Author: Jennifer Fitz

How to Know if Your Clothes are Okay

In light of the recent controversy over whether FLOTUS was wearing the proper shoes for climbing into an airplane to visit a natural disaster zone, I offer this quick guide for how to tell whether you are wearing what you ought to be wearing:

You are a politician: Wear a suit.  Always wear a suit, except when you are being too uptight by wearing a suit.  In that case, you should forgo the suit so you can be disrespectful for not wearing a suit.

You are a business owner: If you want to intimidate your employees by showing you are a member of the corporate elite, wear a suit.  If you want to intimidate your employees by showing that you are powerful enough you don’t have to wear a suit, don’t wear a suit.  The proper way to dress is called “Giving out free food to poor people,” unless it’s part of your secret plot to oppress poor people.  The media will let you know.

You are a college student:  Wear exactly the right t-shirt.  Not wearing a t-shirt shows you are planning to oppress people one day, except when it shows that you are going to do great things one day.

You are a mother:  Go change your clothes immediately.  You obviously don’t care, at all, about your children, your family, or the downfall of civilization.

You are a father: Did you dress yourself?  We can tell.  Did your wife dress you?  We can tell.  Either way, you must never, ever, look like your mother dressed you.  Also, she should have raised you better than that.

You are a teenage girl:  Your clothes, if you choose to wear them, are just fine.  Everything you wear is just fine.  Anyone who says otherwise is body-shaming you.  You are not actually required to wear clothes, though, because that would be sexist.

You are a teenage boy:  You can wear whatever you want, as long as you are saving someone from imminent death.  Otherwise, please go away.

You are a disabled person being bullied or glorified on the internet: Your clothes are the unique expression of you — don’t change a thing!

You are a disabled person who hasn’t been born yet, or who requires any medical care, ever, for any reason: Die, wastrel.  Clothes are not meant for you.

You didn’t die, and now you’re out in public being weird:  There should be better funding for programs to make you less weird.

You are a thin, beautiful, member of the British aristocracy: Your clothes are just perfect!

You are a fat, beautiful, member of the British aristocracy: Hence the destruction of the realm.

You are FLOTUS:  Everything you wear is a symbol of why the other party would have saved us.  Or destroyed us.  Either one.  Your clothes are so versatile!

You are attending a Catholic church: Your clothes are one of the sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance.  Just ask the person sitting in the next pew.  If you dare.

 

File:58th Presidential Inauguration Marianique Santos 21.jpg

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia, public domain, where the category Melania Trump in 2017 will meet all your stiletto-viewing needs.

In Search of the “Real America”

There’s a meme going around right now about what “real Americans” are like.  We see pictures of heroic rescues in the Texas floods contrasted with recent racist or fascist violence.  The “real America” is the good one.  The real America is where people pull together, act bravely, and give everything to help their neighbor, no matter who that neighbor might be.

I don’t disagree.  America really is that, and we have the pictures to prove it.

The difficult bit is that we aren’t only that.

***

I have some assorted friends whom I profoundly love and respect, and to whom I owe a perpetual debt of gratitude for the goodness they have brought into my life.

These friends are like me, though, in that they are noticeably flawed.   (Like me in kind, not degree – evidence is I’m more flawed than they are.)

I don’t want to hear about that.  Even if I do sometimes notice their weaknesses, I want everyone else to shut their mouths.  What I see in them, what I want everyone to notice, is the beauty and goodness and truth they bring to this world.   I want to shout: Do you not understand what they did for me? For you?!

***

This instinct to see the good in our friends is how we get to an All Dogs Go To Heaven theology.  It’s a good instinct.  We can see that our friends are made in the image and likeness of God, inherently lovable and worth loving.  That’s an accurate view of who they are.  The thought of such a person going to Hell is unthinkable.  We’re not alone there.  God Himself has been quite explicit about His desire to save the world rather than condemn it.

