I’ve spent several days

It’s no wonder that while continuing my reading of G.K. Chesterton, his thoughts on story pulled me in.

He says, in Orthodoxy, that “Life (according to the faith) is very like a serial story in a magazine: life ends with the promise (or menace) ‘to be continued in our next.’”

Recently, a friend of mine attended a play that left her feeling unsatisfied. It didn’t bring the resolve she was expecting. Not that we should always expect a happy resolve, but there seems to be something deep within us that yearns for a satisfying conclusion.

I believe these things are all connected, and Chesterton brings home the point. We, like he, experience life as a story. We are all, by our nature, storytellers. We can’t help ourselves. Stories are in everything. Music tells a story. So does a painting. And a photograph. “A picture says a thousand words.” Indeed.

We are a people of story, and this life is our great drama. And within the Christian life is a promise that our story will be like the stories we know and love. Yes, there will be drama. There will be conflict. There will be good and bad guys. There will be tension and resolve. We will learn and grow, laugh and weep.

Those stories that are well-fashioned beg for a sequel. Readers want to know what’s next, and they’ll stand in line waiting for Part II, rising early and missing breakfast to be the first to get a peek.

This is who we are. It all makes sense, including the part, “to be continued.”

This week I helped kids learn ways to bring vividness to their stories, of bringing their writing alive for their readers. I tried to help them find ways to make their stories more alive and life-giving.

If we do this story well, when we reach that last chapter and it’s time to close the book, we can be assured, as Christians, that the best is yet to come.

Q4U: What chapter remains unwritten in your life story?

Copyright 2012 Roxane Salonen

What was the deal with the tears? I had know.

“Why is she crying mommy?” I asked.

“Because she’s happy.”

Now I was really confused! Of course, as an adult, I understand the concept of tears of joy. Or, as the case was for me this past weekend, tears of joyful gratitude.

I hadn’t expected the faucet to turn on in the middle of my son’s First Eucharist celebration. But it happened just the same.

He’d told me after rehearsal a few nights earlier that because of his last name, he would be sitting in the very last row of children that day.

“But you know what the good thing is?” he said. “I get to help carry up the gifts.”

I heard the words, but until the moment actually came, it didn’t truly sink in. My son, by default of his last name, had been chosen with three other kids to bring up the bread and wine that would become Jesus’ body and blood — and on the day he would receive that Sacrament for the very first time.

I can’t imagine a better reason for being last. “The last shall be first.” Indeed.

But in all of the excitement of the celebration, I’d forgotten his quiet utterance from a few nights before. So when I saw my friend, Rita, come out of nowhere and tap my guy and his three comrades on the shoulder, I was confused for a moment. Had they done something wrong?

The cue was received, and they stood up dutifully to get in position, walking through the throngs of parents and other family members to the back of the church to gather the gifts.

Watching my son process up the church aisle in his sharp, black suit with the others to offer these treasures to the Bishop had to have been a highlight of my mothering years. It was a moment when I couldn’t hold back. The tear ducts opened and, unable to control them, I just let them fall where they may.

It might seem I’m being overly dramatic. But please understand that to me, what happened was pure gift. Not something to be proud over so much (though I was proud of how reverently my son handled his duty), but an unexpected gift to be humbly received.

Life doesn’t always feel this pure and good. There are tough times to be had in a busy, lively, growing family in this world. Sometimes, the gems are covered up for long periods of time.

Oftentimes, like this past weekend, they come at an unexpected moment. And when they appear upon the surface like the sun on the morning horizon, for no reason other than God’s unconditional love, it’s hard to dismiss them as something other than a small miracle.

Adam “Joseph”  after receiving Jesus with his godmother and me

Thank you, God, for loving me and my family, despite our imperfections. Thank you for my son and what he’s just experienced. And thank you for reaching my heart, too, on his special day. 

Q4U: When have your tears come from deep-seated gratitude?

Copyright 2012 Roxane Salonen

Just tonight, that same “baby” took a shower by himself, declaring he doesn’t like night showers because then he has to sleep with wet hair. I told him about the towel trick — to put a towel on his pillow to at least soak up some of the moisture. He’s an information guy like I’m an information gal and he seemed pleased to have this new option.

He’s 9 now, and still as precious to me as that day. Adam is our child whose basic disposition is calmer, more thoughtful and thought-filled than most of the Salonens — in general, anyway. He’s always been a bundle of sweetness and even though all our kids have special qualities about them, I’ve always felt an abundance of grace emanating from this little guy.

This weekend he’ll take the next step in his Christian journey.  He’ll be our fourth child to receive First Holy Eucharist and be confirmed in the Catholic faith as a third-grader. Our firstborn, Christian, was among the very first crop of younger confirmants in our diocese.

There are all sorts of opinions as to whether children should receive these Sacraments this early. Bottom line, Confirmation is a Sacrament of Initiation, not a graduation. And in the early church, the two were very close together, initially one after the other, and only separated more and more as time went on. Our current bishop wanted to get closer to the original intent, so here we are.

The other thing that needs to be understood, perhaps above all else, is that a Sacrament is a grace that helps the person be strengthened in his or her Christian journey. If you knew you could be strengthened to put on the armor of Christ at an early age but also had the choice to wait years later, what would the purpose be? Why not have access to them earlier if they’re being offered? I realize different denominations approach this differently, but for Catholics, this isn’t much different than the idea of infant Baptism. Grace is grace, and even an infant can feel and respond to its effects.

For those reasons, I like this earlier Confirmation deal. And I’m looking forward to this weekend’s celebration. Our son has a wonderful sponsor, his godfather, and has chosen the name “Joseph” as his Confirmation name.

