Mary as Mama
May 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment
A Mary Moment Monday post
Four letters, two syllables.
Mama.
Sometimes, the soothing balm to my days. Other times, pronounced in certain way, I find myself cringing, knowing what’s coming next.
Mama.
I don’t remember using this term for my own mother-figures. I don’t recall ever saying this as a child, but maybe I’ve just forgotten.
Mama.
It’s a word I don’t hear the teenagers in my life using with their mothers. Has my own seven-and-a-half-year-old started trending away from using it?
Mama.
It’s such a simple word, isn’t it?
Mama.
Though I do call Mary “Mother,” it’s to this word that I come when I think of her.
Mama.
She can be formal, poised on a statue in the front of the church with perfect hair and a well-behaved toddler boy. She can have great make-up and an unreal complexion and unrumpled clothes.
Mama.
To me, she’s more approachable with an apron and gardening gloves, a coming-lose-at-the-temples ponytail and the start of a sunburn. She’s someone I can talk to when I think of her as human (even though I know she was also sinless) and as a mom-friend (though I know she is the Queen of Heaven).
Mama.
Turning to Mary has become natural, but I sometimes forget its importance. I overlook the difference I can make, I will make, when I trust with my whole self.
Mama.
She must touch our temples, she must hold us tight. She must carry us when the tears flow so hard they blind us. She must pray for us when we don’t know what to ask. Even when we aren’t sure anyone else is there. Even when we wonder if it’s worth it to continue. Even when the bright sun can’t fight the dark night.
Mama.
A whole month for Mama. I’m glad I get a day, but even gladder that she gets a month.
image credit: Karen’s Whimsy
Quick Takes with Pictures
May 11, 2012 By 4 Comments
You know what makes me happy? This conversation from Facebook and the subsequent picture I have in my head because of it.
Anyone know where I can find a statue of Mary on a HORSE? Huh? I think I need one.
Well, come to think of it, I probably need two. My four-year-old is sure to claim one to play with. (You know, like she did with the Holy Family.)
If you’re reading this in a feed reader, I’ll spare you the necessary click-through and just show you how the window view at the top of my blog has changed, thanks to Dorian and her amazingness.
In case you have an interest in my latest obsessions, it has involved dirt, flowers, and mulch, transforming my front view to this:
That streak of motivation also led to this:
In other news, I just confirmed, this week, that I’ll be in Dallas at the end of August. For this:
and this:
I’m a weeeeeeee bit excited, especially as I’m going to be stuck like glue to her:
(and a few other people too, but Julie and I have a special plan, mwahaha)
This week, my phone (which is not “smart,” and that’s part of the reason I love it so), has been spending a lot of time in rice:
It had an unfortunate meeting with some coffee and then, as I was watering my hanging baskets, I leaned over to water some of the planted stuff and forgot all about the Truth of Watering Hanging Baskets: They will drip on you if you are under them.
To this I say: I’m glad I have rice in the house!
And here’s something pretty I just wanted to share, and which the artist, Michelle Paine, gave me permission to share (it’s copyrighted):
Used with permission; copyright Michelle Arnold Paine
She shares about her painting of this “transciption” of Fra Angelico’s original and the story behind it on her blog. She’s doing a whole series on the Annunciation and I’m moved by them.
It reminds me of how I used to love going to the Museum of Art in Toledo with my mother, and how she would stand beneath the panel of Monet’s Water Lilies and just gaze. I never understood that stopping and looking, that pausing to savor, that slowing down.
But maybe I do, just a bit, now.
Michelle Paine is doing some amazing work. Her figurative paintings on Mary just make my heart beat harder and tears well up in my eyes…and I have no ability to explain why.
Quick Takes can be found this week at Betty Beguiles. Please pray for Jen from Conversion Diary.
Hide-and-Seek with the Holy Family
May 4, 2012 By 1 Comment
My favorite Nativity Set is part of my decor.
Since Christmas, my four-year-old has had an interest in arranging them. And rearranging them.
And now…they play hide-and-seek.
It took me a week or so to realize they were missing from their usual shelf.
Turns out, Mama Mary, Joseph, and the shepherd were with the Holy Family statue on an upper shelf (let’s not think about how she GOT to that taller shelf, ok?).
The donkey, being quite creative, hid in the printer.
