Holy Family

This last Sunday the homily was amazing at our 5:00 pm Mass. The priest spoke about how today, the favorite shows of the youth are those about "Friends." Years ago, shows about family were popular because they were believable. Today, shows depicting an intact family with defined male and female roles is so far from reality that they cannot be popular. One of the central problems with our families today is that we are all more interested in personal fulfillment than in what we can give to others. That thought resonated with me, because I worry that I will give too much. I worry about "losing myself." I worry about not being fulfilled professionally. I realize that there probably isn't a "too much" in a marriage, and even if there is, I'm nowhere close to that point. I have chosen to be a wife first, and everything else second. We really want to have a strong family, and I know that in the end, all the worldly accolades will not matter. What will matter is how well I have loved my husband, and hopefully my children. My vocation as a wife is supported by my professional activies, not the other way around. Honestly, though, I wonder what all of that looks like for me. I sometimes feel like I'm just reaching in different directions hoping something will stick. The nice thing about the Navy was that the choices were limited... now my choices are still limited but in a different way. Figuring out what works with being a Navy wife is kind of difficult. You can't really build a career because you move at random times..so I think the solution to this is to figure out what does work with being a Navy wife. Something I like to do, and can feasibly do many places. For now, I think I'm going to stick with engineering, but I'm thinking that something combining theology and teaching will be what I move towards. I'm a little scared of teaching in NY public schools, plus I need a teaching certificate...and I can still make way more money with engineering...so it will make more sense to move to that down the road.

Wise Words

I got this from the following blog: http://joannab-everyday.blogspot.com/

The version found written on the wall in Mother Teresa's home for children in Calcutta:

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

The Challenge of James

I'm working on my final paper for my New Testament class, and one of the resources for my paper included a section that I found challenging and inspiring. I have quoted a section of it below:

"...Among James's readers, as well, there were clearly some who considered that believing 'that God is one' (Jas 2:19) qualified them to be considered among God's people, or that believing in 'our glorious Lord Jesus Christ' (2:1) was itself sufficient to consider themselves members of the kingdom proclaimed by Jesus. The propensity to find a refuge in religion and a resting place within a community of faith remains constant and keeps James's exhortation perennially relevant.

The tendency can take the form of compulsive doctrinal correctness or ritual conformity. The mark of a 'good' Christian can become the fervent affirmation of the right confessional formulae or a pledge of allegiance to the inspiration of Scripture or an insistence on the inerrancy of a leader or the dedication to the proper liturgical forms. It can also take the form of an obsessive use of religious language, as though faith were a matter of a style of speech, and that devotion to a person could best be demonstrated by the number of times his name was mentioned. The mark of a 'good' Christian can become the constant invocation of the Lord in every conversation."

More to come...this is all I have time to type at the moment...

From: Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Letter of James. The New Interpreter's Bible XII: A Commentary in 12 Volumes. Abingdon Press, Nashville: 1998.

Why I am a Catholic

I have had a somewhat long and winding path to Catholicism. My family is Methodist, and I attended Methodist churches until the end of high school. My first experience with God occurred after the death of my grandmother when I was nine years old. We had moved to Indonesia, and one day I just decided to start praying. This is a perfect example of that part of us that through no conscious decision of our own, but because of how we are made, longs to reach out to God. The next time that I had a significant experience with God was at the age of 14. I was on a mission trip to Mexico with my church youth group, and I had an experience where I felt that in my head, I had a vision of a radiant Jesus. This experience brought Jesus into my understanding of God, and fostered a deep-seated faith. That seed of faith did not really bear fruit until I went to college. I was baptized and confirmed in the Methodist church, but my life remained fundamentally unchanged.

