The Grace of No #GraceofYes

November 19, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

I’ve joked all summer that I need Lisa Hendey to write me a companion volume to her new book, The Grace of Yes. It would consist of a single index card with the word NO in giant letters. She assured me: There’s a chapter for you.

So when my copy of the The Grace of the Yes arrived, I stared at it nervously for a minute, then quick checked the table of contents. Chapter 7: The Grace of No. Written for people like me. I flipped straight to it, like an alcoholic racing past the bar towards the coffee shop.

The thing about being a yes person is that you have to also be a no person. The trick is in knowing when to use which word. Lisa shares her own stories about the well-timed no’s that made the yes‘s possible. Generosity requires not just fortitude, but temperance, prudence, and justice.

Reading the No chapter helped me get a handle on my vocation. What do I need to be saying yes to? How do I know what I should devote my limited time and energy to?

What’s in my jar?

One of the best yes‘s I’ve said over the past several years has been the decision to join Lisa’s stable of writers on the Gospel Reflection team at CatholicMom.com. This month my assigned reading was on the parable of the talents, in which our Lord asks, “What have you done with the gifts I’ve given you?” For a yes person, this is a terrifying reading: Have I failed to use my talents properly? Have I been hiding my gifts in a hole in the ground?

The temptation is to get distracted by the gifts that aren’t in my jar: Lord, I wish I could do ________ for you, but I don’t have what it takes. Part of the Grace of Yes is learning to set aside thoughts about what I can’t do for the Lord so that I can see what I do have to give. So many times, the thing I don’t have is concealing the gift that I do, a gift that I’m wasting. The wonder of being made in the image of the God who creates everything out of nothing is that gifts like poverty, weakness, rejection, loneliness, failure, illness, and even death can all be used to do the Lord’s work, if only we remember to make use of them.

A Beautiful Book for Times Like These

If it’s easy to forget the power and sheer usefulness of unwanted gifts, it’s just as easy to be lulled into complacency when we’re given the fun stuff in our gift bag. The constant temptation is to use our gifts primarily for our own comfort, forgetting that it all belongs to the Lord.

Having prayed my way through Lisa’s No chapter, I’ve put myself onto a few weeks of whatever you call the opposite of a retreat: I guess mindful immersion might describe it. It’s a period of aggressively saying no to all the things that hinder the pursuit of my proper vocation, so that I can see where my yes belongs more clearly.

Whether you’re a natural yes-person or a natural no-person, The Grace of Yes is a beautiful, helpful reflection on learning to hear and answer your calling.

Image: Copyright Jennifer Fitz 2014. Yep.

Book Review: The Salvation Controversy by James Akin

November 12, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

The topic of Catholic vs. Protestant views of salvation has come up several times in conversation lately. With that in mind, here’s a reprint of the review I wrote several years ago of Jimmy Akin’s book The Salvation Controversy, published by Catholic Answers in 2001. The book is currently in print in electronic version only, but you can find hard copies used here and there.

Read on, and see if you are the target audience. If you’re not, give it a skip; but if you are the likely reader, I’m not aware of any better title to meet your need.

James Akin _The Salvation Controversy_ book cover, Kindle edition. — Click through for the link to the Kindle edition.

So I used to have this bad habit of making jokes about double predestination (gross violation of my own rules, you might notice) . . . until the other week when a pair of friends called me on it using the highly effective Stony Silence method. Point taken. And that was the week that The Salvation Controversy turned up on the Catholic Company’s list of blogger-review product choices. What with the promised Tiptoe Through The TULIP, how could I say no?

Verdict: Excellent book – highly recommended. But only if you are the intended audience. (Otherwise you might be kind of lost and bored – it’s a soteriology book. And yeah, I had to look up that word too.) So here’s a synopsis of what is in the book and who is the audience, to help you decide if this is for you.

***

The book is about everything that has to do with what Catholics believe about salvation, and how that stacks up to common Protestant views of salvation. (“Soteriology” is the branch of theology devoted to the doctrine of salvation. Per the glossary in the back of the book, verbatim.)

