Many Catholics questioned the wisdom of continuing with the Synod on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment. We are in the middle on an ongoing, world wide, crisis of abuse and it's cover up. That seems to fundamentally impact the very people this Synod is meant to address - a concern shared by some bishops. But the Synod has been in the works for so long, better not to stand in front of that train. At least it couldn't cause harm, right?

Well, that remains to be seen.

As a young Catholic woman, this Synod has given me some serious concerns about the Vatican's ability or inclination to work with women within the Church.

Even though 80% of consecrated people are women, they are not represented among those with voting power at the Synod. In stark contrast, brothers, who share the same canonical status as religious sisters ARE afforded a vote. This is not a question of ordination or Canon Law. This is a direct discrimination based solely on gender.

I love the Church, and I believe in it's teachings, but I want to remind my fellow Catholics that we are not required to believe and support every little nuance of how things have been done. If it is not a matter of Faith and Morals, faithful Catholics are fully allowed to disagree.

I am exhausted by the commentary on this issue of overt exclusion of women that is often ended by "let's hope and pray that we can do things differently in the future." Often a reminder that we shouldn't get angry about this injustice is thrown in there for good measure.

Frankly, if this situation doesn't upset you I am a little concerned for you.

I understand crisis fatigue, the desire to talk about good things for a change, and the apathy that sets in after watching the bumbling attempts at damage control by the hierarchy - instead of the kind loving guidance of a father that we are due. However, I believe we have good reason not to place our trust in the same men who failed to amend and render justice in the Church when they said they did over a decade ago. An attempt that still came decades too late.

When the reasoning for why women religious superior generals cannot vote, but brother superiors may, relies on numerous people overlooking women because "They haven’t been used to thinking this way" I don't think the hierarchy is ready for their relating to women training wheels to come off just yet.

I keep speaking up, and writing, and talking to people, about the crisis and the reality of the Church because I understand that that is what it means to be a faithful Catholic woman right now. It's not a nice option if it's something you feel called to do. It is abundantly clear that the men of our Church might desire to do the right thing, but they cannot do it if we don't tell them what we need and hold them accountable.

It is very easy for little voices to be silenced. It is so simple to be apathetic and allow for injustice to continue it's course. How nice it would be for Someone Else to stick their neck out as a sacrificial lamb for ourselves.

Oh wait, Jesus did.
Jesus already came and provided an open path for salvation. But we have free will, and we have to cooperate with grace.

I hate to be a debby downer, but sanctifying grace is not known for it's warm fuzzies. You probably aren't going to feel good. You might not see an immediate result. But refusing grace is not an option if we wish to be disciples.

If we love Jesus, we must love his Church. The most loving thing to do in the face of injustice is not to enable it. To call it what it is by name, and to push for the good. For a Church to be what she preaches.

Men, we need you to listen to women and see injustice too. The beauty of talking about reality is it is ready and available for anyone to see if they merely look.
Women, we need to speak to each other and educate ourselves. Keeping up to date on what is happening in the Church is necessary if we are to have productive conversations.

UPDATE: I was reminded that the superiors general of the Dominicans, Jesuits, and Conventual Franciscans, all voting members of the Synod, are calling for the inclusion of women voters, and that the men's Union of Superiors General has been sending non-ordained representatives as voting representatives since 2015. This synod was the opportunity for a change at a later synod.

Was any of this news for you? How can you become involved in discussions that move the Church forward, whatever your state in life?

Let's Talk About "It's a Season"

Seasons of life. It's a convenient image, and one that can take some of the stress out of a difficult time - after all, seasons come and go.
Where I get concerned is when "season of life" is claimed in a less temporary manner. When a hard season is really survival mode that stretches into indefinite lengths.

It's not a "season" if it can reasonably last over a decade! If Winter lasted as long as the young child rearing time of life for many of us, we wouldn't be saying "It's just a season." We would call it a Little Ice Age, and we would be talking about how troubling it is and what we can do to change things.

But perhaps that's the point - not to change things. To accept that we are powerless over our own lives, and enforce that between each other, by proclaiming overwhelm, burn out, and isolation as the natural components of "this season of life." After all, the narrative of "I can't" began with that first positive pregnancy test.

We all know there are things pregnant women must avoid for the safety of themselves and their unborn children. But not all recommendations are grounded in good evidence, and some beliefs have no grounding at all. Things like avoiding bicycle riding and other aerobic exercise. Exercise is not contraindicated for pregnant women as a group, just those with particular conditions, yet my dancing Ballet while pregnant was continuously noted to be an unnecessary risk.