After moving to Austin, Texas for college, I decided that I should join some sort of Christian organization. I can't tell you where that idea came from or what prompted it. For the past couple of years, I really hadn't been much involved in church or my faith. I ended up joining a Christian sorority named Sigma Phi Lambda, and attended several churches until I settled at Hope Chapel, which later planted the congregation of Hope in the City. I realized very quickly at Phi Lamb that there was so much more to relationship with God than I had ever experienced. These people, I remember thinking, were really into this at a deep level, and I knew that I wanted to experience God like that. I read the entire Bible my first semester of college and I just couldn't get enough. Over Christmas break, I went on a mission trip to Waco, TX, and spent the week playing with underpriviliged children and learning for the first time about the poor. I had seen a great deal of poverty in Indonesia as a child, but this was my first experience with the poor in America. Praying with the girls on the trip was a great experience.

After school ended in May, I went with the woman we had worked with in Waco, Janet Dorrell, to India and Nepal for nearly a month. We went to Delhi first, talking to the Gujars, a people group with no written language and low social status, that was being persecuted by the prodominately Hindu government. After a week, we went to Nepal, meeting facscinating people in the hills around Kathmandu. The last week or so was spent in Calcutta with the Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity. It was a life changing experience, and I was really fascinated by India and God's compassion for people that was unfathomable. After I returned home, I spent the summer volunteering with the youth at a church near my parents' house.

The next year, I volunteered to be the Missions Chair for my sorority, and ended up planning a trip for 20 girls to Philadelphia, again to work with the poor. We spent the week talking to drug addicts, helping out with after-school programs, and praying for Philadelphia. I had no idea that I would learn so much about heroin addiction! Truly though, it was again a tearful experience of learning about God and trying to have a "kingdom perspective."

Throughout the rest of college, I was very involved with my church, went on several more mission trips, and generally continued to grow in my relationship with God. After graduating, I joined the Navy, and earned my commission as an Officer. For the next three years I went to various churches as I moved around, but I struggled a little with experiencing God the way that I did in college.

In the spring of 2005, I met my husband, Sean. He is a practicing Catholic, and after we started dating, we began to attend two church services every Sunday: Methodist or non-denominational, and Catholic. This naturally prompted a great deal of discussion about the sermons and our faith in general. I began to realize that I didn't know much about the doctrinal beliefs of either the Methodist or non-denominational churches. The focus had always been on personal relationship with Jesus, and I didn't know the reasoning behind some of the doctrines. That said, I certainly did not expect to become Catholic. I only knew a few Catholics growing up, and it seemed that they all had strange beliefs about unbaptized babies not going to heaven.

I began to research church history, the founding of the Methodist church, and the Reformation. Basically, I began to wonder- why John Wesley, what makes his interpretation special? Similarly with non-denominational churches (where doctrine is not explicitly taught, but exists nonetheless), what makes one individual's interpretation of the Bible correct? This led me to more historical research, and eventually I came to believe that the fundamental tenents of the Reformation, sola fide and sola scriptura (faith alone and scripture alone), were incorrect. Surprisingly, the more I read of the positions of the Catholic church, the more I began to believe that I was actually Catholic. It made more sense to me to believe in sacred tradition as a correction to individual Biblical interpretation. It made sense to me to believe in a universal Church, not lots of different churches based on the views of different people. It made sense to believe (in the words of St. Paul) that we work out our faith everyday with fear and trembling. Salvation is not a one-time experience, but a daily struggle. I came to believe, and experienced during my first communion, that the eucharist is more than a symbolic meal, but a genuine experience of God. Going to Mass, and participating in Communion, seems to be the "piece" if you will, of God that will get me through the next week. I love the peacefulness of Mass, a sanctuary from the craziness of the rest of the week. I'm thankful for the experiences that I have had, and what I learned during my Protestant upbringing about passion, worship, community, and the words of the Bible. All of that enriches my faith, and my experience in the Catholic Church. I'm a Catholic Christian, and I have found my home.

Can we talk credibly about original sin today?

I think it is important that we do speak about original sin, because whether or not it is acknowledged, it is the common experience of all people. As discussed in the lecture, it is critical to define what is meant by original sin. I think most people in our Western culture hear original sin, and imagine the serpent and Adam and Eve, and do not see any sort of connection with reality. I would argue that the concept of sin itself is not well understood, or at the very least is not taken seriously, and so the ability to distinguish between types of sin is expecting quite a lot.