***
Mercy is the thing that makes us see the part of our friends that must at all costs be saved.

Yes, yes, we know about the immense weaknesses and deplorable lapses and insufferable habits — but we know the other side!  We have seen selflessness to make your mouth gape, and virtues so indelibly marked on our friends’ souls that they track in purity and joy on their shoes even when they try their hardest to wipe their goodness off at the door.

***

Some people get so despicable that it’s hard to see the parts worth saving.   God can see those parts though.  The question of salvation isn’t how much nastiness needs to be removed to get down to the person you were created to be.  The question of salvation is: Are you willing to be saved?

***

We aren’t supposed to like nastiness.  It isn’t supposed to be easy and comfortable to live with horrid people.  We should want to be surrounded by peaceful, loving, generous folk who fully live out the commandments.  (Never ever forgetting Proverbs 27:14, but of course there are others as well).

So it’s understandable that we have low patience for certain sins.

***

What is lost in our national discourse is the appreciation of the complexity of other humans.  Someone can be terribly wrong in some ways and entirely right in others.  Someone can both commit serious sins and carry out marvelous good works.  (I’ve got the first part down, thanks.)

You can be a racist nationalist who risks your own life rescuing total strangers.

You can give away your fortune aiding the poor, and also devote yourself to killing the unborn.

You can be a notorious philanderer and also an unshakable civil rights martyr.

The combinations are unlimited, and Americans seem, collectively, to be trying out all of them.

***

Where our national discourse goes wrong is in trying to mount the opposite of the ad hominen attack — call it the ad hominen defense.  If my side is right, my men must be perfect.  An attack on my ideas is an attack on me and mine.

We are unable to admit the possibility of human weakness and complexity, nor to properly rank the seriousness of our failures.  Thus we end up in bizarre situations both divisive and falsely “unifying.”

Sometimes, out of fear of hurting somebody’s feelings or overlooking their virtues, we’re afraid to condemn their serious sins.  Better to get along and smooth things over for a day that never comes when somehow we’ll dialog our way past the impasse without ever opening our mouths.

Other times, out of fear of seeming to approve a vice or a poorly-formed conscience, we feel compelled to commit a course of Total Condemnation — economic, political, and personal.

***

Let me show you a video of the way of peace.  This is South Carolina removing the Confederate flag from the state house grounds.

It came down because of decades and decades of peaceful protest. Did it take too long? Yes.  The remedy for sin always takes too long.  Do people suffer injustice in the course of the long, slow path of peaceful protest? Yes.  But people suffer injustice from violent protest, calumny, and vicious personal attacks.  There’s not an option for waving the Fix Everything Wand and presto-change-o the world is magically better.

Peacefully refusing to accept injustice works.  It has worked marvels of healing and change in a place where you would never have said fifty years ago that all this would come to pass.  It worked in a place where people are still fallen.  Sinful people who do wretched things made that flag come down.  Gracious people doing their best to make the image of God shine in the darkness made that flag come down.  They were the same people.

File:Texas National Guard (36916700965).jpg

U.S. Army National Guard photo by Capt. Martha Nigrelle: “Soldiers, fire fighters, paramedics and neighbors ensured more than 1,000 people and hundreds of dogs and cats were safe, evacuating them to dry ground and local shelters.”  Courtesy of Wikimedia [Public Domain].

Back-to-School Means Back-to-Apologetics

Last night’s report from the corner public high school: “My history teacher explained to the class that the difference between Catholics and Protestants was that Catholics idolize Mary.”

Ah.  Well, there’s academic precision for you.

After learning that this particular teacher was a Lutheran, I produced my go-to book for children who have to deal with Lutherans who can’t be nice to the BVM:

Beginning Apologetics 6

Begining Apologetics 6: How to Explain and Defend Mary from San Juan Catholic Seminars has a page devoted to key quotes from Martin Luther concerning the Blessed Mother.

If you let your kids out in public, they need to know Catholic apologetics.   Parents, don’t count on your local parish to provide this education to your children.  Maybe your parish offers excellent religious education or maybe they don’t, but it’s your job to oversee your children’s formation.