Q4U: What are your thoughts about offering these Sacraments earlier rather than later? I’d love to discuss, even if your thoughts are different than mine.

Copyright 2012 Roxane Salonen

Such is the case with how G.K. Chesterton has raised my appreciation for life; by virtue of sharing how he arrived at belief in God from a position of disbelief.

Namely, I’m talking about what can be summed up in two words: the encore.

Are you ready to see something anew?

On page 57 of Orthodoxy, Chesterton makes the bold statement that materialism rests ultimately upon a false assumption. That assumption being that if a thing repeats itself it is probably dead.

“People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance,” he explains. “This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire.”

Huh, you say? Hang on. Let’s see where he’s going.

“A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life were so gigantic that he never got tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness.”

To further make the point, Chesterton brings in the ever-rising sun. “I do not rise every morning,” he says, “but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.” In other words, he says, the routine of the sun might be due not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.

Cool huh?

To expound, he speaks of children who, when finding a game they enjoy, kick their legs rhythmically, not through absence of life but through excess of it. “Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again,’ and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.”

Grown-ups are not strong enough to exult in monotony, he says, but perhaps God is.

“It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

(I love Chesterton’s mind-blowing images! I can totally see God as a giddy infant wanting to “do it again!”)

Chesterton concludes, rather dramatically, “The reptition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.”

Ah! The encore.

Indeed, Chesterton says, “at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.

And there’s where my mouth drops, and I realize again that each moment is a gift, not guaranteed. Each act of ours is possibly the last, or not.

In that realization, I come back around to the fact that we are here because God has willed it, out of sheer love, and only because of that.

What will we do with the encore God has offered us? The encore of one more day, one more hour, one more second? The stage is ours, and for this day at least, we can make of it what we will.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I want my performance to be stellar. Not perfect, perhaps, but I want the audience to leave feeling as if their hearts have been indelibly changed.

For this moment, it is enough to say thanks, Mr. Chesterton, for helping increase my appreciation for this wonderful life I’m blessed enough to be living out.

Q4U: What helped you appreciate life more this week?

Copyright 2012 Roxane Salonen

To the point, I’ve been carrying around this book for the last couple months, ingesting it little by little.

It’s not that it’s a big book. On the contrary, it’s actually quite small. But the ideas packed into it are condensed. I’m finding myself dog-earing or underlining about every other page, because page after page contains quotable quotes.

The looks of it speaks of something potentially dry. From the outside, one might be intimidated. “Orthodoxy?” But what I’ve found instead is a read that is not only insightful but endearing. This is the written testimony of a former skeptic turned Christian — one of the best sorts of people, I’ve found, to energize my own faith.

Christians who can’t remember a time before belief seem to share the problem of taking faith for granted. And then, when we’re pressed on the issue of what we really believe, we grasp at an explanation that will satisfy the skeptic, or even our fellow Christians. Noting our hemming and hawing, they conclude we really don’t have a faith at all, that it’s all an illusion.

Don’t let the critics sway you from your grounding place. God is extraordinarily logical, and so is the faith He’s given to us so that we might know Him. It’s not just about emotions and things that can’t be measured. Faith is real and can be grasped by the human mind willing to engage in an honest search. But the right sources must be tapped.

It’s this way with anything that begs an explanation. Tools — the right kind for the job — may be needed. A good and, even better, credible guide is essential. That’s why I find people like Chesterton so refreshing. He’s wrestled with the questions from the outside-in, so he’s capable of leading us to the place of logic, step by step.

Take this one for example. The other day I pulled it out of a chapter I was reading in Orthodoxy and slapped it on my Facebook wall. It just feels wrong keeping stuff like this to myself.

“We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it. We now add that we must be fond of another world…in order to have something to change it to.”

If that isn’t a solid case for our having been made to yearn for a world beyond this one, I don’t know what is. It resonated powerfully with my Facebook friends, generating many comments and likes.

The next day, I shared a quote I heard from Fr. Robert Barron on Catholic radio on my wall. He said something to the effect that we can’t talk about human rights without talking about God, since God is the one who grounds us in them.

A short while later, my friend Eric shared briefly the conversion story of Francis S. Collins, author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Eric said Collins became a Christian, in large part, because he realized the paradox of humans adopting a code of human rights, which goes against the natural animal instincts we should be driven by. He concluded that even the idea of human rights had to have been influenced by a creator.

These bursts of reasoning kept me inspired this week. And I like thinking of these gems as flowers I’m gathering up, one by one. We are all collecting these flowers of faith to share with others when the time is right, since flowers beg to be shared, not hoarded and hidden.

Q4U: What are some of your recent finds and quotes that have helped affirm your faith? What are some faith questions you still haven’t wrapped your brain around?

Copyright 2012 Roxane Salonen

I always like these reflections but my attention was suddenly more focused. I’ve read two of Heather’s memoirs and receive her blog updates. We’ve chatted about memoir writing and other topics through email. More often than not, her writing resonates with me, and I can identify with her as a fellow modern-day Christian woman.

Even though it was Easter, Heather was fixating on the crucifixion, and I wasn’t going to stop her. The confluence of the two — Crucifixion and Resurrection — just feels right. One without the other doesn’t make any sense at all. One without the other means no Christianity.

And what would my world be without my Christian faith? Oh, woe would be me, indeed.

Now, more than any other time, perhaps, I feel deeply my gratitude for the supreme, eternal gift of this faith I’ve been given. And like Heather, even on Easter Sunday, I wasn’t done, nor will I ever be done, with the Crucifixion.

