Give Me a Break

I have some issues with bloggers who get a lot of praise from sappy women who knit.

True story.

I read some amazing blogs where women tell of their conversion stories, their dedication to healthy living, surviving horrible bouts with cancer, or just living day to day as a stay at home mom and wading through all the physical and emotional strain that can produce.

However, I immediately recoil when their groupie-type readers continually respond with unending praise, even for crappy posts or posts that could bore the paint off a light post. When I write poorly, one of my most valued gifts from my dedicated readers is their singular act of ignoring me.

I used to take this personally, but now I take it as constructive criticism: Post too long, Post too deep for a Chocolate Cake Friday, Post too boring and they stopped reading even when I was still impressed. Post just really not all that interesting to my readership.

Why do others not get this? Why do lonely people want to follow them around crying aloud, "I love you like your words are my big bowl of ice cream on a sad day!"

So, why do these often brilliant bloggers accept so much fluff and wet kisses?

"Oh! You are so brilliant Belinda Blogger! You have such tremendous insight into the ugliness of human nature! How did you keep your pristine spirit so snow white all these years in the coal black world of lust and sin??!!"


Many a moment I have erased my words, "What a load!"

There is no way these people cry over the lost soul of Adolf Hitler while they were sewing their husband's organic cotton underwear in their secret missionary hut.

Come off it! (When I am sickened by mushy kissee-poo talk between virtual admirers/real life strangers, I get a British accent in my mind and insult intelligently).

And lonely lurkers with starry eyes, you should start your own blogs. I imagine your lives are far more interesting than you think. You can link the whole big fat world with this Internet thing. It's a fun ride. Spilling your stupidity for all mankind to examine from the comfort of their messy computer desk at work.

Duh!

Manischewitz!

All those who know me, know that this is my all time favorite made-up Yiddish swear word. I love to spend time using it when I am really irritated. It makes one instantly feel better.

Today, I am irritated.

We were supposed to have watched the house go to sale tomorrow, but mercifully, the date was rescheduled so that the mortgage company can jockey with the investor who wants to buy the place. Good news. It looks like our house will sell after all.

So the sheriff (who never bothered to notify us of the old date) rescheduled the threatened foreclosure and came by our home when we were not there today to give us the info - at the old house. My brother lives there now full-time. He relayed the message. The sheriff is willing to meet us up at the old house, or even just have us come down to the courthouse. HOWEVER...

My husband calls the sheriff and invites him to come to our new home in the middle of town, where everyone knows us, where people actually just randomly stop by because they heard rumor we live here, where tourists pass all day long, and those who don't know us are just now coming to the conclusion that we are okay. The sheriff even suggested that we could just pick up the papers.

But he is inviting the sheriff here with his car and his blazing lights.

Thank you, husband.

He wonders why I do not like this idea.

I post it because, Manischewitz!, it makes me mad and this concept severely confuses him. But I know, out there in cyberworld, many women will understand my extreme irritation at this and will understand me.

Someone should understand this, right?

I do not speak with him today. He makes his own dinner.

When in Rome...

Missed the Divine Liturgy today.

Colds. The whole crew.

But, on my sloppy walk with my happy dog - coughing and sneezing in between stanzas, I sang the appropriate Roman song for the Eastern Feast I missed,

Lift high the Cross,

The Love of Christ proclaim,

Till all the world

Adore His Sacred Name!

And I sang it just loud enough to be disturbing to the few who walked the sidewalk with me and Dixie-Lou. While I wait for Divine Liturgy to arrive again this coming Sunday, I will attend Mass in the Roman half of my Church during the week and on Saturday. I said to my dog today, "The longer I live, the more ticked off I get at whimpy Catholics, the more Catholic I become. Isn't it wonderful that I can take the Eucharist East or West?!"

She licked a tree.

I think I have become that annoying lady who doesn't realize when her half of the conversation is no longer interesting - at least - with Dixie.

American Dreams

Tonight, I know, for sure, that the American dream is not what everyone tells me it is.


That it is much more like the version for my great great parents when they were coming across the Atlantic in 1892, huddled on the lowest level of a steamer leaving the Danube for America.


It is not about convenience and money and career and good looks and smelling like roses and knowing that I "deserve it all".


