'Part of aging is reflecting about how God interwove things in one's youth into ways to witness to the faith. One of these that came to mind is this:
all the time nowadays people use the word “respect” as in “showing respect for others,” etc.
But for those brought up as total atheists such as myself and my twin, I can’t remember ever hearing the word respect when I was a child. Analyzing this later, I realized, why would anyone respect another human if you thought that humans were just grains of sand with an id attached?
Of course, as Americans, we believed in rights, but this was really just a cultural hang-over for our remote Christian heritage where it was taken for granted that humans had immortal souls and weren’t just hunks of matter of a highly intricate variety!
I found that my Catholic students were fascinated by such observations.
Amidst all the fatigue of old age, with the inertia that exhibits itself in feelings of not having energy to do anything one used to do easily, come surprising graces such as this one:
I tutor 2 home-schooled Catholic pre-teens 9 and 11 years old for a few hours once a week. I was thinking I was too tired to keep this up. But today I was continuing lessons about the saints and I was up to St. Hildegard. I had the mother find the sung hymns she wrote in the 1100’s on the web. I asked these very bright kids, who have been going to daily Mass since early childhood, what they thought the word “mystic” meant.
When I gave them my definition, an enhanced sense of the presence of God, vs. new age descriptions with fortune tellers, etc., here was what they said:
“Oh,” said the 11 year old girl, “you mean what I wake up in the night and sense the mystery of life, and I can pray for long periods of time with no strain?”
Said the 9 year old altar server, “Oh, well, I can always pray better when I am alone and I would say I almost always sense the presence of God.”
Then, when we played the music, I told the girl, who is studying ballet, that I thought the chant like hymns felt like stretching to heaven and that I bet she could dance to the hymns. She rose and danced to the music.
I suggested that some day she might have a dance studio where she could do sacred dance more easily than amongst her younger sisters and brothers running around all the time. She was delighted with the thought. And I seconded the idea the boy had of cleaning out a closet and making it into a little prayer cell.
What a beautiful time that I would have missed if I had let inertia convince me to stop these lessons!!!
Someone gave me a terrific prayer leaflet for anxiety. Maybe some of you know it. There was a certain priest, Don Dolindo, a friend of Padre Pio, who taught worried people how to pray Jesus, Take It Over, whenever they got into what we would now call obsessive anxiety. Google it if you need such a help.
Volunteering and old age:
It can seem like a good idea, but watch out. I thought it would be ideal to volunteer a few mornings a week at the parish office where there was a great need. The parish administrator is a marvelous woman, patient, diplomatic, who loves serving the parishioners who call on the phone and come to the window for help with Mass intentions, buying candles, getting sacramental certificates.
all the time nowadays people use the word “respect” as in “showing respect for others,” etc.
But for those brought up as total atheists such as myself and my twin, I can’t remember ever hearing the word respect when I was a child. Analyzing this later, I realized, why would anyone respect another human if you thought that humans were just grains of sand with an id attached?
Of course, as Americans, we believed in rights, but this was really just a cultural hang-over for our remote Christian heritage where it was taken for granted that humans had immortal souls and weren’t just hunks of matter of a highly intricate variety!
I found that my Catholic students were fascinated by such observations.
Amidst all the fatigue of old age, with the inertia that exhibits itself in feelings of not having energy to do anything one used to do easily, come surprising graces such as this one:
I tutor 2 home-schooled Catholic pre-teens 9 and 11 years old for a few hours once a week. I was thinking I was too tired to keep this up. But today I was continuing lessons about the saints and I was up to St. Hildegard. I had the mother find the sung hymns she wrote in the 1100’s on the web. I asked these very bright kids, who have been going to daily Mass since early childhood, what they thought the word “mystic” meant.
When I gave them my definition, an enhanced sense of the presence of God, vs. new age descriptions with fortune tellers, etc., here was what they said:
“Oh,” said the 11 year old girl, “you mean what I wake up in the night and sense the mystery of life, and I can pray for long periods of time with no strain?”
Said the 9 year old altar server, “Oh, well, I can always pray better when I am alone and I would say I almost always sense the presence of God.”
Then, when we played the music, I told the girl, who is studying ballet, that I thought the chant like hymns felt like stretching to heaven and that I bet she could dance to the hymns. She rose and danced to the music.
I suggested that some day she might have a dance studio where she could do sacred dance more easily than amongst her younger sisters and brothers running around all the time. She was delighted with the thought. And I seconded the idea the boy had of cleaning out a closet and making it into a little prayer cell.
What a beautiful time that I would have missed if I had let inertia convince me to stop these lessons!!!
Someone gave me a terrific prayer leaflet for anxiety. Maybe some of you know it. There was a certain priest, Don Dolindo, a friend of Padre Pio, who taught worried people how to pray Jesus, Take It Over, whenever they got into what we would now call obsessive anxiety. Google it if you need such a help.
Volunteering and old age:
It can seem like a good idea, but watch out. I thought it would be ideal to volunteer a few mornings a week at the parish office where there was a great need. The parish administrator is a marvelous woman, patient, diplomatic, who loves serving the parishioners who call on the phone and come to the window for help with Mass intentions, buying candles, getting sacramental certificates.
The thing I enjoyed the most, contrary to all expectations, was shredding!!!! I had never even seen a shredder except on TV! I loved the rhythm of it and the sense of closure!!!!
But the other things, which you would think a woman who worked her way through college as a secretary, could easily do, I found very hard. I can’t remember numbers at age 81. So, I put on the receipt for the Mass intentions 2012 instead of 2018!!! Or, I put the godmother in the place on the certificate that says birth mother.
Humiliating mistakes!!!!
So, after some months of trying my hardest I am now only an emergency volunteer!
Humiliating mistakes!!!!
So, after some months of trying my hardest I am now only an emergency volunteer!
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