Dreamed that I bought a huge salmon filet from Shohei Ohtani, and he proceeded to tell me — in Japanese — how to prepare it. I just nodded along and marveled that a future Hall of Famer was telling me how to prepare fish.
And then I went on my way and got in a car accident.
Dreams are weird.
Lent is here.
I have words to wrestle with as I wrestle with God. This season is a gift as I ask God to recalibrate my faith after months – no, years – of loss. Not just loss of people I love, but loss through disillusionment, loss of energy, loss of motivation in work.
The words – which I would have brought up at the start of 2024, except that the fog of sadness and weariness clung too tightly to my brain – are SILENCE, REST, and BEYOND.
“Silence” and “rest” are probably obvious; I have been in desperate need of both for some time. But “beyond” just came to me, as in going beyond this earthly plane, beyond work and career, beyond the stifling aspects of the Church, beyond the expectations of others that have governed me throughout my life.
I’m setting up a couple of retreat days later this month to live in my head and think about these things. That time will align with some long-overdue medical appointments. Lest one thinks that I’m using the holy season of Lent as merely a self-improvement time, I pursue these things to find the strength I need to pursue whatever it is God wants me to learn and be. Not the Church, not the MAGA culture warriors who lead my parish, not Catholic Twitter – but God.
I look forward to time with Him this season in hopes that I can connect with Him without the filters and fog of toxic theology in whatever time I have left on this earth. God help me.
Life in recent weeks has been a giant blob of brain fog, aches and pains, and upper respiratory congestion.
Despite my ambivalence about all things Catholic these days, I am actually thinking seriously about Lent on the eve of Ash Wednesday for the first time in a couple of years. But rather than the medieval-to-pre-Vatican-II faith I’ve been steeped in over the past few years, I’m stepping into the mid- to late 20th century with my main Lenten reading (except for some focus on the Gospels).
I seriously doubt Joan Chittister, Henri Nouwen, Dorothy Day, or — God forbid — Pope Francis would make any reading list at our current parish. And that’s why this is at the top of my Lenten book pile this year.
You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way.
I’ve spent decades “leaving tonight.” I didn’t want to live and die the way my life was going.
My grief comes down to this: It breaks my heart that my sister didn’t do the same for herself.
Embarrassed to say I never really meditated on the words of “Fast Car” until my husband told me how it always brought tears to his eyes. I’ve been playing and replaying the Tracy Chapman/Luke Combs performance from last night’s Grammys telecast all morning and weeping.
Maybe I’ll write more about this someday, but it feels like these are the tears I’ve been trying to shed for my sister in the 2+ months since she died. The lyrics of someone looking for better made me think of her. This hurts, but it’s somehow a good hurt.
I’m not a massive Taylor Swift fan, yet I have grown to like her a lot as a person and a songwriter. I totally wish her well and am rooting for her and Travis Kelce (and, by extension, the Chiefs). But Threads is in T-Swift meltdown mode and the obsession feels out of control. Hiding a lot of Swiftie posts to tweak the algorithm right now. 😬
Had a health scare Friday; tests came out fine at urgent care, but I got a referral to a cardiologist. My symptoms are clearly stress-related, and I told the CCD director that I’m not teaching next year largely because of my health.
I wish I could do the same with my job, but in that case, I gotta work more on managing time and stressors. I’ve got ideas with my therapist, but it’s gonna take some time to figure out.
Sucks to be old and fat and unfit and way too aware of my mortality.
I miss the young priest who turned his homily time at the CCD Mass into a q&a period with the kids and gave out prizes (usually candy, saint medals, or cash) when he quizzed them about church stuff.
Today’s priest preached at length out of Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica.”
I spent much of Mass shushing my CCD kids and had to read them the riot act afterward for worse-than-usual behavior. In the front row.
I love my kids, and I do love Mass. But sometimes I see why church attendance is waning.
Finally started getting into “The Bear” before all the awards season love — enough to grab an Italian beef from Portillo’s for lunch today. (Not the best beef around, but good enough.) Already smitten when this Season 1 episode started with a paean to Ceres, the Board of Trade bar with the stiffest old-school cocktails I’ve ever had.
The Chicago in this show is real. And yeah, this show is a comedy.
Been feeling my sister’s loss intensely this week.
She lived in San Diego. I would have texted her pix of our first snow on Tuesday, the various weather graphics from here, the screen grabs of my weather app with the subzero temps today.
Damn, I really miss her.
Still feeling icky and didn’t teach CCD this morning, but F and I did manage to go to Mass at the parish down the street (which is not our hyper-orthodox parish). I’m a bit traditionalist about hymnody, but it did my heart a lot of good to sing “Here I Am, Lord,” which our church typically doesn’t use.
Surveying her outdoor domain — which we forbid her to explore.
It’s kind of cold.
