Carrying on a tradition from my Dutch heritage, my children each left a shoe and a carrot by the front door for Sinterklaas, or Saint Nicholas. In the morning the carrots had disappeared, eaten by Saint Nicholas’s horse, and candies along with a small gift filled the shoes. A simple celebration, but one that continues. My daughters are all in grad school, but they enjoy receiving an envelope from Saint Nick to open on the morning of Dec. 6. Gold coins recall the three bags of gold Saint Nicholas tossed through the window of a cottage that was home to a poor man and his three daughters who had no dowry. Hard candy, and a gift keeps my daughters connected to family and good memories wherever they are.

Tonight I think of my cousins in the Netherlands. Dec. 5, not Christmas, is their gift giving day. The date is not the only difference in our celebrations. In the United States shopping frenzy begins on Black Friday and continues until Christmas day and beyond, when people return gifts to get something they would rather have at a cheaper price. So much time and energy is spent running from store to store, finding the best bargains, wrapping gift after gift, many people are relieved when the Christmas season is over and they can pack up the decorations and get back to an ordinary routine. Christmas has become almost synonymous with excess and consumerism.

Across the ocean, Jeanette, Piet and their family had a more relaxed day. Each person received one special gift, but perhaps the most fun was reading the poems they had written for one another and opening the little gifts, often homemade, that went along with them.

The poems were often humorous, good naturedly poking fun at the recipient or the gift that was offered. One year their oldest son was preparing to take an test for entrance into professional studies. His younger brother made him a “contraption” to use: It had a calculator, a place for notes, and a little mirror to help him read what others had written. Once, a new washing machine was the wish, but all that was affordable was one made of cardboard given along with a poem extolling the virtues of the old machine that creaked and groaned but still managed to present clean clothes.

Christmas day is more like Thanksgiving here: Time to attend church and then for families to gather, share a meal, and enjoy one another’s company. As Christmas approaches, I think we would do well to remember that we don’t have to wear ourselves out with endless shopping and that the number of gifts have nothing to do with the love that is shared.

******************************************** SAINT NICHOLAS DESIGNED BY RON HENDRIKS

HOMEMADE SNOWFLAKE: DR. MARGARET COOK; PHOTO: MARY VAN BALEN

Being unemployed will affect many this holiday season, and while I have a part-time job that will end in a couple of weeks, I put myself in that category. I lingered at the Christmas card display at Half Price Books last night, thinking I might find something to send to a few friends, but decided even reduced prices were more than I could pay. Instead, I decided to make the greetings sent this year. Memories of homemade cards made years ago made me smile.

The first card I made as a young adult was complicated and, as a result, few were sent. I wrote a short story, typed up the pages, illustrated them with watercolors, and sewed them into blank red deckle-edged card stock purchased at a college bookstore.

Then there were the linoleum block printed ones with white pine trees on brown paper. I wrote an original poem inside each one (This was long before computers made printing them out fast and easy). They were so labor intensive that the last ones were sent out in July with a caveat: “Christmas is Everyday.”

More recently, I have made copies of my December column on green paper and sent it to those who do not subscribe to the Catholic Times.

“Maybe I will do that again,” I thought as I moved toward the bookstore door and headed out to the car. It might work for a few friends, but most can easily access my columns online.

I remembered a card I received from Madeleine L’Engle one year. Reading one of her Crosswick’s Journals had inspired me to send her a box (A “Mary K. box” my children said.) filled with things I thought she would enjoy: A crystal growing kit, a homemade book introducing myself and my children, a shell from a favorite Cape Cod beach, some columns, and of course, a letter.)

She surprised me with a wonderful letter, a Christmas card poem, and her newsletter. Her card was simple: Hand lettered poem and line drawing copied on the lovely blue paper that office stores sell: between pale and neon.

“Maybe I will write a poem.”

It would have to be short. Between grading papers, filling out grad school and job applications, studying for the GRE, and writing magazine articles I don’t have lots of time to write poetry.

“Maybe a reflection from my “Lectio Divina.”

The more I thought about the project, the more ideas materialized. That is the joy of homemade: I was taking time to entertain ideas, think of my friends and what I could offer them from my life at the moment. No matter what I decide or how late the cards are sent, the recipients will know a bit more about my heart and my experience of the Incarnation season than they would have if one of the boxes of cards had proved irresistible. And, in the making, so will I.

