And thus begins Advent, a season of preparation for the coming of Christ Jesus (also known worldwide in English-speaking communities as “baby Jesus”). May we all find beauty in the struggles of our preparations for welcoming God into our lives wholly and newly this Christmas season. May God’s will be done among us all, and May we be our best selves. May our Advent be very advent-agious both to ourselves and to the world at large. Amen.
Post-a-day 2022
“Will no one stay awake??? Peter? John? James?”
Sung smoothly and almost eerily to a smooth and vivid tune, Jesus asks these words. Yet, how often do we everyday people experience something similar to this? The ones we love and who love us not supporting us in what we are doing, not for lack of effort or care, but for lack of realizing that merely their presence and attention would have made all the difference in the world in our having felt supported.
Post-a-day 2022
And so, we light the Easter candle… from 2012. ❤ Happy ten years! And happy Jesus!
Post-a-day 2022
As we celebrate the rising of Jesus the Christ, both from death into life and in helping us toward eternal, loving life, may we remember that every day, every moment is an opportunity for us, too, to rise to the occasion, to love irrationally and wholly.
Happy Easter, y’all!! ❤ ❤ ❤
Post-a-day 2022
Tonight, something burned away from me. Big time.
We had a whole day of events at church today, and it was really cool, right? Well, it all ended with Mass and then Adoration. For those who don’t know, Adoration is when a priest brings out the blessed sacrament and puts it on display for folks to adore. Put differently, it is an opportunity for people to sit in a physical presence of God, to look right at a physical form of Him. (The blessed sacrament is bread that has undergone transubstantiation, a change of form/state, into the exact form that was the bread Jesus, way back when in the Garden of Gethsemane, declared to be his body. The priests have a beautiful right – is it actually called a right?? Now, I’m doubting myself here… – in which they recreate Jesus’ words and actions, allowing for the bread and wine to become the body and blood of Christ, just as they were when Jesus declared them to be his body and blood.) It’s like having someone here in person, instead of over the phone – prayer, aka conversation, with one sitting right in front of us.
During Adoration tonight, there was some music, some prayer led aloud, and some silence. For part of the time, the blessed sacrament sat on the altar for all to see. And, eventually, the priests and deacons carried it slowly around the entire church – it’s a quite large church, you see – for everyone to be able to pray right up close to the blessed sacrament.
I tell you, every time I got to see it straight on, clearly, I suddenly lost the capacity to sing. All I experienced in those moments was intensity through my whole being, like a current being upped immensely in power. The words that suddenly filled my head were simply, “Love,” and, “My Love.” Every time.
And then, when it came around by us – I was even on the end of the pew, and they stopped almost exactly next to me – things went to a whole new level. As it turned the corner onto our aisle, my breathing became inexplicably heavy and fast. My tears turned into heavy, intense crying. I was in a sudden full-blown, desperation-type cry in mere moments. We were already kneeling, and I couldn’t even keep myself up – I fell to the ground… or, rather, I went from sitting tall on my knees to collapsing on my heels, holding onto the pew to keep myself from falling off the kneeler, my chin just above even with the pew back where I was holding myself still upright, but lower to the ground than before.
When they were within about a meter or two, I felt a sudden heat approaching me, coming from their direction. As they got next to me, I felt like the intensity of a sun was exploding outward from the small group of priests as deacons, the blessed sacrament at the center. My entire body was intensely hot, in a matter of moments and directly connected to the position of the blessed sacrament. As I roughly cried my heart out, my whole body shaking, I could feel something burning away from me, layers being penetrated and spots being dissolved in the crazy heat. It felt like a fever times two. I considered how I needed to take off my sweatshirt, also the jacket that had been covering the backs of my legs… yet I couldn’t make a move beyond crying and clinging to the pew, looking directly to the blessed sacrament, struggling to breathe calmly (and failing). I even felt one priest notice and look right at me as I fell downward, but I didn’t even look at him as I typically would do. I was pinned.
And then, this small eternity in the cosmos ended. The priests and deacons began to walk again, moving to the next spot. As they moved away, I could feel the temperature changing by small jolts with each step they took. Perhaps thirty seconds or so later, I found no need to remove my sweatshirt, as it was back to the winter cool it had been all day in the church.