Let me allow Heather to speak:

“To over-focus on the violence of the crucifixion, however, is to miss its essential point. No violence we could re-enact could come close to the Passion of the Christ – not because we can’t imagine the violence, but because we can’t imagine Christ’s heart,” she says.

But it gets better:

“Christ doesn’t keep score, count the cost, or hold the crucifixion against us. The crucifixion was Christ’s labor, and just as no loving mother would show her child a gory video of her labor – “Look what I endured for you!” – the writers of the Gospels sketch in the outline and leave the details to our imagination.”

Now, I’m thinking back to the time I saw Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. It was powerful, and I felt grateful for it, even though it was difficult to watch. I recall, the following Sunday, looking at the crucifixion at the point of the altar with new eyes and a more understanding and appreciative heart.

But as with most audio visuals, in time, the effect wears off, and it is hard to recreate in my mind the feelings I had during my viewing of the film, and in the weeks following. And at times I’ve felt like perhaps there was something wrong in that; that I needed to revisit the gore.

Here, Heather has set things right for me, and she’s done it in a way my mother heart can understand. Of course I wouldn’t force my child to watch a film of me in labor. No. I took that on by my own volition. I volunteered. They don’t need to know what it was like, really. That was my suffering and they need not have their faces rubbed in it, nor would I want that for them, or me.

Heather goes on, saying that our failure to revisit the gore in full is “neither to diminish, nor to fail to take full account of, the violence. But we don’t honor the crucifixion by feeling guilty that Christ died for our sins. We honor the crucifixion by consenting to be stripped down and to die for love ourselves.”

“Prayer begins by listening. God speaks in the silence of your hearts and we speak from the fullness of our hearts. I listen, God speaks. I speak, God listens. This listening, speaking is prayer.” 

Whew! Life has been busy. I’ve barely had time to breathe most days of late. Our family has been through some big transitions in a short amount of time and I seem to be saying “hello” to myself in passing.

Let’s just say I’m welcoming Lent this year like no other. I’m feeling it imperative to pause and recall the important things in life. I yearn for the perspective that only God can provide.

Even now in this pre-Lenten time, God is near, always encouraging me, giving me little bits of love and light to keep me moving along. And this week, His gift of love came in the mail through this brand-new book written by my friend Donna-Marie.

This won’t be a review because I’ve only peeked so far. This is a book to be experienced each day of lent, and includes prayers, reflections and activities for families. I know it’s going to be an important companion to me and I’m really looking forward to savoring the wisdom contained within.

The dedication already has me pulled in:

“Lovingly for my children: Justin, Chaldea, Jessica, Joseph and Mary-Catherine.”

Donna-Marie and I met about a decade ago, through email. A friend of mine passed on an article she’d written for CatholicMom.com, and I noted at the end that she had five children and had written a book. I’d just become an author, too, and was excited to connect with another Catholic mother of five who’d moved through the book-writing journey. Her response was immediately warm and inviting, and I invited her to be part of a Catholic writers’ email list to which I belong.

Donna and I are still waiting for a real-life meeting, but we’ve talked on the phone several times and keep in touch electronically during the ups and downs of life, praying for one another and offering encouragement.

I’m a blessed woman for knowing Donna-Marie, and now, for the chance to hang out with her this Lent. And wherever Donna-Marie goes, Mother Teresa is nearby, which makes it even better. The simple, profound wisdom of Blessed Teresa is always refreshing, and in this book, her words are imparted through the heart of a modern-day mom-friend whose life crossed for a decade with this saintly woman.

I hope you’ll find a copy and come along with me. And if you do, please stop back and share your insights. And I’ll share in turn.

You can find the book on Donna-Marie’s blog here, or through Amazon. (It’s $2.50 either place; a pretty good deal for a wisdom-packed read.)

Thanks for letting me gush a little about my friend’s book. I haven’t made it a practice to tout works that don’t have some personal connection to me, so know that my “preview” is genuine.

God bless you as you turn toward this special season of prayer, almsgiving and fasting!

Order Bringing Lent Home with Mother Teresa and support CatholicMom.com with your purchase

Copyright 2012 Roxane Salonen

Imagine my thrill to learn that Chesterton was a journalist by profession. Suddenly, the timing of the read is feeling perfect, newly restarted as I am in my own work as a newspaper reporter.

I’m only a few chapters in and my copy is all dog-eared and underlined. Yes, I am enjoying his insights quite a lot.

This morning’s sunrise — “getting one’s head into the heavens”

Orthodoxy emerged as a response to a challenge by Chesterton’s non-religious friends who contended that though he’d said plenty to affirm his cosmic theory, he’d not sufficiently supported it with example.

To which he responded, in part: “Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets.”

Continuing, he adds, “The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion….To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything, a strain.”

I’m thinking now of the conversations I used to have with an atheist friend, and how tiring things became as we tried to sort things out solely by brain power.

Read the way Chesterston lays it out visually:

“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”

Indeed! We can think it all to death and find we’ve gotten nowhere for the trouble.

That’s sort of the conclusion I came to during my eight-month conversation with a staunch non-believer. Our attempts to have a healthy discussion started out earnest, I think, and there were moments of true enjoyment. But in the end, the ways it seems to me now anyway, my poetic spirit was being stifled by constant scrutinization of the sacred.

Another skeptic once shared with me that music doesn’t move her and never has. How could this be, thought I. Then again, isn’t the musician and poet so much the same? In that regard, it all makes perfect sense. One immersed in the world of logic would, by default, sever him/herself from such pleasures.

Or: if we’re to truly delight in the heavenly, we must admit heaven exists.

