Entering the fray – August 9, 2020 update
School starts tomorrow – professional development for the teachers – and I’m a-flutter with how to make a start of a new chaotic year meaningful.
Public schools (yes, private schools, even) are rife with political activism – doubly so after this summer – and I am anxious about firmly setting down permanency linked to the holy life I want to lead. The political environment, the indoctrination, I think I can handle, but my private life has taken a hit.
I want to blame the interruption of Mass. Truly, I won’t know until I get to heaven and ask God about this time period in my life. We were doing really well with the lockdown, living a cloistered life, but then personal crisis hit. Nothing major, really, just family drama – but it was with persons we have purposefully excluded bc of their toxicity and the occasions of sin we revisit when in their vicinity.
So, yes – a little soul-shaking.
Now I’m returning to teach in a ideologically aggressive environment where I will likely be called to commit to mantras, oaths, polemics, beliefs I don’t espouse.
It won’t happen, so I expect some sort of turmoil.
But living in this expectant turmoil isn’t where I want to be, so… I’m committing to doing things I really, really love: I’m creating my own Catholic writing life.
What will I make?
I’m not sure what I’ll be producing. If anything – at least at this moment in time – it’ll be an often-written reflection of what I see in the world around me that soothes my soul.
Take my friend Elena’s post here, for example:
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe penultimate days of summer pic.twitter.com/4zcAF2DnRG
— Elena (@omnialnchristo) August 9, 2020
God’s love for us is reflected not only in the world He provides us with, but in the memory of what we’ve experienced. When I see Elena’s photos, I’m a witness to the Love God gives her as she walks through her native land. I experience this Love, if only vicariously, but then I recall a memory of my youth.. walking among dry, harvested fields to reach the top of canals to fly a kite with my siblings. It is the of the very few memories I have of doing anything with them, a life lost to alcoholism and ruin, but it’s a moment given to me by God. Why?
To Love again. To Love now, even though I have no part of them in this moment of my life. God gave me Love then, He’s calling me to Love now.
Dearest Lord, thank you for this sweet memory. I pray for them now. May I one day Love them in their presence.. in the future. Thy Holy Will be done. Amen.
Now.. that’s cool. I had absolutely no idea I would be writing that. I had no idea those ideas were in there, that they’d come out of me, on this late Sunday afternoon, with me on my bed, my husband prepping dinner, and my cat asking for a scritch.
This is one of the many purposes of writing: to discover. to reveal. to mirror the divine.
(.. which is why I think more Catholics should be writing!)
Who will I make it with?
My idea is to write with fellow creatives – write, read, create, make.. Literature, scripts, poetry, indie shorts..
Play.
I feel embarrassed and shy starting from nothing.. I feel like a little girl all alone on the playground.. but the loss over the absence of having a literate Catholic life has become to great for me. So, off I go, cheerfully, to go make it.. and I hope to find some Catholics who would like to experiment with something they’ve never done before OR find some Catholics who have.
This is about creating anything Catholic, from the very hidden & obscure to the most overt & obnoxious.. I support it all!
.. as long as it’s not heterodox or blasphemous.
I advocate the holy. This is how we can help sanctify the world. Amen.
AMDG. St. Edith Stein, Sunday, August 9, 2020.
Veronica, it is the Lord.. 