A few months ago, I decided I HAD to get a bilingual Bible. I actually have two Bibles in Spanish, but after seeing another person's bilingual Bible (even if it was a Protestant one), I knew I had to have one. It hadn't even hit me that such a thing existed until I saw it, and then it was all like YES! I WANT IT.

I tried to just find one in Chihuahua, pero es no va (no go). After a bizarrely long time, it occured to me I could order one online, but all the ones I looked at were rather expensive, even before the international shipping costs. (Note to US vendors - quit giving shipping breaks to Canada and not Mexico, you racist capitalist swine.) And at last I thought of my new favorite online bookstore, Better World, which not only has a good selection and inexpensive shipping (less than $4 per book, anywhere in the world), it also gives part of all sales to literacy funds and rescues used books from extinction. Huzzah! Get good and make good.

So I went ahead and ordered a very nice-looking leather-bound Catholic bilingual Bible from them, and began to play the waiting game. This is the part I hate, because every time I order books, I want them NOW, and every day I am in a fever of anticipation and mild fear that they won't arrive. Or that when they do, no one will be around to accept them and they would get to the downtown post office and require all sorts of wheeling and dealing in order for me to get a ride down there to retrieve them. Or get hung up at customs for no particular reason (Guangzhou never did release my $50 copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). You're so vulnerable when you're in love.

Every day for the past three weeks, I've danced around the mailbox trying to catch sight of the book or a "pick up" slip, but every day, nothing. Until today! Hooray, it has arrived!

Thus, I must sing a song of praise to Spanish and Mexico. I've already covered Better World Books. Dig 'em.

1. Spanish is connected to Latin in a much purer way than English is, and I love it when Spanish words for things are like the more high-level English words. Example: yesterday, one of my adults classes asked me what "behavior" meant. I gave my usual sort of stuttering explanation until the light dawned. "OH," one of them said, and wrote down in his notebook, "Comportamente".

I love that.

2. People in Mexico are WAY more polite than Americans, and, strangely, Korea. Everyone, and I mean everyone, greets each other with "Buenos dias" or "buenos tardes". Men hold the door openfor women. If you drop something on the floor, someone else rushes to pick it up for you. All conversations start with inquiries into how you are feeling and how your family is, and people are genuinely interested. And something happens in Mexico on a daily basis that I saw maybe five times the whole year I lived in Korea - men give their seats to women on the bus, even teenage boys. Doesn't matter the age of the woman, males get up and offer their seats with a gentlemanly flourish. I saw this happen maybe five times in Korea, and always to old or pregnant women.

3. Mexico - they work hard and they play hard.

4. La comida! I know I've praised Mexican food before, but you can never praise it enough.

5. Menudo (the boy band) WAS NOT FROM MEXICO. In a related note, Bruce Lee was not Japanese.

6. Rosaries a'poppin'.

7. Mexico has day care centers, children's hospitals. extended close-knit families, babysitters, etc., but Mexicans never seem to be under the impression that raising their kids is ultimately anyone's responsibilty but their own. They're not always looking for ways to blame the school or teachers for everything their kids do, and they don't scream and threaten litigation to get everything their own way for their own needs, all other people be damned. Ejemplo: I was doing an activity with a high-level class in which they had to imagine they were hotel managers and had to come up with solutions to some problems in their hotel. One problem was there was nothing for kids to do and they ran around the hotel aimlessly. i did this about a thousand times in China, and my students there came up with good solutions involving hiring nannies, building playgrounds, etc. - pretty much what I figured were the "right" answers. But my Mexican students, all women with children, unanimously came up with ideas to educate people on how to take care of their own kids and how to spend more time with their own families. Bravo!

8. The kids I see in Mass are the most well-behaved kids I have ever seen in church. Ever.

This has gotten a bit away from my Bible, hasn't it?