The first several chapters lay the groundwork, looking at what the Bible says (and hence, what Catholics believe) about the when’s and how’s of salvation. Key concept: the word “salvation” refers to more than just a single instant when your eternal fate is sealed. So when debating “salvation” it is important to make sure you know what kind of salvation you are debating.

→ These chapters are essential. Jimmy Akin is notoriously meticulous in how he examines a topic and builds arguments. If you jump ahead to the really gory stuff – indulgences, predestination, faith-versus-works – without reading the front chapters, you will be lost. Maybe without realizing. Gotta read those laying-the-groundwork chapters. (If you are a catechist, you should read those chapters just for an “Aha!” about what it is Catholics believe about salvation.)

After these preliminaries, there are chapters tackling all the hot topics:

Penance
Indulgences
Predestination (per Calvinism)
Faith versus Works
The Joint Statement between Lutherans and Catholics on salvation

And then it ends there. This is a handbook; no great thesis being pushed, just a thorough explanation of the issues at hand. In addition to the glossary, there is a topical index and an index to all the scriptural citations.

The Reading Level

Jimmy Akin writes very clearly, and in ordinary language. Nothing at all like some horrid paper you had to read for an upper-level elective. BUT, he uses big words where necessary. I had to look up maybe four big words (I lost my list – I was keeping one for you) towards the beginning of the book, mostly ones that I more or less knew what they meant, but wanted to make certain. There’s a glossary at the back of the book to help you keep your vocabulary straight.

The arguments are not difficult, but they are very precise and laid out very carefully. Which means you need to pay attention and follow them step-by-step, both within and across chapters. At times this requires patience. Definitely not a three-quick-bullet-points approach to apologetics.

Prerequisites

First, you need to have a basic understanding of the Christian faith – that Jesus died to save us from our sins so we could live with Him forever in Heaven, all that. In no way is this an “Introduction to Christianity” book. Just not.

Secondly, you need to be familiar with at least the broad lines of debate between Protestants and Catholics. Jimmy Akin is essentially walking into the midst of the argument, holding up his hands and saying, “Ho now guys, let’s get our terms straight, and then see how much we really disagree after all.” If you haven’t been immersed in these topics already, I think you might get lost.

And finally, you will want to be knowledgeable of the Bible. All arguments revolve around the study of scripture, and I expect you’d get exhausted if you had to go read all the citations for the first time. You should be at that point where when you read, “It says in Romans 2:6 . . .” you can at least nod and have a rough idea of what Romans is all about, even though how many of us go around thinking, “Oh yeah, 2:6, let me quote that for you?” Maybe you need to go back and re-read, but the epistles should not be new material for you. (The word “epistle” should not be new to you.)

→ FYI Catholic Answers and the Envoy Institute are both excellent sources for entry-level materials if you are just wading into the world of apologetics for the first time. Come back to this book later.

Would a Protestant Hate This Book?

Mmn, I’m not sure. I was tempted to ask some friends to test-read for me, but in the end I didn’t. As apologists go – apologists can be a grumpy bunch – Jimmy Akin is the picture of charity. In my limited experience, he’s one of the three most charitable people on the Internet, honestly. You can read his blog here and see for yourself. He does indulge in the periodic “Catholics are just using the words of scripture” observation, which is of course very encouraging for Catholics, but if you were a sensitive non-Catholic, that could rub the wrong way. (Unless you happened to agree with the Catholic position on the particular point in question.)

To the best of my knowledge, Akin is very careful to state protestant beliefs accurately, and never to argue against a straw man. If anyone finds otherwise, I would like to hear about it. (Obviously in a short book he isn’t going to address every possible position on the various controversies. But my impression is that he builds fair arguments.)

→ Which makes sense, since one of his goals is to demonstrate that the Catholic position is not necessarily an impossible leap for assorted Protestants. So if you are a non-Catholic trying to figure out “Is my position on salvation consistent with Catholic teaching?” this is the manual to assist you. [Good news: the odds are in your favor.]

