John Janaro's Blog, page 298

Held

April has come and gone. It is still Easter. The candle marks another year of our Lord.

Christ is Risen! Alleluia!

Sometimes in a moment, in a simple gesture, a word, the shape of a face, I am surprised. It really is true. There is an Absolute Love who has given everything to make me His own forever.

I could burst into rivers of tears for having forgotten everything. And I know that I shall forget it again. But the edifice of hope is being built in my soul. This is true. This is stronger than my weakness.

And when I feel my weakness, I discover that I am being held.

Janaroland: A Pictorial Essay

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, and I just don't seem to have a thousand words in me right now, I'm going to take the opportunity to show some pictures! So here's some "life at home" and "life at school" images. As the children grow older, they are increasingly reluctant to be photographed, especially by me, because they know that any picture I take may end up here! So I have to be sneaky. The kids don't realize that only five people read this blog, and that one of them is their "Papa" (their grandfather, "Hi Dad!").
Before this rambling introduction gets to be a thousand words in itself, here we go:

Josefina has strapped on these binoculars on so she can have super vision (and look silly)
What is it, a space monster? !!
There's Teresa snuggling Alex, our "outdoor cat"! By the way, Alex is now a
grandmother. One of her kittens that we gave away to friends just had her own kittens.
Teenagers avoiding camera. "Daddy I can't believe you put that picture up!" They
will say when they see it. Oh well, we've got two thirds of Agnese's face here, hahaha!
The beautiful world we live in... a few weeks ago, before Spring started.
Alexandra and her daughter Reepicheep, our two OUTDOOR cats, eating fancy-pantsy
cat food instead of going out to hunt for mice. This is something like "grilled salmon with
cream sauce and portobello mushrooms." Its nice that they allow us to live in their house, lol!
That would be this house here. Ah, the humble abode! Yes, its small by American
standards for our family, but thank God we have what we need, and He takes care
of us. So we bump into each other a lot. That's not such a bad thing.
But we have to be careful where we sit. You never know where you might find
a little person taking a nap.
The kids (in 2013) can still fit in the old Toyota minivan....
Although they had more room in 2004 (from left to right, baby Teresa, Agnese,
John Paul, Lucia). Josefina didn't exist yet, which is mind-blowing even to imagine.
Back to 2013: Here's the little Missy in the school hallway. With a straw hat from somewhere.
And here's Teresa, lovelier than all the flowers
The lovely Lucia, busy at school
Three of our beautiful girls
And a handsome young man who is their brother (Go Caps!)
The little one is always up to something. Josefina's restaurant is open. "Hey Mister, what do wanna eat!"
At the Montessori Center, Jojo examines some coral
Then, of course, there are the parents who love each other very much, and who are grateful to God.
Flowers. Have a beautiful day. :)

Pope Francis to Youth: "Have a Great Soul!"

"To you [young people],who are at the beginning of the journey of life,I ask: have you thought about the talentsthat God has given you?Have you thought about howyou can put them at the service of others?Don't bury your talents!Bet on big ideals,those ideals that enlarge the heart,those ideals that will make your talents fruitful.Life is not given to usso that we can keep it jealously for ourselves,but is given to us so that we may donate it.Dear young people, have a great soul!Don't be afraid to dream great things!"
--Pope Francis

Asking For My Love

How do I treat the people who are closest to me in my life every day?

There is plenty of material right here for an examination of conscience: one that brings humility, and sorrow, and a memory that commits me again to the vocation of love and the work that it requires.

If I were alone in my own being, however, it would be a fruitless commitment. I would despair of ever being able to find the bridge between my limited self and the lives of other limited persons. My solitude would be an impenetrable shell.

But I am not alone. Jesus is present, and He is at work drawing me beyond myself by the power of His Spirit.

I fail again and again. But Jesus is present. Jesus has conquered my weakness. I must never be discouraged. I must keep going to Him, seeking Him, asking for Him, letting Him build me up through the instruments of His grace, and learning more and more to recognize Him in other persons, in every circumstance.

He is here, asking for my love.

Teresa's Take on Educational Method

Teresa at the Montessori
Center, dressed as an angelEducational diversity is giving rise to some very interesting and unusual learning models. I have heard of homeschooling and various cooperative enterprises, charter schools, vocational schools, online schools, and of course the Montessori school.

Our kids have been enriched by the Montessori environment, and I think they are very much at home in it. However, they are aware of the existence of other unusual methods of pedagogy. Teresa told me about one of them the other day that sounded new.

It began with my overhearing a conversation, in which Teresa said something like this:

Teresa: "...its a Desk School."

Me (interrupting): "What? What kind of school did you say?"

Teresa: "A Desk School."

Me (not hearing well, ironically): "A deaf school? Oh, you mean a 'school for the deaf' -- that's good. Its good that they have resources for children with special needs."

Teresa: "No, a DESK school. Its a school where the kids sit at desks."

