counts.

j) Keep a journal in your purse to write down whatever, including your fears.

k) Keep the Diaper bag in the car

* Fully stocked (it only works this way)
* may require a trailer hitch

l) Add 15 minutes lag time (front and back) to each + every task

* Do not schedule more than 2 tasks in 24 hours

m) Put on music when the house or apartment feels cluttered so cleaning is less dreary, or when the home feels lonely or when despair threatens your internal motivation to act.

n) No one is perfect. When you are trying to make the picture perfect home or dinner or whatever it is, remember who your audience is, they don’t expect perfection, just love and attention and food on the table.

o) Off. Turn the TV and computer off and go outside or at least out.

p) Pray each day – even just God…..help. Pray for friends, pray for wisdom, pray when you are stuck in line at a light, it makes the time less tedious.

q) Queue things up. Schedule multiple kids hair cuts, dentists and doctors appointments together. Jesus was the ultimate multi-tasker, healing bodies and souls, forgiving sins and teaching the Pharisees at the same time. He didn’t just heal one leper, He did ten at a time!

r) Dad is the relief pitcher.. Feel free to call in the reliever from the bull pen.

s) Stash emergency chocolate in your purse, have it ready to share with someone else who has or is having a bad day.

t) Take time to read to yourself for even just 2 minutes –I keep books in the car.

u) You make lists; cross them out as they get done. Moses made lists.

v) Vary once in a while, make the list and rip it up.. Moses did this too.

w) Write your stories; there are thousands every day.

x) Schedules and meal planning help keep budgets and diets, and as a bonus, fight boredom. Have them posted EXTRA BIG somewhere central ( I know that seems odd, but it is true). There are seasons and schedules and feasts in Churches and states and Governments and they are all well advertised in prominent places to ensure proper preparation and planning. The family is no different.

y) Accept that part of who you are forevermore, is Mom, and there is no such thing as being “just a mom.” A mom of one is vital to that one child. A mom of seven is just as vital to each of her children individually.

z) Nap in the car with the kids if they fall asleep in their car seats. Zzzzzzzz.

Even God rested after creating the world in six days. You helped create a life and you are mortal –of course you are tired! It took nine months to get to this point, give yourself at least nine months to fully recover.

Lastly, remember: Doing all the little things with great love is what God calls all of us to do. It’s hard and sometimes repetitive and frustrating, but it is a great and simple calling to love these little ones well. When you feed your baby, you have fed the hungry. When you bathe and dress your children, you have clothed the naked. All of this is the work of building the kingdom of God. Rejoice and be glad.

The Grace of a Pinched Nerve by Sherry Antonetti

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:19:29 +0000

Over the course of weeks, I’d been praying to be more responsive, more present, more loving to my daughter, to this one daughter with whom I seem to easily slip into having a cooler heart. She is romantic, sentimental, sweet and dreamy. Sometimes I want her to be more focused and disciplined, particularly when it is homework time.

The one course my daughter takes seriously is religion. Last week, she had a question for her family. What was our favorite encounter with Jesus? One child said the feeding of the 5000, and wryly commented on how we do that every week. Another spoke about Jesus throwing the money changers out of the temple. He was struggling with an Ethics class and peers. I wasn’t much in the mood to answer her questions as I felt preoccupied with the need to fix dinner, to get the family moving along on the evening routine but I answered, “Ask and ye shall receive.” Her own answer caught me up short, “The Resurrection,” but admittedly, I did not ponder what her answer revealed about her heart at the time. I buried it in the business of being practical. “The homework is done.” I could check it off.

That Sunday, I woke up with a hard pinch in my neck. Dutifully, we began the routine of getting ready for mass. Having loaded the car with most of our children, we recognized our middle daughter had not yet come down stairs. A quick run upstairs revealed she was still asleep. So my husband took those ready for Sunday and I busied her about getting ready so we could make the next mass time. My neck hurt terribly and it hurt my mood. We’d been doing so well. I didn’t snap but I wasn’t warm either.

We drove to the church. I wasn’t mentally ready for mass or talk. My daughter started to chatter and I shushed her because of it. She sat silently, staring out the window, seemingly uninjured by my coolness. Parking was difficult and I had to back in the car. She saw me wince as I looked back as I parked. “Are you okay?” she asked gently. Stressed, I brusquely explained about the pinched nerve. Walking into the church, my daughter put her hand up on my neck and began to massage it. Now I admittedly am a bit standoffish about being touched. I wanted to pull away. But the pain was so severe, the touch melted my resolve.

Then I noticed that the hand stayed there. It rubbed my neck and stayed there all the way through to the Gospel. It returned when we sat for the homily. Her hand stayed until the consecration. When she finally put her hand down, the pain remained but the frost on my heart has long since thawed. My daughter’s love was revealed in her hand and all I could feel was “Lord I am not worthy.”

When mass finished, she wanted to go to the bake sale but couldn’t decide which treat she wanted the family to enjoy, a chocolate Bundt or a blueberry pound cake. She looked to me and asked, “Is your neck better Mom?”

It wasn’t but I nodded and swallowed hard as the pinch went up and down.

“Which one should we pick?” she asks, her eyes are bright.

I recalled my mother’s response to my daughter’s assignment, the healing of the blind man after the Pharisees asked, “Who sinned?” and Jesus’ response. The man was allowed to suffer so that the Glory of God might be revealed through Christ. The pain in the neck allowed me to see what a pain in the neck I’d been. The suffering had brought me closer to my daughter and begun the healing a far greater hurt, a fearful and cool heart.

I looked at the cakes and we bought both.