A good Catholic upbringing doesn’t erase free will.  All the best formation in the world is no guarantee your children will remain Catholic into adulthood.  But if you don’t even give them the tools they need to attempt a defense of their faith, you’re kinda asking for it.

Prepping for Disasters

Texas is on my mind, what with friends being flooded and vivid memories of SC’s teeny-tiny-in-comparison floods.  Something to know about these disasters: You don’t hear from the worst-affected.  In order to post photos mid-storm, you have to have power and internet.  In order for you to see photos from disaster crews, the disaster crews have to be able to get into the area.  You can reasonably assume the destruction and death in Texas are much worse than what we are seeing now.

Into this, yesterday afternoon I was enjoying a little slice of Heaven: A leisurely afternoon of lunch and conversation with good friends in glorious weather.  During which time a friend posed a disaster-preparedness question: In the event of an EMP attack from North Korea, do we need to worry about having an emergency water supply?

On the one hand, the answer among the conversationalists was yes: Well pumps and city water facilities both use electricity, so if that goes out, your water goes out.

But I felt compelled to add: I have no idea whether the North Koreans will ever disrupt my water supply, but I know for a fact the city’s beaten them to it plenty of times.  So yes, I store water.  Weirdly, thus far we’ve been spared weather-related disruptions even when those nearby were not — but construction crews working near water mains?  Oh yes, that gets us every time.

Tip:  When you empty a liquor bottle, you have a freshly sterilized container on your hands.  Go ahead and fill that puppy up with nice clean city water while you’ve got it, screw the lid on, and stuff it into some corner where you can never reach anyway.

Related Tip: If you are using a vodka bottle, label your stored water.  Otherwise, you’ll lose track of whether you’re looking at water or vodka.  When you need the one for something, the other just won’t do.

Since water’s something you just can’t go without, it’s something I’m a recreational-prepper for.  When a hurricane comes, I turn over the canoe, lay out the kiddie pools, and put out coolers and other containers under the eaves of the house, to collect rainwater in case we lose water afterwards.  You want to be able to flush your toilet post-hurricane, even if it doesn’t rain again for a few days.

As footage from Texas shows, though, all your prepping can come to naught.  Catching clean rain water for post-storm use does you no good whatsoever if your clean water is under four feet of biohazard-laden flood waters.  Storing rice and beans won’t help if your rice and beans are soaked in the flood, or carried off in the tornado, or burnt to ashes when lightning catches your house on fire.

So why bother prepping?

 

File:Hurricane Harvey ESA382898.jpg
Image: Modified Copernicus Sentinel data [CC BY-SA 3.0-igo ], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Prepping Improves Everyone’s Odds

The reason everyone should do at least a little bit of disaster-preparedness is because you have no idea ahead of time who’s going to get hit, when, where, and how.  If my neighbor’s house floods — whether due to a hurricane or just a busted washing machine hose — if I have a little stash of instant coffee over at my clean, dry, spared-disaster house, things can be better.

Tip: Instant coffee + a box of UHT chocolate milk = A tiny package of sanity when civilization has receded beyond your horizon.

Double Tip: Even more than coffee, keep a reserve supply of any necessary-to-life medications you take.   If you possibly can, make arrangements with your physician to get yourself one month ahead on your refills.

Triple Tip:  Many people can’t do this because we have stupid, stupid, stupid laws.  Consider lobbying for change in this regard.

The reality is that in a major disaster, everything is going to be horrible.  You can’t possibly build the perfect bunker to shield yourself from every misery.  But what everyone can do is think ahead and set aside a little bit of provision, according to their means and their needs, so that overall the odds are better that somebody nearby will be in a position to provide emergency relief until bigger help can come along.

File:Hurricane Harvey (2017) DSC9077 (36042148423).jpg

 Photo by Brant Kelly (_DSC9077.jpg) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Related, three posts from SC’s floods that might be of interest.  The first two are particularly apropos if you have young people who would like to drive down post-disaster and help with the massive clean-up:

Once it’s all-clear and you can safely get in to help in a useful, systematic way, in conjunction with some effort spearheaded by locals who know what it is needed — which is going to be a while, and by that time the work is going to be super-nasty — do it.