And I collapsed even further, like all my energy had been spent, like after a long, long day of work and a nice cleansing shower, how I collapse into bed… it felt like that. I could barely even hold onto the pew back at this point, I just draped an arm on it to keep me from collapsing fully to the floor. My eyes could just see over the pew back, following the blessed sacrament still, but from a distance now. All my energy was gone. I had been well worn, it felt, well washed and scrubbed and cleaned. I tried singing a bit, and could only manage it when I couldn’t see the blessed sacrament directly. Every time I saw it, no sound was emitted from me, now matter how I may have intended.
I eventually got my energy restored and was even more energetic afterward than I had been all day today. My mom was asking the main priest about a quote afterward, and I joined them briefly as I returned from a bathroom trip. The priest recognized me from adoration – he remembered seeing me crying. I wasn’t embarrassed. Not in the least.
And I noticed that I felt so much more myself now, not so afraid or strained or stressed about anything anymore. Weight had been lifted, and from all of me, somehow. Now, I’m going to bed much later than I like or than usual. I am utterly exhausted. I do not know what is going to happen with my living situation or my financial situation. Nope. And, somehow, I’m not secretly incredibly stressed about that. We’ll just face that tomorrow and onward. May God’s way manifest clearly and beautifully, and may I embody it fully through myself in every way.
Post-a-day 2022
I book-clubbed tonight… on a book about God. Actually, on a book about Jesus.
I have never done that before.
I had never really wanted to do that before, though, because I’m not sure I have ever really had friends who are comfortable enough in themselves to be able to see and speak honestly about all of it and their own lives and experiences. So, it is cool that I have a friend like that, that we are both like that these days.
And I enjoyed the book-clubbing… cheesy as the questions may have been… and un-relatable as the author’s experience may be for me (and my friend)… But it was nice to talk about such things and in such a way. I am satisfied from it. Like a few sips of sparkling, cool beverage on a warm day. Satisfied. 🙂
Post-a-day 2020
And Satan cackles, “Alas, I have conquered this Jesus!”
But, rising from the dead on the third day, young Jesus declares to an astonished Satan, “April Fools!”
”Noooooooooo…..,” weeps Satan.
Post-a-day 2018
Last night, it snowed here. In Houston, Texas. It happened yet again. What miracles lie before us? It began after I went to sleep, and didn’t begin to stick until after I woke up for a bathroom break in the middle of the night. So, I woke up to snow covering everything that wasn’t concrete this morning. Which, when you think about it, is kind of the best kind of snow – you don’t have to shovel or worry about tire chains or anything, but you get to have beautiful snow everywhere around you.
The hit of the morning was arriving to school. My mom drove me in, because we were going to a Christkindlmarkt (German Christmas market) together after school, and the market was too far away for me to drive home first and then go, and it didn’t make sense for us to drive two cars out there. She was staying for a bit, because we had Mass at school for the Immaculate Conception, and this was a chance for her to see the school a little bit. Pulling into the parking lot (vacant of teachers, because we were so early), we discovered a sort of snowball fight happening in the picnic table area next to the lot. We didn’t have much snow on the ground, but the kids were making some snowballs out of it, and throwing them around at one another. It was adorable.
Naturally, my mom declared that I had to make a snowball, as we were leaving the car. I grabbed an already-made snowball from the ground, which had lost only a bit after originally falling there, and showed it to her. As she eyed me up while she finished off her own snowball, I realized that she intended to throw hers at me.
And so the fight began.
My mom and I, shuffling around a parking lot and a small grassy area with snow about it, picking up and throwing odd snowballs at one another, practically screeching with delight. When I was turned away, a snowball hit her square in the back of the head. No one was too near us, though, so it had come a long way. And these were a little tough for regular snowballs, so it definitely hurt her a bit in the moment (stung, perhaps, is the appropriate word here). It didn’t ruin out fun, of course, but merely added to the silliness of the whole affair – one of my students had attacked my mother with a snowball*. No part of that declaration makes sense for living here, in Houston, Texas. 😛
In class, before Mass, kids lined up at the windows to stare at the snow in the courtyard below and on the roofs within view. This was only the second time in their lives that it has snowed here, so their fascination with it was completely understandable, and utterly adorable.
Today had some magic, that’s for sure.
*I found out later that the student who hit my mom actually was a student of mine. He asked me ‘who that teacher was, walking with me earlier,’ and, when I asked for clarification, he described the morning snowball affair. “That was my mom.” In shock, he declared that he thought it was a teacher and asked me to tell my mom that he was sorry for what he did to her. (My mom and I laughed at the thought that he apologized for having hit my mom, but that is seems to be the case that he willingly would hit a teacher in the head with a hard snowball, without question.)