Conclusion: This boy is not leaving my shelf.

This book is immensely useful if you are ready to tackle the material. Clear, concise, well-explained, and covering material that was new to me. I’m due for a re-read, because there’s no way I mastered everything on the first read-through.

(→ Luckily I lost my original copy for a while and had to buy a second, so I do have a loaner available for my handful of real-life friends who fit the target audience.)

Not a beginner book, but if you are looking for a very approachable intermediate-level discussion, this one is superb. I give it a firm ‘buy’ recommend if this is the topic you want to study.

Cover image via Amazon.com used for the purpose of this review.

Adultery is Not the Only Option: Five Things You Can Do to Keep Your Vows Intact

November 7, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

Deacon Greg Kandra writes about a recent NY Times piece on priests who forsake their vows, and the women who help them do it. You would think from the way people talk that there’s something about a man in holy orders that just makes him irresistible. It’s as if there’s a force field emanating from that Roman collar that disables free will: Don’t get too close, ladies, or you might have no choice but to fall in love!

Well, the don’t get too close part may be true, anyway. But that’s not because women with crushes on priests are some special class of victim; quite the reverse. The temptation to adultery is boringly common. Banal. Unimpressive. Anyone can fall in love, that’s why the species lives longer than a single generation. It doesn’t require special conditions. That you have a crush on so-and-so is no more an indication of your vocation than liking that BMW in the parking lot is a sign you should drive it home this afternoon.

Thus there are things grown-ups do to avoid letting that falling-in-love impulse get out of control. You can do these things, too.

1. Decide not to take what isn’t yours.

As long as you’re convinced the world somehow owes you access to Mr. or Ms. Scintillating, you’re easy prey: You’ve already talked yourself into infidelity. You have to make the decision that once you take vows, you will remain faithful to those vows. You have to make the decision that if you yourself are free to marry, you will not seek a spouse among those who are not free to marry you.

Just making this decision won’t turn you into the picture of purity. But it is the first and most necessary step, because you can’t live with integrity until you at least decide that’s what you want to do.

2. Recognize that you are prone to temptation, just like everyone else.

Who do you think you are? You’re not too holy, too ugly, or too stupid to be an adulterer, and being smart is no protection either. Humans fall in love with other humans. Eros goes astray. It happens. Knowing that it could happen to you, like knowing that you could be in a car wreck, means having advance warning. There are situations to look out for and precautions to take. You don’t need to live in a bubble (which has its own dangers), but for goodness sake put on your seat belt.

3. When you realize trouble is brewing, back away fast.

You may well be surprised the first time you find yourself suddenly attracted to someone who’s on the not-available list.

If you’re recently married or ordained, it can come as a surprise that you’re again attracted to some other person, having just spent the past few years completely wrapped up in the excitement of your new vocation. It was normal back when you were single to become interested in people; then you found The One, and that was supposed to be the end of all that dating business, right?

Likewise, if you’re single and have heretofore only been attracted to other single people, it could be a shock to discover you’ve suddenly got a crush on someone who is decidedly not available.

What to do?

Put distance, and lots of it, between you and the object of your crush. Now is not the time to figure out your whole rule of life-and-friendship for ever and ever amen. Just act, immediately, to keep the current situation from becoming a problem. Change your routine, get a new hobby, decline invitations. Find something to be doing so that you can’t be around the person you find attractive.

There’s no need to make an announcement. Don’t make an announcement. Just be someplace else. Not around.

4. Learn your weaknesses so you can take steps to avoid peril.

You know the kind of person you find attractive. If you’ve taken a vow of marriage or celibacy, don’t go seeking out the company of that kind of person. You do in fact have a need for friendship outside of your marriage or religious vocation; seek friends who won’t pose any particular temptation against chastity for you.

If your husband or wife has a friend you find attractive, don’t be alone around that friend. Ever. If your religious vocation puts you in the path of someone you find attractive, find ways to not be alone with that person. You might think impure thoughts (of which you will repent, immediately, see below), but you can prevent it from going further by silently but intentionally putting some kind of physical obstacle between yourself and the possibility of acting on your lust.