The third is probably only of interest to a select audience:  What’s the Story Behind the Flooding in SC?  Obviously, the story behind the flooding in Texas is that Harvey is dropping several giant lakes worth of water on land that would rather be land, thanks.  What’s relevant for SC folks, and others who’ve endured similar spot-disasters, is that what we’ve experienced are situations where most people are fine, if inconvenienced, which leaves a very strong community at hand available to assist with clean-up.

Greater metro Houston, in contrast, is getting poured on in a way that’s going to be devastating more people than not.  And remember that washed-out roads means that the ability of anyone to get in and help will be hampered for a long time.

So this is a hugely different situation than that time your town was hit by this or that terrible-but-limited natural disaster.  And you know from memory that things were plenty bad enough then.  This is super-bad.

 

Math Book Confidence

Boy Studying1

This is a math book review, but also a talk about motivation.

My lone homeschooler (this year) is prone to worrying.  Concerning math, her chief worries are that there will be too much work, that it will be too difficult, or that it will all be futile.

Now I don’t believe in rushing math.  Other than the odd prodigy you read about in the news, I’ve seen very little benefit to rushing students into upper level math at an early age.  Experience teaches that engineers should complete one year of high school calculus in high school.  For everyone else, getting through algebra 2 or trig by the end of high school seems to be sufficient.  They do, after all, offer college math classes in college.

What this means is that for most kids, doing algebra 1 in 9th grade makes sense.  Their brains are far more capable of abstract thinking at that age than at earlier grades.  I’ve known, on that count, a number of engineers who found it far better to take geometry in 10th grade or later, even if it meant taking both algebra and geometry in the same year (concurrently or doing geometry over the summer), because geometry requires mature abstract thinking.

Therefore, our goal for our kids is for them to have a sound understanding of arithmetic, elementary geometry concepts, and simple pre-algebra by the end of 8th grade.  I would rather them finish middle school fluent in 8th grade math than floundering in algebra.

I wrote here in 2012 about how we handled elementary math (verdict: Math-U-See for us), and here in 2015 about why we switched to Saxon (because the primary teacher changed).  Here’s a quick comparison of what I like about each:

Instructional DVD’s, Dive into Saxon vs. MUS:  Equivalent.  Not identical, but both walk you through the lesson and give example problems.  The Dive videos are more like an actual math class, both longer and with more conversation than the MUS videos.  The Dive videos contain explicitly Christian content (Bible verses, assorted theistic comments).   FYI – Math-u-See materials don’t contain explicitly Christian or theistic content except in select courses such as the Stewardship course.

Word Problem Solving: Math-U-See wins hands down. My three kids who spent their elementary years in MUS have a much better ability to read a word problem and know how to solve it, because MUS teaches math concepts from a real-life-problem point of view.  Saxon uses many similar teaching aids, but the approach to word problems is to teach children to analyze the script in the word problem as if it were an abstract code.

Math Facts: Saxon.  MUS does tell you to memorize your facts.  It assumes you are working whatever drills are necessary on your own.  Saxon builds in daily fact drills so that you cannot escape math fact practice.  In addition to the four arithmetic operations, Saxon drills geometric principles, ratio equivalents, and simple algebraic equivalents.

Review: Saxon.  The sheer quantity of daily practice problems is notorious.  Every review problem is labeled with the chapter where you can look up that type of problem, so it is very useful for children who need to go back and remember how to solve a given type of problem.  Math-U-See, in contrast, works from the idea that you will master a topic before moving on.  Problems build in complexity over time.  Saxon does not assume you mastered one lesson before moving on to the next.

Mental Math: Saxon.  In addition to the “mental math” practice at the start of each lesson, the sheer variety of problems practiced on any given day demands mental flexibility.  In contrast, I’d say that Math-U-See provides better overall mastery of math concepts, and MUS pre-introduces concepts it isn’t officially teaching yet.  For example, students know fraction equivalents in MUS years before they actually crack the Fractions book.