“Show me where it hurts, God said, and every cell in my body burst into tears before His tender eyes.”
Rabia – Eighth-century Islamic saint and poet*

When I read these words I thought of two women: Precious, from the movie of the same name and a former student whose funeral I had attended earlier that day. One was black, one was white. One still lived, one was dead at twenty-nine. Both were sexually abused and led lives overwhelmed with challenges and battles that for one, proved insurmountable.

I watched the movie with a friend I had met while working with young women, all victims of abuse of one type or another. For many of them, abuse began with sexual molestation as young children. As we walked out of the screening room, I became aware of the color not only of those of us leaving, but also of the line of people waiting for the next showing.

“Where are the WHITE people?” I asked. I have been seeing movies at this art theater for years and had never seen such lack of diversity. Does the general public think “Precious” is a movie for a “black” audience? I hope not. “Must be a fluke,” I thought to myself.

“Maybe not,” I thought after I spoke to a young friend a week later. She had seen the movie at a large, multi-screen complex in the middle of an upscale shopping center. After talking for a while about the importance of the film and how moving it was, I ventured to ask the same question: “I don’t want to sound racist, but I am wondering about the people in the theater. Was it a diverse crowd?”

“No, not at all. First, it was smaller than I thought. And almost everyone there was African American.”

Another fluke? I hope so. The themes dealt with in “Precious” transcend race, economic status, and nationality. Being poor and Black complicates things in our society, but the reality of abuse knows no boundaries, and sadly, no one culture seems any better at dealing with it than another.

“In Black culture people sweep things like this under the rug,” my young friend said. “Everybody wants to keep it a secret, and more and more people get hurt.”

“All cultures sweep abuse under the rug,” I replied. “Look at the Catholic Church; it did just that for years. Why? To protect the institution, the status quo? And the Church isn’t alone. In some sick way, no one wants to look at and admit the scope of abuse or deal with its consequences.”

That thought was reinforced when I read a newspaper article the following day about the lack of funding for women’s shelters. Many abused women and their children are turned away, forced to return to lives increasingly scarred by domestic violence. In the coming year, more shelters will close, endangering hundreds of others.

We have to ask hard questions: Why is there insufficient funding to protect the most vulnerable among us? Why do we assign this problem to a particular race, faith, or nationality (usually not our own) when it exists everywhere? Why are we willing to avert our eyes rather than confront the truth?

“Precious” forces us to see a broken society and inadequacies of services for those in desperate need. The movie reveals the importance of good teachers in seemingly impossible situations. It makes us squirm when stereotypical reactions to obesity are challenged. It teaches us to look beyond surface realities to causes. It allows us to know a real human being that most of us would be happy to pass on the street and never see again. “Precious” reveals our common humanity and the dignity of those we are tempted to “write off” as a “drain on society.”

Every person has truths to teach, especially people from whom we expect little or nothing. Through all the pain, injustice, and suffering, “Precious” shows us courage, tenacity, and amazingly, hope, whose name is Love.
© 2009 Mary van Balen

* From “Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West.” trans. Daniel Ladinsky. New York: Penguin, 2002. p 2.

Happy Thanksgiving! When Abraham Lincoln first declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, it served as a means of healing the divisions that existed in the country as well as a time set aside to thank God for the many gifts each one knew in his or her life. The holiday is one of my favorites having escaped the gross commercialism and consumerism that engulfs Christmas. Thanksgiving remains a time to share a meal with family and friends and to recognize the good that graces us. It is also a time to pray for the world and those who are suffering in it.

In the midst of busy lives that take us in different geographic directions, my daughters and I enjoyed dinner and conversation last night. We spent today with my father, polishing off a pie for breakfast, watching the parade, and eating a turkey dinner. Later, joined by a good friend, we played cards and “Apples to Apples,” laughing until we could barely catch our breath. It felt good.

The future is an unknown; at the moment it includes graduate school for my daughters, maybe for me. Decisions loom ahead. But today, I am savoring rootedness. I am sitting in the living room where I spent twenty-some years celebrating holidays with my family. I am working in the kitchen where I baked pies and basted turkeys with my mother and her mother.

In this house I celebrated God with Us first in the love of family and then with friends, in holydays, and in sacrament. This big, old house is a good place to be as I discern direction for my future. My daughters and I will soak up the security of rootedness, of a place where we are embraced and loved unconditionally, and then we will resume our journeys confident of the love that gives wings as well as roots.