People will go on and on about how if only you were a good Christian with a pure heart, you could lay down naked in a locked room with the most attractive person in the world, and never think or do one impure thing. Well that’s true as far as it goes, but you aren’t that good of a Christian. Get over yourself. Do like the rest of us wannabes and flee temptation.

5. Work the Beginner Spirituality

Oh sure, you’re all sophisticated in your prayer life or your theology or something. But let’s face it: You’re thinking about breaking someone’s sacred vows. You’re not as advanced as all that.

Two tools can keep you out of the deep water:

1. An immediate act of contrition. It’s the chapstick of the spiritual life, so keep it in your pocket and plan to apply it constantly. You think an impure thought, you say an act of contrition. (ex: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner. or: Oh crap, really Lord, I’m so sorry. I mean it.) Probably you’ll keep on sinning, so you just keep on saying it. You sin all the time, you be sorry all the time. That’s how it works. You can be sorry while you are sinning. Just keep working the sorry. Work it.

2. No-fuss Confession. You don’t have to go to a priest who knows you. You don’t have to give your life story. You don’t have to seek advice. Show up, confess your impure thoughts, be sorry, get absolved. Is there a time and place for spiritual direction? You betcha. But when you’re flirting with mortal sin, don’t let the spiritual champagne get in the way of the bucket of Grace that will put out the smoldering fire.

Add to all this as much as you can. Prayer, fasting, etc etc etc. But don’t kid yourself, you’re in the spiritual basement. Don’t be proud. Don’t wait for the perfect thing. Slap on the emergency measures early and often.

There are Higher Paths, and No Guarantees

There are more and deeper things you can do. Pray for purity (you will probably get assigned that as a penance at some point anyway), contemplate the beauty of your own vocation, build up your understanding of why the sins that plague you are in fact heinously nasty boils on your otherwise okay, well probably kinda wretched, soul. There’s nothing like understanding what a sinner you are to appreciate how good a Savior you’ve got.

Doing these things won’t cause your free will to shrivel and up go away. You won’t turn into a purity-seeking automaton. Indeed, you can’t seek purity without free will, because it isn’t purity if you don’t seek it freely. Without freedom, you’re just a very well-trained house pet. But because you aren’t a pet, you can choose to use your mind and your body to build a hedge of protection around your temptable but goodness-willing soul.

Related: The Classic Marriage-Affirming Romantic Comedy about Adultery. It’s the 101 on What Not to Do, with a beautiful ending featuring true manly-man mature spirituality. Starring Bob Hope & Lucille Ball.

Note on the photo: This happened to be today’s Wikimedia featured image, and I thought it was both very cool and not off-topic. Go to the Category:St.-Johannes-Nepomuk-Kapelle (Hiddingsel) to see several more in the series that are just lovely.

Image © Dietmar Rabich, rabich.de, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

You know you’ve done something right when . . .

November 5, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

. . . We’re in the truck, and the middle-schooler makes some remark to me mentioning birth control — comment on the news, an advertisement, something a friend said, I can’t remember what. Eight-year-old eavesdropper in the back seat asks, “What’s birth control?”

I avoid choking and give a low-key answer, along the lines of, “It’s a drug or device used to make it so your body can’t have babies, or has a hard time having babies.”

End of discussion, we move on, middle-schooler picks up with something else.

A mile down the highway, eight-year-old says, “Wouldn’t making it so your body can’t have babies be a mortal sin?”

Score.

By Photo: Andreas Praefcke (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

A Right Relationship with Sister Death

November 3, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

The media is gushing over another high-profile suicide, which is of course high-profile precisely because the media chooses to gush over it. What sane people do, when they learn that someone is contemplating killing themselves, is gently suggest a chat with the doctor about pain management. Or they come over and help with the laundry.

Dear Reporters,

You are allowed to use both your brain and your moral sense when choosing how to cover a story. When someone calls you with a big Suicide Scoop, consider running a piece about suicide hotlines, or pallative care, or the President’s plan to fix unemployment.

