Reflections on "La La Land"

   Ron and I saw La La Land.  Fascinating movie.  I really enjoyed it.  So artistically done.  So daring and original.  I loved that.
   My big take away was that, while I loved seeing the two main characters be so supportive of each other's careers as artists, my experience is that motherhood IS my art.  Being a mom and raising a family is that into which I am throwing all of my creative expression, talent, and any giftedness I have.  Many people do what is shown in this movie: set up a family, but go out of the home to be a real artist or success.  But for me, family is where I am called to be the real success in my life.
     May God bless our home, and all homes and families, and may mothers and fathers see their homes as the canvases onto which to pour their best, creative expression.

Christmas Season

    I am so grateful that Christmas is a season and not a day.
    I am so grateful that Christmas is about Christ and not about gifts.
    I am so grateful that Christmas is about prayer and not about business.
    I am so grateful that Christmas is about family.  It is about giving birth.  It is about sticking together in trials.  It is about loyalty in tough times.  It is about the divine becoming manifest in the ordinary.  It is about poverty.  It is about faith.  It is about hope.  It is about wonder and awe.
    I love Christmas.

A Mother's Light

    The Gospel says, "You are the light of the world."  Yes, we should all let our light shine!  The Gospel also says, "No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on a lamp stand, and it gives light to all in the house." (Mt. 5:25)
    The question is: What is your lamp stand?
    We have a natural inclination to shine our lights by using our talents and doing our various jobs well.  If we are a fifth grade teacher, we think, "I am going to let the light of Christ shine as I teach."  If we are a cantor at Mass, we think, "I am going to sing for Jesus."  We often think about leaving our homes, and shining the light of Christ in public.
    But note that the Gospel says, "It gives light to all in the house."  Perhaps the metaphor is appropriate for moms to take literally.  Those in our house should see the light!  The lamp stand should be first and foremost in our homes!
    It is a holy endeavor to pray for each person in our home, think about them, and ask God, "What are they most needing right now?"  Maybe one daughter needs some one-on-one time with you.  Maybe one son needs you to help him organize his room.  Maybe your children need you to refresh family prayer time, make it slower paced, more focused and enriched.  Maybe one of your children is net yet engaged in a personal relationship with Jesus, and needs to hear you explain how you found Jesus and keep your relationship with him alive.  Maybe your family needs a home-cooked meal, enjoyed all together over a leisurely evening.  Maybe your family needs more rest.
   Attentiveness to the details of each person in our family is a chance to BE CHRIST to them.  If we slow down, forget everything else, and just be the presence of Christ for them, that is one powerful way to let our lights shine.  We shine the saving light of Christ through our love.

High School Soccer

It is a joy to watch Jacob on the field as a starting soccer player!  He made a goal in this game!  How short these last 4 years will be.  It is a privilege I savor to be present at these events.  I know I will miss them!

Family Time

We had such a LOVELY evening as a family--playing games, eating a rich meal, talking, laughing and relaxing.  Nothing is quite so wonderful.  I am struck anew by the fact that each one in this family is literally a GIFT to me.  God gives me gifts, just like I give others wrapped packages.  One of His choicest gifts to me is this family.   

Mothers' Retreat

   The moms in our area just had a retreat in our home.  2 wonderful priests came and offered Confession and a guided reflection on Scripture.  Then a mom gave her testimony.  Then we had Mass.  I showed a movie I had put together, "My Favorite Thing About My Mom," according to many of our children.  It was such a rich and joyful morning.  In fact, it was one of the best days of my life.  

