Laetitia

Champagne music is what the style of Lawrence Welk is commonly known as, at least in Wikipedia. That perhaps contributes to why my mother digs him.  She speaks of him as fondly as dear old Uncle Eddie and the look in her eye reminds me of a bobby-soxer swooning for Frank Sinatra. “I like to watch people having fun,” she says.

The thing is my mother is a baby boomer. That’s right — a baby boomer. Lawrence is not exactly her generation’s bag. However, we religiously would watch reruns of Lawrence Welk on PBS on Saturdays while my parents would be cooking dinner together.  My brother and I would usually have a glazed over look after watching ten minutes, such was the effect of powder blue clothing and champagne music.

My favorite parts if hard pressed would be when the camera would pan to the audience members. I loved especially when Mr. Welk would wisk away some “lucky” lady to start dancing with her.   It was fun too when they panned to 100 couples dancing in a 2′x2′ square who were being bumped in and out of rotation. My mother pretended to not hear me laughing.

And then there was the polka. If anything there is anything about Lawrence Welk that I can relate to it would be the polka. No I do not listen to polka. But it reminds me of my mother’s mother who is Polish. Grandma ruled with a tight iron fist always warning us not to “get fresh”. However, when Joe and I would make our annual pilgrimage to the Strawberry Festival at Transfiguration Church something magical occurred. You have to understand that this is a Polish parish who takes their strawberries seriously. And their Polish heritage. But given the iron fist, you can imagine the look my brother and I gave each other when we first went into the chruch hall hearing polka music in the background and my grandmother as carefree as school girl. She began to dance lightly, teasing us to join in. We may have, but we were frozen in place out of sheer amazement. Grandma is rarely seen so giddy. But strawberries and polka music are the secret weapon against the iron fist.

So when Mr. Welk has his polka boys play, I drift back to those days of being with my brother and grandmother during summer vacations, eating strawberry sundaes and listening to polka in my home parish. And lost in that moment, I think about my mother digging the way Lawrence Welk enjoys starting up the band and I realize that I would not want my family any other way then they already are.

(In case you want to read a blog on Lawrence Welk, check out http://welkmusicalfamily.blogspot.com/)

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I will let you in on a little secret: I was terrified at the thought of myself working in a soup kitchen. I was not afraid of the people, or the work, or the place. In fact, even the thought of working in a soup kitchen was not an issue for me as long as someone else, anyone else was working in a soup kitchen. My fear was that of noblesse oblige, that I as a privileged citizen would deem to sacrifice my precious time and pity for those poor unfortunate needy people. Even though I have a viscerally disdainful attitude toward this perspective, I was worried that I would fall into the trap of being the sort of person who misses the dignity of a person in the process of assuaging personal guilt. So I avoided this sort of work. But it was Pat, a Secular Franciscan fraternity member who is as generous as she is wise, who transformed this fear into action. But I am getting ahead of myself.

As I walked toward the soup kitchen, a line from U2’s One swirled in my head as I soaked in the uncanny hush of an early morning New York City: Did you come to play Jesus to the lepers in your head? The old fears were allowing me to build up a handsome wall of excuses until I saw Pat waving brightly at me. She has a disarming way about her. All the old fears were promptly left outside the door as I was ushered into the kitchen to find an apron and gloves to prepare food for our guests.

Do you know how some people can see a process and join right in and help? Well, I cannot. I have the look of a doe caught in the headlights. I need a patient and slow explanation as if I am five years old. Pat tried her level best to explain how to systematically and rapidly assemble cheese sandwiches. And while I kept saying to myself, “You can do this, it is only a cheese sandwich,” the process of double slices of bread, cheese slices and repeat were as comedic as Lucy on the chocolate assembly line. I finished only by the help of others. And as I was finding the joy of working with others on these tasks, I was entirely unprepared for what would happened next.

Our guests came in, sat down, and we served them food. While this seems as ordinary as it gets, it was positively magical for me. I was among people who had no hidden agendas, no secrets, no shame, no pride. They were honest. And because of that honestly they had a humility that was rich. So caught up was I in this humility that I wept inside at the presence of Christ. Indeed, so profound was this experience that when I think of the face of Christ I think of these guests. And as I left the soup kitchen, I left as the leper but with the satisfaction of having embraced the humble love of Christ.

An interesting take on feminism. What do you think about the problem the ad suggests in taking women’s liberation to its extreme? Also, does the ad work in terms of selling the product or does it merely provoke?

Post your comments now. I have posted a few Guinness ads and will continue to post them as I find them. Taking them as a superior example of advertising and thus a slice of contemporary society, how do we as Catholics or others of sincere faith react to the messages these ads convey?  Engaging the world, hoping to find Christ in it, let us react to the Guinness ads!

My grandmother’s parents came here from Poland in the early 20th century.  She grew up mainly on a farm in upstate NY, the farm being her father’s solution to the rising costs of potatoes. Her older sisters and brothers spoke Polish, and she remembers speaking it until she went to school. And as the school scrubbed away her name Regina in favor of Virginia, so did they scrub away the Polish in favor of English. Tragically, her mother died when she was 17 and she was beginning to march in line with the rest of the greatest generation going off to fight World War II, albeit on the home front. In essence, she lost much of her familial Polish traditions in practice if not in spirit. The soul of a Pole remains Polish.