Sincerely,

The Not Enamored with the Culture of Death Crowd

But Catholics, with our Culture of Life and all that, we have this thing about death as well. Think St. Francis, who was not nearly so cute a saint as your neighbor’s bird feeder might suggest. Courtesy of Wikipedia, here’s a translation of the closing lines of The Canticle of the Sun:

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Bodily Death,
from whose embrace no living person can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Happy those she finds doing Your most holy will.
The second death can do no harm to them.

And hence the Catholic Triduum of Death* we celebrate every fall, playing opposite the Feast of the Resurrection come spring. You know it’s Catholic because there are funny clothes, good food, and mortal terror all wrapped up in one, and then we go to church. Twice. I’m contemplating the four last things — quick, someone carve a turnip!

Death is Not Your Servant

When we talk about a healthy relationship with Sister Death, we have to set aside our emotions. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t have them, or that they are meaningless. Our emotions are chock full of information for us, and when it comes to death, there are some normal ones:

You will likely grieve, terribly and for years, at the death of a loved one. We are not made to be separated one from another.
You will likely have a natural fear of death, because you were made for eternal life, not death.
You will likely sometimes be tempted into thinking that death is not such a bad solution when things are horribly, unspeakably, unavoidably wrong.

When we take these natural emotions and make them our king, we try to turn death into our servant. And hence, we look to death to spare us those inconvenient people who wreck all our plans, demanding hours of thankless toil if we are to care for them, and they giving us nothing. We try to dismiss death, announcing that death can’t beat us when our mortal coil threatens to shove off early, always just when we were finally having fun for a change.

The temptation is to make death into our cosmic janitor, under orders to stay discreetly out of the way of the party, and then to quick step in and clean up for us when the room gets to be a mess.

What Sisters Actually Do for One Another

St. Francis pegged it with the term Sister death, though if your idea of sisterhood comes from sappy memes on social media, you might not quite catch the reference. Your girlfriends are sycophants. Sisters keep you honest.

Sister Death isn’t there to do your chores for you. “Ha! You say I’m your friend now, but that’s just because you don’t feel like changing Grandpa’s diaper. Get in there and do it, and quit complaining. Also, give me back my shirt.”

Sister Death knows when you’re faking. “Oh yeah, you’re all spiritually prepared to meet your eternal reward now, are you? You just wait till this flu passes and you have to cover Mrs. Beedlenauer’s Sunday School class, we’ll see how holy you are.”

Sister Death isn’t charmed. “I don’t care what you had planned, and no I don’t want to see your new house. You go in there now, and put your body between that bad guy and that innocent civilian, and it’s none of your business whether you get to go back to Wichita after, and it’s not my decision either.”

Sister Death doesn’t take your excuses when you say you aren’t ready for eternal life yet. She says, “You’ve known very well this was coming, and it’s not my fault you were goofing off instead of doing what you were supposed to do. I’m not getting in trouble for you, I’m doing what Dad said.”

Hope vs. Presumption

It is the virtue of Hope that allows us to have courage in the face of death:

Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

(ccc 1817)

But blessed hope is different than I’m in charge of this life-and-death business, it’ll happen on my terms. We aren’t in charge. We prepare our souls for eternal life, aware of our need for God’s mercy, but never presuming on it. Hope, properly ordered, is the antidote to presumption: We convert our healthy fear of death into a healthy fear of God.

The Culture of Death is a culture of idolatry, but it’s not a worship of death; it’s a worship of ourselves. We appoint ourselves gods over death, dishing it out according to our plans.

A Culture of Life is likewise not some clinging, fearful escape from our inevitable end. Rather, when we worship the Author of Life, we leave all question of comings and goings in His hands. Our job is to live well, to love God well, regardless of how much suffering or terror that might involve.

Sooner or later Sister Death will come for us, in God’s time, not ours. Seek her out early, and expect to receive a stinging, eternal variation on none of your beeswax. Mind your own business, which is the work of living and helping others to live, and you and she will get along just fine.

