In Memory of Henry (Link-up included)

(Image credit Colleen Novit)

It is with a simultaneously heavy and joyful heart that I share with those of you who have not heard that Henry Dobrovits died on Wednesday of complications from surgery.

I went to Mass today with Henry's family as my intention. As I flipped through the hymnal before Mass, I discovered that all the music for that Mass was joyful. And oddly (or not), everything fit.

Our opening hymn. "Have you not seen? All you have needed has been met by his gracious ordaining." Henry "should" have died alone. He was only able to be registered for international adoption because his medical condition was misdiagnosed. And a family saw him, loved him, worked so hard to bring him home. Henry spent the last year of his life in a family. He experienced so much love in that year. It was the hand of God, graciously ordaining that Henry get everything he need.

The Scripture passages. The first reading: "Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb." Henry was called to that feast yesterday. He is blessed indeed. Our responsorial psalm: "I will go in to the house of the Lord, singing my song of rejoicing." How could Henry not rejoice as he entered into God's house?

And oh, the Communion hymn. "Taste and see the goodness of the Lord." Henry gets to taste and see that goodness in a way that we have never experienced. But I am sure that it is not an unfamiliar goodness. God is love, and because of his family, Henry learned what love is. As Henry's soul slipped from his body, he slipped into true love, the place where he is meant to be and for which his family was always preparing him.

Henry is in Heaven now, and all his pain is gone. But my heart is broken for his family. Henry was the youngest of seven. His parents and his siblings miss him terribly. They desperately need our prayers.

A collection for Henry's medical and funeral expenses is being taken up via chip in in the top right corner of this blog. I have created a link-up so that Henry's family has an easy job finding lots of posts for their child when they feel ready to read them. If you have a post about Henry, please feel free to add it here.

GOOD NEWS!

This might be the blog post I've been most excited to write. GERTIE IS ON MFFM! A FAMILY IS COMING FOR HER!

Thanks be to God. That's all there is to say. Thanks be to God.

Update 10/19: Gertie's family has a profile now! They are also adopting a little girl named Gianna. You can donate to help them here.

Religious education

This article (link to Google cache, as the original seems to have been deleted) on Fr. Simon's blog has gotten me thinking about religious education. I have taught CCD for two years in local parishes, and I mentioned briefly a while back that I have some issues with the curriculum I used last year, and would post about catechesis later. It's officially later. So here goes.

I think there's something terribly wrong with our current religious education system. Some anecdotes: I was confirmed with eighth graders who went to Mass every Sunday (and still do, as far as I know), but did not know what day Jesus died on. (Was it Ash Wednesday?--No, of course not, it was Easter.) I have seen children in white dresses and suits raise their hands to answer during the homily and announce clearly that it's not really Jesus, it's just bread--and then be admitted to First Communion!

Clearly, this is a problem. It saddens me to say this, but I suspect that religious education, for many children, simply does not make a difference. I know that for some kids, religion class is the only exposure they had to religion, and that for some kids, that is enough to make the difference. I'm not suggesting cutting out religion class.

But I will say that I have had 13 years of religion class, using different books from different publishers, including some very highly recommended ones, and not one moment of any of it has ever made me want to be Catholic. I have had college classes that made me want to be Catholic, and conversations with people I love that made me want to be Catholic, and experiences of God that made me want to be Catholic. But if it all came down to religion class? I think I'd be an atheist. Religion textbooks were saccharine and shallow, filled with tacky pictures and lame essay prompts. ("Look at this picture of a bird flying across a sunset. Write a prayer to the Holy Spirit.") If this is the best the Catholic Church can come up with, what does that say about her?

So I see two big problems with the current state of religious education. It doesn't effectively convey the factual information it is intended to teach, and it doesn't effectively convey the beauty of the Church. What can be done about this? I don't know. I wish I did. I would be a better CCD teacher if I did. Here are some ideas. I'd love comments on them.

• Go back to catechism-based instruction. I do not remember anything from first grade religion class except for the following: Who made us?--God made us.--How did God make us?--In His own image and likeness.--Why did God make us?--To know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. I'm not saying we should turn religion class into children memorizing by rote phrases that they do not understand, but I believe we underestimate the importance of simply being able to state definitions. (What is a sacrament?--It's uh like this special thing that happens like at church? And uh you need a priest? Surely this is not our goal, but this is what we achieve when we water things down too much.)
• Get rid of the link between sacraments and age. If four-year-olds and eight-year-olds are both common at First Communions, the pressure to "pass" unprepared children will be lower.
• Involve parents. What if CCD classes involved family homework? "CCD is supposed to be fun, so we don't give homework." No offense, but that's garbage. Religion is not supposed to be easy. If you have to read a Bible story with your mother and talk about it with her, it's not going to kill you. Or her. Obviously it is better to evangelize children through their parents than parents through their children. But I think something like this actually does both. (How to get parents to actually do this is another question entirely. At the church I last taught at, the parents were invited in to join the class for prayer at the last five minutes of class. I usually had two or maybe three parents, out of a class of ten, bother to come five minutes early.)
• Focus on beauty. (Please don't tell me this contradicts my first suggestion. I will cry if you do.) Teach the kids to sing chant. Introduce them to old prayers. Show them paintings. As a commenter said at a post on Little Catholic Bubble, "Start by seeking the Beautiful. This will lead you to the Good. Eventually you'll end up at the Truth. Then you can dive into all the rules you want."