The avoidance of risk can became a way to feel in control of an out of control process. If you check all the boxes and do everything perfectly, you're guaranteed to have a healthy pregnancy, birth, and baby. Right? Eventually we can start to think the guidelines work like magic - fulfill them and you will receive their promises.

But life is inherently risky! Loving is risky. Living is risky. The Cross is about as risky as it gets.

Sometimes avoiding risk can look like taking up our cross. We can proclaim how we live out our vocation as young mothers by proclaiming "I do small things!" Which it true, and good, and beautiful. Much of the work needed in this world is considered a small thing.
Where I have issues with it is when "I do small things!" becomes "I can only do small things."

We start to shrink our own possibilities, and the opportunities to say yes to what God might be asking of us.

What has been your experience with discussions about "seasons of life"? 

Has this term been helpful or limiting for you?

An Amelia Hill House Fall Update

It was pointed out to me that I have been awful at blog documenting this Amelia Hill House renovation adventure. An adventure it has been! If you're on Instagram, you have had a sneak preview in my stories. If not, here's what's been up in the old farmhouse!

Library is getting bookshelves like a proper library!

Bookshelves are getting installed this week, and I'm so happy with them! We sprung for having a local carpenter build shelves out of real wood, instead of doing the IKEA route again. It felt right for the age of the house to add something long lasting and useful.

These are the entire length of this room, but it won't all fit in the frame. Six bookcases total.

Next week we can finally start putting books on shelves, and not in multiple boxes and bins. The luxury!

And paint!

Picking a color for this room was probably the hardest decision about the house for me (besides buying the house.) It felt like such a big deal to pick a color for an entire room. Not just the baseboards, cabinets, or a wall.

We hemmed and hawed, and vacillated between blues and greens - and red for a hot minute there. We have not had a sunny day since we started painting this past Monday, but soon we will see how this looks in full light! This light has made it impossible to capture a true color photo of the color, but it is Sycamore Grove from Behr which looks more of a richer green on our walls.

But the lighting may be an issue

Full light is something sorely lacking in the library as of late, and not just due to the dreary weather.
When I was scraping the ceiling of its popcorn (more on that later) I had to remove the old light fixture to safely scrape that area. I've never loved the fixture, and it has always manage to be a bit dim - despite having 5 light bulbs. However I wasn't expecting to find cloth covered wires and no ground wire.

You might recall that rewiring the entire house was part of our pre-move in contractor work. Or so I thought. We're trying to understand what, exactly, happened in the communication breakdown between what we got in the estimate and what the electrician believed to be his scope of work. That outdated wiring limits what kind of fixture we can install, and it may not even be safe to install anything.

Hopefully that gets ironed out soon. The days are growing shorter here in the north!

Oh ceilings

Now about that ceiling.

We had your typical popcorn ceiling in the library. I don't actually mind popcorn ceilings, but when we took down the room length mirror door closet, it exposed a radically different texture on that part of the ceiling. Leaving them as is wasn't going to work long term.

So I started scraping, to limited success. I mostly succeeded in getting the large bumpy parts off, but there was still a definite varying texture remaining.

So we rented a dry wall sander from Home Depot and started sanding.

Oh my goodness. Even with being hooked up to a shop vac, that room, and it's adjourning rooms, looked like they were covered in volcanic ash. We're probably doing to be dusting for a week, just to get back to normal. So lesson learned - don't try and sand off remaining popcorn ceiling.

Now I'm not sure what to do. Heavy duty hand scraper? Just cover the whole thing? If so, which what? I don't feel keen to put up new popcorn ceiling after the rain of dust and spider webs that came off the old one. Open to ideas in the comments!

The nursery is getting some color

Nursery color was a much easier decision. Maybe because it's a smaller room, way up at the top of the house, and only inhabited by the least verbal of my children. We went with Daydream from Sherwin Williams. It's sort of a lilac grey but it looks much more on the lavender side on our walls. That works for me, but would have been frustrating if we were going for more of a delicate color.

I need to do one more coat of color, then start on the trim, but then this room will finally be open for occupation! The kids are so excited to do The Great Room Swap again.

Projects on the back burner

In an old house, there is always more that could be done, but some are higher on the list than others.
That includes things like: cleaning out the garage, planning a functional garden for next year, replacing some doors, painting the day nursery ceiling, and making any sort of organizational effort in the day nursery actually. It's currently just an explosion of toys that I choose to ignore for the time being.

