ice cream on thursdays

I have a friend, a former co-worker, who is older than my mom, who is having some serious health issues, having been diagnosed with  some chronic problems.  She has been asking for months for me to take her to "Charlene's Grave".  Charlene Richard was a little Cajun Girl who lived and died over 50 years ago in a rural community about 45 minutes from us.  She died at age 12 after a short battle with leukemia, and gradually she has developed a reputation as the "L'il Cajun Saint".

So, with school about to start, and time about to become very short, when she suggested that we go "next  week", I googled.  The cemetery where Charlene is buried is adjacent to the church.  The parish has Mass at 6:00 pm on Thursdays, so I told her we would go then.  I figured if we were going to make a road trip of it, we might as well do more than sit in a hot cemetery.  This is Louisiana, and it was July.

We arrived in time for Mass.  I knew that since it was a small, rural community, we would obviously stick out at Mass, but I had hoped to blend in at least a little.  Well, so much for that idea. Including the priest, the musician, and the altar server, there were 7 of us at Mass.  That's the number of completion and perfection in the Bible, though.  Mass was absolutely gorgeous...the musician played and sang her heart out.  The homily felt like it was written just for us (and matched the picture of Abraham and Isaac in the sanctuary).

After Mass, we ventured out to the cemetery.  Charlene's grave is easy to spot, but someone else was praying there, so we meandered around the cemetery for a bit, before stopping to visit with Charlene. Even though it was after 6 in the evening, it was still quite hot, but  the experience was so peaceful. We were alone, and except for nature, there were no sounds.  No vehicles passing on the highway.....just peace.  We paused long enough to write down our petitions and place them in the box on her grave.  We knelt and prayed. Tears may or may not have been shed.

I know that some have reservations about the whole business of asking saints to pray for us, but I believe that if we can ask other broken people in this broken world to pray for us, then surely we should be able to request assistance of someone whom we believe has direct access to the Good Lord.

We made our way back home, - a little more at peace, and a little more hopeful,  but not before stopping at McDonald's for an ice cream sundae.

Fast forwarding to the next Thursday.  It was hotter than hot, but my son and two of his Boy Scout buddies were to meet in a local park for one of the other parents to take their pictures, in anticipation of upcoming Eagle Scout Ceremony.  

A couple of the grandkids were visiting, so I had brought them with me, thinking they would enjoy the park as something different.  They fed the ducks....

...and played on the playground.  But they were tired, and it was hot, and they mostly just wanted to get to their other grandma's house.  

When the photo shoot was done, the boys decided to go eat ice cream (it is summer and it is hot), and after letting the girls play for a little longer, I took them to meet up with their other grandmother. We saw one police unit shortly after leaving the park.  We were nearly broadsided by another that was speeding through a red light.  After I dropped the girls off, I met up with the boys and the photographer dad at the ice cream shop, and we sat for an hour or more, talking and watching as law enforcement vehicles - marked and unmarked - sped by at odd intervals. The 3 boys have known each other since second grade, and all of them are starting college in the fall, and that occupied much of the conversation.  "My mom says there's been a shooting at the Grand," one of them said quietly, reading the text from his phone.  So in the age of instant information, we all turned to our phones...

Yep, sure enough.  But not much information available. Maybe some domestic issue, we assumed.  We visited a while longer before going our separate ways. 

Once we got home, we saw our  hometown on national news. When all the dust settled, three people were dead - people connected only by the fact that they had gone to see Trainwreck on a hot, July night.  The deceased included the shooter - someone from out of state who was "just not right" and two beautiful young ladies, Jillian and Mayci.  Several others were hospitalized.  

But here, we still pray.  Here, we come together to emerge even stronger. Here, we have joy, and nobody from out of town is going to steal our joy on a hot Thursday night.  

13 for 13

I was going to compose something profound about the year in review, but this seemed like a better option.  Especially since its been a while since I've written anything bordering on profound.  Thirteen pictures...from 2013.

1. My boys at a wrestling meet.  It is such a hard sport to appropriately photograph in action.  I love that they enjoy it as brothers.  They say wrestling teaches a lot about real life.  It became a little too real, however, when one of their coaches had a heart attack and died during practice in early 2013.

2.  The Eagle Project for Son #1 was completed.  Merit badges remained, but at least this part was done.

3. In the spring, I made a decision that I never thought I would make, and elected to leave the place where I had worked for the past 24 years.  In retrospect, it was an unexpected blessing.

4.  This was the key to my sanity while working at that place.  Almost every morning, before work, I could find 10 or 15 minutes or more...sometimes an hour.... to sit in the peace and the Presence.  It was at Mass in this church that I first had an inkling that God might have something different planned for me for the coming year.

5.  It wasn't the school where I thought I might be going.  But I prayed to know the "right" one, and in the end, it met every one of the specifications (both serious and not so serious) that I had on my Perfect School list.

6.  Kid #2 got to spend 2 weeks at the National Boy Scout Jamboree.  He is a character.

 7.  Kid #1 turned 18.  I was so excited that he would be able to sign all of his own back-to-school paperwork when school started.  He also worked 2 jobs this summer:  a 7:30-4:30 internship with the computer repair folks at the school board and then a 5:00-11:00 or so job at Sonic as a carhop. We didn't see much of him!

