Small Success Thursday: Not Too Much Jesus

 

1. I’ve been tired lately, mostly because that’s the way my life is.  The first thing that goes is the prayer life, because of excuses:

(a) Tired = willpower AWOL

(b)  The things that make me tired (= my life) are always happening during the times I had planned to pray

(c) Or else tired = sleeping in = whole day thrown off = forget it, too late

(d) and of course the “I just forgot” problem.

So the solution was to buy a new book.  This one.  Which I was resisting valiantly until some knowledgeable person went and said I needed to learn what was in it.  She was right.

It arrived a few days ago, but remember, tired, so I didn’t really succeed at anything until this morning.  Wow.

I sorta kinda new how different it was to sing the psalms than to say them, but no, I didn’t really.

Zowie.

2. I’m pretty sure I’m doing it wrong, by the way.  I can’t sight read, and for various reasons the only instrument I had on hand was my daughter’s thumb piano, which means, if you are me, you have to give your best guess on anything that straddles Do.  And thumb pianos make me so confused anyway.  But even doing it wrong . . . what a difference.  Slower, though, but I didn’t mind that.  I even mostly paid attention to the words, which is an improvement.

3. I am not using #3 to complain about anything.

4. I turned in my column for New Evangelizers that is supposed to run one week from today.  It is not about Thanksgiving, so maybe my trusty editor will flip it around with another post.  Or maybe people want to spend Thanksgiving reading what I have to say about the Mass and church-n-stuff.  The thing you need to know:

I linked to Katie O’Keefe’s article about the Christmas Carols & Advent Hymns.

You should go ahead and look at that now.  She even tells you the difference between a hymn and a carol.  I didn’t know that before.

5. If I were to sum up my Theory of Leadership it would be this: Do the things people ask you to do.  I’m puzzled that people keep wanting to meet for the discipleship group, even on busy weeks when we also have a Bible study and a long day at the co-op and Thanksgiving coming up.  But people do, so we will.  You can’t really tell people, “No! Stay Home! Too Much Jesus!”.  Since that would be false and all.

6. The reason I know that people want to meet for discipleship group on Sunday is because I switched to a pediatrician at the clinic in the ‘hood.

7. Yes, that kind.  Where if you don’t have insurance they treat you on a sliding scale, and the New Patient Form doesn’t just ask you whether you’re homeless (they don’t ask you that in the ‘burbs), it has five different categories of homeless for you to choose from.

8. I did not do this out of solidarity with the poor.  I did it out of total exasperation with the reputable practice in the ‘burbs, combined with the fact that my eldest are tweens and teens now so the stakes are a lot higher in terms of the moral values of their physician, combined with the fact that my friend the homeschooling pro-life Catholic pediatrician from our discipleship group is one of the doctors there, and she told me to get off my rear and make an appointment because the kids were due for tetanus shots, ahem.

(She didn’t say it that way.  I am translating for readers here who do not speak Gentle-and-Sweet, which I don’t speak either.  I can understand it though, mostly.)

9.  So the practice in the ‘hood is a whole lot better than the one out in the sprawl.  Not just because my friend is one of the doctors.  (Though she might be having an impact).  The desk staff were both competent and friendly, they got things done, they were efficient, and they didn’t treat you like you’re an idiot.  And no one prescribed weird extra lab work ‘just to be sure’.  I’m sold.  Also, it’s closer to my house.

10.  The kids were pretty scandalized by the routine questions, though.  They don’t ask about whether you use sunscreen in the ‘hood.  They do ask about whether you, 11-year-old, use drugs or alcohol.  Also, “Are you sexually active?”  My children were mortified, sheltered little creatures that they are.  Our parish youth minister would have been nodding her head vigorously — the big problems kids face are not starting in high school, they are starting much younger.

11. So maybe that explains why people are so keen for God more days of the week.

12.  Which point (scheduling discipleship group, Little Flowers, Bible study, etc.) we were able to confer about during the pediatrician Q&A, so that I could go home and e-mail folks to let them know, sort of, what’s up.

13. Also, we discovered #3 child is a little bit near-sighted.  Follow-up with eye doctor scheduled for early December.

14.  Hey, and music!  SuperHusband recorded this from Mass on Sunday, and Dr. Mad Musical Super-Genius set it to a slide show. There’s nothing like an apprenticeship to the mad scientist at the choir lab downtown to make a man quite relaxed about cantoring one teeny tiny psalm back at the home parish.

15. Also, I think I’m going to end up banned at St. P’s, on account of how I kept leaning forward in my pew so I could get a peek at my cutie-pie 11-year-old hanging with the sopranos, who were blocked by a column if I sat back nicely.  I did not wave, though. That counts for something.  I definitely pray better when strangers do the singing.

15.  Look! Advent Rabbits! It’s a convertible set, they turn into Christmas Bunnies on the 25th.

My friend Sandra said she’d bring home Miffy merchandise in exchange for French lessons.  I’m on it.  I think there’s a French proverb that runs something like Lapins de Noel arrivés, leçons de Français commencés. Roughly.

Mundelein Psalter cover art courtesy of http://www.liturgicalinstitute.org/#!mundelein-psalter/byelb.