*For the uninitiated, here’s what my play on words was an allusion to:

The Triduum are the three high holy days of the year: Holy Thursday, commemorating the Last Supper, Good Friday, when Christ was crucified, and the Easter Vigil, the feast of the Resurrection, which begins after nightfall Saturday night before Easter Sunday.

I’m just joking around about there being a “Triduum of Death” in the fall. That’s not a thing. But it’s a playful reference to All Saint’s Eve (Halloween), All Saints’ Day November 1, when we honor everyone who’s gone to Heaven, and All Souls’ Day November 2, when we remember and pray for those who have died. Three days during which we contemplate eternal life by lighting candles, praying fervently, and eating chocolate.

Photo credits:

By Jean-Pol GRANDMONT (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0, GFDL or CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Albrecht Kauw [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Playground Evangelization: Making Parishes More Welcoming for Families

October 27, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

Two girls and I pulled into St. Mary’s Greenville Saturday evening with half an hour to go before the vigil Mass. Thirty minutes is too long for tired children to prayerfully admire the architecture, and too short to go anyplace else. So we went to the playground across the soccer field, by the school. It took about five minutes on that playground for my eight-year-old to start campaigning for us to move to St. Mary’s and enroll her in the parish school. I pointed out there’d be classes and homework, and not just cute skirts and endless recess, but she wasn’t deterred.

Playgrounds aren’t how we choose our religion, but when it comes to making a parish welcoming to families with children, yes, playgrounds matter.

What are some other things that make a difference?

1. Don’t let me drop off the face of the earth.

When I was seriously ill this spring, I was grateful for Catholic (and not-so-Catholic) friends who showed up with everything I needed – Holy Communion, rides for the kids, interesting conversation. When I was finally able to return to Mass, that weird Catholic thing happened: A longtime pew mate turned to me and said with genuine happiness at seeing me there, “I’ve been wondering where you’ve been!” I might have been mildly irritated, except I don’t know her name either. If she quit coming to Mass, I’d miss her, but I’d never know what happened.

I don’t know what the solution is, because everyone looks at me funny when I suggest we start wearing name tags. I know that the need to be known is at odds with the curiously Catholic need to be unknown — sometimes it’s pleasant, or necessary, to roll into a Mass with the dark confidence that no one will bug you. In and out, alone with your thoughts, Mass for the Introverts.

But we have to solve the Invisible Parishioner Problem, and it isn’t only a Catholic problem. I listened Friday night to someone telling me how he and his wife just didn’t feel like they’d found their place in the big Baptist congregation in the town they’d moved to late in life. No one knew them. They weren’t part of the inner circle, so they didn’t really have any church friends.

“How long have you been there?” I asked.

“Oh, since 1985.”

2. Respect my time.

Because I run in catechetical circles, I hear a lot of moaning about those awful families that Just. Don’t. Care. If only they loved Jesus more, they’d have better attendance. Clearly they aren’t putting God first, because the parish is offering __________, and the family has a reason they aren’t coming. If you really cared, you come.

Yeah, no. I’ve heard an awful lot of reasons people couldn’t come to the classes I’ve taught, and I’m still waiting to hear from someone who just doesn’t care. Pretty much the real reasons boil down to three:

My class isn’t a good fit. Big surprise: There exist people who just don’t need what I happen to be teaching. This is a relief for me, because I can’t write a class that’s perfect for everyone. If you need something else, please go find that something. I’ll help you find it, if I can.
They have another more pressing obligation. I’ve been stood up for the Girl Scouts, the baseball team, the art museum . . . there’s an awful lot of good out there. Far be it from me to tell someone that their ten-year-old boy doesn’t need sports. I’ve got a boy. Boys need sports. Everyone knows this. Spit at a Catholic school, hit a sports team. That’s how it is. The world doesn’t revolve around my program. I understand that parents have to make hard decisions about their time.
Their life just stinks. A mother once apologized to me for her daughter’s extended absence from religious ed. Mom was down with pneumonia for two months, and the rest of the family hates the Catholic Church. Bad things happen. If I can’t help you, at least I can let you know you’re welcome to come when you can.