I do believe that the Church and its teachers should continue to teach original sin because it explains the sense of unease that we live with, even if we do not acknowledge God. Central to the theology of original sin is the concept that it is not personal, moral guilt that is inherited simply by virtue of being born human. I think we understand that intuitively when we talk about the death of unborn children, or the death of children. However, it is the common experience of people that it is a struggle to be good. If it were not, we would not see hurt that arises when we consciously make a bad choice. The problem is not a lack of awareness of good and evil, it is choosing the evil rather than the good. So, either we are struggling because of internal conflict that is inherent to human nature, or we are struggling because of outside socialization. There is relief in realizing that all people struggle to be good, even the saints, and the universality of the struggle would seem to indicate that it is inherent to human nature. Being good does not “come naturally.” In fact, I think we diminish the saints when we assume that being good did come naturally for them. I believe this is what is meant by Paul when he directs the Philippians to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12). The teaching of original sin is then one not of judgment, but of mercy and understanding. It does not tell people that they are inherently evil or depraved, but communicates understanding of the difficulty and struggle of life. One of the central roles of the Church is to walk with people as they struggle, and to offer the assistance of other people through shared experience and prayer.

As long as we explain the words, the concept of original sin is completely relevant to helping us understand our own lives, and the lives of those around us.

Sorting clutter

I think everyone would love to have less clutter- this is a great starting point with tasks for every month and rules like "if you haven't used it in a year, get rid of it!"

http://www.oprah.com/article/home/homeimprovement/challenge_clean_rituals

Moms find balance

(CNN) -- Ashley Hewitt spent 16 years rising through the ranks of corporate human resources, reaching manager and director positions. But after having her third child, a full-time career proved too much.

Ashley Hewitt left a corporate career to raise her three children. She now works as a high-skilled temp.

Even cutting her hours back to 36 a week turned out to be more of a problem than a solution.
"I was trying to be a full-time mom and a full-time employee with part-time hours for both and it just wasn't working well," Hewitt said.
In 2006, she took a voluntary severance package from Duke Energy, her longtime employer, and became one of many professional women who leave the work force at the peak of their careers to focus on their families.
But such new stay-at-home moms can also be the perfect match for companies seeking highly-educated and skilled workers for temporary work.
"They're realizing that ... this is a talent pool that's experienced and professional and efficient and ready to work as long as they're given a little bit of consideration to their personal needs," said Allison O'Kelly, CEO of Mom Corps.
The Atlanta, Georgia, company is one of several staffing agencies formed in recent years to connect career-women-turned-stay-at-home moms with employers. On-Ramps, Flexible Executives, Flexible Resources and FlexWork Connection have similar missions.

Hewitt, 40, said she didn't want to quit working "cold turkey." She submitted her resume to Mom Corps in 2006 and currently works about 10-14 hours per week out of her home in Charlotte, North Carolina, doing human resources work on contract for Wachovia.
"I like the fact that I can do this work and the people that I'm working for... understand that it's only one aspect of my life," Hewitt said.
"They also understand that I'm trying to do this flexibly so I may not be available at 2 o'clock for a conference call because all the kids are coming off the bus."

Money not the top motivator
Mom Corps founder O'Kelly, 35, knows first hand about the tug of war between career and family. The Harvard Business School graduate was a manager at Toys R Us when she had her first child. The baby had health problems that forced her to frequently miss work.
"I was having a really tough time with that because that just isn't my style," O'Kelly said.
Working Moms• 71% of U.S. women with children work or are looking for work • 55% of U.S. women with children under a year old are in the labor force • 24% of U.S. working mothers have a part-time job Source: U.S. Department of Labor
She left the company and began working on contract as an accountant. She ended up with so much work that she offered some of it to her friends. O'Kelly said she soon realized there was enough demand to expand beyond accounting and her circle of acquaintances. Mom Corps was born in 2005. The company now has 25,000 job seekers in its database, many with marketing, human resources or accounting backgrounds. About 90 percent have a college degree and more than a third have a graduate degree, O'Kelly said. Most are 30-44 years old. Once placed, they typically earn $30-$70 an hour, O'Kelly said.