Watched “Good Grief” on Netflix. Reminded me a lot of that soapy English movie “Peter’s Friends.” Not necessarily a bad thing. Still spoke to me about the complicated nature of dealing with loss.
Still somehow coexisting.
It’s already mid-January, but I want to think that I can still move forward in fresh start mode as if it’s New Year’s Day.
This list will no doubt morph throughout the year. As it is, I buy and download books and hardly make time to actually read them. I want to change that this year, especially as the sense of my own mortality has grown exponentially in recent months.
I purged my library of most of the hardcore Catholic stuff (mainly Opus Dei-aligned books and other like-minded material) and found myself with lots of Merton, Nouwen, Jesuit-authored works, and St. John XXIII.
The list so far (excluding the abovementioned authors for now), which will forever remain in progress:
(This, of course, is no guarantee that I’ll actually read them; I also reserve the right to call an audible and read stuff I happen to come across in my stacks or on my Kindle. I also figure on much of my reading including audiobooks.)
I’ll likely add books by Pope Francis, Eugene Peterson, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Brian Zahnd. Thinking a lot about grief, universalist theology, brain health, and aging, so I expect more reading about all that.
Honestly. Death can really do a number on one’s life.
Called in sick to CCD for tomorrow. Should have done it last week.
Some days, I wonder whether I should have just done that from the start and backed away over the summer.
The past several months have done a number on my Catholic faith. Maybe some of it is just physical and emotional exhaustion; I know much of it is realizing that my parish is a MAGA breeding ground that makes me wonder whether being lowercase-o orthodox requires my becoming a heartless, hellfire-preaching, conspiracy-theorizing political nincompoop. I’ve grown deeply uncomfortable with the Baltimore Cathechism brand of Roman fundamentalism there that is growing outright (and outwardly) contemptuous of the present pope.
I’ve spent a few years trying to reconcile my social libertarian tendencies, economic progressive beliefs, and social justice sympathies with my conservative inclinations (e.g., being pro-life [with allowances for circumstances such as rape or incest], attempting to be more observant in uppercase-C Church practices). I’ve been failing miserably, especially in recent months. But I keep thinking there has got to be a place for me in the Big Tent, somewhere between the New Agey Franciscans and the scary Opus Dei types.
Sometimes I wonder whether I should have just remained Anglican.
It’s pretty depressing to know that I was actually cheering for a positive just so I could get out of teaching CCD tomorrow.
But I’m still not feeling well.
I find the most awesome stuff on Threads. This, for example (h/t @thehappygivers).
Somehow, I made it through a trip to Seafood City without weeping because I couldn’t text Eleanor to explain some weird Filipino food I found in the freezer aisle. 😐
Decolonize the soap shelves! 😬
Been spending a ton of time on Threads in the past few weeks. Unfortunately, the Christmas holiday teamed up with the algorithm to bring me enough posts about grief and people losing their parents/siblings/friends/cats/dogs/birds to make me want to go back to bed and hide for a month.
So, I’m back here for now. I’m also thinking it’s time for me to jumpstart some analog journaling, especially with the New Year approaching. Social media posting and texting with friends aside, I really haven’t processed all the sadness churning through my psyche in the past month. I keep waiting to fall off an emotional cliff, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Meanwhile, I’m slowly backing away from our very conservative Catholic parish, which is clearly much more of a MAGA breeding ground than I imagined. Learning this has been disheartening and sad. I’ll finish up the CCD year, but I plan an indefinite break from the place. I have so much more to write about that, but not yet. Not here.
So much lost this year. It’s exhausting to have to let go of so much.
(Repurposing some of what I posted to a grief support group on Facebook—some of which in turn is repurposed from a Threads post—because I have very little of anything left in me.)
It’s been a tough year of losses: one of our cats in April, my college mentor and close friend in June, and my sister last month. I feel like I haven’t fully grieved my mom in 2021, and a work friend and one of our dogs passed not long after.
I haven’t had a breakdown or anything—just a few scattered tears and overwhelming, heavy sadness. I still have to press ahead for work and family. Waiting with dread for some kind of collapse.
Meanwhile, it’s Christmas Eve. Just put together dinner: arroz caldo, a Filipino chicken and rice porridge, which Mom always made late on Christmas Eve so we could eat just before opening our gifts at midnight.
I’ve made it for my family for years. Sometimes I’d text my sister a picture to prove to her that I could make it. She’d text back with heart or thumbs-up emoji, sometimes typing “Wish I was there!”
Now neither she nor Mom are around to tell. Pressing ahead, but my heart feels empty.
My sister and I were close, and she would have been 67 at the end of November. This is tough.
But there will be Christmas. And arroz caldo. A blessed holiday to you.
My latest comfort viewing: Last weekend’s “ABBA Christmas” skit from “SNL.” Played over and over again. Just call me “Frostitita.”