When parishes start playing the passive-aggressive I guess you don’t love me game, we show our hand: It never really was about your relationship with God. It was about making me feel good about myself in my display of “serving” you.

If I care about my fellow parishioners, what I want is to help them find what they actually need, in a format that works with the many other legitimate demands their vocation makes upon them.

3. No. Really. Playgrounds.

If you mention “playground” and “church” in the same sentence, the remarks from parents fall one of two ways:

Happy: My parish has a great playground for the kids to run around on after Mass.
Unhappy: I can’t get to know anyone at my parish, because there is nothing for my kids to do but stand in the parking lot after Mass.

This isn’t rocket science. This is the physics of having human bodies. Is there a place to change diapers? Is there a place to take the loud baby / rambunctious toddler during Mass? Even when it’s raining? If I take my kids to religious ed, are there classes or activities for the whole family, or is religious ed one more thing that breaks apart our family life?

What’s true for families is true for everyone else. The structures have to work for the bodies in question. When I’m an able-bodied person, I love my parish facilities. We have a fabulous campus. But I’ve gone through periods of illness and injury when I dreaded the place. The distances were suddenly enormous. Impossible. Not designed for people like me.

I like coffee, donuts, and humans, but I avoid coffee-and-donut hour because the room is loud, and it’s hard for me to understand what people are saying, or to be understood without shouting. There’s nothing to be done about it, so I just go to the playground instead.

This post is part of a mini-symposium being hosted by Leah Libresco on making the Church more welcoming. Will Duquette’s observations are here. I agree with Will.

Why Being a Writer Isn’t as Obvious as All That

October 21, 2014 By Jennifer Fitz

Karen Kelly Boyce has a good piece up at the Catholic Writers Guild on cementing your identity as a writer. Her two instructions are:

1. Tell people you are a writer.

2. Treat your writing seriously. Make an office, use it.

For those of us transitioning from “I’d like to be a writer one day” to “I am a writer” there’s a vicious cycle of self-doubt: We don’t take ourselves seriously, so others don’t take us seriously, so we don’t take ourselves seriously . . ..

Karen’s instructions are just the thing for breaking the cycle.

But I have a very hard time taking her instructions.

Since I’m a writer, I’ll tell you about that now.

***

Let’s be clear: I am a writer. My first professional writing jobs were in graduate school, way back in 1995-1996. I actually wrote for a semi-living. Nothing glamorous — in-house newsletters and a pile of editing work — but it was real writing, for pay. That made me a writer.

It was confusing, of course, because I was going to school to study accounting. One doesn’t usually graduate from business school with “I am a writer” on the brain. I slapped on the accountant sticker and ran with it.

I did the accounting thing for a couple years, transitioned into the non-profit sector and then into the zero-profit sector. Slapped on the housewife sticker and then the stay-at-home-mom sticker and finally the homeschooling-mom sticker. I did some odds-and-ends accounting projects during that time, and so I didn’t let my accountant label fully wear off. I did some teaching stuff, and the teaching stuff involved writing things. The accountant stuff involved writing things. I was a still a writer, it turns out. I still didn’t put the writer sticker on.

***

When my children were babies, I had a mom’s forum I was very active on. I started feeling restless. I asked an internet friend to pray for me: I’m feeling like I should be doing something more and I don’t know what.

My husband and I went to a charismatic Mass, random event we just enjoyed going to. The speaker before Mass spoke about discerning small-v vocations. “What have you been doing for as long as you can remember?” he asked us. I told my husband: Well, I’ve been writing ever since I knew how. It’s the one thing I always do.

Used to drive my grandmother nuts.

***

Meanwhile, I heard about blogging. I started a little anonymous mom-blog just to practice writing for an audience.

Then I saw this link to the Catholic Writers Guild’s online writers conference. It was free and I could do it from home. I did it.

I went again the next year.