So those are my initial thoughts on what the problems are and some ways to move towards fixing them. Please tell me what you think, even if you totally disagree. In your experience, what works? What doesn't?

(Side note: In the interests of avoiding self-plagiarism, I feel obliged to state that some of this post, content-wise, has been on my Facebook page, and some of the text is actually just a copy-and-paste.)

Help needed on several fronts

The Hansen family needs your prayers! Their daughter Maia is in intensive care. I don't know enough medical terminology to be able to explain what is wrong, but it involves seizures, neurosurgeons, and fluid buildup in her brain. The link is to the family's blog, where you can read updates from Maia's parents.

Ksenia needs your help. Look at the change in her from the picture on the right to the picture on the left. She was unlisted on Reece's Rainbow recently and we all thought she had died. But she's back. RR doesn't have enough information about her to collect money, unfortunately. She can also only be adopted by Canadians right now due to the rules in her country. Please pray like crazy, and share her with your friends--even if they aren't Canadian, their friends might be.

As always, keep praying for Kurt! Please consider giving him money. I found his guardian angel, and am hoping that we can work together on a fundraiser. (Do I have any ideas? Possibly. Not really. Yet.)

In personal news, I'm home from school. It's good to be with the family. I hope to start posting more regularly (how many times have I said that now?). Maybe I'll weigh in on the bikini argument floating around the blogosphere; I posted a link on my Facebook page and my friends brought up some really interesting points. Or maybe I won't. I'm not sure that I have anything to add.

Realizations

It's been an interesting week. Some good things have happened and some bad things have happened and some very stressful things which are ultimately good have happened. Part of me would like to be more specific, but I am not going to share the details right now.

Today, however, I had a kind of spiritual epiphany. The background: As I've mentioned before, I have had depression on and off over the past few years, and even in the times when I'm not actually depressed, there are bad days. Bad days often manifest themselves in despair and the desire to quit current major life projects (school, romantic relationship) for no reason. I was talking to A once about vocations, and saying that I needed to find something that I could live with on bad days as well as good, because I would always have bad days. He said that this was an entirely too negative way of looking at the future. I disagreed. We let it go.

Fast forward to today. I was walking to Mass, thinking about depression and the shadow it has left on my life, and thinking about the future, and I thought, "Some darkness just never goes away." Then I thought of John 1:5: "And the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." And two things occurred to me.

First of all, darkness does not understand light. No wonder I don't know what God is doing. He is light, and there is so much darkness in my life. Secondly, darkness cannot overpower light. Light always wins. If the darkness never goes away, it's not because it lost the battle with the light, it's because I held the door and windows closed and refused to let the light shine in.

This afternoon I went to an area meeting of People of Praise, a charismatic Christian group. From some of the things the people said I gained a few additional pieces to the puzzle. One man got up and said that the Lord had moved him to share that His forgiveness was so perfect that there was nothing you could do that made it impossible to start over. Another said that God's forgiveness was a perfect forgiveness, and the belief that your relationship with God was damaged if you had sinned and been forgiven was a lie. And the frequent requests for the Holy Spirit to come helped me to ask God to shine His light into my darkness. I imagined myself opening the door to a closet containing the things I try to keep secret from God and letting Him in.

So overall, this is what today has taught me: A was right. There don't always have to be bad days. I can't get rid of them, but God can.

I have always known this, but today I think I started to believe it.

Easter!

I need to post here more regularly.....

Easter was wonderful. My mother and my sisters S (my twin) and J (8yo) came up to visit. So did K. Most of my friends stayed on campus for Easter, and we had a relaxed and prayerful weekend. Not much homework was done.

My school does a really good job with Easter. We have morning prayer for the Triduum, the normal Triduum liturgies (Holy Thursday/Good Friday/Stations), Tenebrae, Easter Vigil (with 7 OT readings), and four Easter Sunday Masses. The regular Sunday evening Vespers are especially solemn on Easter. Our main church has several choirs, which are really good, and the liturgical style is very solemn, respectful, and prayerful. I spent a lot of time in church this weekend (6.5 hours in church or church-related things on Friday alone :o). At the last minute K was able to stay for the Easter Vigil--his first ever!

This was a socially and spiritually productive weekend for me. My family got to know my friends a bit better, and got to meet K for the first time. (Verdict: Mutual like and desire to get to know better. Yay!) I got to know K better and spend time with him. (I do not think I get to do this enough. Stupid four hours.) And I think I grew in faith.

It's interesting to me how my relationships teach me about God. This weekend this was most clear in the cases of J and K. I was sitting next to J thinking about how much I loved her, and it occurred to me that if I, an imperfect creature, can love someone this much despite her imperfection, then God, Who is perfect love, must be able to love me too. Obvious? Probably, but this idea that God loves me does not come naturally to me. As for K, the fact that he's mine when I have done nothing to deserve him makes it easier to believe in grace. How do religions where God isn't a person make themselves believable?