Projects on the back back burner

Then there are the things that probably aren't going to happen for another few years. They include getting the fireplace in working order (although I do think adding candles in there does a lot to brighten and cozy the room.)
Decorating the guest house with any sort of vision.
Replacing our crumbling retaining wall next to the stone patio (granted this might get moved up to back burner status out of necessity, but probably not until next spring/summer.)
Updating our extremely 1970's living room so it's not the darkest room in the house, and doesn't mesh with it's adjourning rooms in style or feel at all.

Rachel from Efficient Momma has some help with that last one! She has started offering room consultations, and she worked on our living room as part of her portfolio.
Some rooms in the house were very easy for me to envision and break down into actionable steps. This living room? It just felt like a giant block of scary. Painting the fireplace had been suggested, but I had a hard time picturing that in the space. Rachel's photoshopping skills helped me a lot!

She includes links to specific products and DIY tutorials, along with her thoughts and reasoning, in a helpful item-by-item write up along with the photo. Even though we probably won't tackle this space for a while, I feel like at least I can keep an eye out for specific items, like the large area rug, as we acquire items for other areas of the house.

Overall, I'm so happy to be doing this work! Even when it gives me blisters on my hands from painting so much. Getting all the interior spaces in the house usable by winter has been a big goal for me, and I think it can happen!

Going to throw this out there because sometimes the Internet is a magic genie granter-of-wishes-and-dreams: if you know of a good place to get things like rugs, chairs/couches, lamps, and other library needed items in the Minneapolis area or online - let me know! I would love to thrift or antique these items if I can.
I can re-pay you in an open invitation to join me for coffee, or a whiskey, in the completed Amelia Hill House library!

Updating to link up with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes!

How Are We Teaching Our Girls to Live as Catholic Women?

There's something off about how we speak to girls about their futures in the Church.

We say "The world needs what women are" but it is women themselves who shoot down other women.

We say "Women need to be part of the decision making process in the Church" but the questions about which decisions, exactly, go quietly unanswered.

We say "Women play a vital role in the life and hands of the Church" but are we treating the formation of our future Catholic women as vital or is it more of an afterthought?

I see this in many parishes manifesting as a lack of strong formation, or even social, programs specifically for girls. Vocations discernment programs largely being aimed at future priests, not future nuns or sisters.
Girls get the message - I am on my own here.

But we try and catch them later! We see adult women struggling to find their place in the Church, to fulfill their vocation, to understand their faith heritage. We try to offer studies, groups, lectures, events.
Yet we do it poorly so much of the time.

I don't know about my fellow women, but I am so weary of a Catholic women's spirituality that desires to do Theology Lite. A spirituality that says "We will have the work of your hands, just don't ask questions of your mind." These groups are meant for encouragement so you can "keep on keeping on", but are not really a launching point for change and difference.
This is a pressure within the Church, from women to other women. We give this to ourselves, and this is the world we are showing our daughters in faith.

When I look around at what my 4 year old daughter can age into through parish life, I don't see many opportunities to grow her connections with other Catholic girls. That's a shame. Girls will be asked many more hard, pressing, questions, and at a younger age, than their male peers. She will need those connections. She will need that knowledge base, and the experience of growing with other faithful girls.

I am a faithful Catholic woman, and I will remain so, but to do that well I need to be Church. This needs to be a community that pushes each other to be better. To know Jesus better and to love each other better.

The Church is in crisis right now. Frankly, it's probably going to be in crisis for a while. A long while. This isn't going to go away.
Now, more than ever, we need to see and identify those places where the Catholic community is weak and lax. Those places that have been left for later. Ignored and even belittled.

My fellow Catholic women, let's learn! Let's tackle learning those parts of the faith that we have never ironed out in our minds. Let's make space for our daughters to grow. Let us be a community of faith AND works. A community that sees that women are not just the fuel for the parish machine, but a beautiful, vital, distinct, and visible part of the Church.

How do you see places the Catholic Church could better serve girls? What places do you see needing to be addressed in the wider Church? In your own specific area?

Ember Day Plans - Fall 2018

The Fall Ember Days begin tomorrow! (Can you tell I'm excited?!) I love these quarterly days of fasting and prayer.  To give you some ideas of how to observe, I thought I would share my plans for this Ember Week!

Physical

Preparing my heart for the work of a new season means tackling the physical spaces I would rather ignore, or have already procrastinated on handling. This week it's prepping the library for painting, and cleaning out the grease trap over the stove.

I also do a lot of the less frequent type of cleaning this week: vacuuming the porch, cleaning out the car, doing a quick purge in each room, switching over clothes for the new season, etc. 