Therein lies the great sadness of the atheist, it seems to me — this inability to expand.

I’ll leave you with one more thought — one I also plastered to my Facebook wall earlier this week, as found in the introduction by Philip Yancey:

“Evil’s greatest triumph may be its success in portraying religion as an enemy of pleasure when, in fact, all the things we enjoy are the inventions of a Creator who lavished them on the world.”

And this, too, bears repeating:

God’s Thursday morning palette, Fargo, North Dakota

Q4U: When has logic been limiting to you? 

It was special enough to do something I may have done only one other time in my life. I scheduled an appointment to have my hair styled.

I also bought a new, black dress, and a sparkly hair barrette.

When I was asked several months ago to be the emcee at our Catholic radio station’s annual fundraising banquet, I didn’t know that by saying yes, I would be triply blessed.

I knew it would be an honor. After serving as one of four rotating hosts for Real Presence Live for the past two years, as well as being an everyday listener, I have nothing but gratitude for what Catholic radio has done to increase and enliven my faith. I was happy to speak to this before a room full of hundreds of Catholic radio supporters. Blessing #1.

Blessing #2 came in the choice of keynote speaker. Radio is one of the most intimate forms of media. We feel as if the people talking to us through the airwaves are actually with us; more so even than television.

I’ve been inviting this guy into my home and minivan for the past several years. Patrick Coffin has gotten me through many mundane moments of domesticity as I’ve worked to keep my house in order, dinner on the table, and shuffled my five children from here to there. I’ve been able to do all of this while simultaneously learning more about my faith through his radio program, Catholic Answers Live. To say I admire him is an understatement.

So introducing our bishop, a priest, our station director and Patrick was, for me, nothing short of a wonderful and undeserved gift.

The third blessing was an afterthought. This month marks my last month of hosting Catholic radio. Due to my new job, I will have to leave behind this wonderful gig. I do so reluctantly, but knowing it’s best I focus on family and this new mission for now. I hope to be back someday in some capacity. So, last night was something of a goodbye as well — though unstated. For that reason, it was even more special.

Normally, I would have taken more notes, but because I was in “work mode,” my notes are fairly slight. But I enjoyed hearing someone I admire so much speak to people here in our area. (Tonight, my mom will be hearing him three hours away in Bismarck.)

And I did come away with a few nuggets. Here are a few of the quotes — either from others but referenced by Patrick or his own — I thought worthy of noting:

On the significance of the Eucharist:  Jesus didn’t leave us orphaned. When lovers part ways, they always leave a memento. Jesus did the same by leaving his Body and Blood.

On Christian persecution: This should come as no surprise to us. We sort of signed up for it at Baptism.

On the first technological revolution: Marconi, inventor of the radio, made place irrelevant for the first time in human history. (We don’t have to be there to be affected and connected.)

On Christian unity in light of today’s moral issues: When a maniac is at the door, feuding brothers reconcile.

And finally, my favorite:

On what young people need to know to combat self-worth issues:They need to know their price tag.

Think about that last one. If you and I knew our worth — the worth that God sees in us — how would that affect the choices we make and the way we live our lives?

In my mind, just as Patrick said, knowing our price tag is everything. It’s the difference between night and day, between rags and riches, between hate and love.

And love, especially self-love, can and will change the world.

Be good to yourself. Know your price tag. Then proceed accordingly.

Q4U: Was there a moment in your life when you became more aware of your price tag in God’s eyes? How did that change things for you?

Copyright 2012 Roxane Salonen

I’ve never been so proud of my firstborn daughter as last week when she verbally presented an essay that had been part of a grouping of finalists in a contest among parochial schools in our area. The contest was sponsored by a local pro-life organization and included several winners from each of the three schools.

My daughter was one of two from her middle-school who made the cut. They presented to a group of peers, including high-school students, along with teachers, parents and some of the folks from the organization.

Two videos were shown to highlight the importance of life; both were beautifully done and evoked my emotion on the subject. But my most powerful feelings came through when our daughter approached the podium and calmly read her essay.

Think of it: you’re a teen, you’re in front of your peers and you’re reading something you consider fairly personal before a microphone on a stage. This is no easy task, and at least one of the gals who read looked like she might faint. Another passed on the opportunity entirely due to nerves.

I don’t blame them. Public speaking is among the biggest fears that we have as a society. Which is why it was such a triumph for my daughter. I coached her a little the night before. I told her all the things that helped me when I was in similar situations in the past, and even now when I have to go before a crowd. She wasn’t convinced it would work.

So, I can’t take the credit. I’d say it was grace more than anything I might have done. Still, I was relieved for her that everything came together at the right moment.

And here’s what else I came away with: it felt big. It felt like the beginning of something. We may not know for years just what that thing may be, but I’m fairly certain I will look back on that day at some point in the future and say, “Yep, that’s when it all started.”

Finalists were honored with a rose…

A figurine of a child in utero…

And a check for $25.

Here’s the speech as viewed from my phone’s video camera. In case that’s too hard to discern, here are the words to the speech:

“A person’s a person no matter how small.” The famous quote by Dr. Seuss runs through my mind whenever I go to pray at the abortion mill in Fargo. I wonder if he knew how prophetic his words would become on the topic of pro-life versus pro-choice. Luckily, America is becoming more pro-life each day!

I will explain to you the two main reasons why I believe that’s coming true. Firstly, the effect of the testimonies of the post-abortive women, and how they’ve touched the hearts of others. Secondly, thanks to science and new technology like the fetal-monitor, people can observe what really takes place during an abortion.