50 ways to Save the World Today by Sherry Antonetti

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:00:53 +0000

This piece was inspired by a fellow writer who created a thread asking how we could save the world and if the world needed saving. It was not a religious forum but it asked a big question, what can we do to make the world better. My personal belief is that the world cannot be saved except one person, one moment at a time. What we hope to save the world from, is despair, hopelessness, pain, rage, wrath, waste, sloth, isolation, neglect, carelessness and indifference. What we hope is to create a world filled with people who act with charitable intent, careful forethought and great kindness, energy and generosity. What we hope is to reflect Christ to others through our actions, thoughts and words.

How do we do this? One moment, one person, one act of will at a time.

50) Exercise today.
49) Learn to play an instrument.
48) Volunteer with a charity of your choice.
47) Keep informed on the news.
46) Smile at someone.
45) Exercise the benefit of doubt towards someone else
44) Read to a kid.
43) Go outside.
42) Play.
41) Meet your neighbors.
40) Write a letter.
39) Remember birthdays.
38) Thank the custodian at your workplace, or the person in the fastfood restaurant.
37) Pick up one piece of litter on the side of the road.
36) Turn off the computer, the radio, the televison, blackberry, cellphone and talk.
35) Fix a dinner that takes time.
34) Write your Senator/representative
33) Schedule a dental appointment and a physical check up. Go.
32) Give away something to charity.
31) Write something beautiful.
30) Call your Mom, or remember her.
29) Forgive someone in your heart, if you can’t in person. Mean it.
28) Put fresh flowers on the table.
27) Pray
26) Root for the home team.
25) Dance with your children
24) Fix something in your house you’ve been meaning to get to.
23) Open a savings account.
22) Invite a family or friend over to dinner.
21) Plan a reunion.
20) Thank a teacher that made a difference to you.
19) Read a book you’ve never read but should have.
18) Plant a garden or weed one.
17) Schedule a date night, plan it.
16) Rescue a dog or cat.
15) Go to bed early.
14) Swallow a criticism
13) Go for a walk.
12) Ask someone else how you can help.
11) Be unafraid to speak your mind.
10) Learn your family tree and history.
9) When no one else is willing to volunteer, stand up.
Give someone talking your full attention rather than formulating your own clever response or multi-tasking.
7) Keep the promises you make.
6) Visit the sick.
5) Feed the hungry.
4) Banish smugness from your own mind and heart.
3) Recycle.
2) Become one of those people others want to be like and be near, that makes people laugh, that gets things done, that listens well and cares.
1) Don’t quit.

As a Catholic, I would add stay close to the sacraments and read the scripture daily. Now I have to turn off the computer and start doing.

Copyright 2009 Sherry Antonetti

One Mom’s “Humility Weight Loss” Program by Sherry Antonetti

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:00:53 +0000

Motherhood is a lifelong lesson in humility. In the beginning, you surrender your body. When you first see the child face to face, any part of your heart still your own gets engulfed. But the ego takes a while to whittle down to nothingness, and that comes with the long haul of raising a human being.

I’ve lost two pounds of pride in the past week.

That Monday, I was supposed to feel smart. After all, I had managed to get a piece published. My cousin had called to hire me to write on a grant. Then my ten year old son asked me to play Stratego, and he schooled me.

I didn’t get even close. I found every one of his bombs. Twice. The first game, he found my flag in three easy moves using scouts. The second game, I snapped at him for watching as I arranged my pieces, certain I was telegraphing the location of my flag with every flick of a hand. I tried doing a shell game as I shuffled pieces but then I got confused. He mowed down one row and just flooded the back side, destroying my carefully laid defenses. I believe the casualty rate was 80% and 20% for him. Maybe General Custard had it worse, but few can chalk up such appalling numbers on a field of battle in such consistent play and not be removed from command.

My son tried to console me. “Maybe next time, you’ll do better.” He smiled. “It’s the first time I’ve won.” He grinned again. He had been playing his dad and older brother. I wondered if the Stratego skill was on the Y chromosome. My son eagerly set up the game again. “How about chess?” I offered. No. “Scrabble?” Nyet. “Go Fish?” He shook his head.

The phone rang. Desperate for a reprieve from another beating, I pounced on the receiver. “Hey Honey, I saw your piece. The article looks good.” I temporarily basked in glory again. “She was smart once.” I thought.

My son jumped on the phone. “Dad! Dad! I crushed Mom! It was beautiful! She never had a clue where my flag was and I Won!” I let them finish talking and set up my board.

My other son came into the room, looked at my reactive set up to the prior game’s obliteration and started giving me pointers. Proof that it really had been as bad as I thought; my victorious son did not protest my getting help. He even offered some strategic tips. Fifteen minutes of tutorial on faints and defenses, strategic losses and the effective use of the spy later, I still lost.

After a perfect record of 0 and 6, my son must have felt bad, as he didn’t ask for another game. Maybe I wasn’t enough of a challenge. He put away his game board and disappeared for a while. Just when I was starting to feel perky again, my son returned with a new game board under his harm. “You need to work on strategy Mom. So I thought maybe we should play checkers instead.”

I’m not telling who won, but the scale says I lost another pound.

What Mary Understands and Can Help Us Understand by Sherry Antonetti

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:00:47 +0000

A few years ago, a friend of mine lamented the troubles she faced with her only son. Hearing her anguish about his schooling, his behavior and how hard it was to parent him, I handed her the rosary I had in my purse.

“But I’m Jewish.” She responded, looking at the beads.

“So talk to her, from one Jewish mother to another.”

We had a good laugh and she took the beads and draped them over her menorah. She even said it helped.

Mary understands so much of what causes our hearts to soar or ache. She understands the immense difficulty of following God’s call, and the only response appropriate. Mary understands being poor. She understands having no place to go and needing shelter. She faced the locked doors of the world and showed that love could make any place warm and welcoming, even a stable.

