About the author….
Do you know how difficult it is to answer the question: “Tell us about yourself.”
In the immortal words of my younger sister, I long to reply,
“and why is it you want to know?” She
does that to put people off when they are prying. But I am guessing that if you don’t know me
personally and are just reading my blog you might want to be able to put me in
context. Good luck with that – I haven’t
had an
easy time with that one myself.
I am almost middle-aged.
But they say 50 is the new 30, so whatever that means. I think for the purposes of putting my writing in context it tells you the
influences of my life: decades of a
culture that went
fast-forward in a very haywire way.
For example, women sought to be “equal” with men and lost
the sense of being treasured and put up on a pedestal by the men who loved
them. (perhaps a rare woman experiences
that.) Men were told to “express their
feelings” and they have lost some of their mystique and still probably can’t
get much beyond “good” and “bad” for feeling-identification. (tell me I’m wrong, generally speaking, I
dare you.) Men don’t know if they should
hold doors open for women or pick up the tab for dinner. I could rave on and on in sweeping
generalizations on that topic- but suffice it to say that the sexual revolution
and everything that flowed out of it has almost wrecked a nation (in my humble
perspective). (cf. a 50% divorce
rate) And now we see the rise of three
Catholic Popes in a row that have tried to fix this whole mess. So I am, as a faithful,
academically-inclined, and pastorally-minded Catholic lay woman really find
myself enthralled by some of the latest resources and teachings coming out of Rome. I am particularly in love with a body of
teaching from John Paul II called “Theology of the Body.” Which is, as I have said to people ad
nauseaum, not sex ed – God help us – but about
the dignity of man and woman and the roots of our relationships when we grow
them in the soil of faith. At some
point in the blog I will write more about that.
Also in my cultural experience we have rocketed forward from
every family having one car, to every family member having his/her own car.
The Amish, by contrast, shun the owning of cars…. Because they take you away from family and community. I have a profound respect and deep admiration
for the Amish culture because in staying “backwards,” they also will eventually
show us how to go forwards – out of our dysfunctional mess. I have done a ton of reading on the Amish and
I observe them at least annually on a trip to Pennsylvania. However, in my post entitled “I fell in love tonight
at W…,” you will see testimony that they are moving as communities to various agrarian areas in Upstate New York. In fact, I was quite disappointed when the farmland
across the street from me did not get
purchased by Amish: I so much wanted
them for neighbors so I could get to know them better as a people.
In my life time – now this will be really unthinkable for
the youngest of my readers – I grew up initially with ONE TELEVISION set and it
was heavy as hell, not mounted on a wall, and you had to get up off your
backside to change the channel manually.
We begged my parents to get cable TV so that we could watch Eddie Albert
and Eva Gabor in “Green Acres” – and my father could watch sports – and my
mother could watch religious programming and old movies. The latter two factors are still significant
in why my aging parents continue to pay the bleeping robbing cable companies on
a monthly basis.
I, however, tore that contract up years ago. Yeah, you read that correctly: I don’t, per se, “have tv.” I have A TV, I just don’t have TV
service. I am unmotivated to hook up an
antenna or a cable dish, so, I just watch DVD’s. However, aside from the liberating financial
choice that is, it is also promotes another reason: I needed the TIME that people lose watching
TV in order to get other things accomplished.
A true vignette in this regard:
The year was 1992 and I was at some confirmation class at the church
where I was working and off-handedly mentioned to a parent standing next to
me: “No, I don’t have a television.” And he literally responded with indignance, “well
I don’t think that’s right.” Seriously, as if I had violated some rule and
not having a television made me a communist or something socially unacceptable. I have come to add on to my classic response,
“I don’t have time for television,” the phrase:
“ I have a life.” It seems to do
the trick.
Another thing about me:
I sleep with dogs. Two cocker
spaniels and one mixed breed lab, to be exact.
Sometimes I even get a whole pillow to myself. Mostly the big dog can’t get up on the bed
because in her case, the amount of her force versus the gravitational pull of
the earth directly opposes one another.
Then again, given that explanation, it’s a wonder I myself make it into
bed at night.
And maybe the last thing I want to admit at this point is
that I have been misleading everyone for years.
When you all have been saying, “You should write,” I led you, with my silence, to believe that I wasn’t. For me, writing is as important as
breathing. I thank God that I type as
fast as I do or I would never have time to make a meal…. I’d be too busy
writing…. Lesson plans, articles for a local Christian newspaper a few years
back, letters, emails, anything. I need
to throw the ideas out on the table and make some sense of them. It makes me feel better.
The Cornucopia of Life is based on my concept that there is
a lot of fruit in life that goes un-inspected.
It’s just packed into the cornucopia and spilling over. Every person has stories. But not every person examines them, looks for
the humor, distills the content for a lesson, and learns from them. This is my modest effort to do that with
you. Thanks Everyone – for pushing me to
write. And also thanks to the people who
made me mad enough to leave my favorite part time job. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have
enough time to write. And I intend to tell
that story some day too.
I close with
one of my favorite Irish prayers:
“May the Good Lord bless those who love
us.
And may He turn the hearts of those
who don’t love us.
And if they don’t let
their hearts be turned, then may He turn their ankles
so we know them by their
limping.”
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