Being told abortion is wrong by someone who has never experienced it isn’t as powerful as hearing it from someone who has gone through the trauma. The leap of faith the women have when they talk about devastating low self-esteem issues, along with the heart break they face when they realize they’ve killed their own child, and anything in between, is so touching that those who hear them often have a conversion.

Science is developing greatly, thanks to inventions like the fetal monitor; mothers are able to hear their baby’s heartbeat, and see their child move before they can even feel it, creating in instant bond between the two. America interprets this as love, and life, realizing that when the baby backs up in the womb, and tries to save its life, it’s for a purpose. In turn, America’s able to see that we need to be defenders of life, no matter how small that life may be.

God is using technology and time to reveal the truth of this tragic solution. I’m hopeful I’ll be able to see the day when abortion is no longer legal and desired in America.

Q4U: When did you glimpse the start of something big, and know it?

Copyright 2012 Roxane Salonen

My mind is engaged and moving in a positive direction, but my brain is saying, “Information overload!” and “Can’t I just sleep an extra 15 minutes? What are you trying to do to me?” Similarly, my body is enjoying the new challenge of dressing in work clothes each business day, but it’s also feeling a tad weary from the transition.

But this, too, is true: I’m thoroughly enjoying my new environment and co-workers and the continual flow of ideas. I’m loving doing interviews and collecting stories like one collects seashells at the ocean to arrange them nicely for others to enjoy. It’s a pretty sweet deal all the way around.

But I’ve been needing something…a place to collect myself midday. And this week I finally made the connection.

Our newspaper is kiddy-corner from our state’s only abortion facility, and a few steps from that, a relatively new Visitation Chapel has been set up, primarily to pray for those who enter the facility and come out forever changed. It’s only open on abortion days and anyone can come throughout the day to pray before the Blessed Sacrament.

I’m also convinced this is one of the major causes of disbelief. We live in a world of “give it to me yesterday!” Delayed gratification is extremely difficult for us to tolerate in our climate of instantaneous outcome.

Accustomed as we are to this approach, how could we possibly tolerate the slow-moving ways of the Divine? Not with any ease, that’s for certain. And I think any believer would attest to the difficulty. Who among us hasn’t experienced long periods when God’s plan seemed about as clear as a car window that’s just slogged through a rain-inundated country road?

But every once in a great while, we’re aligned just right with the mirror, and even though we’re still looking at things in hindsight, events and circumstances that have seemed confounding for a long while, perhaps, become abundantly clear. Kind of like that same car window after it’s been washed down with Windex and a nice cloth in the sunny aftermath of the rain shower.

At least that’s what it’s seemed like for me as I’ve taken up my new post as a reporter at our local daily newspaper, The Forum. All of the opened and closed doors alike for the past year — even the past decade — make so much more sense now. Where the line of life was once disjointed and fuzzy, I see things connecting, and a cohesive story in progress. Each writing endeavor, and even so many moments when I wasn’t writing, seem to have been preparing me for the work I began on Tuesday. It almost feels a little eerie to me how quickly I feel at home there. Has it been less than a week only?

I know God’s grace is also at work here. Without a doubt, the many prayers of family and friends have been powerfully evident to me interiorly. I also know that as nice a gift as this has been, this clarification of my life’s movement won’t remain this strong forever. There will be times ahead when some details will become incomprehensible. When that happens, I’ll have to try to remember to think back on this time when so many pieces of my life fit together in such remarkable fashion.

I’ll also remind myself that while mud pies may be present there, regular old mud doesn’t follow us to the life after this one. It’s only on earth when we can’t see the whole picture that blindness, confusion and frustration prevail. Someday, all will be crystal clear, everyday, all the time. What a beautiful reality to look forward to!

For now, I’m cherishing the gift of my precious glance in the rear-view mirror that’s shown me that at this time in my life, I’m right where I’m supposed to be.

Q4U: Do you recall an Aha! moment when events and outcomes that made little sense suddenly came into clear view? What did it feel like when things came together?

Copyright 2012 Roxane Salonen

It’s been a rich Advent for me;

In this article from Crosswalk.com, a work of university professor William Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church, is referenced. Cavanaugh explains the dangers of a government that absorbs its society into itself. North Korea, the reporter notes, is a picture of what happens when the state is full-grown and controls everything.

According to the article, Cavanuagh explains that in healthy societies, churches, voluntary organizations, political parties, and family are all intermediate associations that serve as buffers between the individual and the raw power of the state. “North Korea has eliminated all but the family. Yet even in the family, how much trust can there be if you can go to a concentration camp for something stupid your relative says or does? Better to disassociate even from family and trust no one.”

Imagine living in an environment in which you must disassociate from everyone dear to you in order to survive. There is no life in that that I can see.

Cavanaugh also points out that in North Korea, politics and economics are one. “…the state is deified, Caesar is God, and human freedom and dignity are crushed.” Meanwhile, the “dear leader” is getting drunk on liquor that costs hundreds of dollars a bottle. (How else can he live with himself, after all?)

So what does this have to do with Christ? Everything. For, as the article points out, “Advent reminds us of the coming of the eternal King who is Truth and in whom there is no shadow of falsehood. He came once in humility to shame the powerful in their lies. He comes today to rule over his people and to set us free with his Truth.”

Most of us have no idea how fortunate we are through our ability to embrace our God and live in the light of truth and love. When you are celebrating with your families this Christmas, I hope you will be mindful, as I am now, that being with family, no matter how imperfect they might be, is a supreme blessing. Welcoming and worshiping our Lord Jesus Christ with them? There’s nothing sweeter nor more important.