Gospel of Matthew--Lectio Divina

   This Advent I am beginning to read through the Gospel of Matthew using the format of lectio divina.  Lectio divina is a kind of prayer of Scriptures popularized by St. Theresa of Avila and other Carmelite saints.  The method is to read a small portion of Scripture and silently reflect on it, one verse at a time.  It is astonishing how God can speak to us through Scripture if we just create silence and stillness of heart.
    I have read the Gospel of Matthew many times.  But reading it this morning as the sun rose while all the children were still snoring in their beds, I was shocked by what I read.  First, the Jews had awaited a Messiah, a Savior, for too long.  The genealogy of Jesus mentions the deportation to Babylon.  Where was God, where was the Savior, during this deportation?  Where was He during all the other horrible sufferings and slaughters they had endured?  The very Gospel itself is saying to me: "The Messiah came.  The whole point of the Gospel is to testify to that very truth.  The promise of a savior WAS INDEED fulfilled.  But the Gospel is not hiding the fact that God took a long time.  It is almost shouting it out.  Much suffering occurred before God's appointed time for a savior.  The Gospel itself is reflecting that.  Please remember, Kathryn, that God chose to send the Messiah in a messy way, in a way that was not neat and punctual.  God's timing uses imperfection--that's part of how God works.  God's timing will often seem to us way off--too late or too soon."
     I am confident that God is telling us something about Himself through this timing that frustrates us.
    My conviction is that one of His favorite things to do is to show up when we have despaired He will not show up.  This timing shocks us and prompts us to depend on Him.  It is how we develop faith.  Abraham and Sarah are called the father and mother of faith.  Why?  Because God promised them a son from whom a whole nation would be born, and then let them get way too old to have a child.  They lived their entire adult lives well into old age, watching God not fulfill His promise--yet.  They must have spent most of their days for many decades, tempted to conclude that God had failed them.  Did they despair?  I do not know.  Probably sometimes.  But eventually they saw God work His miracle of Sarah conceiving and bearing a child.  But that blessing was only to be followed by Abraham being called to sacrifice Isaac.  Imagine the faith necessary to tie Isaac to an alter and pull out you dagger.
     This story in Genesis is a clear message from God as to how He works.  He takes away everything, in order to give us something and show His hand.
     I marvel at the so-called "problem of evil." I confess that I have sometimes asked, "Why does God allow this suffering?  Maybe God is absent.  If there were an all-good, all-loving God, He never would have allowed this to happen."  But the Bible is purposeful in telling us that God always allows pain, suffering, death, injustice, and travesty, as He appears in our lives.  His epiphany is always through messiness.  Poor Moses received the epiphany of the burning bush, while in a 40 year exile for having committed murder!  The Bible is screaming out the message: "Avoiding or preventing suffering is just now how God works!"
     I can understand how an atheist might imagine an all-perfect, all-loving God, and then see the suffering in the world and conclude that such a God does not exist.  But as Christians, we have to let the Bible show us who God really is.  He is all-powerful.  He is all-good.  But He does not use that power or goodness to preserve us from pain or tragedy.  His signature is to allow horrible sufferings, and then to show up and do something astonishing in the midst of it.
    This impacts me powerfully.  My life is messy.  My timing is all off.
    But the Gospel of Matthew is teaching me: that is how God works.  This is His path for you, Kathryn.  He is allowing all these imperfections, all these "Too late's" and "Not enough's" so that I will lay down my own sense of power and accomplishment and let God work miracles in my own life.  
   

My New Spiritual Goal

    Having just begun Advent, and thus a new liturgical year, I have made a spiritual resolution.  I am choosing to work on being steady.  My emotions can fluctuate a little too fast.  They can go a little too low and a little too high.  So, I resolve to pray for the grace to stay steady.  This steadiness will build on my goals the last 2 years: faith and joy respectively.  Steadiness builds on faith since faith assures us that God is in control.  Rather than steadiness being a delusion, it is holy and right, an adherence to Providence's path for us, even through rough and unexpected twists and turns.  Steadiness also builds on joy, since joy comes even in the midst of trials.  In the past year I have come to see that God loves me so much more than I had ever realized, and I find joy in the ways He has powerfully intervened in my life, rescuing, saving and blessing me.  Since He is so obviously intentional and mindful of me, I feel joy in being cared for and loved.  I see this year's goal as securing the fruit of these two years of hard interior work and making sure that, rather than it going to waste, my soul is strengthened to the fullest degree for the glory of God and the praise of His name.
    Last week, on the first Sunday of Advent, I was praying in Mass.  I had a different spiritual goal in mind.  But as I was kneeling I felt the Holy Spirit impress upon my spirit: "Steady."  I thought, "Wow, this is a true prompting.  I would never have come up with this word.  I've never heard anyone laud steadiness as a Catholic or Christian virtue."  Nevertheless, I felt it strongly then, as I do now.  So, hopefully led by my loving God, I choose this virtue as my spiritual goal of this liturgical year.

Sebastian

How blessed I am with such a wonderful, wonderful child! 

My favorite things about Sebastian are: 

His amazing ability to kick, punt, serve, throw and shoot a ball;

His amazing ability to walk up to an stranger, say hello and shake their hand;

His high energy;

His love for daily Mass; 

His sense of humor, his jokes;

His laugh;

His tendency to put his head on my shoulder and rest. 

