Our Lady of Lourdes

This is how I arranged the dining table centrepiece before bed last night..a visual reminder, for all who rise in the early or not so early hours of the morning...and who wander past the dining area to the kitchen for breakfast. A reminder of today's feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.. Saints book, candles; Fr Lovasik book on Our Lady of Lourdes; dh's statue of Our Lady, from his childhood home....and our art focus book.

A week or so ago, someone asked me Why I Bother. Their point was I am doing a lot of work outside the home at the moment, a lot of stuff in the home for Kumon and for volunteer stuff, and at midnight, before bed and an early start the next morning for Mass, I do things like arrange a centrepiece for the table.

Don't bother, I was told. Let others do the chores and don't worry about the extras.

But I do want to "worry" about the extras.

It is the extras that make the house a home, a refuge, something set apart. That make a life, really.

I said awhile back, to a priest, that women don't always have time for the great inventions, for the great works, not because we are less inclined to these things but because our days and minds are often filled with little things...little things that never seem to amount to much, that no one may even notice if done or left undone, but which make a mark on the lives of family and friends.

Creating a space, a nook, for quiet reading and sitting. For movies. Putting out flowers and candles. Planning a dessert for a saints day. Plumping up cushions and scattering an interesting book. Texting friends. Having a person who is lonely over for a cuppa..and including the kids in the converation. Sending a smile.

I am not advising mothers and wives and women to be martyrs. I certainly take time for reading, for work, for my study, for workouts. But my mind and days are also full of All Those Small Things ( Blink 182).

And I bother.

'A man,' as one of them observed to me once, 'is so in the way in the house!' Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford.

And not at all true. But the point is made..a woman often does make a subtle difference. Shouldn't that difference be calculated, for the good, for beauty, for people?

Thus the "perfect woman" (cf. Prov 31:10) becomes an irreplaceable support and source of spiritual strength for other people, who perceive the great energies of her spirit. These "perfect women" are owed much by their families, and sometimes by whole nations.
In our own time, the successes of science and technology make it possible to attain material well-being to a degree hitherto unknown. While this favours some, it pushes others to the edges of society. In this way, unilateral progress can also lead to a gradual loss of sensitivity for man, that is, for what is essentially human. In this sense, our time in particular awaits the manifestation of that "genius" which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance: because they are human! - and because "the greatest of these is love" (cf. 1 Cor 13:13).MULIERIS DIGNITATEM Pope John Paul II

Why do I bother? Out of love..not just for family, but for friends, for others, for people I meet, for love of God.

A recent homily on St Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 13 ( If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal... ) challenged all of us, husbands, wives, women, men, single, married, religious..all of us to serve with love. If we love, we are not jealous; we do not act out of selfishness and concern for ourselves; we act with love and care for others.

I must act with that feminine genius of which the Pope spoke, with that sensitivity for human beings in every, yes, every, circumstance...even with that oh so talkative! (but gorgeous) teen or the disparaging neighbour or critical person at church or the exasperating relative or the ( sometimes) angry spouse...

A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace. Mother Theresa

In my very busy life, I remember some of the stories of my childhood and early teen years, those stories that shaped me. The Little House on the Prairie series. The Anne of Green Gables books. The Meet the Austins series. The Dimity boarding school books. All those Pollyanna novels. Jane Austen. Swallows and Amazons. Noel Streatfield. Verily Anderson. Dodie Smith. Bridge to Terabithia. Amongst others.

What was it that attracted me to these books?

Their vision of family life. Of normality. Of fun. Of dinners and chats and walks and time together.

I take this vision and try to live it out, in my whirlwind of activity and technology.

I bother with the little things.

The extras that are not really extras. For, as we women, seek careers and study, seek good, seek to be truly ourselves it is sad if we also lose sight of what it is that makes a home...us.

Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world. Mother Theresa