While the earnings can be high, the money isn't the primary motivator for many of the stay-at-home moms seeking flexible work. Some simply want to stay plugged into their industries and use their skills. "I think it's probably something that they're missing from a personal, professional point of view, just part of their self-identity is very attached to their career and having to let that go is a big struggle," said Jessica Riester, founder of FlexWork Connection in Irvine, California. Riester, 35, launched her recruiting business earlier this year after deciding to take some time off from her career to have children. The former finance manager at a start-up company soon landed a part-time corporate job, working 20 hours a week, and realized other professional women were very interested in the arrangement. "I was telling my friends about this new setup and they were all jealous and wanted something similar," Riester said. "[They] all kind of struggled with wanting to have some kind of career going but also have the time to spend with their kids, not working the crazy hours that we had been."

'New normal of flex careers'
The demands of a full-time job appear to be taking their toll on working mothers. About 60 percent said working part time would be ideal for them, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center. Only 48 percent felt that way in a similar poll done 10 years earlier.
For those who don't want to work full time, turning to staffing agencies that cater to stay-at-home moms can be one option. The trend reflects "the new normal of flex careers," said Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the nonprofit Families and Work Institute.
"There's been an assumption for a long time that a career is a straight and narrow ladder that one climbs and if one steps off of it then you're down at the bottom or if you even step sideways, you plunge, and you climb that ladder until you leap over an abyss ... to retirement" Galinsky said. "That is not the reality of people's lives."

I'm always interested in new options for the work/life balance, but I'm also interested in the comments after the article, since most people interpret the article in terms of their own choices. You always have
-what about dads?
-woman who works full-time with kids and believes everyone should
-people who say the debate only applies to rich or upper-middle class women

Comments I found interesting pointed out that part-time work only makes sense in certain industries, usually those with a critical mass of women (ie accounting, human resources). Engineering has not come that far, for the most part jobs are at least full-time. Another good point is that health care is an issue. I dealt with this for the first time this year when I left the Navy. Up to that point, it was all taken care of for me. When I started my new job, I had to learn about PPOs, HMOs, ect, and deal with the military health care simultaneously. TRICARE, the military health system, takes some time to figure out for dependents.

One of the issues that I deal with in my job now relates to this in terms of schedules. I'm the only person who lives here, the rest of my colleagues fly in every week, which makes for a strange work schedule, especially when combined with my desire for a Monday-Friday, 8-5 schedule. Also there are different pressures and expectations when everyone you work with is away from their families and have nothing to go home to but an empty hotel room. It's interesting- not something I thought about before taking the job.

Here's the original source for the article: http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/07/17/skilled.temp.work/index.html?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail

Enjoy being unbalanced

"That's the wonderful thing about seeing that our society makes impossible demands on all women. You free yourself to ignore social pressures and begin creating a life that comes from your own deepest desires, hopes and dreams. You'll stop living life from the outside in and begin living it from the inside out.

Women describe the moments when they really "got" that the expectations they'd been trying to fulfill were unfulfillable. They say this epiphany was terrible because it meant relinquishing the goal of total social acceptance. But it was also the beginning of freedom, of learning to seek guidance by turning inward to the heart, rather than outward to social prescriptions." - Martha Beck, Oprah.com http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/05/21/o.balance/index.html

