Living La Lupe

Authentic Moment #2: Wedding Tears

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We were at a friend’s wedding a while back.  The groom had lost his father at least a decade earlier. There was a beautiful bouquet of flowers on a sewhiterosesandlavenderat in the front row meant to honor him. During the ceremony, the priest spoke the father’s name and prayed for the couple to live their lives in the same spirit in which he lived his. The groom’s eyes welled up for a second but he controlled the surge of emotion. His sister, a bridesmaid, maybe unaware of this tribute, eyes instantly bloodshot from the sheer force exerted trying to push back the wave of tears. Eyes red, lips pursed, unable to blend the sorrow and joy of the moment, resolute tears streamed down her face.

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What does “authentic moment” mean? Read here.

A Pilgrim in the Land of Quinoa

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The other day I was sitting at dinner and had the truest realization I have had about my parents in a long time. We (as in me and the two of them) are immigrants in this world that we live in. We inhabit the world of the mostly white upper middle class. All three of us have worked to find our place here. We are happy and fulfilled. We’re not sell-outs. We do more than pay lip service to our roots but we will always be non-natives here. We will always understand things just a little bit differently, we will say things differently, we will love things differently.

It is not in our nature to do some of the things we are trying to do. I have tried for years now, at least seven, to eat healthier and to eat local produce. To become a moleturnip lover and organic beet juicer. But it has never stuck. I’ve tried to make healthy food for our family. I have never ventured too far into Mexican food territory because only someone who has grown up eating La Lupe’s cooking can appreciate the true horror of enchiladas fried in olive oil and made with fat-free cheese or tacos made with high fiber, whole grain tortillas.

The other day my parents came over for dinner. That night I made Lemon Chicken and Orzo soup with a hint of fresh thyme. It was delicious. My dad ate two bowls. I consumed a heaping bowl of it. Then I put the girls to sleep and came back downstairs to find both my parents eating a plate of chicken mole with rice and beans leftover from a dinner my mom made a few days before. I was offended. My delicious soup of which you ate two bowls wasn’t enough to satisfy you? Wasn’t enough to make you full? My first impulse was to give up trying to help my parents eat healthier. They want to. They try to. But they never stick with it longer than a few weeks.

As I was feeling righteously indignant, I felt the pang of hunger in my stomach. I was still hungry, too. Dammit. I really want a plate of mole and rice and beans, too. But on principle I didn’t serve myself.

I’m familiar with that eating cycle, too. I’ll be disciplined enough to cook food like this for a few weeks: crab salad in wonton cups, garden risotto, curry butternut squash soup. But I will hit a point where I am achingly hungry and I almost tackle the lady that sells tamales around our neighborhood when I see her walking toward our house. Because in my gut, I know I am a pilgrim to this locally grown, seasonal produce land. In my veins courses the blood that calls for hydrogenated fats and high fructose corn syrup. Our people have for too long subsisted on this diet. My body yearns for it.

And so it is with almost every part of me that I try to fight back against my instincts. It takes all the strength I can summon not to yell at my kids when they say they don’t like mole, it takes orchestrated body language to show them that I love the sweet potato and apple quinoa I have placed before them, and it takes a herculean effort to not buy the delicious flour tortillas from the Mexican bakery and eat them slathered with butter all day long.

So we beat on, boats against the current of our childhood, of our most primal reactions, of our earliest lessons. And maybe, like my parents, I’ll spend my lifetime eating a bowl of fancy pants soup and then, right before bed, drink charro beans cold out of the fridge. But I think the desire to eat better does in fact mean we’re eating better. And while balancing the lard and the lychees, the cajeta and the kale, the Knorr Suiza and the nutmeg is hard, I think it is good. So I will continue to navigate these waters and try to find a middle ground with some semblance of grace…and possibly a butter mustache.

Book Review: Fearing the Stigmata

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fearing-stigmata-weber-book-coverThe author is Matt Weber, a twenty-something Catholic who hosts the weekly Catholic TV segment “A Word with Weber”. This book is a compliation of vignettes from his life as a young adult.

The observations (more like Catholic inside jokes) he makes about Catholicism are right on as are his theology and sense of liturgy. He doesn’t reveal anything too personal or initimate but you can see that he is a good man and a nice guy. I agree with another review I read online — reading this book is like having a beer with an endearingly dorky, funny Catholic guy who went to Harvard.

I’ve read some of Matt’s stuff on Busted Halo and his writing can be sidesplitting.  He does the same here:

A prayer while he is in front of a statue of Mary:

Lastly, please do not physically manifest yourself in this statue because a) I’m not sure I’m the guy you want to be talking to and b) I’m not sure I can handle being spoken to in direct statue form…keep my heart calm and my pants dry.