8 &9.  Totally enjoyed a visit from the grandkids.  There are 6 of them...4 of them are seen in these pictures.

10.  We don't always get back-to-school pictures. Its a hectic morning for all of us.  But they let me snap one out of the car window as they waited for the bus.  I have a junior and a senior!  How time has flown.  Speaking of time...it's about 6 a.m. in the picture, which is why they don't look too alert.

 11.  This was a long road - working on the Ad Altare Dei religious award.  But we finally finished it up and our pastor presented our little group with their medals one Sunday morning.  The lighting in the picture is not great, but we were proud.

12.  Son #2...full of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Smelling the sweet scent of chrism.

13.  A half-way decent family picture at Son #1's Eagle Ceremony.  Finally!!

Lagniappe:  Visiting with my Granddad.  He is 97 and looking good!

Gotta include one more bonus pic.  This one was a "selfie in the sacristy".  Altar servers before the Easter Vigil Mass.  I like the little guy looking up to the older servers.  My guys have served at the Easter Vigil for the past 7 or so years.  They do it willingly, but each year I think, "this might be the last time.".  That growing up thing.

It was a year.  Closed doors and new beginnings.  Goals achieved, gifts received.  Through it all, God is good!

the path to eagle

There was a time, not too long ago, where my response to some event would be "oh, I can blog about that." But so rarely now does that happen.

Holy Week and the celebration of the Triduum awakened some of that.  It is so full of imagery and just good "stuff".  

Another stepping stone occurred this weekend, too, that I would wish to document (and which the teen subject would probably be OK with).

It's been a long process to get to this point, but his Eagle project was completed this weekend.  Other things remain before he can submit his application, but the project is DONE! 

Planning began in earnest about a year ago.  He had seen a stepping stone Rosary and when the time was right he approached the principal at the school he attended for grades K-8 about doing such a project for the school.  They were willing, and so he began work on a proposal, submitted it for all of the signatures and had it approved last summer.  At some point, we were told that there were other plans for the area that he wanted to use for the project, and they were unable to find another suitable chunk of real estate.  They suggested painting a Rosary under a covered area that they have.  Since this was a major change in the project, he was required to do another proposal and submit it.  This happened during the fall.

Then wrestling season began.  If you have wrestlers, you know that nothing else happens during wrestling season (November - February, more or less).  Then he got a job.  I have been forbidden to post that picture on the internet.

A few weekends ago, we bought the supplies.  Last week we were out of school, but the "project beneficiary" was not until Friday, so we (he) made final plans and decided the project would take place on Friday and Saturday.

Friday morning, a small crew - his brother and a good friend - prepared the surface..

 And then they waited...and waited.  We made a run to WalMart for donuts and cookies.  And waited.  Finally, they decided it was "dry enough" and began to lay out the pattern, tracing each bead with chalk.

This process took quite a while, because you know that even though it had been carefully measured and drawn, things did not fit exactly.  So there were changes and decisions to be made along the way.

 Finally, it was time for a trial run with the paint...

They mixed in some gold paint sprinkles...thinking that a little glitter would be a cool thing.  That was pretty much a fail.  Even though we used more than it called for, there was no sparkly glitter effect when we finished.

They painted the "Our Father" beads, and that was a learning experience.  The first one had paint that had oozed under then stencil and then they got paint on the asphalt when they put the stencil down after peeling it off of the circle.  But, they figured out how to fix both of these problems. They cleaned up and went home.

Saturday morning a larger crew showed up.  He had worried about having too many "little kids" that would be careless with a paint roller, but in the end the six that showed up, were perfect.  It was amazing how much debris collected on the covered surface overnight.

I love the picture below - of my Eagle-to-be giving instructions.

Then, working in pairs of one older and one younger, the painting commenced.  It went perfectly.  No drips, no spill, no runs...

What to put as the "connector" on the Rosary had been a problem that he needed to figure out.  In the end, he chose the school logo and made the stencil himself.

For the Cross, he just elected to free-hand it with the roller, and again, it worked quite well.

 A Scout is clean, you know....and paint is messy, so here is the clean-up.

I love this picture, here, too, where he seems to be offering it up to the good God.  Actually, he was looking at the paint he'd gotten all over his hands after taking off one of the paint rollers...

And a final picture of the crew, with the project.  

He is so proud.  Just now, he saw me looking at the pictures to put on here, and he had to stop and look through them again.  "Yeah, I did that," he said.  "Mom, do you think we could go by there tomorrow....just to get another good look at it with it all dry?"

memories of henry, hope for sandy

Last weekend, as "super storm" Sandy took aim at the northeastern part of our country, my boys ran in a cross country meet in the little known town (village?) of Henry, Louisiana.  I was eager for this meet, because it was the first time in several years that I had occasion to visit Henry, and I was anxious to see the progress that had been made.