 

Saxon Math 8/7 3ED Homeschool KIT | Main photo (Cover)

My Overall Preferred Strategy

I like Math-U-See for the elementary years, because of the way it teaches comprehension.  People like me, however, need something to help with math fact memorization, and honestly I don’t know exactly what that is.  Memory work is not my strong suit in teaching.  But if you’re using MUS, you’ll want to plan some kind of supplemental drill.  However, because Saxon spirals through topics, it is easier to move into a Saxon book at any time, no matter what you’ve been using before.

You can also skip a level in Saxon, which gives you the flexibility of, say, taking three years to complete two math books with some alternate learning in between. For example my current 8th grader did Saxon 6/5 in 6th and early 7th grade, paused to do some Life of Fred and some real-life math applications, then picked back up with Saxon 8/7 later in 7th grade with no difficulty; she’ll complete 8/7 by the end of 8th grade.

(Why no, I feel no need whatsoever for the kids to do their Saxon books at the earlier of the two grades in a given book title.  See below to find out why.)

For this particular student, I’ll probably go back to Math-U-See for Algebra 1 in 9th grade.  The uncluttered format and arrow-like focus of Math-U-See will probably work better for her in upper level math.   More philosophy of education: It’s more important in math that you master what you do study than that you dabble in greater depths than you can truly handle.

There are other subjects where floating in the depths has its benefits.  I don’t believe that is the case with math.

Math Book Confidence

Coming back to the title of this post: My current 8th grader is easily intimidated by a math book.

One of the reasons I like 8/7 as an 8th grade pre-algebra book is that I’ve seen it work.  The spiral, scattershot nature of Saxon means that you are very likely to fill in any little gaps that might have sneaked into the elementary years.  The memory work is focused on preparing for high school.  The perpetual review pounds the concepts into your brain.  So, in the hands of a student who actually does the homework, it’s a very effective tool.

Seeing the book work gives us confidence that it will keep working.  The current 8th grader knows that her older sister did this book in 8th grade and went on to ace Algebra 1 at the corner high school.  That makes a big difference in helping the younger sibling, who finds math books daunting, to keep her chin up and grind away.  It helps me to be motivated to make the child stick with it when she gets daunted (or I do).

–> Neither of the girls are especially math-loving students; they have decent intelligence, but they aren’t staying up late at night playing math games or anything.  Another book might be better for a different kind of child.

So I would say that above all in picking a math book, to choose one that has been successful for students similar to yours.  It’s just easier to work through a book if you have good reason to believe your work will bear fruit.

Talking Privileges for Converts vs. Cradle Catholics

Fr. Matthew Schneider has an article up at Crux, weighing in on the Should Converts Just Shut Up debate (which Crux started).  Fr. Schneider probably says something very nice and that readers here would be okay with, because he’s good for that.  I don’t recall we’ve ever disagreed before.  Fr. Longenecker said something nice, for example.  But I couldn’t read Fr. Schneider because I’ve started breaking out in the blogger-version of hives (BVH) every time I even see this discussion.

BVH reaction: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE??

Kids.  We have a way of evaluating people’s opinions on any topic, religious or otherwise.

We ask: Is it true?

It doesn’t matter whether the opinion comes from a cradle catholic, a convert, a heretic, or a rank atheist.  What matters is whether it is true.

It is normal to take an interest in a person’s credentials.  Sometimes, perhaps laying in the ER with your brain bleeding, you have nothing but credentials to rely on in making decisions.  But if you’ve gone so far as to become a Catholic writer, then it is my hope that no matter how incompetent you are at medical or financial or engineering decisions, you have the ability to weed out the Catholic Faith from Not the Catholic Faith.

Those of us who have half an hour’s experience comparing what credentialed Catholics say to what the Church says can let you in on a secret: It is neither the number of years being Catholic, nor the sorts of degrees acquired, nor the kinds of sacraments received that determine whether someone is writing the truth.  It is whether the person sufficiently desires to tell the truth that they make the effort.

