Aurora Borealis

We’ve been to Mass this morning for the Feast of Mary, Mother of God.  It’s nice that All Saints offers a normal Sunday Mass schedule for today, so we went to our usual 8:45.  We were asked to bring the gifts up to the altar. Mr. Tldz carried the cruet of wine, I took the water, and Agent Murphy carried the sacramentary.  Once we got him pointed the right direction, he did pretty well.  When we got about half way up the aisle, Father Jude (the visiting Franciscan scholastic who teaches theology at a college outside of Philadelphia and who also said Christmas Eve Mass) knelt down to be at the Agent’s level. Then he really seemed to get it, and he raced the rest of the way up the aisle with the book.  Father Jude told him he did perfectly.

Now that we’re home, we’re back in our PJs and set for a lazy day. Diapers have been folded, the beginnings of a pot of soup is on the stove for dinner (lunch will just be Christmas leftovers), and now we’re ready to watch movies or something.

Last night we ordered in a couple of pizzas for dinner.  We were going to watch a movie after the Agent went to bed, but I’d been fighting a migraine all day, so we were curled up in bed with cups of spiced cider listening to the radio by 8:30.  Fell asleep sometime after that, and then woke up around 10:30 to go to bed for the night. A couple of old fuddy duddies, we. But I can’t really think of a nicer way to celebrate the new year. This morning we had cold pizza and egg nog for breakfast – what a way to start 2010!  (Okay, we were responsible parents and the Agent Murphy had his usual breakfast: oatmeal mixed with apple sauce and yogurt, a banana, a vitamin, milk.)

So now on with our lazy day.  Nowhere to go until church on Sunday morning. If only we could keep the Agent from pestering attacking The Dog…

Mr. Tldz was inducted into the Knights of Columbus last night.  I’ve been telling him this means he’ll really be my knight in shining armor.  He came home last night to inform me there is a Shining Armor Award available to Knights who accomplish certain things in their first year of membership.  So if he wins that, he’ll really really be my knight in shining armor!

I think this will be a very good thing.  Apparently our parish has one of the more active Knights councils in the state.  And since he was inducted on Agent Murphy’s second birthday, we’ll always have a way to remember how long he’s been a Knight.

So since it looks like our move is actually going to happen, we went to our new parish this morning for 8:45 Mass, which we think will be our normal.  Oh my gosh, we really like it!  As far as physical appearances, the new IHM is much prettier and more traditionally Catholic in appearance; but All Saints has the flavor of an authentically, orthodox Catholic community.  And the church is pretty in its own way.  It’s very simple, with lots of windows (plain glass, not stained) through which you see mainly lots of trees on the property.  There is no fixed crucifix.  There are large windows behind the altar looking out on a large wooden cross.

It appears their pro-life group has their own permanent bulletin board in the narthex.  There is an actual cry room (though the sign calls it the “Little Saints Room).  We made use of it for a while this morning because the Agent was being a bit unruly. At All Saints, they actually keep pens in the penholders in the pews, and he kept wanting to play with those and would pitch a fit when we took them away; but we really didn’t need him scribbling on the pew upholstery.

Their faith formation offerings all seem to be very worthwhile, and they had a handy brochure out on everything lined up for the fall and winter.  Last week we already signed Mr. Tldz up for a small group study called “Fathers for Good” which starts next week.  After Mass this morning a man came up and said, “Hi, I’m Jerry.”  (He’s leading the group, and I’d indicated we’d planned to start coming to Mass there this weekend, so he must have been on the lookout for us.)  He invited us out to breakfast with some other folks (to whom he introduced us — and said they were the ones who introduced him to the parish).  We said we’d love to in the future but declined today given that we’re swamped with packing, etc. to get done.  This is all very promising.

EDIT: Only when I sat down to put all the dates of this small group study on the calendar did I realize that the man teaching the class is Jeff, not Jerry.  When Jerry introduced himself to us on Sunday, I guess my mind just tried to fill in the blanks to make it make sense.  Apparently Jerry is just a friendly guy who considers himself the welcome wagon.  Still very promising.

Oh please.  But our pastor seemingly tried to canonize Ted Kennedy from the ambo on Sunday.  I was so disgusted.  We’d hoped to go to our new parish this past weekend, but since things were still so up in the air on the house deal, we held off on it.  What a stunning example we got of why we’re looking forward to switching parishes!

