My "I love teaching" moment of the day

This semester, I'm a TA for two classes, which means I'm on campus 4 days a week for those classes. They're in the old library building, which is oddly chopped up--to access part of the basement, which has a bunch of classrooms, you actually have to leave the building and go around the corner. Anyway, both of my classes are in the basement, so the windows are at the very top of the room. This afternoon, I was in the American Lit classroom, waiting for the professor to open up her powerpoint so I could bring something up on the computer. I could feel someone looking at me, so I looked up and saw two of my Chaucer students, standing at the window, waving down to me. Kinda goofy, kinda sweet: I got my "awww" moment for the day.

Random Monday thoughts

It's cold and raining, just like it has been all day. I'm in the midst of research at the moment, but here's what's on my mind this evening:

1) I forgot my umbrella this morning and was trying to be tough and pretend I didn't need one. But when Corey and I left lunch and it was pouring, I was really thankful to find a $5 umbrella that held up all afternoon ;)

2) Sketchy as it may look, La Ha makes a fantastic taco-best $5 lunch you can get downtown.

3) I attempted pasta with a Béchamel sauce for dinner, but I over-salted and it was a little gross. I mean, I ate it and all, but I'm on my third bottle of water because I'm trying not to wake up dehydrated.

4) The best part about having a pullout bed/couch? When I want to read my homework lying in bed, but I don't want to actually be in bed because if I work in bed, it's hard for me to fall asleep. Perfect solution.

5) It's taken me 30 minutes to write this post because I'm a little distracted right now. Not by any one thing, but by life in general. I need to work on curbing my ADD tendencies.

All right, time to get back to my pal Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Musical conversion

When I was younger, I used to almost regret that I was born into the Catholic Church; when you're raised in the Faith from infancy, you don't have a conversion story, or so I thought. What I've come to realize is that growing in faith requires lots of small moments of reconversion, of not doubting God's presence in places that I didn't see Him before. Liturgical music is one of those areas for me.

I was raised in fairly traditional parishes. When I was in late elementary school, we attended a Byzantine Rite parish for a while (a long story in and of itself), but when we came back to the Roman Rite, my parents decided that we would attend a LifeTeen Mass at the parish closest to our home. We gave it a shot, but none of us really liked it--compared to the staid chanting of the parish we had left, the contemporary music and attitudes of the attendees seemed downright disrespectful. In retrospect, the sharp contrast between the two Masses probably exacerbated those feelings, but I came away from that experience with an extreme distrust of any sort of contemporary music.

Finally, we settled at a parish that was, and still is, home: a small but diverse parish whose music is a combination of traditional Catholic hymns and African American gospel spirituals (sounds odd, but it works for us!). That was the church I attended all through college, because I was afraid that the Catholic Student Association (CSA) at the local state university would be too much like what I had experienced before. I went to Mass at the CSA maybe 6 or 7 times in my four years of undergrad; it was different, but I was comfortable and involved in my home parish in the same city, so I felt no reason to change.

But I graduated and moved south and as much as I'd have liked to go home for church every weekend, the trip (four hours one way) was completely impractical. So, right after I moved, I talked to the priest I knew here, Father W, to see if his parish could use me as a cantor or Sunday School teacher; I had decided that I was an adult and I should have a proper parish that I was registered in. He smiled, thanked me, and then told me that the CSA over at the College could probably use me more. I agreed to go and check it out, though secretly I was really less than thrilled about it. I was just so sure that it would be like my memories of those LifeTeen Masses and I didn't want to waste a Sunday.

I do like to please people, though, and I pride myself on being a woman of my word, so sure enough, when 4:30 rolled around on that Sunday, I put the church address into my GPS and upon arrival, with knots of anxiety in my stomach, climbed the steps of the old brick church downtown. I was greeted with a smile and a bulletin from a girl that... looked really excited to be there. Odd, I thought, but I was there to give it my best shot, so I went and found a seat. I couldn't tell you now, months later, what the homily was about, but I do remember thinking Wow, everyone looks really happy to be here. That surprised me then, though now it doesn't seem odd at all. Best of all, the musicians weren't irreverent and self-important like I had expected and (most exciting for me) there were no hand motions. Of all the things about contemporary music that I disliked, hand motions are still my sticking point. So, all those things in mind, I hesitated, then checked the box marked "Yes" next to the question on the parish registration form that asked if I was interested in serving with the music ministry.

The next week, I showed up at 3:30 for rehearsal and plunged right into the thick of the music ministry. We had a rough start to the semester, with the old campus minister retiring and a new one coming, as well as musicians dropping out and joining, but by the end of the semester, we had a cohesive group which has in fact grown since the semester started. And you know, it's a funny thing, but I've grown to love (some of) the music I once wrote off as not being worth my time. When I was home for Christmas, I found that as much as I still love my home parish, I missed my CSA friends--it feels like home too.

I'm afraid that the classical training that I got at MC made me a bit of snob when it came to music, but I've gotten past that. I've also found that I'm using that training, which is good. We do use the contemporary music, but we also do a few traditional songs and we have a great, enthusiastic group of musicians; we may not always sound totally professional, but we're all there because we want to give back to God from the gifts we've been given. And I think that that makes all the difference. That girl that greeted me the first day? Well, we're now running the music ministry together (she's one of our guitarists and a really good one at that) and she's my Monday lunch buddy. I see our viola player twice a week when she's leaving class and I'm going in to TA another class on the same hall, and I occasionally run into the other folks in the group while I'm on campus. It's a good feeling, to have a musical family not unlike the one I left behind when I graduated from college.