Earnest people make honest mistakes, and dishonest people foment errors, and both categories of people are the reason we keep our thinking caps on.

I think if I were, therefore, to provide a useful bit of ad hominen caution for the unwashed masses about whom everyone is so concerned, it would be this:  If your betters are telling you it is the type of person and not their ideas that need evaluating in order to discover the truth, you should stop reading those betters.

 

 

Anti-Racist Jesus Visits Canaan

Today the encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman came around in the readings again.  I once heard a deacon preach that this incident just shows that Jesus was “human” like the rest of us, where “human” is code for “sinful.”

I don’t think so, sir.

Back in 2014, I wrote a bit of Gospel fan fiction, taking the words of Scripture verbatim, but filling out the details Scripture doesn’t supply.  Everyone does this when they read, and sometimes our fill-in-the-blanks interpretations are justified and sometimes they are not.  I wrote a follow-up post on why I hold with the Jesus is Not a Jerk Thesis.  I still hold with that reasoning:

Thus when the infamous quote comes around full circle in conversation with the Canaanite woman and his disciples, we have a Jesus who:

  • Is master of the Law, not slave of it.
  • Has praised the faith of pagans.
  • Has spoken of the redemption of the very region they are now standing in.
  • Has willingly and freely healed non-Jews.
  • And has said that perseverance in prayer is desirable.

And then He pulls out a pun in his dialog, turning the meaning of the expression on its head.

Were I writing that same story today, I wouldn’t write it the way I wrote it back then.   Today my mind is on the idea of racism, and for the reasons I summarize above (see the original post for more details), I tend to view this encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman as the counterpart to what today we would call an anti-racist moment.  Jesus has been attempting, through word and action, to teach his disciples that salvation is for the whole world.

They will eventually get that message (“neither Jew nor Greek”), but they haven’t got it yet.

Here they are being asked to heal someone’s daughter of a demon.  A demon, guys!  This is serious, serious trouble, and it’s the kind of trouble that elite religious healing-commando people ought to be on the job taking care of.  Instead they say: Send her away. She’s bugging us.

What exactly do you do with people whose hearts are so hardened?

Give them another talk?   You can only give so many talks.

Our Lord, being fully God, had the ability to know this Canaanite woman.  He had the ability to know how she would react under pressure, and what sorts of things would wound her and which would not.

People are cured of their bigotry only when they get to see the world through the eyes of the person they’ve pushed off and objectified.  The disciples would have happily dismissed the woman as some noisy, intrusive, undeserving gentile.  Jesus says what needs to be said — he verbalizes what they are thinking — so they can see how unjust it is, and they can see in her response how deserving of their respect she is.

 

File:Folio 164r - The Canaanite Woman.jpg

Artwork: The Canaanite Woman, via Wikimedia [Public Domain]

 

Two Bits of Common Sense Eclipse Safety for Kids

I live on the pending eclipse path, so How To Keep Your Kids From Going Blind is suddenly a topic around here.

First thing to know: The hazard of the eclipse is if you look at the sun.  There aren’t deadly Eclipse Rays that come out and attack while you are napping in your hammock in the shade.  The trouble, of course, is thats it’s really unusual to see the sun get all blocked up by the moon, and so people who would otherwise never stare at the sun might suddenly take an interest.  Staring at the sun is always bad for you.

(Your pets, in contrast, probably aren’t going to take up astronomy as a hobby on Monday afternoon, unless I suppose that’s something you’ve caught them at before.  My pets never stare at the sun. They mostly stare at the back door.  And meat.  If there’s a Meat Eclipse, my dog will be watching that one closely.)

So anyway, back to your kids.

#1 Practice Using Your Safety Glasses Ahead of Time

You got yourself NASA-approved glasses, of course, and you’ve read all about sun-viewing safety.  Now practice.  You do not want to be in the middle of a very short once-in-a-lifetime event and your kids are like “I can’t make mine work!”  “I can’t see!” “These itch!”  Practice.