PHOTO: MARY VAN BALEN
PAUL PHILIBERT

Last night I attended a lecture by Fr. Paul Philibert, OP, who spoke about Yves Congar’s vision for reform in the Catholic Church. Congar was a French Dominican priest who had enormous influence on the work of renewal both before and during the Second Vatican Council and was especially interested in both ecumenism and the place of the laity in the Church.

Fr. Philibert elaborated on Congar’s four conditions for reform without schism: primacy of charity and pastoral concern, remain in communion with the whole, patience, and return to the principles of Tradition. These points would be helpful guides for change in government or any societal institutions, I thought, and even though Paul’s comments on them captured my attention, the idea that played in my head on the drive home was one that came up again during the Q&A session.

While talking about the need for reformers to remain part of the whole rather than to break away and form a sect or a new entity, Paul identified two elements of the whole that should be constantly interacting: the center and the periphery. The job of the center is to maintain continuity. The job of the periphery is to interact with those it touches and to respond in new ways. The center is by nature conservative and cautious, the periphery innovative and pioneering.

Prophets are on the periphery. They speak the truth, as they know it. They act upon it. They often get in trouble, especially when the center is not functioning in a healthy way. That is nothing new. You can read all about it in the Old Testament, or in today’s newspaper. In the Catholic Church prophets have been met with variety of reactions including house arrest and exile to refusal to allow the “offenders” to publish or teach. The fear of change and desire to maintain power and the status quo can delay acceptance of truth and renewal for hundreds of years. The Civil Rights Era of the 1960’s is a good example of an unhealthy center refusing to admit to and address racism in our country.

In a conversation with a woman in the audience, Paul said that often today the periphery worries too much about the center, trying to convince it of the rightness of their words, trying to make those unwilling to embrace change understand the need for it. The periphery can spend too much time looking inward instead of engaging with the world and challenging issues. The periphery can be just as unhealthy as the center.

“The periphery must move outward, like the expanding galaxy,” Paul said.

Driving home, I wondered those words and thought about those of us on the periphery of the Church, of government institutions, of industry, of social policy. Are we spending too much time looking toward the center instead of looking outward? Are we willing to risk being prophets and truth-tellers?

“Prophets are not patient reformers,” Fr. Philibert said to the chuckling audience.

Patient reformers must be those who fill in the spaces between Prophets on the edge and those in the center. Patient reformers, like Congar, will wait out the exiles and continue to write and think with faith that the center will, in time, understand and accept.

Does the Church have too many “patient reformers?” Does it need more prophets? Does the world?

Every day is a good day on the beach. A least that is my opinion. Yesterday morning I pulled a yellow rain slicker over my wool jacket, slipped the hood over a winter cap, and headed down Coast Guard Beach on Cape Cod. Not many people share my opinion of beach walking weather, I guess, because the shoreline was almost deserted. A few tourists stood at the top of the access steps and snapped photos of huge waves crashing on the shoreline. That was as close as they wanted to get.

I walked for hours between the high cliffs on my left that rose from the sand and the roaring ocean pounding the coast on my right. When I looked ahead, everything disappeared into thick, gray mist. The drops hitting my face were a tangy mix of rain and spray from the turbulent sea. Each breath drew briny air deep into my lungs where I imagined it worked the same healing as it did in my soul.

As gusts of wind pushed at the slicker’s hood, I tightened its draw stings and snapped the top fastener, walking with my head bent slightly into the blustery weather. Two pelicans were riding out the storm close to shore, disappearing into watery troughs and then lifted into sight again on the swells. Occasionally, gulls circled, but, but most of them had found shelter somewhere else.

A few crows had fun with air currents, feet dangling straight below their bellies, wings spread wide, they swirled, hovered, fell back, and plummeted down, sometimes colliding into each other as the wind took them for a ride. They hung on to brambles that covered the tops and edges of the cliffs and rested a moment before taking off again.

I often look down when I walk the beach, searching stony rubble, amazed by the variety of specimens tumbled and deposited by the sea. Yesterday I found a green stone circled by a textured strip of quartz-like crystals growing vertically, branching out and looking like a miniature stone forest. I put that one in my pocket. After a few hundred feet, the mounds of rocks disappeared, replaced by single stones laid feet apart.

“Why so far apart? Why alone?” I wondered. The pattern repeated until the beach disappeared into mist.

