The It's Its There Their They're Quiz

1. Go to this quiz.
2. If you don't get them all right, do it again.
3. Repeat #2 until you get them all correctly answered.
4. Seriously.
5. I mean it.

You Scored an A

You got 10/10 questions correct. It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human. And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.

The It's Its There Their They're Quiz

I love Lent ... really ... no, seriously ... I mean it

I love being a parent. I always loved it. Even in the middle of the night when babies wake up. Honest.

And I love Lent. No - I do - really. Even in the middle of the thing, when the one thing I'm looking for is rest, and the thousand things that still need to be done aren't going to wait.

I chose parenthood.

And I choose Lent.

And if someone figures out how to make MORE hours in a day ... no wait. I don't need more hours in each day. I need two or three extra days each week for the next couple of weeks. Well, if you figure out how to make that happen, tell me.

I choose Lent.

And I choose to be who I am in the progression of duties at our parish. This is a choice. (Self, are you listening to you?)

There is now the day when I am as likely to ask my girl soldier and the two young giants for help and support in the clinch as they are to ask me. That day is here. And there will come a day when my activities and duties and participations in parish life will be passed to a new generation. In the meantime, all I need to do is remember to keep in practice. Take rest when I can get it. Find peace and go in when the door is open. One day I'll stay in that place, where there is peace and prayer. But that day's not today. Today I have work to do. Today I have to pray with my hands.

Middle aged student

Does the title of this blog post make you cringe? It kind of does make me cringe. I recoil a bit. I mean ... you know the type, right?

She's that middle-aged housewife near the front of the room who doesn't seem to realize that the professor and all of the students would really really like to move on now. Her "questions" make it sound like she should have gotten a few volunteer jobs over the years - or gone for a walk or something. Maybe she should just invite the prof to lunch if she wants that kind of conversation. That middle-aged housewife student is a pain in the butt, and everyone knows it.

She sits in my head and taunts me every time I think about returning to school. I see her oddly too-young clothes mixed with her oddly too-old shoes (the ones that fasten with velcro), and I see the back of her head and the fact that it's obvious that she does her own color (but the cut's strictly mall-salon). I wonder what she saw when she looked in the mirror or if she ever listens to herself, and I feel solidarity with the students. And then she turns around and she's got my face. I do not like that woman.

And it's bad enough that she's there at all. Or that she's embarrassing herself so thoroughly. But what really gets to me is that when she turns around, and she's me after all, she has the annoying nerve to ask me, "Why are YOU here?"

Because I want a real degree, I bluster. Because my first degree was an exercise in uselessness. It wasn't even accredited. For four years I worked like stink, kept my head down, and tried not to be very noticed in that parallel universe called school. For four years I wore pantyhose in the sweaty gulf heat and made sure I didn't talk to boys in unchaperoned areas. For four years I didn't have the sense to transfer out of that place. I want a real degree now - the one I should've gotten then.

She doesn't even see to hear me. She's turning back to the prof now, and she's about to raise her hand. Oh, lord help us all. She's going to pose another question.

Wait. You don't understand. Listen. It's not just the degree.

She stops and looks at me again. Can the twit even hear me?

I really really want this. I want to go back to school worse than I've wanted anything in a long time. I want the subject matter. I want the grades. I want the challenge. The intellectual challenge.

She passes me a reading list. She's such a bitch! What an annoying woman! This is the recommended reading list for people who take this course! It's the list of stuff you should've read before you even get this far. She thinks she's so smart.

And she starts to turn back to the front again.

Why am I wasting my time talking to her?

I can't stop myself.

I know if I tell her the truth, she'll disappear, and all the students will look like real people, and the reality of what I'm proposing to do will be my context instead of this frustrating ongoing conversation with a woman who pretends to be deaf to my voice.

All right, fine.

Here's the deal, lady. No, no. Don't turn away from me. I'm going to return to school as soon as I can afford to. I'm going to do this because I want to, and I'm going to do this because my old degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on. I said, pay attention. Look me in the eye. Those other reasons are true. But they're not the real reason. The real reason is because the second half of my life is starting, and I want the second half of my life to be deeper and broader and higher and more full. I want to build on the foundation and base I've built. I want to write and to have things to write about. I want to learn and stretch and become something with greater powers of ... of ...

damn.

I almost did it. She started to fade there for awhile, but I can't think of the word. At least I shut her up for today. One of these days, though, I'm going to break through, and she's going to vanish. In her place will be online courses, and community college courses, and "prior learning" credits, and classes in the context of other adults who want what I want. Other adults who are at Marylhurst (I think that's where I'll find them, anyway) and in the same department, and discussing the ideas with various degrees of usefulness and uselessness, and that badly dressed chatty cathy in the second row will be permanently erased.

