But, I like hotdogs! !

I have endured rolled eyes and glassy stares whenever I have given an explanation as to why I participate (endure?) in a body purification program maybe two to three times a year. The three week program basically gives your liver a rest from all of the detoxing it tries to do to combat the invasion of chemicals and preservatives that we daily consume. The Program encourages consumption of an abundance of normal food that our grandparents ate all the time and taking some herbs in capsule form. I do not make money off of selling the program to others. People only find out about 'my cleanse' when I try to politely decline a type of food that is offered to me during the three week period. "What's the matter? Are you a health nut?" "Do you think you are too heavy?" are just a few of the taunts hurled my way. No, I am not a health nut. No, I do not think that I am obese. I am only finally understanding how my body works and how I can optimize the way it functions. Eating ice cream, candy, and drinking coffee are still a few of my favorite things! I am simply not opposed to being open to the elimination of the negative and encouraging a few positives in my physical realm.

Hot dogs have been hailed as really bad things to ingest. Someone told me that if I had ever watched how hot dogs are made, I would never even think of having one. "Do you know what they put in those?!" Well, I have an idea what goes into hot dogs, and I definitely understand why they are not on the suggested meats for my post cleanse. But, you know, I like hot dogs! I can make them a little healthier by putting sauerkraut on them and drinking bottled water with them instead of a Mountain Dew. I have thousands of justifications for eating hot dogs. The best one is the total confidence that by adhering to other health habits, I enable my liver to spend extra time on ridding the nasties of the dogs from my body. How clever!

Now, from my physical realm to my spiritual realm. Over the past ten years I have participated in a type of purification program with the Church. Information about pedophiles, church closings, and various shady deals within the walls of the Catholic Church gave me a wake up call about what I had been unwittingly ingesting for years. Because of that influx of information, I guess I have been on a type of cleanse. I now try to be more aware of how I participate in the Church in an attempt to optimize my spiritual health. How am I doing? I pray, read, listen to music and still work hard on a Confirmation team to open students up to their spiritual destinies. Yet, I now make every attempt to stay aware of what the church is putting in the 'hot dogs' for their parishioners' consumption. Are there any ingredients in what I am fed spiritually that requires a spiritual cleanse?

I recently started to read "Render Unto Rome" 'The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church' by Jason Berry. A friend gave it to me to read and I swore I would diligently read it. That vow collapsed just into the third chapter when I read about Pope Pius IX and St. Peter's Pence. I have not picked up that book in three weeks because, darn it, I like hot dogs! I do not want to know anymore about how the church misuses funds. I want to believe that the church is perfect as much as I want to believe that eating hot dogs at every meal is great for my body! But, because I know that man is not perfect, I know that I have to pick up the book again and read on. Yes, I am hoping that the ending shows that the Spirit does as great a job cleansing the Church as my healthy liver does to all the nasties that find their way into my food!

So, page 51, how long will it take me to finish on page 360? I confess that I turned to the last page and found comfort and a little inspiration in the last line: "The miracle is that the Eucharist endures."

Sowing seeds

From the Word among Us:

"Time and again, God gives us opportunities to do something different, to make a new and better choice, even the choice to become a saint........Each of us has the opportunity to be a saint--not by becoming a world-famous missionary like Mother Teresa or an erudite theologian like Pope John Paul II or a martyr like Edith Stein, but by simply being the best version of ourselves that we can be. By living the calling God has given us; by loving our husbands and wives, our children and parents and friends; by doing our jobs to the best of our ability."

Defying gravity?

'When someone asked me what that "Surrender" blog-blurt was all about, I had no ready answer except that I am tired of being anchored down by the gravity of the institutional church. The positives of Gravity in keeping all things secured to the earth, have to be overcome when one wishes to fly. Years ago, a small number of people thought differently about flight, and they changed travel forever. Our local church does everything in its power to keep us all grounded in standard faith. Kudos! But what about the miracles? Rohr's thoughts, that miracles rarely happen in the institution but through the concerted efforts of its small groups, make sense to me at this point in my life. I have been verrrry frustrated over the last few years of fighting the consolidated church's gravity. Under other church leadership I used to fly. One staff member grew to listen to me, get a quizzical look on her face, nod and say, "Go ahead, try it." I never thanked her enough.

I miss it. I miss that staff encouragement. Real encouragement to create opportunities to reach people, not just filling a void in a list of assigned duties. I miss it enough to surrender. I surrender to the fact that many well meaning people want the parish to run in a standard fashion. That is fine. But now that I understand what Rohr was trying to say in 'Falling Upward', I can let them do it without frustration. I can surrender. I surrender to the fact that there is no room for cardinals that see reflections in the glass and want to fly. No room for cardinals who make 'bonks' that seem stupid to the people living within the walls of the parish. That cardinal of mine will eventually fly away, either because he will have realized that there is no one to fight on the other side of the glass, or because he has literally bashed his brains in from the intensity of his efforts. I don't intend to leave my brains smashed up against the brick of our church!

So..... I surrender. I will surrender to letting the staff run the church. I surrender to the fact that our local church does not really trust what its people see and feel. I surrender to the fact that my talents will never be used to their fullest if I continually bow to the institution. I will respect the institution (and those that run it) as the safe haven Rohr expounded it to be. I simply can no longer deny the reflection that I see in the glass. No one would have ever found out that 747's could fly hundreds of people across the country unless someone first believed in defying gravity.