I've always been interested in different religions and philosophies, and a few years ago, I read quite a bit about Islam.  One of the concepts I liked when I was reading was that of the "revert", the idea that people do not convert to Islam, they revert, because their original nature was that of submission to God.  I like the idea that the process of coming closer and submitting to God is reverting to your true nature and not something forced on you against your natural inclinations.  I also like the word for personal reasons, because I'm neither a "cradle Catholic" nor a convert to Catholicism, and the term "revert" expresses what happened rather succinctly.
My mother and my maternal side of the family were Catholic, and therefore, when I was a baby, I was baptised into the Church.  However, my father was not, and even my mother was not too keen on actually raising me Catholic.  They both decided that I should decide for myself and be free from dogma and all that stuff, even though, when I expressed a desire to go to Mass or church and learn more about Jesus and read the Bible, I was actively discouraged (for a while.  I am quite stubborn when I want to be.).  So I grew up without much Catholic input, did not go to parochial school, did not go to Mass, did not go to catechism classes, didn't make a first communion or  confirmation, did not learn much about the Church at all except a little about Jesus and Mary and "you wouldn't like it".
Therefore, when I decided as an adult I was interested in this whole Catholic thing, I found myself in an odd position.  I was baptised, so technically I didn't need to go through RCIA.  But I knew very little about the Church, the Mass, the teachings, even basic Mass protocol.  I was terrified the first time I went to Mass of my own accord.  I was sure I would be thrown out as an outsider, an imposter, a fraud.  I knew better than to take holy communion, but everything else I had to learn by looking out of the corner of my eyes at what everyone else was doing.  I left shaky with relief, and determined to return.  Gradually, the fear left me and I became more and more sure, against all that I thought was logical and normal for me, that I wanted to get confirmed. 
God handed me a gift right when I needed it; my parish offered a confirmation class for adults, and I grabbed the chance, finally making my first confession, confirmation, and communion.  But still, for years, I didn't have a snappy answer to the question, "How long have you been a Catholic?"  It seemed weird and confusing to answer honestly with, "Well, I was born Catholic but didn't get any instruction and then I decided to get confirmed as an adult..."  Now I can just say, "I reverted a few years ago", and then if someone wants more details, they can ask. 
Needless to say, it's the best thing I ever did, too.

I have a new favorite saint - Saint Gemma Galgani. She's not as famous in the West as Francis or Therese or Padre Pio, but she's a good one. We've been spending a lot of time together, she and I, and, inspiried by her example and Lent, I've been praying to share in the suffering of Jesus, just a little bit.

It occured to me during Mass that I already have my own, so to speak, stigmata. Both the crucifixes over the altars at Saint Anthony's show Jesus with torn, bloody knees, and it finally hit me - Jesus' knees hurt. So I might not bleed from my palms, but I can feel Our Lord's pain in my knees and meditate on the Passion and offer it up just like Pio. Jesus walked on swollen knees. Jesus knows how it feels to turn just a little and have them shoot pain up your legs. Jesus knows how it feels to practically have to drag them by sheer willpower. And I do, too.

Jesus also decided to let me share in his suffering by letting me pull/throw out/strain my lower back yesterday. I almost never have back pain, amazingly, but yesterday I pulled somethin' because I can't bend over or sit or pick anything up without a whole bunch of hurting. So I can just be mean and gripe about it or I can see it as another manifestation of my personalized stigmata. Jesus' back hurt carrying the cross. Jesus couldn't bend over during the Passion without wrenching something.

If this sounds like I'm being sarcastic, I'm really not. Every time I have to clench my teeth to keep from shouting from the pain and I have to walk around like an 80-year-old woman because I can't go any faster without hurting, I remember that Jesus hurt like this and a million times worse - for me. And for all these ungrateful people who try to minimize him and ignore and blaspheme him and say he doesn't even exist. He would have gone through all that even for the worst person on earth (Christopher Hitchens?) alone. And thnking of that suddenly makes me feel a whole lot better.

I love the rosary, and I've recently gotten into making twine rosaries. Once you make them, though, you have to have someone to give them to, so, besides sending them to various missions which desperately need them, I've decided I will also send one to whomever wants one, especially prisoners. If you want one or know someone who does, just send me an email at amberrollins[at]gmail.com and give me your address. La Paz de Jesucristo!