P.S. My task today was to “[d]raw a Christmas card”. So, I drew one on the roof of my mom’s car tonight as we were leaving the Christkindlmarkt. Frost had begun to reappear all over the place.
Post-a-day 2017
Just as I was going to bed on Sunday night, I ended up on the phone with my mom. She was on her way to Cowboy Church, the Church services offered for all the cowboys who are in town to participate in the rodeo (though it is open to all, of course), and so, even though it was long past my bedtime, it being near midnight my time, I asked her to call me back once she had arrived and settled in at the service.
I rushed to finish my bedtime routine, reading and all, and had just finished everything when my phone was buzzing with the FaceTime call from Church. Therefore, I found myself attending Church for the first time from the comfort of my own bed. But it gets better.
The passage on which the pastor focused mainly was the one from Luke 10 where Jesus ends up at the home of Martha and Mary, and Mary sits and listens to and dotes on Jesus, while her sister, Martha, is preparing the meal. (Martha eventually comments to Jesus about the situation, and asks him to tell Mary that she needs to help Martha, and not just sit around, and then Jesus talks about how Mary has actually picked the better and more important of the two options, and all that jazz.)
You know how there’s always the discussion over Shakespeare’s works, whether they are too old-fashioned to be fully understood to people today, and would do best being re-done in a way that people can actually relate to the various situations and circumstances, as people had been able to do in Shakespeare’s time? Now, typically, we think of the biblical figures as following a certain type of diet, based on historical information on the region, as well as various notes within the Bible itself. However, seeing as this was Cowboy Church, the pastor definitely took it upon himself to speak to his audience, and to make the story more relatable for his listeners.
How, you ask, did he do that? Well, Martha wasn’t cooking seeds in the oil, making bread, or anything like that. She was in the kitchen chopping tomatoes for the salsa, cooking and slicing the meat, heating the tortillas… in short, she was making fajitas for Jesus.
After that image, all I could see was a Jesus eating fajitas next to a jar of Pace Picante, while wearing a tunic, a cowboy hat, and boots; and then riding off on a horse, while swinging a lasso in the air. Or perhaps I just kept flipping back and forth between a sort of Chuck Norris and a Jesus image. Not sure – it’s a difficult thing to imagine, Jesus eating tacos and fajitas.
All in all, I had a wonderful time at Cowboy Church, and for various reasons. i also had several firsts in that attendance. It was, of course, my first time at Cowboy Church, and I was thrilled to be in attendance. It was my first time to attend Church while in my bed and PJs. it was my first time imagining Jesus easting fajitas and salsa. And, perhaps the oddest of them all, it was my first time spending the entire service using my phone. It was a way cool sort of bedtime story slash activity. So glad to have such an awesome mom. Thanks, Mom!
Post-a-day 2017
Shortly after I turned 18, my mom and I went to stay at my aunt’s house (perhaps for a weekend or something), which is in a small town about two hours outside of our city, and in the semi-middle-of-nowhere.
My cousin Shawn, who is not quite a year older than I am and was/is also my Confirmation sponsor, decided for us to go out for a bit, late one night. He was reminded of the fact that I had recently turned 18, and so declared that we needed to have cigars to celebrate. I shared my being not into it, but went along to the gas station, where he bought two small cigars (which smelled nice, actually).
We ended up at a park down the street, play complex and all, and I don’t remember if Shawn smoked his cigar or not, but I know that I did not smoke mine, and ended up just giving it back to him. Nonetheless, we hung out at the park for a couple hours, I recall, just walking around, talking as we played on the various playsets. I remember specifically mentioning how I loved that Jesus has fabulous grammar in the Bible (I think it was as I was walking across the shaky bridge thing, and then slid down a pole at the end). Somewhere, I had been discussing with girlfriends the idea of husbands and boyfriends and such, and we had come to the idea that Jesus just needs to be a real person right now, so he can be one of our boyfriends. And I just loved that he had perfect grammar (at least from what I recalled having read), making me wish even more that he could be my man. Haha.
So these are the kinds of things I did with my cousins growing up. Harmless, somewhat silly activities, filled with goofy yet incredibly honest and open conversation. I miss Shawn a lot, and all the ridiculous love he has to share (and shares) with the world.
He’ll be in India for a while soon. Just a fun fact. 🙂
hannah ananas 