The blessed mother knows the nature of an unplanned pregnancy better than anyone before or since.. She can speak to the pregnant woman who worries. She can speak to those who face the pending suffering and possible death of their child.. She also recognizes exactly why the newly expecting woman is frightened. She knows the cross. She knows the whole path to Calvary. She understands how when faced with the opportunity to love and sacrifice, or close off and avoid being cracked open by God, how many of us fear becoming that more sacrificial, more loving person that serves God first.

Many people including my friend don’t quite understand why Catholics love this woman so much. But I see Mary and see how relevant she is, how timeless. We can see so much of our own lives in this simple woman’s whole story if we just look. This Queen of Heaven understands how the world can be physically and emotionally against the simple tasks of living. She and her husband fled to Egypt so she knows the life of a stranger in a foreign land, and the pain of the unwelcome stares at the immigrant. Mary has known poverty and simplicity and scarcity. She has known the domestic life and the demands of the day that trumped becoming a person of power or influence or wealth, and yet by living that life so completely, she met known kings of the world and the King of the World.

The Mother of God is so reachable, so knowing of the great things which cause any of us pain. She holds great sympathy for the family searching for a lost child, as she held that moment when she could not find her son, and greater understanding of how hard it is to watch one’s child suffer, or cradle them in death. She has known the quiet house feeling of the widow and heard the gossip of those who watched her son speak and act and did not believe. So for me, Mary has known all the little and big ways in which a soul can be pierced by sin and yet withstood it all.

She calls us and tells us how best to follow Christ in his ministry. “I am the Lord’s handmaiden. Let it be done to me as You have said.” is the response to God’s call however it comes. “This is my son. Listen to Him. Do what he says.” Mary knows a life suffused in love is what God wants for us as well: through moments of joy, in times of sorrow, in those events which seem luminous with love and those that transcend all we could explain. Mary understands the simple beauty of birth and the great agony of death and all the moments in between. She shows how to be present in all occasions. The Rosary reveals all the rich full moments of this humble Jewish woman’s life and how they reflect a true ardent relationship with God. God calls, and the answer supposed to always be a willing “Yes.”

I still have a rosary in my purse my friend once draped over her menorah. I gave her one to keep for herself. Mary is there for those times when we have a problem that seems beyond solving, beyond coping, beyond understanding; so talk to the Blessed Mother. She’ll listen, she’ll understand and she’ll help reveal how to find Christ in all things.

The Lesson of Paul’s Kiss by Sherry Antonetti

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:00:20 +0000

Every once in a while, I’m reminded that my son has Downs Syndrome. Most of the time, my son is just my son and the day has its rhythms. He gets up. He needs a change. He needs to eat. He needs his meds. He needs to be cleaned up from breakfast and given time on the floor to practice crawling. He needs a nap and then the cycle begins again for lunch. Paul’s small size belies his age and so the delay that would otherwise be thrown into sharp relief by past experience with children this age is muted. He looks six months. He is almost one. He “revs” in place and tries to get up on all fours and sits with a little support. He says “Mommmm” and “Daaaaad” and eats mush and laughs at his own face in the mirror. These are things that babies do at six months. The things he does and his size allows my mother’s heart to be fooled into downplaying his condition.

But then I go to the grocery store or the park or for a walk and there will be a child the same age as Paul and I am immediately grounded in reality.

This past week, reality came at Sunday mass. She is round, she is plump and she is trying to stand. Her mother hands her cheerios which she greedily grabs and pops in her mouth. The mom does not worry about choking. The child does not choke. I do not want to be haunted by his diagnosis and so I bury those thoughts about mental retardation and where on the bell curve my son might fall. I discipline my mind to focus on how happy he is, how the physical therapist said he’s making great progress and the fact that in his first year of life, he’s already beat the odds by surviving open heart surgery. It doesn’t work.

Seeing the daughter toddle step towards her mother makes me stare at my son a bit harder. Just as his size masks his age, his face does not betray his Trisomy 21. No one knows unless I tell them that he has it. Right now, his handicapping condition lurks. Every parent of a child with disabilities fantasizes about not just having their child overcome the condition they’ve been diagnosed with, but somehow transcending the condition, rendering the fear that dogs anyone having a child with special needs, powerless and empty. I am no different. Forced to see how he is different, I pine for what is the same, then I grow annoyed with myself for not loving my son better.

One of Paul’s graces is linked to his condition. Paul forces the tempo of our lives to slow down, and all ten of us to pay attention. His brothers know when he got his first tooth (July 2nd); one of his sisters announced when he started rolling over (he could do it before he had surgery and spent the 41 days in the hospital being annoyed at being tied down); and I woke to the first said “Mommmmmm.” (the week of Easter). The jaded parents that had seen everything 8 times before, now marvel as if this was our first child, because everything Paul accomplishes is a triumph over adversity, a story of overcoming a barrier that we as his parents cannot yet gage. “Behold, I make all things new. “ comes to mind.

The priest is speaking about how radically Christ wanted the people to take Him into their hearts, to gnaw on Jesus, to feast on the bread of life. My son suddenly lurches forward in my arms and gives my nose the largest loudest most ardent kiss he can manage. My face is dripping with drool as he completes his kiss with a pleased bobbing in my arms at the people behind me. My son has just gnawed at me the way I’m supposed to gnaw at Christ. Paul’s kiss revealed God’s love and how we’re supposed to love God. In that fragile impulsive moment I suddenly no longer envied even a little, the mom with the girl who could easily eat cheerios. I feasted on my son’s merry blue eyes and expressive smile as he delighted that his mom had fixed her eyes on him.

I will never go hungry, those eyes will always be like this, holding this much light and love. God in His wisdom, gave us this son on top of all the other blessings that are our four other girls and four other boys, to push us beyond what we thought we could handle, so we would rely on Him. God gave us this son that needed more than we could easily manage so we would need to be fed, would want to feast on Christ. God gave us Paul to gnaw on our hearts. God gave us Paul so Paul could throw our hearts open and make them roomy for Christ.