"Gosh," I thought... but before my mind could drift into a reflection on how constraining it must be for a kid to be stuck to a desk, I realized that I went to "Desk School" for twelve years! "Oh, hahaha, you mean like a regular school."

I hope the desks still have cubby holes underneath. :-)

Ah, the old "school desk" with cubby for storing textbooks, notebooks, pencils,
candy wrappers, baseball cards, paper airplanes, and even the occasional frog.

Have You Been "Busted" By the Pope?

"Gotcha!" No, just patting a kid's headYou have probably found that, when you read Pope Frank's homilies, you come across passages which make you think, "Oh my gosh, he just nailed me!"

Are you the lukewarm Christian who just wants a small, comfortable Church? Scorch!

Or maybe you think of God as a kind of "god-spray" that diffuses itself into a mist which goes a little bit everywhere but doesn't really matter. Zing!

Or maybe you have your little "idols"--success, careerism, vanity (or something...c'mon don't kid yourself)--that tend to bump Christ off the center of the road of your life. Yup!

Or you think being Christian is just wonderful, and you're in such a good place right now with Jesus that, like Peter, you want to build a monument right here and just be happy. But the Holy Spirit is "annoying" you, drawing your heart to grow, to go forward on the journey, and especially to embrace all that "cross" business, erk. Can't the Holy Spirit just take a nap for awhile? Hahaha...oh dear....

Do you actually worship the Lord, or do you just ask Him for stuff? Facepalm! Oh, umm... I forgot about that. Worship, yes...just saying, "God, wow, glory to You! Praise You! I adore You!" This means more than just mouthing the "Glory Be" and then saying "gimme, gimme, gimme!" It means real attention to God, silence, adoration, and praising God just because He is God.

God doesn't need our praise, of course. But as created persons, we are made to be worshipers; we are made to recognize, to adore, to rejoice in, to be amazed by Eternal, Infinite Love. He raises us up to share His glory and to fill us with His Love. We are made to worship, and as Pope Frank points out, if we don't worship God, we will worship something else instead, something less than God and therefore unworthy of our hearts and degrading to our humanity.

Okay, Francis. We surrender. We're busted.

But let us not stop there. There's a reason why he keeps ruthlessly slicing the baloney of our illusions. He wants us to see the real possibility that God offers us. He wants us to place our confidence in God and receive His mercy through Jesus Christ.

"Let us not be closed
to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives!
Are we often weary, disheartened and sad?
Do we feel weighed down by our sins?
Do we think that we won’t be able to cope?
Let us not close our hearts,
let us not lose confidence,
let us never give up:
there are no situations which God cannot change,
there is no sin which he cannot forgive
if only we open ourselves to him."

--Pope Francis

Christianity Brings Joy...So Why am I So Messed Up?

A Christian is full of joy. Right?
So what's wrong with me? Why do I so often feel weak, angry, frustrated and broken? Why am I depressed and obsessed and devoid of energy, and why does my life seem like such a train wreck?
It is rather a blow to my "Christian Ego". I've tried using raw will power to bury all that and make myself joyful, but it doesn't work. Okay, I know there's a lot of pathology going on here. Its important to acknowledge that and deal with it on the appropriate level.
It is also important to recognize honestly that my Christian life and witness leave much to be desired. NEWSFLASH: I am a sinner!
Surprise.
I can't deny it. But I also must never be satisfied with it. God is changing me, and He wants me to cooperate with Him. Into the midst of all my mess, Jesus has come! Jesus is here with me, and I want to follow Him.
I'm on His mysterious journey, and it has plenty of dark valleys and sorrows on many levels. Its about healing me and raising me up to a supernatural life, making me a new creation, an adopted son of the Father.
Yup. Me. Bozo-the-human-being, destined to live forever in the glory of God.
The journey, with all its depths, is also about sharing in the mysterious solidarity of the human race, helping to carry the burdens of others, and being plunged into the great love of the heart of Jesus, which is always going out to the margins....
And so, again and again, I discover that I am weak and broken.
God wants all of that. He wants our crying out in pain–spiritual, emotional, or physical–to be a cry that begs for Him. Where else can we bring all of that? Jesus has already borne all of it, my weakness, my brokenness, all of it right down to the core of me… He has endured it all and wants me to open up that vulnerability so He can transform me. That doesn’t mean he’ll make me “feel better” (at least, not in the way I think He should), but He will deepen my trust in Him, and it is through trust that I am changed.
It is through trust that I begin to taste joy.
A priest once told me to imagine I had a basket. Take the anger, the fear, whatever, and (in my mind) put it in the basket, and then (again in my imagination) put the basket on the altar before the Blessed Sacrament and say “Jesus I give this to you.” If I find more stuff still there inside me, I put it in the basket again. And again. Give it to Jesus.
"But I can't do this..." Grab that feeling right there, and put it in the basket. Bring it to the altar. Give it to Jesus. "I feel so helpless..." Basket. "My head hurts, I can't think, I'm exhausted..." Basket. "But I don't want to change. I love myself. I want to keep my life. I don't want to give myself away!..." BASKET!
Okay, that’s a “technique” — it might be helpful, or it might not. If all we can do is groan in pain, let’s groan to the Father and let the Spirit groan in us. I am convinced that He works deeply this way. Just “give” it to Him. God is not surprised by our pain. He has made it His own.
On the other side of it all is an indestructible joy. A spark of this fire has already begun in our hearts, and sometimes others can see it even when we can't.