During his Wednesday address, the Pope said:

“Dear brothers and sisters, let us joyously live the feast of Christmas, which now draws near. Let us live this wondrous event: The Son of God again is born “today”; God is truly close to each one of us, and He wants to meet us — He wants to bring us to Himself. He is the true light, which dispels and dissolves the darkness enveloping our lives and mankind. Let us live the Lord’s birth by contemplating the path of God’s immense love, which raised us to Himself through the mystery of the incarnation, passion, death and resurrection of His Son, for — as St. Augustine affirms — “In [Christ] the divinity of the Only Begotten was made a partaker of our mortality, so that we might be made partakers of His immortality” (Letter 187,6,20: PL 33: 839-840).”

Jesus is coming! Don’t miss the significance of the arrival of this tiny babe. And please, if at all possible, have the merriest of Christmases!

Copyright 2011 Roxane Salonen

I interviewed Metaxas by phone from Seattle, where he was doing some work before heading back to his New York City residence. He’ll be speaking in our area in March, so I had the privilege of picking his brain a bit to help introduce him to our community. When I asked him what drives him, he credited his faith, but also admitted to many “rudderless” years earlier in his life. Groundwork for faith had been evident during his German-Greek Orthodox childhood, but he’d mostly renounced the possibility of God as an enlightened college student.

In his mid-20s, Metaxas had begun looking for answers to life’s biggest questions and came upon various theories, including Carl Jung’s idea of the collective unconsciousness to define God. Around that time his uncle became ill and fell into a coma. When a friend offered prayers, Metaxas was taken aback, moved by the thought that some people actually believed there was a God who cared enough to listen to earthly concerns. When his friend suggested they pray together, he said yes, surprising himself, and in that conversation, he felt an interior shift. Shortly thereafter, he had a dream that changed everything, as he explains in an online video of his conversion.

Several elements merged in the dream; the symbolism of his Greek Orthodox heritage, his love of fishing and his own intellectual ideas melding Jung and Freud. In his waking hours, he’d imagined a frozen lake with the ice being the conscious mind and the water beneath being the unconscious mind, or God. He’d concluded that the goal of life was for the two to have some kind of conversation, and that one should strive to drill a hole into the ice to get at the moving water below.

In his dream he was standing on a frozen lake ice-fishing. He recalls glorious sunshine and brilliant blue sky. He looked down and saw a fish coming up through the fishing hole, so he leaned down and picked it up by the gill. It was a golden fish — like in a fairytale — a miracle, he said.

And suddenly, he recognized that the fish was Christ and that God was speaking to him through the dream. “I realized, it’s true. Jesus is real and I have him, I’m holding him,” he recounted, “and I’m flooded with joy because I realized God used my own symbol system to sort of one-up me, to blow my mind, because all I wanted to do was reach through the ice and touch this inert water, and God is saying, ‘No, I have something more for you. I have my son, Jesus Christ, and He’s a living person. He’s alive.’”

Ever since hearing this story, I can’t get it out of my mind. Perhaps it’s my propensity toward visual learning, combined with my own love of fishing and fond childhood memories of ice-fishing in particular. I can’t help but wonder what ways Christ may be pushing up through the ice of my life to draw me toward the living water.

I commented at my faith-sharing group the other day, on the Feast of St. Lucy, how much in the dark we are in this life; that there is so much we can’t see and know right now. I see Metaxas’ symbol of the frozen lake as the visible of our lives, and the water beneath as all that is invisible now, but that we’ll see someday. I also believe we’re given glimpses of this living water during our earthly journey but not the ability to fully immerse in it.

Conversion stories invigorate me, and even though this isn’t a Catholic conversion story, it won’t be the first time I’ve been deeply moved by the example of a fellow Protestant sister or brother in Christ. A recent newspaper article I wrote about a fellow faith mother and blogging friend inspired me plenty. I hope it will have the same effect on you. Here it is.

Also, if you’re interested: Metaxas’ conversion story in his own words.

Q4U: Advent is as much about conversion as anything else, it seems to me. What about conversion is most inspiring to you?

Copyright 2011 Roxane Salonen

We’re coming up on the third

What I don’t mean by that is that there is a perfect way to do Advent. Not at all! What I do mean is that this season is for us! It was created for us so that we might pull back long enough to reflect on what’s coming. And what’s coming is no small thing, even if He was packaged that way at the entrance.

This week during my show on Real Presence Radio, I had the honor of doing an hour-long segment on Advent with a local priest and another regular guest. Both will be involved in heading up a silent, Ignatian retreat in the coming months. Even though it’s a ways off, the retreat seemed a natural fit for a talk on Advent, when quiet becomes a necessity if we’re to meet God and hear what it is that He’s trying to tell us.

“But aren’t most people scared of silence or pulling away to be quiet?” I asked the priest. The answer I got in return: Yes, this is often the case, but if they knew they were not going to be alone with themselves, and instead were going to hang out with God, they might approach it differently.

Indeed! Though I’ve become more comfortable with silence — and often crave it — in recent years, I can understand the propensity of some to run the other way when presented with an opportunity to quiet down, to just…listen.

Following through on my question about the fear of silence that many people have, Rachelle, promoter of the retreat, said, “You can’t believe how much God talks when you give Him the chance!”

In other words, we need not be fearful of the quiet. As the priest also noted, “It’s again that difference between loneliness and solitude.”

Loneliness is when we are alone, in the dark all by ourselves. Like a scared child at night who has not yet learned to tap into the antidote to the bogeyman’s powers — God — we flee to our parents’ bedroom and hope they might have a soft word to share, or a soft space in the middle for us to rest if we’re really lucky.