He stood up there and kept saying, “This is not political.”  Oh come on!  You’re talking about one of the most viciously partisan politicians in Washington.  I could have gone along with noting that a man who had the means to live a life of leisure devoted himself to years of public service.  (I’d push aside my opinion that his public service wreaked havoc on our society; I’d give him credit for being a public servant.) He apparently had intentions to help the poor, and those are good intentions.  And if Father had gone on to say that today we hope Senator Kennedy is meeting his Maker, who is recognizing the good he’s done and extending mercy to him for any ways in which his goals and the agenda he pushed were errant, I would have been fine with that.  But instead we got, “I hope today he is meeting his Maker, who is saying, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”

Yes, well done leaving a young woman at the bottom of a lake.  Well done putting poison pills in all sorts of legislation to promote a radical abortion agenda, leading to the slaughter of so many unborn babies. He once held pro-life views but sold his soul for power in the Democrat party. Maybe he thought he could do more good that way than the harm he caused. (I wonder what Mary Jo and all the babies have to say about that?) Apparently concern for the poor doesn’t extend to the poor unborn, or born people who become inconvenient to a Kennedy. Maybe he was simply misguided.  We know he had his demons.  So sure, I pray he receives the mercy for his sins that all of us hope for for ours.  But “Well done, good and faithful servant”? And I’m supposed to believe that wasn’t a political homily?

I hope our new parish will be more Catholic.  Our current parish’s website is pretty reflective of its culture, so if that holds true for the new parish’s website, then I’m pretty hopeful about the culture there.

My Mothers Day celebration started Saturday evening, when for date night Mr. Tldz made a lovely dinner — moussaka and lemon oven potatoes, neither of which we’ve had in a while; and then he made baklava!  Yummy!  (Holy cow – do all those items actually go together?!?  We’re usually famous for weird combinations of ethnic foods.)  It was fabulous — especially when followed by a nice back massage!

For breakfast Sunday we had freshly made blueberry scones and steel cut oatmeal.  Agent Murphy was  good during Mass.  (We didn’t have to make a break for the narthex at any point during Mass, so that counts as good.)  I got my presents when we got home — God and the World, a written interview with Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), a John Michael Talbot CD, and from Agent Murphy Dr. Laura’s new book, In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms.  Looks like both books will be good reads.  As Mr. Tldz said, the interview format with Ratzinger is probably the best way for me to read his stuff these days since it can easily been done in tiny chunks.

During Agent Murphy’s nap, I went out and picked up an umbrella stroller for our upcoming trip to Chicago.  We’re looking forward to that!  We actually really like our full-size stroller.  It’s nicely light weight, but we were looking for something with a smaller profile when folded so it doesn’t take up so much room in the trunk, and we found an umbrella one that doesn’t seem to be built for midgets to push.  After Agent Murphy’s nap, we called the grandmothers.  I had a nice chat with my mom, and Mr. Tldz left a message for his.

We got all of our cooking (including a couple of pies) and laundry done for the week.  (Ours, anyway.  Agent Murphy always has more!)  And we still managed to retire at a normal hour.  A very good weekend.  I hope all my mom friends out there had good Mothers Days, too.

Now my boy is clamoring for help with his puzzles and for story time, so I must go be Mommy.

Mr. Tldz and I woke up yesterday morning inexplicably exhausted.  We don’t know why.  We hadn’t gone to bed late.  But anyway, we were thrown off our normal schedule and didn’t get to Mass.   So we had a more leisurely breakfast than normal, and then swung into high gear getting the house cleaned up for the open house before we left for our “exile.”