My writing picked up from there. Nothing big, just bits and pieces of this and that as I grew more serious.

By the following year, I was involved with the CWG as a volunteer. Next thing I knew, I was running the CWG Blog.

***

True story: I was hesitant to promote the CWG blog on my own personal blog, because I figured they probably didn’t want to be associated with me.

Yes. That’s right. I was the person who was handpicked to create and manage the CWG Blog, and I genuinely assumed that the Guild would rather I kept quiet about that fact. It just seemed like a reasonable thing for an organization to want.

I mean yeah, sure, they’d let me volunteer. But let’s not get carried away. An organization needs to keep up its standards, you know?

I still sorta feel that way. But I think they’re okay with me, because they let me be Vice President for a while.

***

One day, a friend of mine referred to me, in public, as a “blogger.”

I was mortified.

***

So here I am. I get paid to write stuff. I’ve published a book. I’ve had actual times in my life when people contacted me (not the other way around) and said, “Could I hire you to do this writing thing for pay?”

But when people ask me what I do, I still don’t automatically respond, “I’m a writer.” Also, I don’t have my own office.

***

Part of the reason is that writing is not the main thing I do. The main thing I do is raise my kids. It’s the thing I love to do, despite my utterly not-safe-for-Pinterest lifestyle. The thought of not writing is weird. Alien. The thought of not being able to organize my life around the rearing of my children makes me cry. Unspeakable.

***

I still have my accountant sticker, and I do enough teaching stuff that I have a teacher sticker I wear sometimes too. I don’t usually tell people about those, either, unless it comes up.

Usually I just tell people I’m a housewife. It’s subversive and it causes people to leave me alone, which at a party is nice, because you can never really have a conversation at a party anyway, too loud and mingley. Anyone who gets as far as inviting me for a cup of coffee, which is when you can have a conversation, already knows I’m writer by then.

***

They know by then because I have terrible handwriting. I have bad dreams sometimes about trying to write down my phone number and not succeeding. These dreams have a basis in real life. So when someone wants to get together for coffee I give them my business card, so that I don’t have to write down my number by hand. Thus even if they didn’t know before, by the time coffee comes around, they know.

***

The other reason I don’t mention writing much is that I write about religion. Not just any religion, but wacked-out I Think Catholicism Is True religion. Most people don’t want to read about that.

And then yet the other reason I don’t mention it is because I spend a lot of time in Catholic places. It goes better if I show up as just another random housewife lady, and not with my professional Catholic sticker on. People eventually find out what I do in my spare time, but they don’t find out until after they know me. It’s better that way.

***

I’m a very shy writer. When I was a kid, my family would always ask, “When can we see what you’re writing?”

I would cover my notebook and say, “When it’s finished.”

That’s still the answer.

***

I don’t have an office because the main thing I do is raise my kids. That’s my #1 job. There’s no spare bedroom, and it would take an awful lot of spare bedrooms before Jennifer’s Writing Space got to the head of the queue. I’m considered a priority member of the household because I have to share my bedroom with zero pets and only one human, and the human is the person I married.

I could go out and get an accounting job, and use the money to buy a giant house with lots of spare rooms. But I’d have to give up my day job raising my kids, which I love, and there wouldn’t be much writing time, either. Not a good strategy.

One day when I’m old, maybe enough children will move out that we’ll have a room that could be my writing space. Until then, I share office space with my five best friends. I’m good with that.

***

When I go to confession, 98% of my sins are in some manner writing-related.

***

But the office thing isn’t nothing. I know I’m a writer, because my husband bought me a lovely ultralight computer for my birthday this year. I have a teenager, which means I have a live-in babysitter, which means I can take a child to lessons or sports and leave the other ones home, and I get to sit alone in the car for an hour.

I use my little computer to write drafts, and then save them on dropbox and go edit and publish back home at the shared big office computer.

My happy hour, by which I mean the hour when I am very happy, is when I’m sitting in a parking lot all by myself, with no one bothering me, and I can write things.

The other people I live with cook dinner, and I get those writing hours. So I guess that makes me official.