That it is about the freedom just to be who I was created to be, to worship without fear, to buy and sell freely, to not live under the thumb of a harsh dictator. I have always know this was "it", but I always assume that maybe I am not as smart as so many others, and so this time when I said, "yes," to buying a new big, home, I gave in and adapted to the contemporary version of the Dream.


Never again will I confuse lust with love; house with home.


Now that I have lost the house I lusted for, I have rediscovered my home.


When I first moved to the East Coast in 1992, a hundred years exactly after Sarah-Ruth and David-Jakob Borgos moved to the Lower East Side, I demanded that my father take me to New York where he had visited his mother's family several summers as a kid. The first thing I did in New York was to take a picture of my feet on the docks off Ellis Island.

"Now, I am standing in your footsteps," I whispered to my brave grandmother who did more than I could ever be capable of - leaving older children behind to give younger ones a better future, marrying an abusive man twice her age just to satisfy Orthodox parents and eat better than a peasant, moving across the world to live in a land of plenty, but where plenty would only be available to her great great granddaughters one hundred years away.


This was her dream, to bless her offspring with whatever good America had to offer. It had to be better than pogroms and Czars and angry-fisted Kaisers.




As I unwrapped the picture I have of Ellis Island this morning, where my great grandparents stepped off a creaking wooden ship, I stopped and brushed the heavy layer of dust off it, and thought to myself, "Now this is how it is. I have a roof, and a family, and a church whose bells ring loudly across my street three times a day, and a free public library, and education for my children...and I have the freedom to make mistakes without really suffering on the scale so many other citizens of other less compassionate nations do.


I used to display this picture proudly in my kitchen before I moved to a house where there was no room with all the cabinetry. This time, with the slightly crooked slant of the ceiling, as happens in old and long-lived in homes, I hung it up above my baking table, next to my picture of the birch tree forest in spring.


I feel better leaving the snobby neighborhood behind.


I feel better not having to worry anymore about tall grass where snakes wander.


I feel better that there are people on my street who keep an eye on each other.


I feel better not having to drive my children up and down the mountain in so much snow, having to worry about them playing the same forest where coyotes and bear wander freely and frequently.


I feel better now, because I don't live in the house everyone else insisted I must buy in order to be happy.


I was already happy. It was all the others who were not happy, and so they pushed hard for me to finally financially tax myself as much as all of them. They just could not accept my no, and I apparently, did not know how to express it loud enough.


No, I don't need central air.


No, I don't need a giant yard for my children to play in.


No, I don't need wall to wall carpeting, a huge deck, a four car garage (seriously, this is how many cars we have gotten in our garage at one time).


That old twin in town that I had begged for, this one was better.


The house with the really cheap mortgage and fraction of a yard, that was just fine.


The house without the dishwasher, it would have been okay.


What is right for me, is not right for you. I have learned this lesson in the loss of this house.



What is truly right for my children is always right for their mother.


Love you, friends and family, but your house is selling to a very low bidder on Tuesday. Say your goodbyes to the convenience of our central air and our big yard and our country like setting.


Because it is nearly all finished now...


the understanding of that American dream my great great grandmother had for me -the one that can only be created by immigrants who had so much less in the past.


It's amazing the thick film of dust our modern American "needs" can leave on the good sense of our ancestors.

How my great great grandmother worked from home before opening her boarding house and kosher restaurant. This is the original work-at-home American experience - brading rugs and slaving with textiles to sell on the street corner in the Lower East Side.

True Story!

I got an email from one of the editors at AC yesterday. My bonus was nice this quarter. Not even just my initial payments for my articles, but my bonus. It's not like I could buy that Cadillac or anything, but it means I can buy a really big bag of chips!

Yay me!

They asked me for three stories in two days. I said yes, mostly because I am fairly addicted to writing things. Any things.

I will direct you to them all. Each lovely (or creepy - cause Halloween in coming) piece.

And I have five articles (not including township meetings - which are quite soap opera in their own way) coming up in my newspaper shortly.

I will direct you there as well.

Enjoy your Sunday.

I have a nasty cold, flu or something like that. We, as a family, have been able to say no to so many undesirable social events, because of the H1N1 scare..."Can't help you with that thing, pal. We have the flu, or something like it."