Poster Children for NFP by Sherry Antonetti

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:00:48 +0000

Showing up for mass on time and worried that I didn’t look at the schedule to see if three of the oldest kids need to serve, we huddled guiltily in the back of the church. Some of the ushers know that this is our habit, to send the oldest five upstairs to watch the mass and for my husband and me to wrestle with the “non sentient” crowd unobserved by the majority of the parishioners. We try to disperse to muffle the amount of noise we make, but usually, the two, three year or nine month old will out us to the rest of the parish with a few well placed random happy screams. There’s just no way to be invisible with nine in tow.

At the back of the church there are folding chairs for the stragglers and for us, and a table where one can pick up handy literature on the needs of the food pantry, materials concerning pending legislation that will affect Catholic schools or the Church, teachings on Abortion, flyers for CYO and for retreats, and now, a giant poster covered with sunflowers advertising Natural Family Planning. Sitting with nine children in the back, it was hard not to giggle with the backdrop.

Still, upon reflection, I came to understand that we are NFP poster children. Only if the goal is to have no children, are we not. The fact that we have nine is more a tribute to my stellar book keeping skills and our great love, than the efficiency or effectiveness of NFP. If you succeed in keeping your family small using this method, it is because you have practiced the virtues of obedience and patience and sacrifice –all beautiful virtues which God loves. You have followed God’s plan. If you sometimes ignore, forget, or willfully chose to ignore the times when one must abstain to avoid conception, you have abandoned yourself to life, to love, to a future of hope, and allowed yourself to be used in the great first gift of creation, also virtues that God loves. Either way, NFP places you firmly on the path to God.

And the bonus of all this, a man with his young daughter came by and walked in our midst to the table. He took up a flyer for the next session teaching NFP. Whether he did it out of desire for the massive number of sunflowers we had surrounding us or not, it didn’t matter.

The usher came by right after that moment, and gave me a wink.

P.S. It wasn’t our week to serve, or at least, it wasn’t our week to have kids on the altar up front.

Loaves and Fishes

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:00:54 +0000

The other day I heard a popular interpretation of the feeding of the 5000, wherein Jesus doesn’t really multiply the loaves and fishes, He just inspires everyone by His generosity to share what they have. Such an explanation of this revelation of Christ’s purpose and being is very satisfying to the 21st century intellect that views actual miracles as being rather simplistic. “It’s not like He’s a Magic Jesus.” That sort of thinking leads to a race to explain away all the miracles of Jesus via “ordinary explanations,” to eliminate any real reason for Wonder or Awe at the Christ.

Even though I understood mentally the idea that the greater miracle was the moving of men’s hearts than the creation of food for the masses, such an interpretation has always bothered me. It wasn’t until I heard a discussion of Transubstantiation that I recognized what about that understanding of this particular miracle bothered my spirit. The bread and wine, under the scrutiny of a microscope remains the bread and wine, yet when consecrated, is Jesus’s body and blood. This belief is the crux of Catholicism, it is what separates Us from the rest of Christianity. The Eucharist is not a symbol or a reminder, it is Christ present fully in our midst. We repeat “This is what we believe,” every time we say Amen in receiving communion.

The dual nature of Christ has plagued people’s capacity for faith since the early Church. Yet accepting if not understanding that dualism is critical to being authentically Catholic.

Jesus was fully man and fully God and neither reality prevented the other. Mary was both the Virgin and the Mother of God. The answer repeated itself over and over again in other stories of Christ’s power and authenticity. Lazarus was both dead and resurrected. The lame man had his sins forgiven and his legs healed. Was it not all the more likely that Christ in the blessing, breaking and sharing of the loaves and the fishes, both fed the people and inspired others to imitate His example?

The 21st century urge to turn Jesus into “simply a good teacher” is nothing new. People have been denying Christ since they first heard of his existence, be they Herod, Peter, Paul, Sarte, John Lennon or Christopher Hitchens.. Jesus is not magic, He is Miraculous. He knows following Him is difficult and dangerous, and thus tells us “Be Not Afraid.” He knows we need nothing short of the impossible to comprehend the difference between us and God and to believe, and thus He takes up and endures the Cross and Crucifixion. We cannot comprehend His Full Humanity without his Death, nor His full Divinity without the Resurrection.

Pass the loaves and fishes please.

How Not to Bring Your Children to Mass

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:00:06 +0000

Bringing small children to mass is always an adventure. Jesus wasn’t kidding when he said “Suffer the little children to come to me.” Some days, even the bribe of donuts after church fails to secure a toddler’s cooperation. As a veteran of these faith trials, I offer the following suggestions to make the weekly obligation more child friendly and faith filled.

Don’t Pretend you aren’t going to mass. This means the kids shouldn’t be loaded up with such items as iPods, game boys, multiple cars, blocks and barbies. Books can be a lifesaver, but even reading should be somewhat selective. Any child that can read, should follow along in the misselette. Any child that can’t read, might be diverted by a picture bible or Catholic oriented story. I’ve seen some parents pacify squirmy four year olds with a quiet reading of the gospel. Toddlers may need a toy or two to keep them busy. Such toys should be hard to lose, noiseless and ultimately, so toddler oriented that older children won’t be watching them play with envy in their hearts.

Feed them at home. Some parents walk into mass with a plan of throwing food at their children to maintain silence. Armed with bags from the local fast food establishment containing anything from lollipops to pancakes, they figure as long as the kids are quiet, it doesn’t matter if they’re eating. Bringing food for health reasons is one thing, but Mass is a communal experience and every sane child that sees another child chowing down on food in the cry room is thinking the same thing. “I want some.”

Pretending they’re not kids. Expecting children to sit quietly, eyes front, silent and well behaved for an entire sixty minutes is not recognizing children are children. They will have moments of great reverence and in the next two seconds, have an elbow fight with their sibling over pew space. One will sing loudly to emphasize the fact that the other is not singing. Breaking the mass down into parts helps a child to cope with the length of the liturgy better. Opening song to Gospel is one part, homily to Offertory hymn is a second part, Offertory to Our Father, Kiss of Peace to Go in Peace.