Realistically, not everything I try to do will happen, but I will have forced myself to do what is asked of me and that is a valuable practice in and of itself.

Spiritual

Confession is always the number one practice for spiritual clean out that I try to make happen during the Ember Days. 

This season I'm also re-committing to praying the Liturgy of the Hours for the readings, morning, and evening prayers. During a parish town hall this past weekend on the abuse crisis, our pastor said something that made me pause. He noted that most priests who became abusers started neglecting their promise to pray this common prayer of the Church first. Being negligent in small things was the first step down that evil road. For the healing and intentions of abuse survivors, I am dedicating these prayers that should have been faithfully prayed in the first place.

Fasting

I'm a fan of the two prong fasting approach. On these Ember Days I will be following a traditional fast (nothing but liquids during the day) and fasting from social media scrolling. 

To do the spiritual and physical clean out, I need time. When I looked at my time spent, my greatest amount of truly wasted time was scrolling on social media. The amount of that that turned into legitimate connection and communication with others was tiny, and could have been easily found without the scrolling.

Connection

Living through, and within, this crisis in the Church has made it very clear to me that this is also a crisis of community. Of connection. Of remembering to care about others as loved Children of God. These Ember Days I am making a special effort to connection with my children, with my spouse, with members of my parish, Catholics beyond my parish, and others I may have met but have not gotten to know yet. 

I don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but I've found that making a conscious effort to be open to the Holy Spirit tends to create what needs to be.

How are you observing these Ember Days? Will this be your first time?

Where I've Been Lately

This has been one of my longest writing breaks in a good while. I think it's time to level with y'all and let you know where I've been lately.

Talking Off-line

In the Diocese of Minneapolis/St. Paul, the young adults have been leading discussions about the church crisis, developing concrete steps for moving forward, and submitting a letter to the Bishop. I attended the first large discussion with over a hundred other young adults. While I felt like it was a productive conversation at my table, the equal representation of men and women in the room was not reflected in who stood up to address the larger group.

I emailed the organizers about it. Which turned into an invitation to their next planning meeting.
Which turned into getting involved in next steps.
Which turned into being listed as an organizer by the time the letter was released.
All within just a few days.

That meant that more people have been coming up to me wanting to talk about the crisis and what is being done about it in the diocese. I love having those conversations in person! Human connection is so very important for having these hard discussions, and I believe very strongly that we need to feed our community connections now more than ever.
Not every conversation is positive, but I think it is harder for most people to see the subject of their frustration as an object when they are a flesh and bone person standing in front of them.

Writing Online

All of those in person conversations have been enlightening. Plenty of young parents have told me that changes are unnecessary, that the "past should be in the past", or just straight up that the crisis does not concern them.

I wrote a piece for YA Respond, the collection of people who are behind the young adult response in the diocese, addressing that reaction.

Beyond that, I've been on the quiet side online because of....

The Fallout

I knew there would be push back, but I never anticipated how much I would be torn down by other WOMEN. I've gotten hateful emails, messages, comments. One women told me, to my face, that I should "Go home and love your babies instead of talking like this."

It's been a lesson in internalized misogyny, I tell you what.

I appreciate that it's easier for women to be angry at another woman, and to take out their frustrations on someone like me who is sticking her neck out. But just because something is easy does not make it ok. I'm not actually an endless pit that can take all the evil of the world. I'm a human being who isn't always being seen as one right now.

Let's be very clear here - if you have issues with how things are being handled right now, you are invited to get your butt in gear and do something too. I will not allow anyone to continue on harming their own souls by venting their hatred.

Protecting my own mental health has been important because, imagine that, I still have other things going on in my life.

Homeschooling

Like homeschooling. This has been a rocky year.
This year I am schooling 1st grade and preschool. 1st grade seems to be a turning point on when it's ok to be different from your peers. Suddenly I'm getting a lot of push back about learning to read (still on that struggle bus) and doing pretty much anything I ask during the day.
It's very hard when the number of young homeschooling families seems to be plummeting, and all his little friends are in the parish school together or at various other schools.

The preschooler would prefer to do school everyday. She does not believe in this concept of "the weekend". If she could start kindergarten right now, that would be swell by her.

Preschooler has been allowed to start phonics because I just can't keep her from starting any longer. Open to suggestions for a struggling to blend, not even beginning, reader. I've tried most of what I've found online and it's not doing the trick here on week 5.