But solitude is something else entirely. In solitude, we are not alone. God is with us, and God is big enough to fill all of the dark spaces that encircle us on a daily basis if we but shift our position just a bit and make room for Him.

And here’s the even better news. Even though retreats are amazing and we should all experience them on occasion (they are just plain good for the soul), we can find this solitude, this quiet reserved for a conversation with God, wherever we are. For example, I started out my week (after dropping off the kids at school) on my bed with a book of Scripture readings. I read some of them and asked God to be with me in the week ahead. I opened my heart to make room for Him. I’ve felt Him with me every day of the week and I know that this orienting myself to God played no small part in that.

Q4U: Where was your favorite quiet “space” this week? How did you prepare for it? What did it feel like to spend some time there?

I went to the wrong table at first, passing by one bearing a tempting red-velvet cake. I drooled over it — one of my favorites — and thought how lucky those women were to get to sample that. A short while later I found out that was my table after all. The baker added some lemon rind to the frosting to give it just a hint of citrus loveliness.

“You should have seen

I could tell she wanted to say more, but it was just too hard with her siblings all around fighting for air time. But from her expression, I knew that though it had been an emotion-filled day, it wasn’t necessarily in a bad way. And then I remembered the all-day retreat. The tear-filled afternoon must have be linked to that.

Once her siblings had disappeared into the house, she pulled out a folded-up piece of paper from her backpack and began reading it out loud. “Listen to this, Mom.” She wouldn’t be sharing unless it really mattered. I perked up.

It was a letter from God that had been given to her and her classmates. She was only a few lines into repeating it for my sake when my own internal waterworks were tapped. Just a little wetness in the eyes, but how could one so loved not react? This is the stuff that moves the world, not to mention an individual heart.

Around this time last year, I’d just begun an email conversation with an atheist gal my age. One of the most confounding aspects of what she revealed to me in our months-long conversation was her version of God. Let’s just say it was far from pretty; in fact, it was downright horrifying. If that had been the God to whom I’d been introduced, I’d have run the other way, too.

Somehow, gratefully, I missed the memo about God being a tyrant. Instead, I have been fed a steady diet of loving thoughts from my Lord and Savior from my earliest years as a Christian. And it’s made all the difference.

Words can either draw in or repel. The words God has expressed to me through His never-ending letter of love have been true sustenance for my soul. If only atheists could know this love. It would change everything for them, too. I pray that this letter will reach every last one of God’s children, that all will know of their uniqueness and eternal worth.

I’m going to let Jesus take over from here. This one’s for you. Yes, you…

My dear child,

I love you (John 15:9). I have called you by name, you are mine (Isaiah 43:1). Before I formed you, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you (Jeremiah 1:5). You did not choose me, I chose you (John 15:16). Because you are precious to me, and honored, I love you (Isaiah 43:4). I have loved you with an everlasting love and I will continue my constant love (Jeremiah 31:3). 

How can I abandon you? My love for you is too strong (Hosea 11:8). I love you so much that I hung on the cross at Calvary. I died for you, and if you believe in Me, you will have everlasting life (John 3:16). 
 
Can a woman forget her own baby and not love the child she bore? Yet even should she forget, I will never forget you. I cannot forget you. I formed you in the palm of my hands (Isaiah 49:15-16). I am with you always until the end of the world (Matthew 28:20). 

Do not let your heart be troubled, trust in me (John 14:1). I will help you (Isaiah 41:13). When you pass through deep waters, I will be with you. Your troubles will not overwhelm you. My rod and my staff will comfort you. I will lead you in the path of righteousness (Psalm 23). I will give you peace in the midst of a storm. Don’t let your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (John 14:27). The peace I give you surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7).

My eyes are upon you and I will give you hope, for I am merciful (Psalm 33:18). You will have access to my grace and rejoice in hope while sharing in the glory of my Father (Romans 5:2). You may have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you (John 16:22). 

Do not worry (Luke 12:9). Even the hairs on your head have all been counted, so there is no need to be afraid of anything (Matthew 10:30). The mountains may depart and the hills will be shaken but my steadfast love for you will never end (Isaiah 54:10). 
 
Come unto me, all who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). I will be true and faithful. I will show you constant love and make you mine forever. I will keep my promise, and you will really know me then as never before. I am the Lord your God (Hosea 13:4). 

Your Faithful Friend,
Jesus

Yeah, so, just in case you forgot…you are loved. Always and forever. No matter what. And if you ever need a reminder…there it is.

Q4U: Which of Jesus’ words of love affect you the most?

Copyright 2011 Roxane Salonen

This is me around age 7

This photo depicts best how I’m feeling right now. Maybe it’s knowing the holidays and colder weather are coming; that shift from exterior to interior. I suspect there’s more to it, though, and not all of it is nameable.

What I do know is that I’m yearning for Abba Father. I’m needing a bit of a resting place, some soft spot to go to curl up and let go for a while.

I’m thinking of a time I fell asleep in my father’s arms. He was wearing a Pendelton shirt, a little on the scratchy side but simultaneously comforting. I was curled up in his arms near the fireplace in the living room of my grandparents’ home. I recall the padding of his heartbeat against my ear, his rhythmic breathing, and the gentle resonance of people talking quietly all around. It was the epitome of safe. Even after I awoke, I just stayed there for a long while, allowing myself to feel the warmth of the fire and his sure, safe arms before re-entering the colder world beyond his lap.

That’s what I’m wanting right now. And I know that this need isn’t something any human being can fulfill. So I won’t go expecting it of anyone in my life. There’s only one place to go for it.