I walked between the stones, examining them closely: Some were a homogeneous black or charcoal gray. Others were brightly mottled wet granite showing off their colors. The variety was limitless: green, translucent, knobby rose-colored stones, dark ovals filled with tiny white remains of sea life frozen like meteors in a night sky.

Waves crashed and sent foamy arches of water washing over the solitary stones, flowing around them when returning to the sea. The stones looked lonely to me. Like people close enough to see one another, but too far away to touch. Receding water carved interesting patterns in the sand between the rocks and the shoreline.

I watched for a long time, not sure why my heart was touched by these lone sentries, keeping watch over ancient rhythms that smoothed their edges, left them alone on the beach, and one day would pull them back into its watery depths.

Leaving them untouched, I continued walking the beach, more aware of the Presence in which I moved.

I am sitting in the foyer of Boston College’s School of Social Work as I type this blog entry, having come to look at a couple of graduate programs. I have always loved this part of the country, and the thought of possibly living here for a time is a happy one.

As if to contribute to my feeling of “being at home,” I have run into two people who are connected with another favorite place: The Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University. The first encounter was with a young man I met at SJU last year while I was a resident at Institute He was a master’s student at the School of Theology there.

I started to call out to him, but checked myself. What were the chances of running into a SOT grad here on my short visit. He continued to walk toward the door.

“What would it hurt,” I thought. “If it isn’t him, no harm done.”

“Don’t I know you from Collegeville?” I asked. He stopped and turned around and smiled. Yes, we had spent a number of afternoons visiting over lunch at the SOT’s Thursday’s Conviviums. And, he made the best caramels to share at Christmas time. He is on campus working on a PhD in theology. We reminisced briefly about our experiences and fond memories of SJU and wished each other well.

I was still thinking about that encounter while I sat in the foyer of the Boston College School of Social work. In the middle of checking email, I glanced up and saw, sitting across the entranceway, a young woman wearing a St. Ben’s sweatshirt. Remembering my own daughter’s surprise and pleasure when she was at some academic function and someone recognized her alma mater, I walked over to talk with the St. Ben’s grad.

We talked a bit about St. Benedict and Saint John’s (a combined university) and her experience as a second year student in the MSW program at BC. She was getting ready to go to Thailand for a practicum, being part of the MSW’s global concentration track.

“I am sooo glad you came over,” she said. I was, too.

Something about meeting people who have connections to the same place I do, makes me feel more at home in new environs. BC has been a warm and welcoming place for me these past two days. A little bit of Minnesota and Saint John’s camaraderie made if feel all the warmer despite wind and dropping temperatures.
Besides, we three had all lived through -39 F temperatures, so a little Boston wind and chill barely registered.

LINK A great article about Abraham Lincoln and the Leonid Shower. A MUST READ from November 1999 issue of Sky and Telescope “Astronomy Magazine article on this years Leonid Meteor Shower” “How Stuff Works” explains meteors and the Leonids>

Picture that accompanies “Sky and Telescope” article on Abraham Lincoln and the Leonids, November 1999.

This year’s Leonid meteor shower might be spectacular. The moon will be new so not much interference there. The Leonids peak in predawn sky Nov. 16 into 17. I will call my friend and hope we can sit atop her grassy roof once again to enjoy the show! Click on the link about Abraham Lincoln and the Leonid Shower. It is a wonderful story, and as a sideline, shows what treasures have been preserved because people wrote letters.

The Common Good received a “yea” vote last night when the healthcare bill passed the House. It is a beginning.

One Republican crossed party lines to vote with the majority of Democrats, Anh “Joseph” Cao. Who is he? Why would he make such a courageous move? A little Googling gave me an idea.

He is a Vietnamese who escaped from Vietnam when he was eight years old. Successful in school, he felt called to the priesthood and studied at a Jesuit seminary for six years before discerning that was not his call. He did share the Jesuit passion for social justice, and carried that with him through law school and eventually into a political career.

He is in his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives, the first Republican to be elected in Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District since the late 1800’s, representing a predominately Democratic constituency with a large African American population.

Joseph Cao’s heart seems to be with those living in poverty, those not well severed by the government or other agencies like those in his own district (including himself and his family) who were devastated by hurricane Katrina, and refugees. I imagine we will hear more about him in the weeks to come.

Links: Searchable text provided by the Library of Congress