As you can see, Henry is a little town not too very far from the Gulf Coast.  My first dealings with Henry were when I interviewed for a job there a little over 20 years ago.  At the time, I think they had a K-12 school, but it has since closed due to consolidation, and at this point, all that appears to remain is a gym.  I chose to wait for a job a little closer to home, and that was that.

Until about 4 years ago.  Hurricane Ike had rolled through, and my sons' Boy Scout troop had offered their services in helping with clean up.  We stopped first in Erath, where we wiped down walls and picked items strewn about in the cemetery, and then journeyed on to Henry.  The destruction there was just heartbreaking.  We concentrated our efforts on the Catholic Church.  A few weeks earlier, it had looked like this.

The church was already about 3 feet off of the ground, and the water left by the storm surge reaches to the door handles.

There we met Fr. Matthew, a priest from India.  The church had suffered a similar fate after Hurricane Rita, 3 years earlier, and they had just completed renovations.  He had moved back in to the rectory only a few months before Ike.  He was so proud of the new furnishings - real wood pews in the church, new furnishings in the rectory.  It was so sad to see the pews and the buckled wood floor in the sanctuary.  We wiped the film from the pews, and it came back as soon as we wiped it way...probably mold, rather than mud.  The rectory was being gutted that day.  Loads and loads of moldy, wet sheet rock carted out.  We did what we could (which wasn't much), but we left touched that day.  Sometimes when you attempt to give, you are the one who receives, and it was true that day.

Fr. Matthew has since returned to his native country, but he touched us all.  So appreciative, but seemingly in shock, as he carried a few more items that had been on the second floor to his car.

But Henry is a place that you don't happen upon, unless it is your destination, as it was for us this past Saturday.  The school was gone - demolished after Ike, except for the gym (which still smells faintly of mildew).  In the gym hang banners from championships and teams past.  Rather sad, as if time stopped in 1991 or so.

But what we most wanted to see was the church.....

It has been raised another six feet or so.  Unfortunately, it was locked (as most churches are today) and we could not see the inside.  The rectory is gone, moved to a house a few doors down.

And so there is hope. Things do get rebuilt.  Life does go on.  And in the chaos and in the sadness in the good that we do for others, God does work and touch hearts and lives.

riding shotgun with Jesus

I've mentioned Ad Altare Dei before, I think.  It's a religious award that Boy Scouts can work on.  It takes an in-depth look at each sacrament and tries to draw connections between the sacraments, scouts, and real-life, I think.

My little group started working on it in earnest in January, 2011.  We took off the summer (moving, vacations, summer camp) and most of the fall of 2011, and got things rolling again in 2012.  We have been through Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, and Holy Orders.  Only Marriage remains.  Saving the most difficult or the best for last??

As part of Anointing of the Sick, the boys are supposed to spend a month (?) helping the sick or elderly in some form or fashion.  We weren't really that enthused about going to a hospital (too many super-icky germs there) and not real comfortable with nursing home service.

So I emailed the husband of a couple I have gotten to be friends with through church.  He and his wife are my parents' ages, and she had surgery back in February.  There were many complications...a stroke during surgery that caused a loss of sight (they are hopeful this will improve some, but it has been months), diabetes that has caused the wound to heal painfully slowly, chronic diarrhea that makes it risky to go in public.  I had visited them one afternoon earlier in the summer and quite enjoyed myself, and thought that perhaps the boys could be of assistance to them.

Yes, he said, there were flower beds that needed weeding.  And so we set the time for Friday evening, when it would be cooler.  As luck would have it, it has rained all week, and the flower beds were a little soggy, but I knew my friends were looking forward to company.  I also know that our priest has visited them once in the months since the surgery (he has had a lot going on), but I know I would not want to go months at a time without the Eucharist.  So I asked if I could take Communion to them.  We had to work out some bugs (like I had to get the sacristan to open the church in the evening so I could get the Blessed Sacrament and I had to borrow a pyx from my SIL), but it all worked out!

My teen drove while Jesus and I rode shotgun. (Nothing could be better with a teen driver!)  I held the pyx in my hands, conscious of the incredible privilege.  My boys tried to avoid questionable language.

My friends were so happy to see us and Jesus!  As soon as I could work it in to the conversation, (did I mention they were happy to see us?) we had a brief communion service...a few prayers, a reading from the day's Gospel, a short discussion/homily, the Lord's prayer and Communion.  It was special to be a part of.

After that, we visited.  My boys did not turn their noses up at the talk of adult diapers, scabs, and wounds.  They got a good feel for the frustration and isolation of someone who is house-bound.  They enjoyed talking about the sports they participate in at school, things they are doing in Scouts and heard stories about our hosts' grandchildren. I saw them smiling and laughing.  It was really a wonderful evening.  We enjoyed strawberry cupcakes and a couple of hours later left with some to take home.  It did my heart good to hear my boys say that they had enjoyed the evening, rather than acting like they were being tortured to fulfill this particular requirement.  Before we left - we looked at the flower beds....we'll be back!

We are called to bring Jesus to others, to be Gift for others.  Most often, it is in an abstract way, but this time  it was in a literal, concrete, truly present way.  But in the awesome, perfect way that Jesus works, we all left richer!