First, we delivered a meal to a couple from church who just had a baby girl a couple of weeks ago.  They happened to be one of the presenting couples on our Engaged Encounter weekend.  Then we went and visited J^3, an older couple from our church.  He, Dr. J., was a longtime biology professor at UK-Lexington, an anomaly in that environment as a staunch pro-lifer.  They moved here a few years ago because one of their daughters lives here, and her oldest of 3 children has pretty significant special needs; so they moved down in retirement in order to be able to help.  Mrs. J. has been involved with the pro-life committee a little bit, but Dr. J. is in rather poor health, and I think it has declined rather precipitously since they’ve moved here.  He’s now confined to a wheel chair, so they don’t get out very much, and hadn’t really been here long enough before his health took a turn to establish a big social network.  (Unfortunately, our parish is not very good at welcoming in these sorts of situations.) So they feel some sense of isolation.  Finally, in February, we managed to take a meal over to share with them.  And it has worked out nicely, because we’ve been able to go over there both times we’ve had Sunday afternoon open houses.  Those are scheduled from 2-4 — prime Agent Murphy nap time.  Fortunately, J^3 have a nursery set up for their grandkids.  (One of the three here in town is just a few months older than Agent Murphy.)  So Agent Murphy has a place to nap during the open house and we have a chance to visit.

They are neat folks who’ve lived an interesting life.  They are devout Catholics and have experienced a number of parishes, including helping to grow a Newman Center.  Dr. J., because of his field of study and experiences trying to convey information about human life to students over a long number of years, has noteworthy insights into the pro-life movement.  He survived great evil and tragedy (as in concentration camp) as a child and came to the U.S. at the age of 11 or 12 to be raised by, I believe, a great-uncle.  I guess one sentence from yesterday’s conversation sums up: “When we were returning from Switzerland in the ’70s with a suitcase full of cloned frogs…”  My response to that: “Now not many people can say that!”  We enjoy their company, and I believe they enjoy ours.  We’ll need to make a point, sometime in the next few weeks, of going over to visit “just because” at a time when Agent Murphy can be up and about and get to know them better.

Unfortunately, we had no activity at the open house.  Will have to discuss ideas with our realtor this week, because we’ve had absolutely no activity since the last open house 2 weeks ago.  But we had a lovely afternoon.  We stayed with J^3 longer than we planned, so we didn’t keep to our cooking schedule and ended up going to JR’s for barbecue last night.  Another lovely touch to the day.  But Mommy forgot to bring Agent Murphy’s sippy cup, and I’m not sure how to go about teaching him how to drink from a straw.  We tried last night, but he ended up having to wait until we got home to drink his milk.

I don’t mean that quite as it sounds.  Easter was very good, but life has just been hectic since.

Agent Murphy stubbornly refused to sleep in his stroller at Easter Vigil Mass.  He came so close a few times, but very definitely fought it off.  But he was really tired and was getting really cranky.  So we only made it an hour and a half (the first half of Mass), so we just heard the beginning of “Alleluia” as we got to our car.  Oh well, we tried.

We had a lovely meal on Easter Sunday, and then had time to watch episodes of Matlock and Columbo.  (Traditional Easter activities, right?)  It was a good day.  But then around 10 a.m. Monday we lost power (along with much of the metro area, thanks to heavy rain followed by strong winds = lots of fallen trees).  It finally came back in the last couple of hours.  Another reason for Alleluia!  Now I just have to get caught up on everything.  At least our diaper washing schedule will be undisrupted.  (Ah, the things we are grateful for!)  And the power outage gave us an excuse to have dinner at a barbecue place we really like.

We’re getting some interest in the house (calls to our realtor, etc.), but no one has actually looked at it yet.  But we take the activity as a good sign and hope things will move along so we can make an offer on the house we want.

We are now the proud owners of an 8′ pew from our old church.  It’s stashed in the basement.  Hopefully whatever house we move to will have a nice spot for it.

Just got done icing a batch of Almond Joy Biscotti.  It’s our first flavor experiment, working off the basic biscotti recipe we have.  The author of that cookbook (all desserts) suggests one have an icing spatula, so we procured one around the time we got married.  Never actually used it until today.  What a great thing!  Now we’re waiting impatiently for the chocolate to set so we can try these guys out.  The half-baked ends of the dough rolls tasted pretty good, though, so that’s promising.