Went to my first Christmas Mass in Mexico at our parish church this week.  I expected it to be packed, even the earliest one, which is the one we went to, and it sure was.  It’s great to see the church so filled, though, and it struck me - I always read about people in the US saying their churches are not very well attended on a weekly basis, but everywhere I’ve been to Mass, including Texas, it’s been packed full.  Sunday Mass in China was full, even with threat of reprisal, Mass in Korea was full, Mass in Texas was always SRO (even early-morning daily Mass), and there are so many people at every Mass in Mexico that people end up standing in the lobby and outside the church, still listening, genuflecting, and making the sign of the cross.  Where are these places with little attendance?  I have been very fortunate.

It was a beautiful Mass, needless to say, and even more beautiful was Pope Benedict’s midnight mass.  My husband and I watched it on EWTN, and while the whole thing was awe-inspiring, his homily was so deep, so transcendent, so amazing that I can’t even do it any sort of justice.  ”We won’t see another one like him again,” a priest in Korea said during an Easter retreat, and he sure got that right.  El Papa (the wonderful Spanish for the pope) has this way of saying/writing things with so many layers that you can read or hear it fifteen times and find something new and truthful every time.  And I have to admit, something I will never forget, something I burst out crying when he said, was this:

“The medieval theologian William of Saint Thierry once said that God — from the time of Adam — saw that his grandeur provoked resistance in man, that we felt limited in our own being and threatened in our freedom. Therefore God chose a new way. He became a child. He made himself dependent and weak, in need of our love. Now, this God who has become a child says to us: you can no longer fear me, you can only love me.“

This is Christmas.

I had the presence of mind to remember to bring the camera today when we made our trip up Calle Francisco Villa to go to Mass, so I've snagged a bunch of cool new pics of Chihuahua and our new parish, San Antonio de Padua.


Go to Hola Mexico (link somewhere in my sidebar) to see them all in their glory (more pics of The Boy to come soon).

Seriously...

Lent is a wonderful thing. When I was a kid and had only the most nebulous idea of what Lent was, I thought it was all about giving things up and suffering. Wrong! To quote the American Catholic web site, "Lent is a time of choice. The desert is a place of choice. Confront the choices you have made, the choices you are making and the choices you have yet to make."

Some Lenten web resources:

Lent: Call to Conversion

US Conference of Catholic Bishops Lenten Resources

EWTN Lent Calendar

Creighton College's Online Ministry Page Online retreat, Stations of the Cross, tons of good stuff.

For a whole lot of reasons, my favorite pope is John XXIII. Now, thanks to the good and amazing Jennifer F. of the Et Tu? blog, I have what's called the Daily Decalogue of John XXIII. I find this wonderful not only because I already love John the 23rd, but because this apeals greatly to my psychological make-up. Whenever I have to commit to do anything for a long time, even if it's something I love and want to do, I suddenly can't do it. But for only one day...OK. I can handle that.

1) Only for today, I will seek to live the livelong day positively
without wishing to solve the problems of my life all at once.



2) Only for today, I will take the greatest care of my appearance: I
will dress modestly; I will not raise my voice; I will be courteous in
my behaviour; I will not criticize anyone; I will not claim to improve
or to discipline anyone except myself.



3) Only for today, I will be happy in the certainty that I was created
to be happy, not only in the other world but also in this one.



4) Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances, without requiring
all circumstances to be adapted to my own wishes.



5) Only for today, I will devote 10 minutes of my time to some good
reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the
body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul.



6) Only for today, I will do one good deed and not tell anyone about it.



7) Only for today, I will do at least one thing I do not like doing;
and if my feelings are hurt, I will make sure that no one notices.



8) Only for today, I will make a plan for myself: I may not follow it
to the letter, but I will make it. And I will be on guard against two
evils: hastiness and indecision.



9) Only for today, I will firmly believe, despite appearances, that
the good Providence of God cares for me as no one else who exists in
this world.



10) Only for today, I will have no fears. In particular, I will not be
afraid to enjoy what is beautiful and to believe in goodness. Indeed,
for 12 hours I can certainly do what might cause me consternation were
I to believe I had to do it all my life.