Bleaching E V E R Y T H I N G

The drama could not stop with the big kids! I brought the baby into the doctor with, what I thought, was a bad yeast diaper rash. It was that, but also Staph. STAPH. Eeeeeeeek!!!

This has been a lesson in how little can actually be done against bacteria, but I am fighting this battle with so. much. bleach.

ALLLLLLL THE BLEACHHHHHH!!

Modern medicine is a marvel, y'all.
Somehow this baby is still pretty cheerful, despite the infection with the awful creatures.

Auditioning

It's been a few weeks of hard, and frankly I needed a win. I did an audition that I *think* went really well!
I'm the kind of Type A actor who keeps an audition log. That way I can record exactly how many times I've thrown myself against this brick wall. (I jest...sort of...) This was my 15th audition. In my "mood coming out" column for this audition I put "nailed it". We'll see what ends up in the "outcome" column.

Amelia Hill House reno

We are attempting to tackle two big areas before the winter sets in: the nursery and the library.

Upon removing the wallpaper in the nursery, and letting it sit, it became apparent that the vintage wallpaper was just not in good enough condition to preserve. The plaster behind it was flaking off the wall, and I called it as a DIY project. For a room intended for a baby the various issues were getting beyond my pay grade.

It's been a few weeks of occasionally having workers here scraping the wall and re-plastering. I don't love parenting and homeschooling with strange men coming in and out all day (who don't speak to me. It's weird.) I keep reminding myself how nice it will be to finally have all the rooms upstairs in usable condition!

We finally won the battle of the rusty nails (...by bringing in a handy man who tackled it in 10 minutes...) so we are now picking colors for the library! We found a local carpenter to build shelves that will be stained to match the dark walnut inlays we have in the floor. I'm going for a 1920's study feel to it, that won't feel too dark in the dead of winter. Ideas welcome!

It does get s t r o n g light in the late afternoon, so I'm thinking red would be a little intense. I like the idea of a dark green, but we have used a lot of green in the house so far.

Linking this little life update with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes!

"But Not All Men!" and Other Unhelpful Responses

It's been a hell of week - and I do mean that literally. I have never been so disappointed and discouraged in my fellow Catholics.

I thought so highly of them. I thought that when rubber hit the road they would show up, listen to truth, ignore their personal bogeymen and do what was right. Instead I have never before seen such a show of clericalism, cults of personality, intellectual dishonesty, and a love of comfort over truth.

I appreciate that as a survivor of abuse (albeit not clerical abuse) I have less tolerance for the hand wringing and "woe is me and mine" attitude when there is true evil lurking in our midst. But it's time to shape it up, fellow Catholics! Here are some of the responses I've been seeing that are thoroughly unhelpful, at best.

"But not all men!"

No duh, not all men behave problematically. But can we say that there are sociological differences in how men are responding to this crisis, as a group, and how women are responding? Absolutely.
Having that conversation shut down because "my husband would never act like that" doesn't help anyone. It shuts down the very real issue that women are having a hell of a time being taken seriously as voices here.

"I'm waiting for more information."

Omnipotence isn't happening for you. The reality is we do have some information, and I will not be a shrinking violet. In the refusal of Rome to clarify the issue, we must use what we have to the best of our ability and demand that our leaders do what is required of them.
If our leaders refuse to lead - it's a problem. Final, unassailable, proof or not.

"As a faithful Catholic, I will side with the Pope."

No. No it is not more Catholic to love a man more than Jesus. That is clericalism at it's raging finest. The essence of following mammon instead of God.

"Let's not jump to conclusions."

This wouldn't be a bad one if it wasn't hurled at anyone seeking to move the issue forward. It's not jumping to conclusions to say that Pope Francis is letting down the larger Church, and inciting even more scandal, by remaining silent. It's stating a fact.

"The real problem is a lack of women priests!"

Yes, let's blame the women some more everybody! Let's pile on and make sure our pet project is the thing that gets forwarded here. Not truth. Not love. Pet. Project.

"It's only the *Catholic* Church that has an abuse problem."

It's hubris to think that abuse could never happen in OUR tradition, in OUR town, in OUR family. But it can and it does. Oh how the mighty will fall.

"They always had it out for Pope Francis anyway."

Probably. I'm not going to pretend that anyone is squeaky clean of ulterior agendas. Does it mean they're wrong to be speaking now? No. No it doesn't.
Just because someone is dirty doesn't mean they don't know about more dirt. In fact it makes it more likely. Don't ignore the message because you have a personal tiff with the messenger.

More on the topic:

Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes.

What responses should be added to this list? How have you responded?