After Ash Wednesday, he would call the proceeding days Pimple Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. (So true!)

He takes on the subject of appropriateness of instruments in liturgical music:

If you have strict notions about church music — pre-Vatican II era — and you just fainted, I apologize. Being “the harmonica guy” from church over the past few years has brought me a lot of joy.

He has a chapter that compares faith and church to wellness and the gym. I agree.

I think Matt Weber is a gifted humorist. I am glad he is out there in the world trying to help Catholic young adults not feel weird. It is a needed ministry. As a young adult, I feel weird all the time. It is difficult deciding what kind of adult you want to be. Do you want to accept the interests and passions that you have or do you try to bury them making yourself something you think you should be? Matt shows us that we can embrace ourselves, quirks and all, and it can lead to a good life.

In his next book, I would like to see him apply his humor to a longer and more singular narrative. As I was reading I found myself wanting to hear him speak more at length about a subject or delve a little deeper into why he loves the Church so much. He touched on the fact that being Catholic at Harvard was kind of a challenge but he brushes this under the rug quickly by saying that most people were open minded. This would have been an interesting angle, getting into the details of where his Catholicism came up against the New England intellectualism that Harvard is so famous for.

When I read the chapter about how he played balloon volleyball with cloistered nuns as a family tradition every year, that’s when I realized that this book is not aimed at giving the reader concrete ideas of how to remain faithful during the young adult years. It is definitely not preachy. Instead he wants to offer glimpses of his life that show that being a faithful young adult does not have to be boring. Matt follows his faith in his own unique way and has a blast doing it.

This book is an amusing quick and light read. Each chapter is short – three to six pages and only takes a few minutes to read. Especially since the chapters aren’t linked together, I found myself reading a chapter here and there throughout the day.

Enjoy!

Figuring Out What I Don’t Like

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This seems like a duh thing but I have to be very purposeful when figuring out my actual opinion of things. There are so many things influencing what I think and what I do that sometimes I think I love something because that’s what all people like me love when really, I hate it.

It seems elementary, but I spent most of last year trying to prioritize and figure out what things I really think are important and what things I do because I feel like I should do them.

Here are some things I found:angrycat

  • I hate sewing.
  • I hate exercising.
  • I hate drinking water.
  • I hate going to confession.

I made this list, now what? Well, why do I hate these things?:

  • I love crafts and I am pretty good at DIY projects. A long time ago I took this to mean that I should love to sew because that’s what crafty people do. But I don’t like to sew. Not even a little.
  • Kraft and I have been running with a group that is training for a half-marathon in February. I love the group runs on Saturday but I don’t like running during the week. What I realized is I don’t like running by myself. I like working out with other people. I need the accountability and the support.
  • Kraft and I have always loved drinking sodas. When we started running I bought us some Siggs to help us stay hydrated but I never really picked up the habit of drinking water. The cap on the Sigg is not the easiest thing in the world to drink out of. I promise I’m not a diva, but if I don’t enjoy drinking plain water that much, it’s gotta be really easy for me to do or I’m not going to do it.
  • As for confession, that’s not entirely true, I don’t hate confession. I love going to confession but I hate the actual confessing part. I hate going to a priest who doesn’t know me or my struggles and I hate using vague, sterile language to describe my own personal sins. I always feel like I did it wrong or like I cheated. I love being absolved. And sometimes we need a drive-thru kind of confession, but I want more.

I do believe that the good things in life are worth a little extra work, a little more forethought, a little more sacrifice. That being said, there are so many things that require us to be disciplined and so many things that are out of our control, why don’t we fix the things in our control. If we can make it easier for ourselves to keep up healthy habits or make good choices than we are so much more likely to choose to do the right thing.

Here are some things I plan on taking action on:

  • Stop agonizing over sewing projects. Yes, it would be neat to make clothes for the girls but not if I hate life while I’m at it. Instead, to flex my creative side, I’ll find some crafts I might actually enjoy like this or this. I will buy Halloween costumes for my kiddos.
  • After the half-marathon, I’m going to go to a lot more Zumba classes. There is a studio just down the street from our house and it is the most fun I’ve ever had exercising. It’s so energizing.  Right now I’ve only been going once a week, but I hope to go a lot more. And at $3 a class, it’s a real find.
  • In terms of drinking more water, I scavenged around our kitchen to find some other water holding devices and I found a free cup we got from a bank. Apparently I love straws because I guzzle water from this all day. I’m pretty sure I refill this about 5 times a day.
  • Confession. That was a little trickier. I’ve thought about finding a spiritual director/confessor for a while. Well, more than a while. Like for the last 7 years. I’m finally so fed up with it that I emailed a priest I’ve worked with before and asked him if he has time to meet with me. We haven’t been able to work out a meeting time yet, but at least it is forward progress.