I tried twice yesterday to go to Adoration, but each attempt was unsuccessful. So I will keep trying. Eventually I’ll get there, and it will be worth it.

The world can be cold. I just found out last night that my little boys were exposed to a sexually explicit R-rated movie in my and my husband’s absence. My heart breaks contemplating their punctured innocence, and the fact that we weren’t there to stop it, to guard their precious souls. I know they are wounded, as I am as their mother. I’m still processing how to deal with this.

Just before that revelation, I attended a session at our Catholic high school about drug use in our area. I learned that heroin use is big right now in our city, and that marijuana is 30 percent stronger now than during the days of Woodstock. There are more emergency room visits related to it than ever before due in part to the dangerous rise of the heart rate associated with its use. The drug ecstasy is also showing up in our school in slightly higher amounts than neighboring schools, according to a poll.

I can do what I can do, but I can’t stop this altogether, I can’t shield my children from the world that awaits. I’m going to need all the injections of grace I can take in to move through this darker part of the parenting journey, knowing that each passing year my little ones are going to be more and more vulnerable to the forces of evil. And that I’m helpless in the face of some of it.

I need to be fueled anew by that greater force that rises above it all, to store up grace that will be necessary for what’s next. I need to cozy up to the Creator again, to go to where He is sitting and waiting, and climb up into His lap. Only there will I find the warmth and hope I’m lacking at present. Once found, I can bring it to my kids, and trust that through it, they will find the love I have for them — that the Creator has for them — more attractive than anything else they might be offered as enticement.

In Scripture this morning, I read from 1 Tim: 1:5: “Whereas the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith.” That’s what I’m seeking in the Creator’s embrace. And I know that without going straight to the Source himself, I’ll get only cheap substitutions.

I’m heading there. I’m on my way. I’m going for the sustenance I’ll need. When I’ve sat there long enough, when I’ve gathered up all my strength again and can see the clear path ahead, then I’ll be able to do the work I’ve been sent to do.

Q4U: Where do you go for a re-fueling of the spiritual kind? How do you deal with the darkness?

Copyright 2011 Roxane Salonen

If you’ve had the pleasure

Earlier today I heard a presentation on integrity and it got me thinking about superheroes, the epitome of integrity. Superheroes are the ones we look to and count on when the city has been threatened.

The presentation today took place at a local church that hosts a monthly gathering for Christian business leaders. It always includes a talk by a local pastor. Today, after telling the story of King David’s fall from grace upon being seduced by Bathsheba (from 2 Samuel, Chapter 11), Pastor Matthew St. John talked about how desperate we are for leaders of integrity; a quality that can take a lifetime to cultivate but an instant to squander.

“When integrity is shown, it’s always a contrast to the norm, to the dynamic in which you are living,” he said, noting that integrity is best displayed as we move away from self-absorption. “A life of integrity is typically a product of self-control lived out consistently. It’s the pursuit of what is noble.”

But it’s also costly. In the above-mentioned Scripture story, Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, stood as the example of integrity, but in the end, it cost him his very life.

Nevertheless, it’s a worthy pursuit, worthy dying for, even. “In your life, what ensures nobility in the world around you?” Pastor Matthew asked as a challenge.

Though heroes may be in short supply, I’ve been blessed to have stumbled onto the path of many (some largely unsung) in the course of my Christian walk. Each has influenced my faith life in some way. Though this is just a small sampling, consider it the start of my list of fellow Christians who have inspired me toward a life of integrity in recent years:

• Converts to the faith like former atheist Jennifer Fulwiler and Heather King have introduced me to insightful food for thought and helped me appreciate the gift of faith in an invigorating way. They are both thinkers who can turn any argument against the faith on its head, but always, they do so with love and compassion, because of the love and compassion that has been shown them. (Love begets love!)

• Abortion attempt survivors have begun springing up to share their stories and I have found them incredibly powerful. Sarah Smith was maimed when an abortion attempt took her twin brother but left her alive in the womb. After surviving the abortion, she was born with bilateral, congenital dislocated hips and many other physical handicaps. Others with similar stories: Melissa Ohdenand Gianna Jessen. These women have given a voice to the voiceless.

• Abstinence speakers. I heard Pam Stenzel speak here in Fargo last year and won’t soon forget it, including the part where she talks about having been conceived in rape. (Hard to imagine such a vibrant person not existing.) Now, she speaks nationally and even internationally on the subject of sexual integrity (there’s that word again), addressing young people in paticular with the positive message of God’s beautiful design for intimacy.
• The newly prolife. I’ve mentioned Abby Johnson before, but I can’t say enough about how inspiring her story has been to me. It took an abundance of integrity for Abby to leave her post at Planned Parenthood and cross over to the other side of the fence to begin speaking up for the child in the womb. She put her life on the line and I’m sure it wasn’t easy losing friends and so many familiar things, but she did it because she felt it was the right thing to do, and now she’s a light to others.
• Those choosing the harder path daily. “Steve Gershom,” a pseudonym, is a man who is Catholic, Gay and Feeling Fine, according to his blog. I bumped into him recently through a radio interview and am truly impressed by his commitment to live a celibate life as a man with same-sex attractions. He is doing what Pastor Matthew mentioned in his talk today, choosing self-discipline and the higher good moment by moment, against the norm.
• Finally, post-abortive women who are speaking out about the ill effects of their decision — including a local group that calls itself P.A.L.S. (post-abortive ladies). I’ve seen up close and personal their stories of healing and triumph over death. Their bravery in speaking out has helped me understand abortion and its effects on a much deeper level and empowered me to approach the subject with compassion and conviction.

Q4U: Who are the unsung heroes in your world who live lives of integrity?