#2 Not All Children Can Be Trusted to Wear Their Safety Glasses

If your child is not mature enough to be counted on, skip the viewing altogether.  Just don’t go there.  If your child is young enough to be oblivious you don’t even have to tell them there’s a viewing option.  You can just let your young children know that the sun is going to be covered up by the moon, so it’s going to get dark outside in the middle of the day, which is nifty.

They’ll of course want to see it get dark (but they won’t want to go bed).  So pick a room with a window that doesn’t face towards the sun during your eclipse time of day.  Set the kids up so they can watch it get dark out that window. Stream the eclipse on your computer so that they can compare the progress of the eclipse with conditions outside.

For more info: NASA has all your eclipse enjoyment science needs covered here. Food, drink, and lounge chairs you’ll have to sort out for yourself.

File:Antoinecaronq571Getty.jpg

Artwork courtesy of Wikimedia [Public Domain]

Parish Programs vs. Discipleship Relationships

As parish programs are starting up with the school year, I want to talk about the necessity of one-on-one discipleship.  This is something that many people on parish staff have zero experience with.  But it’s just spending time with someone listening to them and providing a type of companionship that is ordered towards helping each other become better Christians.

This time could include praying together, talking about problems or personal struggles, answering questions about the faith, sharing good resources, doing a Bible study together, or providing practical how-to help – but it isn’t one thing: It’s paying attention to what the other person needs, and responding to that need.

I pause here to note: Discipleship isn’t grooming successors.  If you run a parish program, of course you keep your eye out for people who can take on responsibility within your program.  But discipleship is about helping the other person to daily answer their individual call from God, even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with your program.

(Indeed: I find it very fruitful to be in mutual-discipleship relationships with people whose work is entirely separate from mine.)

Discipling someone is time-intensive.  You have to spend quantity-time being with each other, and at least some of that time has to be one-on-one time, when personal difficulties can be discussed in confidence.

Everybody in your parish needs this.

Parish staff cannot, therefore, meet the needs of all parishioners (unless your parish only has four people in it, maybe).

Therefore a parish communal life that consists of bringing in the herd, giving them a message, and then sending them home to their separate lives will not work.

Parish staff can hope to personally disciple a very small number of people. The goal should be to work towards helping those few people in turn be mature enough Christians that they can disciple others, and on and on.

A culture of “discipleship” is not just a culture where growing in one’s Christian faith is highly valued; it’s a culture where personally spending time helping each other grow is a normal activity for all members of the community.

Furthermore, to be successful, the two people in a discipleship relationship must like each other.  Otherwise spending time with each other won’t be any fun.

Therefore blind-date discipleship doesn’t work all that well.  As a result, the parish culture needs to be one where people meet each other, get to know each other, and form “horizontal” relationships.  It’s not 100 parents who each know the DRE and smile at each other in the car line.  It’s 100 parents who form friendships in a crystalline network among each other.

You can easily see that it is also therefore necessary that welcoming and incorporating newcomers into that web of parish friendships is essential.  We don’t stop at greeting the stranger.  We don’t stop at inviting the stranger to the potluck.  We learn the stranger’s name, we make sure the stranger has someone to sit with, we create opportunities to get to know the stranger one-on-one, and now the stranger is no longer a stranger and the process of getting involved in discipling one another is underway.

Finally let me clarify that a culture of discipleship doesn’t mean every parishioner is paired with exactly one other parishioner in a formal disciple-teacher relationship.  Some people might have that experience, such as if you are working one-on-one as a catechist with an RCIA candidate receiving individual instruction.  But what is normal and good is a network of discipling relationships.

For example: Jane gets out and walks every morning with Sue, and they talk about whatever’s on their minds; Sue meets Keisha once a week for Bible study; Keisha and Ann and Sarah have a girls’ night once a month where they talk about their work and family challenges; Jane and Ann do a monthly meeting where they talk about the ministry they run together;  Sarah and Maria having a monthly engineering meeting at work (all business), and then they go to lunch afterward and chat about their faith; Maria teaches religious ed on Sunday nights, and her helper Monica learns from her in class, and also they belong to the same quilting club.