Living life from the inside out- not as easy as it sounds. For the past three years, I have been pondering the concept of balance or lack thereof. I left a career that was extremely demanding because I knew it wouldn't allow me to raise children. What I struggle with is what to do now. I'm in an in-between stage- married, but no children yet. I'm still trying to stop living based on what my life looks like to other people. I went to college when I was 15, graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering when I was 20, and received a commission as an officer in the United States Navy a few months later. I did well at everything in the Navy, obtaining all qualifications early. I attended nuclear power school and was qualified to run a nuclear power plant. I completed three overseas deployments. Once you obligate yourself to the military, they don't require much input from you. Your career path is set. And then I left. Now that I can be anything I want to be, I'm at something of a loss. Martha Beck talks about doing what is in your nature. What is in my nature? I don't think it's engineering. My favorite part of the Navy was always the people- leading a team to accomplism an important task- and not over weeks and months, but in 6 hours or a day at most. I enjoyed dealing with the ups and downs of people's lives as a division officer/counselor/peer/friend. Living from the inside out - something to think about.

Working Moms Respond to CNN Article

An article on CNN.com titled "Working Moms Look Back With Mixed Emotions" has drawn quite a few angry comments over the past two days. The article presents the opinions both of women who work and who stay at home. It doesn't mention stay-at-home dads, but I don't think that is the point. Most of the women commenting on the article stated that they chose to work, and their kids are better for it. I think this is disingenuous. While it may be most emotionally satisfying to pretend that you are getting the best of both worlds, most people acknowledge that there are tradeoffs whether you work or stay home, for both men and women. If it were abundantly clear that it is better for children to be "socialized" through day care, and for highly educated women to work, then this debate would no longer exist. The tradeoffs are not the same for all women, or for all children. Many of the responses also cited stay-at-moms as "judging" working women, and stated that they don't judge the moms who stay home- another subterfuge. A lot of this debate is related to how one views marriage and the relationship between husbands and wives. If your concern is "power," or that it is "unfair" for the working spouse to support his or her family, you should certainly work.

Many women have to work to support their families and do not have the choice to stay home. For those who do have the choice, at least be honest about the choice that you are making. Concerned about intellectual stimulation? Try online courses, reading, learning new languages- there is no shortage of intellectual resources out there. Education is a good in and of itself. Not being employed in the public sphere for a period of time does not render education useless- why have liberal arts education at all, if that is the case?

One of the most controversial statements in the article, that "women are happiest in clearly defined and traditional marital roles" from a study -- "What's Love Got To Do With It? Equality, Equity, Commitment and Women's Marital Quality," released last year by University of Virginia sociologists W. Bradford Wilcox and Steven L. Nock, gets to the heart of the issue. We are confused about roles in marriage and what they mean. As women, we are generally afraid of dependency, which prevents us from enjoys the good that can come from interdependency. Fear of losing power, fear of marginalization, fear of being our grandmothers has led us to the conclusion that we must be independent to be happy, and this requires a paycheck.

I think we are called to a higher purpose- one that is at odds with individual power. Part of my vocation is to be my husband's wife, and part of his vocation is to be my husband. We did not get married because it "made sense" or was convenient. The marriage convenant is based on love and giving up power on both sides. You essentially give up the right to be self-centered when you get married, which is one reason marriage is so important to the church.

The issue of clearly defined roles is one that I will come back to, because I think it is central to the confusion that women of my generation feel about marriage and having children.

Read the original article and the following comments at
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/07/14/working.moms.look.back/index.html.

Young adult Catholics, where are you?

This blog is for the purpose of discussing issues relevant to young adults and Catholics. I converted to Catholicism two years ago, and I believe there is a huge need for ministry to the segment of Catholics that are post-college and don't yet have children. I struggle myself with purpose, with meaning, and with figuring out what it means to be a wife without losing my "self," and this blog will explore all these issues. I'm starting a theology degree in the fall, and that will provide plenty of ammo for discussion, I'm sure. The biggest issues for me are:
1) discerning my vocation
2) reconciling my desire for contribution to the world with my intent to be a stay-at-home mom
3) being Catholic in a culture that is not Christian
4) running the race, fixing my eyes on Jesus- for real

Coincidentally, today is the start of World Youth Day 2008. The link below is for all of us who couldn't make it to Australia.

http://video.wyd2008.org/?MediaId=97e9e9a3-a38d-4df9-973d-c495443c0f4c