7 Quick Takes: I’m not ready yet.

1.

Lent Report:  The festival of cleaning combined with our new penitential life is starting to show results.  Neighbor kid who lives in a clean house all the time is unimpressed.  But I am.  For one thing, the finally collasping remains of the Leaf Fort have now been moved to a newly-constructed giant compost garden, where in theory we’ll grow fewer insects and more compost this year.

2.

On the other hand, less school work is being accomplished.  But we will catch back up.  We are still in the initial stages of our new, clean life, and there was some digging-out to do.

3.

I have at least one child interested in attending daily mass more often.  (By “more often” I mean “at all, ever”.)  I’m going to see how doing just Fridays works.

4.

But “just Fridays”, I mean to say, “Yesterday I did not race the kids to mass and adoration even though in theory we could have squeezed it in on the way to Grandma’s house, but seriously?  It wasn’t going to work. ”

As I told Father last week, sometimes trying to haul everyone to church is a near occasion of sin in itself.

I want my kids to associate weekday mass with peaceful, reflective times with God, not with Mom Yelling At You That Your Pants Need To Be Ironed Because You Did Not Put Them Away Properly And Quick Get That Food Off The Table Do You Not Remember We Are Cleaning Up After Ourselves Because We Are Growing In Holiness Quit Making That Face At Your Sister.

 

5.

But what I did do yesterday was something new: I read a book during adoration.    Dropped the kids at Grandma’s, returned library books, then stopped by the church as I sometimes (not always) do on a grandma day.

Normally I would pray for a very small amount of time, and then go over to McDonald’s, buy a cup of coffee, and read a book.  I always puzzled over people who read during Eucharistic adoration, because it felt sort of like if you had an audience with the Queen of England and you whipped out a magazine because you were so bored.  You know, because it’s so much more reverent to dash in,  say hello, and wave goodbye with a, “Nice seeing you, gotta run off to McDonald’s now”, right?

The book was Knox’s Retreat for Lay People.  And it would be a good helpful book if read at McDonald’s.  But read right there in the presence of Jesus? Wow. What a difference.  Talk about a serious book club.  Each point became something I could pray about — that is, talk face to face with Jesus right then and there.  Not contemplate while gazing at the ceiling, or the clouds, or even an icon or crucifix.  But right there with the Real guy.  Sheesh.   I’d never guessed.  Seriously cool.

 

6.

Pray for Allie Hathaway.  I can’t think of a better way to spend your Friday.

7.

“I’m Not Ready Yet” is what our first pair of preschoolers would call out from the bed in the evenings.  They’d lay there in their room, shouting out in a chorus, “I’m not ready yet!  I’m not ready yet!” in protest of their bedtime.  We have it on video.  It has now entered the family vocabulary as our all-purpose expression of dislike for less enjoyable responsibilities.

In other bits of castle dialect these days: Everything is coming back to Mr. Timn.