Having a reward system. Dividing the liturgy into digestible parts helps a child to settle into the liturgy and anticipate what comes. Earning a star for each section of the mass warrants a trip to the park, a donut, or at the very least, public praise. The system should be clear such that if a child mentions to the priest they got “three stars for this mass,” minimal explanations are necessary.

Pretending they’re not your kids. This technique doesn’t work well if you attend mass regularly at the parish. Besides, siblings will out you if you pretend you know nothing about the toddler that is screaming on the floor, and that just gets awkward.

Being present to your children at mass. Just as sitting with the kids at dinner helps with manners, being present to your children will help them be present to others at mass. After all, as the parents, we’re the first example. Dress nicely. Be on time. Sing the songs yourself, with feeling. Read along with emerging reader. Explain what is happening at the Liturgy of the Word and in the Eucharistic Prayer. Encourage the older children to join the choir, altar serve or act as readers. Invest them in being part of the mass just as assertively as one would basketball or academics, to instill in them the idea that this is sacred. This is who we are. This is what we believe.

Finally, when mass is ended, and we say “Thanks be to God,” mean it not because you’ve survived another week of going to mass with a two-year old, but because you welcome the week ahead, having received food for the journey.

The Timeless Transparency of Wisdom

Sherry Antonetti — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:28:04 +0000

My first experience of the wisdom of Cardinal Newman was the “Newman Center” where my parents served as part of a “happening” team. The core questions asked at any retreat were “Who am I?” “Who am I in relationship to others?” and “Who am I in relationship to God?” I was only five at the time, but I thought this was how all adults were. What a great world! They got together, they colored on posters, they talked, they played, they ate and before they dispersed at the end of the weekend, they went to mass and sang their hearts out.

In high school I had forgotten this perception of adulthood as teenagers are want to do. One of the key speakers and participants at those retreats became my high school drama and religion teacher. He tried mightily to get our high school endlessly smug brains to understand that these three questions could collapse into one. “Who I am in relationship to God?” revealed all else. But being teens, immersed in the immediacy of our own emerging personhood, it remained a struggle to consider anything that hadn’t just happened yesterday as important or germane to existence and identity. God was important and all, loving, but out there, alien and kept at a deliberate distance like teachers and parents and grown-ups in general.

At college, my English major required I take Victorian literature. The teacher was an imposingly tall pencil thin woman with a wispy British accent. Her eyes sparkled as she handed out copies of John Henry Newman’s “The Uses of Knowledge,” and instructed us to compose a piece discussing when we had encountered “Truth.” The 18th century language was dense and difficult and thus I scratched at the surface of the Cardinal’s words, but was too grounded in the present campus life to fall backwards into memory and summon these moments when others were seeking to give me a banquet of all the best thoughts and words available from the entire world of history and to reveal God via relationship. I wrote about the college professors I loved for loving their subjects. It wasn’t wrong or inaccurate, but it was incomplete. The present was still too dominant.

Both the teacher from my high school and the teacher from my college have long since died. I had the privilege of visiting the former and rubbing his aching feet at the hospital before he passed and had kept in occasional touch with the later via phone calls and other university friends before she died of Cancer. But both of them gave lessons that stayed and stuck. Both were in their own ways, devotees of Cardinal Newman’s “Idea of the University,” presenting to the youth all the best that the world provided. They understood that pursuing Truth contained within that quest, all truths. They warned that outside of Truth, one might still find knowledge, but not wisdom. One might find strength and power, but not restraint or mercy. They understood and tried to teach that all the best that is said and done and thought in the world, is of God and reveals God. They also tried to impart the wisdom that all we do, say and think everyday reveals “Who we are,” “Who we are in relationship to others,” and “Who we are in relationship to God.”

It took the better part of 43 years for me to return to the wisdom of being five; that I should hope for a time when we gather and play and talk and eat and before we disperse, participate in the Mass and sing our hearts out so that who we are in relationship to God, is who we are everywhere all the time.

Such a Lovely Place

Sherry Antonetti — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:16:13 +0000

My husband loves the tiny bees that specialize in working the smallest of blossoms. He can stand at his garden and watch them with a still intensity that reveals this is where he relaxes. The garden is where he finds the diverse abundant beauty of creation and catches a glimpse of God’s imagination and creative joy. For me, it is when I fish. There’s a moment during the time while standing waste deep in saltwater, when the immense nature of the sky and the forever line of the ocean fall away. In that quiet moment, the unknown quality of being surrounded by two realms in which I cannot live or freely move (ocean and sky), makes me know that even given all that, I belong.

One of the questions I had been asking over the past year as part of research for another writing project I am doing is “Why is beauty a virtue?” I have read pieces that discussed “What is beauty?” which mostly centered on discerning “What is true beauty?” But the question of beauty, of how one knows it, and why it resonates and what it reveals, did not indicate why for me, beauty was a virtue in and of itself. To me, it remained an attribute, a taste, subject to the relative judgment of the observer, until yesterday.

It was a muggy summer morning and I had turned on the classic rock station to help jump start the kitchen routine. “Hotel California” came on and I immediately was transported back to sticky southeast Texas mornings at the beach with buttery yellow cheese grits, orange juice and a side of black edged bacon of my childhood. I supposed that I was feeling sentimental and was about to change the station if only not to be reminded of what I wouldn’t be experiencing this summer, when my daughter pointed outside. A rabbit had made our backyard his home and specifically, the space under our deck. The bunny had hopped out at the first lines of the song and now was standing on its haunches with its ears opened wide towards the musical riffs of Glenn Fry, Don Henley and Joe Walsh.