Bingo. Everyone emails. Except my pal, Tom, who I have already seen three times in town just this morning. I suppose I should have warned him. But there were no hugs or handshakes. Just waves and, "Hey, whasssup?"

So, hopefully, he remains unscathed.

Anyhoo...I know this post is completely about nothing, but I had more tea than coffee this morning. What do you expect?

Kyrie Eleison

Christe Eleison

Kyrie Eleison

Get Beyond Your Story

I had a wonderful telephone meeting with my new life coach yesterday. She lives in California, where I grew up, and she spoke to several women and men and not just me. As she spoke I had to think of how wonderful and beautiful the day must have been in San Jose'.

Do you know the way to San Jose
I've been away so long...

The words kept ringing in my head. I closed my eyes and remembered the ocean. Not the Jersey Shore, the beautiful and rugged coast of the Pacific. Home. And I instantly had a nagging feeling that I may very well have walked far away from the person I used to be, who once - as a 16 year old - spoke to a panel of businessmen at a tobacco company about giving me money to take Bibles to Russia. Where had the girl gone who said, "God uses teenagers, because they are too young to doubt," ?

When had the fear of trusting God entered into my life? When had I stupidly decided that serving the will and temperament of people was so much better?

She asked us each a question about where we wanted to be. Everyone gave an excuse as to why it was everyone else's fault that they could not get there.

"My mom was pushy and vindictive when I was young...Still is...So I have to spend so much of my time just keeping her happy."

"I grew up in foster homes..."

"Everyone else is more successful because they have some magic ingredient I don't have..."

"I am afraid that I won't impress people."

(The last excuse was my own - but because I am an introvert, I kept it to myself and only volunteered that I now live in Pennsylvania).

"Everyone has a story," says the coach. "Get off your story and give your level best for once."

Interesting. If there was whining, I did not hear any.

Everyone does have a story, and I started to think about the people in my life whom I have had a problem with on a continual basis. But I could never quite pin down the issue that irritated me so fiercely. Then it hit me:

They all have tremendous, self-pitying stories that they love more than the life the were meant to live.

My story? It's that I always live other peoples' agendas. I help every little dog and pony show that comes along, hoping to high hope, that eventually if I make life comfortable enough for them they will have the ability to calm down and then, hear God's voice (instead of their own or their mother's/husband's/spoiled childrens') and start making excellent decisions for themselves. Maybe, I always think, they will stop whining to everyone in their path and stop taking so much energy from the lives of others. Energy they could be cultivating on their own.

This never works.

So, instead, I work on myself, and this is my conviction (and I circled it in red):

I want to live my life squarely for the purpose God created me for, and NOT according to everyone else's agenda and tightly held opinions.

I mean, this is what made me beg a group of tobacco salesmen for Bible money. They were my biggest supporters.

And guess what this instantly made me realize? That I am good enough to do this, because less of my story, means less of me, and more of Christ. And anything good in me, is really Him. So how can I lose in serving Him and not everyone else?

I am surrounded by an abundant amount of Grace through the Sacraments and prayer, through the mighty cloud of witnesses who intercede for my best, and through Christ directly in the Eucharist and just on a long walk where it is He, my dog, and me, my eternal desire to do the right thing. Although, on today's walk, I will struggle with my desire to live according to His purpose and not that of 50 other people.

And I must be good enough as I am, because as I am, Christ died for me - even though I was, yet, a sinner (and always will be).

"We did not come to be successful. We came to do the will of God." Blessed Mother Teresa on her ministry to the dying in Calcutta.

She could do anything, because her conviction was simply to serve Christ and leave all the success up to Him. Now that's a story worth listening to.

I serve Him alone, and He will handle how successful I am at anything I do. That really takes a load off it all. Makes the little rat wheel, I have been running on, stop spinning for mother, sister, brother, and friend.

So, here is my question for all my wonderful, brilliant readers: Are you living God's purpose for you? If your life sincerely sucks, is tremendously consumed with schedules and stress, if you do not know how to even answer this question...Chances are, you don't know your purpose, and maybe, you don't even know God.

And you can know Him and intimately. In fact, whether or not we know Him determines whether or not we spend eternity with Him.

Matthew 7:21 "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."

This is what I said to the tobacco salesmen.