On Life

Sorry for the lack of posting. It's midterms week! I'm taking a break from writing my final midterm, a logic takehome, to post this because I don't think I'll get a chance to post over the next week.

This logic midterm is stretching my brain in a good way. It doesn't have very much to do with what we're doing in class, and requires a lot of thinking about stuff that's essentially new. My modern philosophy midterm, also a takehome, was kind of fun to write, but not nearly as intellectually exciting. Psych and Greek were not fun or exciting to study for or to take. I got a 92 on Greek, we'll see what happens with psych.

My friends and I are going on a road trip over spring break. We're hitting up A's house, P's house, B's house, and my house. I'm really looking forward to it, but also somewhat worried because I'm going into it sleep deprived. I am pretty introverted and need some time to myself every now and then, and if I don't get that over this trip, which I'm not sure I'm going to, I'm going to lose my mind somewhere around Monday. My friends tend to assume that I'm withdrawing because I'm not okay, though, and then they come talk to me. I may just have to say look guys, I am okay at the moment but if you don't give me some space I will soon not be. Another sad thing is that I'll probably have less time than I do now to talk to K.

K is an awesome boyfriend. We have skyped for almost eight hours over the course of the last five days (I know, I know), and he's writing me a letter. We always end our Skype sessions with a prayer (except once when we forgot). K makes these prayers up on the spot and they kind of make me want to cry because he always thanks God for me. His faith is just so amazing. He makes me want to be closer to God. He also got me to clean up my room. All around a great guy.

On husbands, children, ends, means, and God and His plans

You know, because none of those is a big enough issue for its own post....

Yesterday and the day before, I attended a conference at my college. This conference is an annual student-run conference that focuses on women's issues from a Catholic/Christian (I'm not sure how denominational they try to stay) perspective. This year's topic was vulnerability. (You now have enough information to figure out where I go to school. Go ahead, Google it, I don't mind. It's a good school and I like it.) My friend A (I need to write a post about A sometime--he is a truly wonderful person) went to this conference too, and he and I had some interesting conversations about many things.

I can't remember exactly how this particular conversation got started. He already knew that I intend to adopt children with special needs. Maybe I was complaining that it was going to be hard to find a guy with similar goals, or maybe I was just saying something depressing about my past dating life. (One boyfriend, mostly long-distance, with marriage as the goal, and then I screwed everything up by failing to communicate. More on that in some other post; for now I'll just say this hasn't helped my cynicism or insecurity any.) Anyway, he made two criticisms of my views about my future husband. The first was that he thought I was trying to have too much control over whom I would marry. The second is that I view him as a means to an end, namely children. My gut reaction was to say that he was completely wrong. Thinking this over, though, he may be more right than I thought initially. (I almost typed, "In this paper I will discuss these criticisms and whether or not I agree with them...." I clearly need to get out more.)

I still think he's wrong about the control issue. Generally, this is certainly an issue for me and something I really need to work on. I hate not being in control, and I especially hate it when someone who won't tell me what he's doing is in control. I find it very frightening. (God, I'm talking to you, in case you hadn't noticed. I would like to know the plot of my life, please.) But I don't think that I'm wrong in this particular instance. Of course, like any college girl, I have a list of stereotypical criteria that my husband "should" have--taller than me (not hard--I'm 5'4" when I round up), smart, funny, Catholic, comforting, supporting, reliable, knows how to dance, wants to adopt children with special needs, etc., etc. (Okay, maybe that last one is not so stereotypical.) But I'm not actually truly picky about most of these. I can only think of one, maybe two, that I would not be willing to compromise on: the children with special needs, and the Catholicism. At the moment I'm not going to talk about the Catholicism, which is the maybe, because it's not really relevant, and also because my thoughts on the subject are complicated and tangled up. The point is that I would potentially marry a stupid short guy who had two left feet, even if he didn't fit my list.

But I would not marry someone who said that there was no way he would ever be willing to adopt children with special needs. And this is what A has a problem with. He says I don't get to decide what the man I marry is like, God does, so I shouldn't make this kind of decision. But I think that if I am called to the vocation of adoption, and I truly believe that I am, then God will not choose for me someone who would prevent me from fulfilling that vocation. Maybe it's my job to convert someone to adoption, A says. Maybe it is, and so I'm not saying I would never date anyone who wasn't over the moon about adoption already. I would even date someone who said no way, at least until it became clear he wasn't changing his mind. But I would not *marry* someone hoping to change his mind about something that important. What do my (nonexistent, I know) readers think?

The other issue was the question of whether I view my husband as an end in himself or only as a means to children. This one's trickier. I do tend to talk that way. I think this is partly because I can imagine what it's like to get my children without actually knowing which children they are. It's a lot harder to imagine dating & marrying someone with no information about who he is. As I told A this morning, I already know why my children need me, but I don't know why my husband does. That being said, I think A has a point in that I do tend to think about a husband as a step on the road to children. He is, of course, a step along that path, but he is also where another, equally important path ends. And that's something I need to remember better.