Cross my word, and I'll cross yours

You Are a Crossword Puzzle

You are well read, and you have a good head for remembering facts. You are a wordsmith. You have a way with words, and you're very literate. You are a mysterious person who enjoys dropping little clues every now and then.

What Kind of Puzzle Are You?

The lessons of the broken tea set

When our daughter was a little girl, she got a darling china tea set as a gift. She loved it, and cuddled the little cups and saucers and tea pot, and poured water back and forth ... and eventually broke a few of the pieces.

Years later, I asked her if she remembered the tea set (she did, fondly), and if she remembered how it felt to break the pieces (she did, with sadness), and if she thought that I should've kept it for her until she got older.

She didn't.

Instead of agreeing with me, and saying that it was somehow my "fault" that the set had not survived intact, she said something that has stuck with me for the years since I asked her about it. She said she thought it was bad to raise children in a world where nothing can break. She thought that perhaps plastic cups and dishes and a "childproofed" house was a lie. When you drop breakable things, they ought to break. How else, she wondered, are you supposed to know you have any effect on the world?

Good point.

After that conversation I pretty much got over thinking that I should've made a grief-free childhood for her or her brothers. A childhood free of loss is indeed a lie. We don't take things from our children just to teach them a lesson or hurt them on purpose for their own good. We needn't. Life will do that. And then we can teach the children how to love, and lose, and grieve, and finally come to a place of gratitude for the gifts we have had.

That was the first lesson of the broken tea set.

The second lesson has begun to take shape in my head now. This newly forming lesson is something akin to not crying over spilt milk, but it's more than a mere philosophizing about water under the bridge, milk already on the floor, or cups already sporting chips or broken handles. It's more a matter now of discovering that there are parts of life meant to be breakable and losable, and parts meant to be permanent, and I am starting to think that the losable bits are supposed to be the lessons and the teachers, showing us what is Eternal.

All children go through that really frustrating phase where they need, need, need things to be the same. They can't get in the car if the carseat is in a different spot. Or, they can't eat without the happy plate. Or ... as one of ours used to tell us, they can't sleep at night if their "cubbahs no' wight" or their "jammies no' wight." (The covers, we figured out. Just remake the bed and straighten out the sheets and blankets, and the problem is fixed. We thought the jammies thing meant that his pajamas had gotten twisted around or something, but we never did really figure it out. It just caused us trouble every night for a long time.) During this phase, a broken tea set can cause waves and paroxysms and storms of grief - or a bewildered quivering chin.

I used to think this meant that we ought to do what we can to make sure we - as children - as humans - should avoid the whole situation. Shouldn't we give our kids unbreakable plastic and non-stainable fabric and easier jammies and covers on their beds? Shouldn't we all try to make sure that we stay away from situations that could cause a sense of loss? Try to preserve what we value? ... Keep our couches covered in plastic?

Thud.

That argument can't sustain itself.

Apparently, some stuff is meant to be impermanent. It can't really be used - or loved - if we keep it too safe.

But why? What is it for? That's the question beginning to creep in at the edges of my brain. I'll take it as a given that God is good, that he made everything, and that he loves us. (I realize I've lost readers on that point, but that's my premise.) So ... if that premise is true, what are the losses and the impermanence for?

Well, I'm starting to think that they serve the same purpose as annual seasons - or the seasons of life's youth and aging. The things not permanent really do teach us to love. The little tiny girl did indeed love that tea set. I love every autumn and every winter and every spring and every summer. It is possible to know a kind of fleeting bliss in a perfect cup of coffee or glass of wine or melting dark chocolate. The night out when the beloved is admiring, and the clothes seem magical, and the stars look on with their icy song of approval - that's near perfection. The gift of a perfect moment - the beauty of it can shatter us.

But it never stays.

Is it a lie?

Are the impermanent things we love a lie? A cruel joke? A cosmic taunting?

I don't think so.

I think ... or ... I am starting to think ... that the impermanence of "mere things" is a repeated lesson. It's sung to us in the ever-changing choir of the constellations and it's whispered to us in dandelions. The coming of spring and the broken tea set can teach us - if we will learn - the only lesson there is for us to learn in this life.

Just as the giver of the tea set said, "I love you, little girl," so the thousands upon thousands of little gifts that come to us in every fleeting pleasure and box of roses on Valentine's Day all say the same thing. They all say "I love you."

God does not give us grief by taking things away. He does not say attachments are a lie.

He gives us attachments because Love is the Truth. We are supposed to be learning ... I am beginning to suspect ... we are supposed to be learning to look at the gifts and see tokens of Love.