Agent Murphy woke up Friday with his nose all coated over with snot.  He’s had a runny nose ever since, but at least this morning his nose wasn’t all caked up; so hopefully he’s on the mend. (He’s currently nearing the end of a much-needed nap.)  I seem to have come down with a bit of a cold, too.  I don’t know if I gave it to him or he gave it me or we caught it together.  I ought to be napping, too…

We were concerned about the length of Palm Sunday Mass (officially Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion) with the Agent’s not feeling quite up to snuff, but he did amazingly well this morning.  Maybe this bodes well for a good Holy Week.  We’re actually planning to go to Easter Vigil Mass, hoping we can get Agent Murphy to go to sleep once we get there and sleep through it, since it starts after his bedtime.  (We’d love to participate in all of the Triduum services, but we figure that would be pushing our luck.)  We may be leaving Mass after a brief time, or we may make it through all three hours.  We shall see.  I should probably go find him some cute Easter pajamas to wear for the occasion…

So last weekend at our parish we ran a signature drive to oppose the Freedom of Choice Act.  It took most of this past week for me to get all the cards processed, but Agent Murphy and I finally went by the post office yesterday afternoon and dumped them all in the mail.  We sent a total of 2.497 cards to senators and representatives.  This is a campaign coordinated by the U.S. bishops.  Several people commented, as they were signing, that this seems like too little too late from our bishops.  I can’t help but agree; but we do what we can.

We were the first group to do a project like this in the new church, and we hit some snags with the setup.  Staff didn’t seem to think through how things like this would go in the new space, so when I did what I was told to do but it wasn’t really what they wanted done, I got chewed out.  A real pain in the-you-know-what.  I hope it’s time off of purgatory for me…  (The cynical part of me says that if the first thing in the new space had been a recycling project sponsored by the social justice committee, the staff would have thought it all through perfectly and everything would have gone smoothly; but then, we’ve long known the priorities of our parish.  But our director of religious education did step in to help Sunday morning, and I really appreciated that.)

Edit: In response to a wrap-up report I sent him, I did receive an e-mail from our pastor today apologizing for “barking” at us before mass last weekend.  That is much appreciated.

Mr. Tldz and I attended the dedication of our new parish church this morning.  The mass was just under 3 hours, and it was packed.  I counted at least 21 priests besides our own 3 concelebrating the mass, and several clergy of other denominations from the neighborhood were also there.  That was nice to see.  It would have been nice if they could have listed in the program the churches that were represented; but anway it was nice to know they were there.

We started in the old church (more formally and nicely referred to in the program as “the 1958 church”) for a short time.  I knew that part would be brief, but I was surprised there wasn’t at least a little more to it.  There was the opening processional with all the clergy coming in, a brief opening prayer of the mass, and then the Archbishop said, “And now let us process to the new church.” I thought there would be an official rite to de-consecrate the old church.  I think something does officially have to be done, but maybe they just don’t do that in the dedication mass for reasons of length or something.

Of course, moving from one church to another took a lot of time.  There was some sort of formal ceremony at the front doors, presenting the church to the Archbishop, handing over the building plans, and officially opening the doors.  We were pretty far back in the crowd, kind of out in the parking lot and they didn’t have a sound system set up for that, so we didn’t hear that part.

We eventually got into the new building, but of course, many of us were standing, because a lot of people had skipped the part in the old church and just secured their seats in the new building.  Communion vessels, linens, sacramental oils… all that stuff was processed in.  Things started at the back of the church, at the new baptismal font (large, placed like the one at the church where we were married).  The Archbishop blessed the water and then we had a rite of sprinkling by the Archbishop and our 3 priests.  We were standing right next to the font, so we got a pretty good bath!

Then we proceeded to have a normal (though bilingual) Liturgy of the Word.  The Archbishop gave a good homily.  He only gave a small part of it in Spanish, which I guess is because if he did the whole thing in both languages, it would have just gone too long.  He seems to be quite fluent in Spanish, though.

Following the profession of faith, we started the rite of dedication.  First was the deposition of the relics into the altar.  Apparently we have relics of Saint John Neumann, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Therese of Liseux.  I don’t know what they are, but I assume they are distant relics.  I don’t know if these relics were in the old church or if there were relics in the old church.  I liked this part because we got to sing the litany of the saints, which I really like.  Oddly, though, in the last part the names listed were some parishioners who had recently died.  Mr. Tldz is pretty certain that is canonically improper.  But even if an exception is made for an event like that specific to a local parish, my question is how is it decided which deceased parishioners are listed?

Then the Archbishop anointed the altar with oil.  A lot of oil.  He poured oil onto the altar.  Then he smeared it all around.  It looked like he was doing a hard scrubbing job.  Our priests got to anoint the walls with oil – or more accurately the sconces on the walls and place the candles.  Love the smell of that oil!