The goat was tucked in between the tissues and my recipe box.
And the oxen? I missed him COMPLETELY in front of the fishing lodge.
I found him days after I thought I had everything reassembled on the correct shelf.
What all this says about my decorating and my ability to ignore things that are under my nose, I don’t know. OK, I DO know. There is room for humor ALL. THE. TIME.
Visit Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes!
This One’s For You, Grandma
January 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
My grandma’s been off visiting her sister in upstate New York, and we talked on the phone the other day.
When she told me she had read my blog, there was a thunk as I fell out of my chair.
Turns out, her sister and brother-in-law (my great-aunt and great-uncle, if you’re keeping track of the family tree) are logging her onto the computer.
Then she told me about how they had lunch with some girlhood friends of her sister’s, one of whom is Catholic and…get this!…has heard of me.
Let’s all pause for a good laugh, shall we?
Now, to encourage you to laugh more–it has tremendous health benefits, after all, and hey, it’s fun–here’s a look at my life of late. (These pictures are also to answer all of Grandma’s questions about the kids, who she misses a lot.)
This is the mancub, 13 months old and into everything. He is all boy.
Yes, he is walking now. And climbing. He especially likes stools. And the couch. And the recliner.
He is also a big fan fan of rocking.
The seven-year-old loves reading and math. She hates–with a passion–the reports she has to do about the books she reads for school.
I realized, when I compiled our photo calendar for this year, that I need to take more pictures of the seven-year-old.
Which is how I captured this moment:
And no post would be complete without the four-year-old, whose quirkiness and personality make us laugh hourly (and inspire hair-pulling episodes with equal frequency).
She likes to help. That makes her a good big sister, as you can see:
So there you go, Grandma, a post just for you! (And one that the other grandmas are all enjoying, too!)
The Lessons of St. Gerard
October 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
A Mary Moment Monday post
I’ve been receiving the Mary Vitamin via email for quite a while, and it’s one of the only email subscriptions I’ve kept over years. It’s also one of the only ones I actually read regularly.
Last week, there was one titled “St. Gerard,” and after I read it, I kept thinking of it. St. Gerard’s feast day was yesterday, October 16. He was special to me before my daughter was born on his feast, but now he’s special in a whole new way.
Each of my kids has been born on a Marian feast. The daughter born on October 16 had a few ties to Mary: she was born during the month of the rosary and the feasts of both Margaret Mary Alacoque and the Purity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
At least, that’s what I thought her birthday ties to Mary were. And then I read this in the Mary Vitamin:
“‘Before and after every meal,’ [St.Gerard] wrote in his resolutions, ‘I will recite three Ave Marias; when taking a drink of water, one Ave Maria; every time the clock strikes, one Ave Maria.’”Father Edward Saint-Omer, C.SS.,R.St. Gerard Majella (Tan Books:1999), 66.
The email included more about St. Gerard’s devotion to Mary:
“The Redemptorists are bound by rule to recite five decades of the Rosary, to make a visit to the Blessed Virgin and to say a certain number of Ave Marias every day. They fast, also, on the eves of Mary’s feasts and abstain from meat every Saturday in the year [Saturday being Mary's special day of the week]. Gerard was not satisfied with these marks of filial love. Still more, he recited a Gloria Patri every time he saw an image of the blessed Virgin, whenever he heard her name pronounced and at the beginning and end of every action. His devotion to the Immaculate Conception was incomparable. How often he was rapt in ecstasy before her image!”Father Edward Saint-Omer, C.SS.,R.,St. Gerard Majella (Tan Books:1999), 66-7.
I couldn’t help but think, after reading this, of the way this daughter often asks to hold a rosary when she’s in bed. It comforts her. She has a nest of blankies and, now, an assortment of rosaries. When I wash her sheets, I find them, and I tuck them away for when she will ask for them before bedtime.
It is no accident that she’s linked to St. Gerard (not that I ever thought it was), and now that I have read more about his devotion to Mary, I will ask him to guide me in mine and as I expose my children to Mary (especially this daughter with the special link to him).
image credit goes here
Here at Snoring Scholar, you'll find marriage and motherhood, book talk and rambling remarks, observations and distractions, in the midst of life in rural Ohio on a farm, with kids, critters, and Catholic flair.
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