Forming habits, especially really good ones, is hard. There’s no need to make it harder on ourselves if we can help it. There are plenty of hard things that we have to deal with. (Like babies who refuse to sleep in past 5am.) So I’m going try and make better the things I can so I can be more patient with the things I can’t.

From My Point of Pew: Intro + Baptism

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Every Sunday when we go to church, weapons of Mass distraction (another idea I had to name this series) work against me when it comes to hearing the readings and the homily. But I love having the kids at church with us. Even if they squirm and shriek and fight and cry only at the moments when the entire church is silent. Jesus wants them there, noise and all. It’s their own form of prayer.

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Weapons of Mass distraction 🙂

Their own form of giving glory to God.

But I don’t think you have to have kids to be distracted at Mass. Sometime homilies are terrible. Sometimes the sound system at church goes out and we’re sitting in the exact wrong spot. Sometimes we’re so hungry all we can do is think about is brunch. And sometimes we’re just plain out of it and daze our way through Mass.

So I wanted to start a little community here. Right here in this very spot. I usually only catch one or two things that stick with me after Mass (you know, other than the amazing sacrifice and gift of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ) and I’m guessing lots of people have this experience. But I’d like to hear more. I’d like to understand more.

Here is a place where we can all throw in our two cents. One takeaway you got from Mass. Whatever your takeaway is, if we all write a few sentences about what the Holy Spirit revealed to us on Sunday, it can add up to a lot that we can all grow from. You can jot down your thoughts in the comment section.

Logistics: Every week I will publish “From My Point of Pew” on Saturday with only a link to the Sunday readings. I’ll write my piece by Sunday midday when the kids are napping. But as we all think of it, we can take a few minutes to tell each other a quick takeaway we heard at Mass. Ideally we could all share here on Sunday but life happens and whenever you can get to it, even if it is Tuesday, I’d love to hear what you have to say.

So we’ll kick it off today —

From My Point of Pew #1: January 12, 2014 – Baptism of the Lord

Our priest told us when he was thinking about his homily, he had no idea how to link Christmas and Baptism. What the heck does baptism have to do with Christmas? But then he realized it’s perfect. Baptism is the bridge to ordinary time. We just witnessed the amazing sacrifice of God humbling himself to become man, to become man at his most vulnerable, most weak, most needy — a baby. That’s hard to top. But followed by Jesus’ baptism, we see how this helps us flow into ordinary time. We go from this miracle, this mystery to a moment that makes it clear what Jesus’ mission is. To teach us what is right and just and to save us from our sins. Now we can enter ordinary time knowing that Jesus will walk with us and teach us.

From your point of pew, what did you hear?

Gift Ideas: Intro + Clever Kids’ Books

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If you read the About Me page, you’ll know that I am a chronic advice giver. Any lessons I’ve learned in motherhood have been hard won so I like to tell people what I’ve learned. Especially when it comes to gift-giving. Gift-giving has a special place in my heart. I love giving gifts and really good gifts. But I really have issues with bad gifts.

So to help you avoid the dreaded Bath and Bodyworks lotion or scented candle, I am going to give lots of gift suggestions you can give the people you love or that you can just get for yourself.

Today we will start with clever kids’ books that are more for the parents than their kids:

As parents, you quickly develop a real thick skin against bad children’s books. They are just everywhere. There is no escaping them. And inevitably your kid will want that horrible book read to her 34 times a day. You get used to it but once in a while, just once, you want a book that you like, that is witty and funny. Well, here are some good ones you can buy your friend to help stem her urge to burn books in her family’s living room:

E-mergency: We just checked this odadreadingoutsideut from the library last week. It is so clever. When the girls were at school and the baby was napping, I actually went and found the book to look at it more closely without little hands turning the pages too quickly.

AlphaOops: Not as witty as E-mergency but still makes you think a little harder than Fancy Nancy.

Go the F*** to Sleep: Brandon found this book and loved it so much he pre-ordered it before it even came out. It is so true to life.

Goodnight iPad: Another book that Brandon bought. If you’re a fan of Goodnight Moon, this one is just so darn cute. I am card carrying member of the Wannabe Amish Club, I have to love any book that promotes throwing gadgets out the window.