Next came the incensation of the altar and the church.  Love the smell of the incense, too!  But this was strange.  As this part of the mass got started, I leaned over to Mr. Tldz and said, “Oh no – I think we’re going to have liturgical dance.”  There were four willowy, barefoot teen girls in matching outfits coming up the aisle.  Well, they didn’t quite do liturgical dance.  They were the bearers of these big pottery bowls of the incense.  They walked them all over the church with very odd, ballet-like, pointed-toe steps.  They were wearing these green-blue leotard-like dresses with asymetrical skirts and matching leggings underneath.  It all seemed a little too new-agey for me.  Not incensing – that’s very Catholic.  But whatever happened to traditional censors and, oh, I don’t know, altar server robes?  I don’t know what that was about.  Except I guess to prove the definitely leftward slant of our parish.

Then came the lighting of the altar and the church – lighting all the candles around the altar and the ambo and the wall sconces – before we returned to the regular order of the mass with the Liturgy of the Eucharist.  The offertory basket that we saw seemed quite full of bills, with denominations besides $1s, so hopefully they did well.  And with as crowded as it was, distibution of Communion went pretty smoothly and quickly.  Having 21+ priests to distribute helped, no doubt.

Following Communion we had a solemn procession of the Blessed Sacrament (like Holy Thursday or a Eucharistic Benediction service) to the new reservation chapel.  The reservation chapel is behind the altar.  The organ pipes block it from view from the main part of the church.  The crucifix hangs in front of the organ pipes.  (The corpus is from the old church, though it’s mounted on a different cross.  This cross doesn’t have “INRI” inscribed on it, which seems odd.)  Apparently there is a sight line into the chapel if you’re seated at the side of the church.  The placement and expense of those organ pipes is a point of contention within the parish.  There are many of us who feel like we should more closely follow the Church’s preference for placing the tabernacle in a “prominent,” “visible” location.  But it is what it is, the design was approved by our bishop, and I guess I’ll get used to having those organ pipes as a backdrop.  I hope I’ll have a chance soon to walk around and look at the reservation chapel.

I do honestly have to say that this new church really does offer a more attractive worship space than our old church.  The old  church had its charms, but, well, it just wasn”t very attractive.  The new space has a rather modern feel, but enough classical elements that it feels “churchlike” to me, and I think it will stand the test of time pretty well.

There were lots of thank yous and other acknowledgements at the end of mass, including some good-natured ribbing between our pastor and the archbishop.  And our pastor announced that one of the stained glass windows (I think he said the Holy Spirit window) is being donated by members of the parish in the name of the woman who has chaired the building committee.  (We don’t appear to have any stained glass in the new church yet, but I guess that’s coming.)  That’s a good thing.  She’s done a lot of hard work for the past 7 years and had to deal with a lot of bad feeling in the parish about various aspects of this project, which ultimately boil down to “people don’t like change” and “people can hold grudges.”

The choir really did a good job – even the children’s choir.  Years ago, under our previous music director, the children’s choir used to sound awful.  Awful.  And they were inflicted on us at mass about once a month.  We’d all shudder.  The kids were very – enthusiastic – but they didn’t seem to be getting any instruction or direction on how to sing; and it seemed like a lot of them were really too young.  This current choir sounded fabulous, and they even had little choir uniforms.

A reception followed at the school gym, but we left right after mass.  We didn’t get out until the time that we’d told N. we’d be back to pick up Agent Murphy.  So we went straight over there.  Apparently he missed us.  It was, after all, his first time being away from Mommy and Daddy while also being in an unfamiliar place.  Aunty N. reported that the Agent hadn’t had much to say to her or A. or  I., and mostly N. had had to hold him.  She carried him away to start playing when Mr. Tldz and I were leaving.  Apparently once he realized we weren’t around anymore, he shrieked.  Fortunately, his trusted friend Lemon the Lion provided some comfort.  So I think it really was the right call to have Agent Murphy visit Aunty N. rather than go to the (I’m sure very crowded) church nursery.  A big thank you to Aunty N. for watching our boy so we could participate in the dedication!

We were glad to know our boy misses us when we’re not around.  And we’re glad he’s back to his normal, busy, talkative self now – babbling, rolling around on the floor with his dog, moving stuff around the house…