Between my daughter and the musically attuned critter, I was forced to allow myself to remember all the things I loved that weren’t available to me, family and places lost to time and distance. We watched in silence as the creature stayed for the entirety of the song and then hopped off to find breakfast when the announcer came on to give the morning news. My daughter speculated that the rabbit must have wondered, “What created that wonderful noise for a time? Why?” Then she said he must have gone off to share his experience with all the other bunnies out there so they’d know such things existed. And I had to marvel, here I’d been thrashing and struggling with this virtue of beauty and my child already knew.

Why is beauty a virtue? Because it reveals thought and love and care and attention to detail and above all, has no apparent value, only intrinsic value. There is no practical use to all the colors and diversity of everything that our God has made, only love explains the necessity of stars and oceans that seem to go on forever and fish that have spots of black and yellow and yet each have a pattern all their own and flowers that require a specific type of tiny bee to pollinate. God loves us to all excess, and thus paints everything from chains of our DNA to the farthest galaxy we can dare to see through our invented technology that mirrors His far seeing eyes, that we might marvel at all the unnecessary beauty and thought and attention to detail. But He in His wisdom, doesn’t make them permanent because then we wouldn’t appreciate them for what they are. A rabbit that is always there, we would not stop to observe. Hotel California would be an awful place to be stuck forever, but it’s good to hear on the radio once and a while. Be still and know I am there. Beauty invites us to be still and know.

The Vocation to Wear Joy

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:00:27 +0000

There is an internet email that most Catholics have seen, that includes a picture of the former pope with the founder of the Missionary of Charity. Both are sterling examples of the vocational life, and in this “Year of the Priest,” ought to be considered study by those seeking discernment, for their solid theological reasoning, their strong body of good works and the total witness they bore through the ends of their lives to their love of our savior, Jesus Christ. Both individuals though not beatified, reveal through the public story of their complete lives, what a total commitment to Christ requires and how that same commitment transforms everything.

“I have loved Jesus in the night.”

For me, blessed Mother Teresa has become a recent close companion. Her admonition to do little things with great love is a daily mantra when I feel taxed by toddlers who move from room to room, finding markers, dumping laundry, ferreting out apples from the refrigerator whenever I let my guard down, attempt to do something outside their eyesight, or take a phone call. But the silence she felt in her prayer life, that closed suffering she endured, was a great gift to the modern world. She witnessed how faith endures and becomes purified, by the silent agony at the foot of the cross.

As a person who loved Christ first and only, she could see her own flaws and how they kept her from her beloved. Every sin, even original sin, keeps us from full communion with Christ. All of our ego must be surrendered if we would enter into the kingdom of God. We must shed everything to be as we once were, in Eden before the fall, and even that requires God’s grace and our willing submission. Our first sin was a fundamental act of disobedience. Mother Teresa understood in her deepest heart, that all sin kept us from Christ. She went through a purgatory of the spirit while living, such that she would be able to begin her work of great love in little things in Heaven immediately. We need her little ways that held such steely conviction despite spiritual suffering. Hers was the model of how we must be the Good Samaritan, how we must embrace the suffering and bring them comfort because it is right. Hers was the quiet answer to the many shouts of atheism that currently are the rage.

She loved Jesus in the night. She was a faithful virgin waiting for the bridegroom, not knowing the hour but knowing it would come.

Likewise, we needed Pope John Paul II’s charismatic rock solid faith. His humility and straight forward capacity to present to the world the model of a Father in love with all of his children was as inspiring as his quiet endurance of his physical sufferings. His was a model of how we should live bravely and speak truthfully and love always, and that these things would even allow one to walk bravely towards death, while all the time holding onto life and embracing the beauty and goodness of this world. He was the faithful servant who understood that taking up one’s cross and following Christ had to be done joyfully if it would be done as Christ directed, and that this included suffering unto death in an unrushed manner.

Modern sensibilities confuse genuine joy as emulated by these two holy people with a Disney Princess type exuberance generated from unfounded optimism based on an ignorance of upcoming trials.. Neither Mother Teresa nor Pope John Paul were unschooled in the brutal nature of our existence or the ways in which the very tasks they were assigned could devour rather than perfect their souls. They knew that all their works could turn to dust, that there would always be more poor, that not everyone would hear what they had to say or embrace it, and still they knew that these works, these tasks, these sufferings were crafted to burn away from them what kept them from Christ. Fully aware of their need for God’s mercy, both Pope John Paul and Mother Teresa put on joy like a cloak for their daily lives’ work. So we are called, to put on joy when we are engaged in the humblest of activities, and facing the most dire of situations. Both Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul allowed their vocations to rewrite their lives in a radical manner. That is what a true vocation does; it remakes us in Christ’s image when we consent to wear joy in all that we do.

Let us hope that this year, many fine men take up the call to wear joy.

A Heart with No Walls

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:00:18 +0000

The minutia of this world can oppress and does so with scandalous ease. Bills, dust bunnies, the scale, the cost of gas, a bad test grade, and the discovery of a hornets’ nest, all can collectively make one just feel, not depressed but seriously annoyed and fatigued by daily life. It is easy to fall into the trap of forgetting that this breath, the house filled with loved ones, the food on the table and the flowers in the garden, all have greater value and fill the world more than, the negative weights no matter how hard the numbers actually are on the scale, on the bill or on the math quiz.

A year ago, I discovered I was pregnant with Paul. Then I discovered he had Trisomy 21. A friend literally piled her kids in the car and drove over that morning and showed up at my door and asked how I was doing. She brought with her, three huge chocolate bars. I threw up a wall. I made a joke. She wasn’t buying. She put her arms out and said, “Hugs first.” And slowly, she broke down the barriers I had put in place to prevent myself from feeling too much pain. I had thought I was being strong.