The Pickle Jar

Lucia comes up to me with a pickle jar.

"Daddy, can you open this?"

Haha! Daddies live for moments like this. Lucia and Teresa and Jojo are sitting at the table, and Daddy has a chance to show his Olympian strength and be their hero. I rub my hands together.

[Of course, this family has no illusions. Everyone knows that there are many things that Daddy can't do. Daddy's sick, Daddy takes medicines, Daddy goes to doctors, Daddy rarely drives the car, Daddy doesn't teach anymore, Daddy's tired, Daddy's nervous, Daddy's tired, but he has written a book. And they can bother him anytime they want. Daddy can answer questions. He reads a lot. He works on the computer a lot.]

But my hands feel fine right now, and I'm the king of opening jars. I can also reach things in high places, and I can kill crickets. Gimme that jar.

Oof oof ow ow...these are usually easy but this one won't budge.

"Can you get me that thingamagigger that grips the lid?" Lucia gets it and brings it to me.

Lid secure, but now the jar is slipping in my other hand. My hand is almost circling the jar. What, did they glue this thing on?

Towels don't help. "Where's Mommy?" someone says. Hey, if I can't do this, Mommy can't do it either. How about both of us?

Mommy grabs the jar with both hand and I take the lid with both hands. Its not working. The jar moves.

This is the toughest jar of pickles I have ever encountered.

We decide to switch. I take the jar with both my hands and dig in, while Eileen takes both hands and turns the thingamagiggger on the lid. "Arrrrrgh!"

POP!

Success at last. It took both of us using all our strength. But the girls wanted pickles. Mommies and Daddies work together to take care of their kids. We do it hundreds of times a day without even noticing it. Its just being a family.

Desperate Josefina Turns to Cards and Drinking ;)

It was just a pitiful sight! She started chugging first thing in the morning. 100 proof H2O. Dangerous stuff. It should be regulated. People drown in it all the time. Although not usually from a sippy cup.

A sippy cup?

Okay, Jojo has some congestion, so it goes down easier in a sippy cup. She also requires entertainment.

Her: "Lets play a game."

Me: "I am not playing Reptile Bingo!" What is Reptile Bingo? Exactly what you think it is. A bingo board with pictures of snakes and lizards (and their names...its educational, of course), and a deck of cards to match. Actually, it is interesting in a nerdy sort of way, but after you've played it fifty thousand times, well....

Her: "No, lets play cards." She slaps the deck on the table.

Me: "What card game?" But the deck has the name of the game on it: "War." I never knew you needed special cards to play "war." Actually, you don't. But if a company wants to make money selling cards these days, they need to come up with gimmicks. Its just a regular card deck, but it says "war" on it, and the picture cards have cartoon dogs and cats instead of kings and queens.

Me: "Do you know how to play 'War'?"

Her: "Ummm... no... teach me!"

This looked like it might be interesting. Higher number beats lower number. That was easy enough. The picture cards were more of a challenge.

Her: "Can I have the cat cards and you can have the dog cards?"

Me: "No, it doesn't work that way. These are actually kings, queens, and jacks. We take what we get. But the picture cards are higher than the number cards. A king beats a queen and a queen beats a jack." I wondered how to illustrate this point. The cartoon dogs and cats were not clearly hierarchical. "Do you know what a king is?"

Her: "The king is a guy who can do whatever he wants." Hmmm. Maybe the kid is smarter than I thought.

Me: "Haha, just remember the higher card wins, but if its a tie, then its a "war," and...etc."

So we played our cards. She put down a six and I put down a ten.

Me: "Okay, see how it works. I have a ten and you have a six. So I win this one and I get to take it."

She seemed quite thrilled by the whole thing. She took another swig, squeezed the cards in her hand and looked at me and said, "Can we play again?"

The Divine Babysitter?

"Hey, I'm baptized, I'm confirmed, I've got my identity card. Now I'm going to go to sleep!"

That's the way Pope Francis described a mentality that often prevails among us. I'm not sure he used those exact words. But since he was speaking off the cuff, I'll cite him off the cuff.

That's funny. Some of us who consider ourselves "serious Catholics" might have a bigger checklist, but once we get through it we're just as ready to hit the hay.

Francis (I am resisting the urge to call him "Frank") observed simply that if we sleep we don't grow, and if we don't grow the Church does not bear fruit. "Instead of being a mother, the Church becomes a babysitter," he said.

Hilarious images from a papal homily, and right on the mark too. They won't be easy to forget.