Some will be relationships of teacher to student, some will be clearly peer-to-peer relationships, and most will be a combination, because everyone has their strengths and gifts and struggles.

This is copyright Jennifer Fitz 2017.  Permission granted to share it around freely for non-profit educational use; I only ask that you attribute and either share in its entirety or provide a link back here so people can read the whole thing if they like.  If you’re a glutton for this stuff, the Evangelization and Discipleship page on this site has links to other articles on related topics.

What Memes Mean

Here’s something interesting about the social media reaction to the racist violence and demonstrations in Charlottesville: People felt the need to assert that racism is wrong.

It was a specific kind of assertion: Not just anger or frustration or sadness, though there was that.  Rather, there were many assertions that seemed to be purely about the need to affirm that yes, in fact this is evil.

Contrast this with, say, the announcement (I saw several over the past few days) that someone’s child had died of a terrible accident or illness.  Those announcements spur people to offer their prayers and condolences, and often in the wake of certain kinds of deaths there will be some venting of how much we hate suicide or drowning or cancer or whatever the source of the problem was.   There might, later at a less sensitive time, be links shared on how to cope with that problem or ways to prevent it in the future.

But no one feels the need to wave a flag saying, “Guys! Drowning is bad!”  or “Cancer isn’t glamorous!” or “It’s time we put aside our love of fatal traffic accidents!”  There are no links to inspiring stories about people who campaigned to persuade the world that being crushed in a landslide is in fact undesirable.  There will be no hopeful mention of the man who used to just love the prospect of dying from massive burns and smoke inhalation, but thanks to a profound change of heart, he now realizes that’s not what people should want out of life.

These evils are self-evident.  You might disagree over the extent to which they can or should be avoided (close all the mountain passes!), but you don’t disagree that these things are bad.

 

***

People can’t shut up about the evil of racism because it is still a pressing topic for them.

Perhaps your friend who daily asserts that skin color doesn’t matter can remember a time when he did think it mattered.  Maybe he wasn’t that bad, but he was bad enough.  He looked down on people of other races, or he felt that somehow his own people were superior, or that there was some justification for certain types of discrimination.  Maybe he theoretically believed in human equality, but in practice he felt that most people of this or that race were not, in practice, as educated and moral and generally deserving as people of his own race.  Maybe he still struggles to shake off the vestiges of prejudice.

Or perhaps your other friend grew up in an openly racist culture (if she’s old enough, she almost certainly did), and she still has memories of segregation and overt discrimination.  Maybe she remembers the callous things some people used to say, and the downright mean things other people used to do.

And perhaps that other group of friends who are always asserting racism is wrong are doing it not because it has ever been an issue for them, personally, but because they are regularly encountering people who are racist.  Maybe they see racism in action.  Maybe they overhear racist comments.  Maybe they get into arguments with others who try to make the case for racism.

***

This is why people post those memes.  The repetition grows tiresome for us who aren’t at that point.  We don’t need anti-racist reminders anymore than we need reminders that air should have oxygen and diesel fuel doesn’t belong on your drinks table.  We wish you would quit posting pictures of different-colored kittens all snuggled up together in a display of racial solidarity, and get back to sharing the plain old non-polemical kittens for which the internet was invented.

But we’ll be patient.  Because if you are a recovering racist, or you spend your day with not-yet-recovering racists, maybe you need an outlet.   If Solidarity Kittens help you, then please: Be helped.

***
In the making of this post, I looked through many kitten photos on Wikimedia, because I’m committed to social justice that way. Other things you might like to know about:

Enjoy.

File:Poes zoogt jongen.JPG

Kitten photo by: Onderwijsgek at nl.wikipedia  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Netherlands.  

File:Kittens.jpg

Cute Kittens poster via Wikimedia, Public Domain.