This has been the year of learning not to throw up walls, to stop trying to do everything or anything so fiercely that I refuse to acknowledge what I feel or what others might. Of learning what Saint Paul means when he says, “When I am weak, I am strong.” It has not been easy. Writing comes naturally to me, and when one writes, one is the author of one’s world. I get to pick the topic, the tone, the images. Writing can become a monologue. It can become a wall to create beautiful worlds and images, while ignoring the real world and real feelings.

Now that same friend, who understood that I should not throw walls up around my heart because it was breaking from fear, is facing her own crucible with her own daughter and a life threatening condition. And there she is, writing in the most unselfish manner imaginable, about her daughter’s condition, about her need for prayer, and about how blessed she feels to have been given such a girl to hold for all this short time and for all the time she may yet have. She has simply asked for all of us to pray. Her heart has no walls right now, she wants everyone regardless of creed, politics or nationality, to pray.

We are called to have hearts that overflow, that cannot contain their depth of feeling. The world would have us medicate or wall up those experiences, end them prematurely, to avoid the continual ache that comes from feelings we cannot manage and situations we cannot control. But as Catholics, as people, we cannot despair and end feelings to end our pain. Shutting ourselves to end our pain does not end the pain, only the ability to acknowledge it. It will come out in some fashion, distorting our ability to love others, to feel.

And so I pray for the lives of all children of families facing the severe cross of a fatal or threatening or permanent pervasive condition. These families, these children live their lives more transparently than the rest of us who forget that we too have a fatal, permanent life threatening condition.

And so now, when I return to the dust bunnies and the bills and the pounds and the homework, it is all bonus, it is all stuff which matters and which doesn’t, because in the end, we are all nestled. We are all held in God’s hands whether we know it or not, in a great heart that has no walls.

And if we do know it, what a safe place to be.

The Great Permeating Power of God’s Grace

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:00:30 +0000

When the news broke that abortionist doctor, George Tiller had been shot dead in his Lutheran church wherein he served as an usher, people began to pray. Over and over again, Pro-life advocates and organizations denounced the evil act of killing a man. They denounced the despair that led to this man’s murder. Political opponents posited that this singular act revealed the inherent radical nature of Pro-life causes. Anyone committed to pro-life and other serious Catholic social teaching issues knows that those causes are hurt when people advocating the protection of the innocent, act out in violence. And so we pray for the repose of George Tiller’s soul, and that of his murderer, and for healing for all those affected by this violent act. God’s grace reached deep enough to move those who had fought and still fight against the pro-abortion forces, to pray for this person who so zealously sought to perform abortions, even late term, past 5 months.

We must pray and pray often and with great love and zeal for the lavish grace of God’s mercy on all abortionists’ souls. We must ask God to change their hearts, to bring them to Him, to convert them as he did Saul to Paul. We must ask God to mold us not to resent them as the older brother in the Prodigal son, and for the mercy on all of us as we struggle to do only what is right and what is holy.

There are people who feel very frustrated by the state of the world. They feel impatient, as if all the prayer and fasting and talking and dialogue has only allowed those who oppose abortion to be trivialized and ignored. Despair is one of the favorite tools of the devil, it allows for inaction, it allows for indifference, it allows for the existence of evil. Therefore, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of self indulgent despair.

We must be able to articulate why we believe what we believe. We must be willing to speak when the opportunity presents itself, without fear. We must pray and speak out. But the very same moral reasoning that brought us to not merely believe but know all human life is sacred, also demands that we not despair when the world rejects the message. Our calling is to convert hearts, not to stop those hearts that disagree or even act against us. Over and over again, Christ reveals that He never wants us to kill or maim for our faith, only to be willing to die to ourselves for it.

We need to remember to pray. To those who bemoan that praying is insufficient, that action is called for, never underestimate the power of prayer. We often dismiss prayer, particularly when what we ask for is denied or delayed. We should remember, God hears all our prayers and answers them according to His great love for us. None of us are forgotten. Not George Tiller, not his murderer, not the advocates for abortion, not the mothers and fathers who agree to it, not the children lost by it, none.

So pray for the end of abortion, pray for the conversion of all hearts, pray for the souls scarred and/or lost because of this evil act, and pray daily to be protected from moral error in all things. We should always remember and never doubt, God’s grace can permeate every heart, and abortion will end, as all evil will. Our job is to cooperate with God by being faithful witnesses for the innocent, and remind all of us of the endless nature of God’s love, bounty, beauty, forgiveness and grace.

If it is the work of the Holy Spirit, it will last

Sherry Antonetti — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:30:22 +0000

If it is the work of the Holy Spirit, it will last.

The stories, the projects, the events, the things I wish to be a part of or feel I have helped come into being, will sometimes cause me to get irritated because something is not happening as I would have it. The next time I am mad because the world according to Sherry is not working, the next time I gnash my teeth because something breaks or becomes hopelessly complicated, I must remember how the Holy Spirit works. Next time some activity or plan overwhelms me, I will remember, if it is the work of the Holy Spirit, it will be.. This is not to say it will happen without effort or without planning or without diligence, only that the last three are insufficient without the Holy Spirit. The things we do that are personality driven, depend upon our personality. The things that are of the Holy Spirit, survive our personalities.

What is an experience of the Holy Spirit? It is one thing to describe the jobs or acts of the Spirit, it is another to relate such an encounter and how it affects everything.

In Catholic catechism we learn that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, Fear of the Lord, Healing, Prophesy, Tongues, Interpretation of Tongues and Love.. Each one examined alone could generate hundreds of examples from our lives, when we encountered people of uncommon gifts and holiness who gave direction, who maybe made us rethink everything, or who fed us what we needed at that moment, rather than what we wished. Even the more exotic gifts, like speaking in tongues or understanding tongues might be viewed as speaking in pure prayer, from the heart to God, and understanding God’s answer.