She still talks about the food her mother made. There is a wistfulness in her eyes and the longing of memories she knows are fading. I have often pressed her with the questions, hoping to resurrect what I perceive as a tragic loss of family tradition. However, as I have grown older I have begun to see our present traditions more in terms of evolution rather than devolution. And as I reflect on what our Easter traditions have been, I realize that there has always been horseradish.

Memories from past Easters always involve horseradish. It is almost a game the way everyone in mock ceremony passes the prepared horseradish to sniff. If you do not know, horseradish properly made can make one’s sinuses feel as though a firecracker has been set off inside. But the horseradish was always for the hardboiled eggs and it is my grandmother who takes the most delight in it.

Horseradish is a very traditional Polish Easter component. The horseradish, like for the Jewish Passover, symbolizes the bitterness of slavery of the Jewish people in Egypt. For Catholics, we also remember the slavery to sin we once had before Christ died to redeem us. For that reason, many Polish people add beet juice to the horseradish to symbolize Christ’s Passion.

All may not be lost for my search for Polish traditions. And if it is, I will always have memories of my grandmother and horseradish.

Chrzan (Horseradish)

INGREDIENTS:

1 horseradish root
salt to taste
4 tbl. sugar
5 tbl. boiling water
Juice of 2 lemons
Beet juice 

1. Grate horseradish root. Food processors will not work for this and it must be grated by hand. Do not grate beforehand or overnight. It must used  immediately to preserve its potency.

2. Add some salt, the sugar, and the fresh lemon juice.

3. Add about 5 spoonfuls of boiling water.

4. Add some beet juice for color.

5. Place in a clean glass jar and store in refrigerator.

Laetitia is proud to introduce a monthly food column called Sacred Ingredients. In it, I will discuss an ingredient and its religious significance historically or presently. I will also post a recipe for you to enjoy!

For the month of May, I will post a weekly Sacred Ingredients column! Stay tuned…

But how did this come about in the context of Secular Franciscan formation? 

Last week my fraternity broke off into small groups in our regular meeting.  The goal was to discuss the concept of family in an effort to both get to know each other more deeply and also to begin some group reflections on our Family and Youth Apostolate. And as I began to describe my own family, I realized how important food is to my family.  Our most sacred moments as a family happen while we cook together and share meals. It is in that spirit that I wish to discuss some sacred ingriedients with you and invite you around my virtual kitchen table to share some good eats.

If you or someone you know has a prayer intention, please visit the PRAYER BOX page on the right column of this blog. You may post your request in the comments field of this post. You can also email your prayer requests to laetitiaprayerrequest@gmail.com.  I will keep these intentions in my personal prayer and also request that my Secular Franciscan fraternity keep it in theirs.

Also, please feel free to forward this to your friends and family.

Peace and all good!

I was on a plane headed for San Diego when I heard he was nearing his last moments. I had been scheduled to attend a conference as an book exhibitor and I was on a jetBlue plane watching all of those last moments on a small TV screen on the seat in front of me.

The last place I wanted to be was in another city working. I wanted to have the time to grieve at home in a familiar place. But that was not as it occurred.  I remember setting up our book booth in a complete mental fog with a couple of colleagues. I dreaded that they might mention his death for fear of getting emotional with colleagues. As it turned out, they did mention it in passing. And it was actually sneering.

Alone in my hotel room, I remember being shaken with grief and insight at the same time. The insight was that I was meant to be where I was, that it was more important to be present as a witness than to isolate myself. I was able, as it turned out, to offer a few remarks that were honest and heartfelt. I found that those who were not Catholic suddenly had questions that I was happy to answer.

Let me be clear and say that that nothing remarkable was said in those exchanges. However, I was not bashful about my faith, and I was fortunate to be able to be present to answer questions about my faith. That was a privilege that I will not forget and that I consider be John Paul II’s last personal gift. It was because of this experience that I felt prompted to do more though I did not know then that it was a prompting again toward the Secular Franciscan Order. That, however, is another post entirely.

And where were you?

There is something that is haunting about Goya’s Still Life with Sheep’s Head.  When I view this painting, I am reminded of Our Lord’s Passion. The sheep has been slaughtered, butchered, so that the ribs have been cut open. The position of the ribs is such that one side has been put up against the other, forming a cross. The head sits left, and though severed has an eerie quality that suggests that the sheep witnessed its own slaughter.

This witnessing of one’s death is precisely what Christ knew he was doing in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Indeed, realizing that the very people who called themselves apostles would abandon him he says in Matthew:

Then Jesus said to them, “This night all of you will have your faith in me shaken, for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be dispersed’; but after I have been raised up, I shall go before you to Galilee.” (Matt 26:31-33)

And yet are we not the sheep? What about our own death and how does this relate to Our Lord’s Passion?

A fraternity member who was a teacher in a public school used to tell her grammar school age students this: we all cry, we all bleed, and we all die.  Jesus, who as St. Paul tells us, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped, humbled himself becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:6,8). He cried, he bled, and he died. He humbled himself embracing our humanity so that we might share in his divinity. In that sense, we can unite our sufferings to his. This idea is known as redemptive suffering, that we can participate in the Lord’s death by uniting our suffering to his for a new life in his resurrection.

I cannot be certain Goya intended anything religious in this painting. He was preoccupied with death and how it can sometimes be cruel. And yet, when I see the very vivid image of the sheep I think about how we are united with Christ in his suffering and death so that we may live.  And most profoundly it is worth meditating this Holy Week on the humility of God’s love, becoming human to die with us so that we might live with him in paradise, like the thief who asked to be remembered. Will we be remembered?