Genuine Happiness

"If there is one thing typical of the saints, it is that they are genuinely happy.  They found the secret of authentic happiness, which lies deep within the soul and has its source in the love of God.  That is why we call the saints blessed."
                                     --Pope Francis

I love my kids!

The Miracle

    This summer I experienced a miracle pertaining to my father, Randall Kreiling.
    For five years, Ron, the kids and I have gone to Italy for the UD Summer Rome Program.  Ron and I have taught, and Ron has directed the program, thus making it a work trip.
    This past summer, however, the administrations told Ron, "Please add a one week trip to Greece."  That is because the Fall and Spring UD semesters to Rome have a week to Greece, and the administration would like the summer program to reflect the other semesters as much as possible so as to draw more students.
   What that meant for me is that I was taken to Greece on business, going to Greece at age 44 for the first time since I went there as a girl to be with my father who had a house there.  The last time I was there I was 18, the last of a string of summers that began when I was maybe 8 years old.  My father loved his house there and loved the island, Hydra, on which he built it.  My memories there are so fond--memories of sunsets, sailboats,  and swimming in the Mediterranean Sea.  My father was always on vacation when we were together, and so I remember him there as relaxed, content, and enjoying being with my sister Kim and me, and that last year, our wonderful sister Melia, too.
    Well, the miracle begins when the Dean of the Rome Campus advised Ron, "When you go to Greece, you should consider Hydra.  That would be a great place to take your students.  Go check it out."  Having to go to Greece on business was interesting, to say the least.  But to be instructed to go to the very island--of all the islands!--that my dad had lived on was just astonishing.  So, indeed, Ron and I kept that in mind.
    The trip this past summer took us as far as Nafplion, a coastal town near Athens.  Once the students left, Ron as director had several days of work to do: to check out new hotels, new restaurants, new museums, excavation sites and ruins, all with a view to maximizing the learning experience and to better monetize the trip.  Ron mentioned to me going to Hydra, but thought we had to travel into Athens, and then take a hydrofoil to Hydra, which would have been too time consuming.  
    But no kidding, one day I was walking down the street  in Nafplion, when I saw a sign written in chalk: "Hydra and Spetses: 34 Euros."  What??  You could get to Hydra from Nafplion?  I was amazed.  I could not believe it.  So I booked us on the next boat.

    Our whole family piled onto the boat and we embarked on our day trip to Hydra and then Spetses.  It was so mesmerizing that I felt numb:  I recognized the waters, the islands, the views.  They were the same as the dozens of times I had traveled by water from Athens to Hydra.  I could hardly breathe.  How was I hear, again?  I pondered.  We had not even tried to make this happen!
     In a stroke of luck, Kim sent me the email address of the owner, and the owner was there and  welcomed us to come visit.  So, our little ferry pulled up, and we stepped foot on the island.  We walked the 176 steps to the house, and she and her family welcomed us like royalty.  They have preserved the house exactly as my dad left it.  "It is a work of art,"  they said.  "No one can own this house.  It will always be Randy's house."  It was such a privilege to see his house so well respected.  His artistic genius and the best of his soul are reflected in that house.

     Well, in short, I think UD would be happy for that ferry ride to be added as a day trip that future summer programs take.  It is convenient, affordable, and a great way to get a feel for Greek islands, since the rest of the program is on the mainland.
     The miracle is: without trying AT ALL, without making the slightest effort to ever get back to Hydra, somehow Ron's and my work just lured us right to that island.  And it might just be that we will HAVE to go there, annually, on business.  What???!!!!  Who HAS to go to Hydra on business????!!!  No one, I can assure you.  It is just a little no-name island, beautiful but historically almost insignificant.  There are countless Greek islands.  The chances of the administration of UD telling us that Hydra is the one we should consider including is astonishing.  That we found such a convenient way to integrate it into the program is even more astonishing.
      Miracles are for a purpose.  What is the purpose of this one?  I think that it is the ongoing chance for God to remind me that I am loved.  It is a reminder of my father's love for me.  I certainly felt loved by my dad those weeks and months I spent on that island.  I felt his full attention.  I felt his planning special days and outings for me.  I felt his affection and we talked, laughed, played, swam, and took pictures together.  My dad failed in so many ways.  He was a truly imperfect person.  I think it is God's grace when He helps us remember people at their best.  I pray that my children and loved ones will think of me, and one day remember me, at my best.  This is God's way of helping me remember him at his best.  Which is as it should be.
     On this anniversary of his death, Daddy, I love you.  God, may he rest in the peace of your loving embrace.  Amen.