More often than not, we fear these gifts and what they will demand of us. These gifts are part of God’s plans, and God’s plans always involve more than what we would demand of ourselves, even though the plans themselves might seem simple. To give an illustration: When Adam and Eve were placed in the garden, given each other, the enormous beauty of creation and the single command to love God, they responded, “That’s it?” And very often, when tasked with the very similar task of serving the domestic church of our families, we too respond…and what else? We are searching for a distraction from serving God with that question.

When Mary was told she would conceive and bear a child, and that this was her role in the salvation of all mankind, she did not say, “That’s it?” She said “yes.” It is pride that keeps us from accepting that God’s plans for us may not involve massive world scale progress, public recognition or monetary rewards. Because these gifts will make us dearer to God, and require all from us, we need humility to accept and use them, to say “yes” like Mary to the Fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Will we dare to feast on them? Or would we rather munch on that apple?

The Holy Spirit is not a passive entity. It inspires and almost requires (free will) action. It is not simply a gentle push, sometimes it batters us like a hurricane. It blows away all flaws, all sins, polishing our souls like stones, breaking all that is not of God. Put another way, The Holy Spirit acts as a scalpel removing all the tumors that poor choices in our spiritual lives have allowed to grow. It refuses to give up, refuses despair, refuses hate, refuses all illusions and self rationalizations. It refuses to give us anything less than perfect love.

Pentecost is just around the corner. Be waiting. Be ready. Be willing.

Conversations with a Unicorn Continued

Sherry Antonetti — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:00:28 +0000

I was transferring tomatoes into bigger pots when it happened again. The Unicorn came. Knowing him as I now did, I assumed it was the tomatoes that attracted him. So I wasn’t fazed when the creature chomped down on several newer plants. “How are things?” I asked.

“Not bad,” he answered. “Being unreal is so much easier than being real.”

“Why is that?” I asked, potting another small plant.

“Simple, being unreal, I can cease and begin and cease and begin again. I can show up because you have tomatoes, but the real must exist from beginning to end. They must go on whether there are tomatoes or not. There is no point at which a real creature can cease to exist and then exist again. Once one is gone, one is gone.”

“Yes, but there are stages of being, we change. We are born, we grow, we age, we die. You don’t die.” I started misting the tomatoes.

“I don’t live either. You change, you grow, but the fundamental core of you remains the same. The DNA of you is the same today as it was the day you were conceived.”

My Down syndrome son Paul, was on a blanket, enjoying his toys and the weather.

“Yes.” At the word DNA, it triggered a thought of my son’s karyotype test that revealed Trisomy 21. Every cell of his body has that marker that makes up his Down Syndrome condition.

“He is rare.”

“Yes. Though the condition is common.”

“Why is he rare?”

“Because we can now test to see that a child has this condition, and some people opt not to have children with handicapping conditions since the test gives them the opportunity to choose.”

“So if there were a test that indicated if a child had autism or bi-polar disorder that could be administered before birth and people could get the results, would there be fewer children with those conditions?”

“Probably.”

“What about ADHD? Schitzophrenia? What about a greater chance of developing Parkinson’s or Diabetes or Alzhemiers?”

“Well I would hope not but again, probably.”

The Unicorn snorted and looked at my tomatoes. “You have a lot of different types of plants.”

“Yes, pineapple tomato, roma, big boy, Nebraska wedding, pear, yellow.”

“Diversity of color, of shape, of form, of seed, of taste and size.” The Unicorn flicked his tail.

“Yes.”

“If it’s good for tomatoes, isn’t it good for more complex creatures like yourself?” He asked, and pushed a toy with his horn towards my son.

“People are afraid of suffering. They don’t want their children to have pain.” I tried to be reasonable.

The Unicorn flattened one ear, he was many things, truthful, beautiful and smart, but not reasonable. “They’re afraid of the work involved, of sacrifice. Instead, they’re not having children.” He snapped.

“No, they’re not having these children.” I corrected.

“They fear how much they might love these children. Real love sometimes aches more than the world can bear.” He nuzzled my son’s belly, and my son broke into pleased giggles. “They will only grow more fearful as their knowledge advances if they refuse to be wise.” My son was still staring at the Unicorn, grabbing at his muzzle and smiling with his happy blue eyes, cooing and gurgling his pleasure. “They will miss moments like this and countless others as they discern that a child should not have an IQ below 100 or learning disablilities or deafness or mental retardation or emotional problems or autism or physical traits that are considered undesirable.

They will become less tolerant of all but the perfect, and even unloving of the perfect itself, for that will be not the result of hard work or love, but engineering and plans.”

I looked at my son and swallowed hard as I admitted, “I wouldn’t have wanted my son to have a disability.”

“No, but would you wave a wand today and make him someone else?” That other ear flattened.

“No. He’s beautiful. He’s whole. He’s my son.”

“Good. There is more to life than ease or perfection. Beauty and truth does not require all A’s or advanced degrees. Love requires we be able to love even the flawed, even one’s self.”

“We did take care of his heart.”

“Yes, you took care of his health, not the same as removing a flaw. Making everyone perfect means you do not need love, and the world will be peopled by folks who can barely tolerate each other, let alone themselves. There is no surgery or medicine or magic that can make one more worthy of love, only more attractive. Real beauty comes from gifts, from talent, from work, from kindness, from service and from humility.”

He backed away from me, I knew our meeting would soon end. His coat shimmered and he shook himself for the best effect. “My coat needs no work. I need no care. I am an illusion of beauty and purity. I am a myth, therefore I require no love. Whereas he,” and he pointed with his horn to my son, “requires feeding and care and medicine and playing and songs and that is a gift of great beauty. Real beauty involves real love, real work.”

The plants he had eaten reappeared in their new pots. “So what do I do with this information?” I asked as he started to fade away.

He snorted and I saw both ears flick forward as he nodded, “Keep working, and encourage all of your friends to keep being real.”