My journey into CSA music ministry is, I think, a good example of these small conversions that happen from time to time. Because of the wonderful people that I'm working and making music with at the College, I now have another place that used to seem empty where I can see God. Life is good, music is great, and God is best.

Prayer for soldiers

From the US Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB):

God of all goodness,
Look with love on those who wait
for the safe return of their loved ones
who serve in the armed forces of their country.
In faith and hope, we turn to you for comfort.
Grant that we may trust in your mercy
and send an angel to sustain us as we await their safe return.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.

My oldest cousin (really more like the older brother I don't have) deploys to Afghanistan tomorrow. Please, pray with me for him and all those who are going with him, that they are kept safe while they are over there.

I Ate The Fuzzy Certs: Lorelai, Rory, My Mother and Me

Picture credit

It's no secret that Gilmore Girls is my favorite TV show of all time. I own all seven seasons (well, OK, I only own 6, but that's part of a longer story) and periodically watch all seven consecutively. I'm in the middle of one of those cycles now, which I started somewhere around January 8th, and I've just started season 4. Part of the quickness of this viewing cycle is undoubtedly my more leisurely schedule this semester, but part of it is, as always, the greatness of this show.

My obsession started back in October 2000 with the first season (side note: I can't believe it's been 10.5 years that I've been watching this show!). I had seen a commercial for this new show during an episode of 7th Heaven on the WB and I convinced my mom that we should watch it together. From the first episode, we were hooked, and every Tuesday night at 8 after that was our time. We laughed, we cried, we bonded; watching Lorelai and Rory's relationship helped to cement ours. Somewhere in the middle of Rory's college experience, probably because of my high school workload, we stopped our tradition and we missed the last few seasons of the show.

Then in 2008, I bought the first two seasons on Amazon; it was a spur-of-the-moment purchase, but I took it home as soon as I got it and Mom and I got back in touch with the Gilmore girls. For Christmas 2008, Mom gave me season 3 and I gave her season 4 (though I am the keeper of all 7 seasons... she swears that they all belong to her... I have a delusional mother, which isn't quite as good as one with a haunted leg, but what can you do?). At some point, I acquired seasons 5, 6, and 7 and we devoured them as well. Sometimes we'd watch 4 or 5 episodes in a day and my dad would come home from work on a Friday afternoon to find us sitting on their bed, watching Gilmore Girls on the computer and he'd shake his head, knowing we'd been there for hours. If the first 3 and a half seasons were like meeting familiar friends again, then the second 3 and a half were like seeing the history with them that we'd missed unfold again. Once again, we laughed, we cried, and we got a whole slew of inside jokes that you'd have to know the show to understand ("Oy with the poodles already!").

Watching the show this time around, though, I realized something. We are Lorelai and Rory. I mean, obviously my mother is happily married to my father, I have four brothers, we don't live in Connecticut, she doesn't run an inn, I'm not Ivy-League educated, we really love her parents... but relationship-wise, we are. My mother really is my best friend-we talk at least once, if not two or three or twelve times a day. She's the one person that I really want to share everything in my life with: the fun stuff, the sad stuff, the embarrassing stuff. Mom knows it all and she's everything to me. She is my reigning Lorelai, my freak of sideshow proportions, my woman with a Hello Kitty waffle iron,

and if I'm lucky, I'll end up half as wonderful as she is.

Lorelai: You're my favorite daughter

Rory: You say that to all your daughters

Lorelai: Yes, I do, but I only mean it with you

Mom, I love you.

Love,

Me

Words to live by

I keep this quote in a sticky note on my desktop, so that I see it every time I log into my computer. It helps keep things in perspective for me, especially when I start to feel overwhelmed by everything I have on my plate

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task anew.

~Francis de Sales~

Back to blogging...?

I didn't mean to take a whole month away from writing; in fact, I intended to write more in January, if anything. However, sickness and heading back to school and basically life intervened, resulting in a month-long absence. The strange thing was, I didn't miss it. I thought I would, but by and large, I didn't feel that there was anything blog-worthy in my life. I talk to Mom daily and the people that (I think) frequent this blog often enough that they know what's going on in my life.

With that in mind, I'm dedicating the month of February (easy because it's the shortest month. I know, that's lazy) to deciding how I want to blog. I'm expecting a month of hodge-podge as I try things to see what feels comfortable and appropriate, because there are so many aspects of my life that I could write about, but I'm not sure all of them translate into good blogging material. I hesitate to write too much about school, simply because I don't want to be critical of my professors, students or colleagues in an online manner that will last; that seems like a bad move professionally. As far as my personal life goes, not much that's blog-worthy there, so that avenue is out. One thing I'm seriously considering is blogging about Catholicism in daily life, but the purpose of this blog is not and never has been proselytizing; my faith is, however, a big part of who I am, so writing about it makes sense. I could write about living in this lovely city, but if I did that, I'd probably go private, simply for safety reasons. I might try putting up a few more photographs, but I'm a notoriously bad photographer in that I forget my camera all the time. I mean to go somewhere with it and it's the one thing I forget consistently--to be honest, I'm not sure where it is at the moment. I could blog about cooking, but I don't think the things I make are that interesting.

But I'm giving myself the next 28 days to figure this out. 28 days of posts, probably random and themeless, and then I'll decide whether or not I'm going to continue. Oh, and if you have any ideas about what I should write about, I'd love suggestions in the com-box. Thanks for bearing with me as I figure all this out.