Tag Archives: family

Gratitude amid the mess

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I am grateful for today, for every day really. Yet today is a day set aside to give thanks and, as one is able or in the mood, to celebrate these gifts in the company of family and friends.

This week in the United States has seen the tragic and bloody consequences of violence, the power of the gun lobby, and the consequences of division and hateful rhetoric. It sets an odd context for giving thanks.

This month began with elections that mirrored the polarization and division in our land. Sadly too it seemed that even the Bishops conference was not immune.

Wars continue amid our global family in Ukraine, Ethiopia, and far too many other countries. As we speak families are on the march through the dangerous Darien Gap while others have finally safely reached our borders to seek asylum, only to be turned away.

Our human family is in the midst of a mess. And Earth our common home is caught up in it all too.

And it is in this context that we are to give thanks?

Yes!

Thanks for the gift of life and love.

Thanks for the possibilities and opportunities to turn things around for the common good.

Thanks that the sun rises and sets each and every day, most often with amazing artistic touches.

Thanks for the people in our lives and the air that we breathe and the creativity within our hearts and minds.

Thanks for all that is and was and will be, even if it is messy. Thanks that God is with us in the mess.

Thanks for companionship, family, friends and four legged friends.

Thanks for the gift of hope.

Today we celebrate and give thanks.

Tomorrow the work of making the world a better place continues.

On this Day

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On this day in 1902, my grandfather Ludwig Lincoln Schmelzer was born in Pennsylvania to German immigrants, Anton and Ida. They chose Lincoln as his middle name because he was born on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. A lot to live up to for a baby!

My granddad Ludy had a kind heart, wise soul, and gentle spirit. He loved my Irish immigrant Gandmother Eileen to bits. Theirs was a love story for the ages–there are love letters to prove it, written by him, that would make your heart melt.

In their later years, my mom’s parents moved in with us. I was in third grade, and so I grew up helping my mom in her tender loving care of her parents. My grandmother passed away first in 1985. Granddad followed when I was in high school, in 1987. I’ve always said that he died of a broken heart, missing his love.

Journeying with my grandfather through those last lonely years was an honor and a privilege. He would watch his wife’s soap operas each day, shows he’d never cared for. He had a routine, and he stuck to it! I remember watching his independent self carefully, as he’d make his way with his cane from the study, which had become his bedroom, through the house to the family room each day. He’d eat, watch his wife’s shows, maybe some golf it was available, and then suffle back to his room. When he passed, he was more than ready to be reunited with my grandmother.

Earlier memories of Granddad are of his scratchy beard. His hugs. His delicious candy canes (he came from a long line of candy makers). And most of all his love. Today would have been his 119th birthday, and it is his 34th birthday in heaven. He has long been reunited with his wife Eileen, and his daughter Eileen (my mom) joined him 17 years ago.

Also on this day, 16 years ago, I wrote my letter to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace taking my first official step on my journey into religious life, requesting to become a Pre-Candidate. What a journey of love it has been! I know that all the love I received from my Granddad as a kid, watching his loving relationships lived out to the end, and my mom’s loving care for both her parents, had a lasting impact on my own life and nurtured own desire to be of loving service.

Happy Birthday Granddad! Celebrating the gift of you.

Granddad and yours truly on my 4th birthday
My grandparents with my Mom Eileen (it was her 4th birthday) and my Uncle Jim

Heart Bubbles

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This post is dedicated to the people in my life who are most directly impacted by the sin of racism.

My prayer of late is percolating, filled with emotion and low on words. I am a very strong “T” on the Myers Briggs (those who know me will not be surprised), but my thought bubbles right now are being outpaced by my heart bubbles.

Love for the people in my life most directly impacted by racism. Frustration at the daily challenge they face just going through life, microagressions, burdens, barriers and other things I can intellectually try to understand but never really will. Care and concern for them, especially at this time when everything is, just, everything.

Anger at the lives lost and put in danger because of the lie of white supremacy. Kids with candy or toys killed. Young men running or walking killed. Young women in their own homes or cars killed. Enough says my heart. When will it stop cries my heart.

Suprise that many well meaning people with skin tones close to mine, who normally don’t see color, are now making the NYT nonfiction best seller list decidedly anti-racist themed. Grateful even if they are late to the party. Worried that a crash course or binge read may not be the best way to do systemic work.

Hope. This moment does feel different. Fervent hope that it truly is different.

Because of the LOVE I feel deep in my heart for the people I have been blessed to call friend and family and community who are most impacted, each moment, each day, each hour, each minute by the sin of racism.

Because of the LOVE that created us and knitted us together. In the beginning, now and forever.

Laundromat Lessons

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Life circumstances have meant that I have had to go to the laundromat from time to time in recent weeks. I don’t mind. For one thing I get it all done at once. For another, I remember my mom all those years when our washer and dryer were broken and visits to the laundrymat, as I called it, were part of the routine.

Memories flood back from some forgotten place, summoned by the sounds and smells.

Saturdays and weeknights at the laundromat. Plugging coins into the machines. Playing make believe. Helping Mom fold (I am sure she had to refold most of it). Making laundromat friends.

I found myself wondering about those boys and girls I knew as I watched kids bonding amidst the too clean smells and preoccupied adults.

Tag. Tossing a stuffed animal. Conspiratorial whispering. Jumping off the sorting tables until an adult looks up and intervenes. Dancing to the music.

In my memory I played.

But more often I was really more like the little girl across from me now. Self suffcient in her pink tennis shoes and practical ponytail, she observes it all, arms crossed.

What impresses me most of all is the working moms–and dads–filling the car with the laundry on a busy weeknight after a very full day. Then filling the car again with kids and heading to the laundromat to be about the business of life, one load at a time. Rinse. Repeat.

Just like my mom, doing what needed to be done. Day by day.

Contemplative Lessons

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Today is my Mom’s 15th birthday in heaven. As often happens around anniversaries, she’s been on my heart and mind a bit of late.

I am grateful to her for so many things, not the least of which is the gift of life!  She taught me so much by her love and example.

My mom was a true contemplative in action.  She could stop and stare for hours … at the forest, at the ocean, at her own backyard.  She saw the love of God reflected in creation and knew instinctively how to soak it all in.

Mom

I used to love just watching her as she stared at the embodiment of God’s love all around us.  My Dad took this picture in West Virginia. It’s classic mom.  She’s probably a little older than I am now in this picture.  She’s got her book on her lap, but she’s contemplating the book of creation instead.

Nourished and fed by the love of God, be it at Sunday mass or all around her, my mom put it into action.  Dust did not settle under her feet.

Over the years in her work, helping prisoners at the local jail learn decision making skills or as a congressional aide helping citizens navigate our system, she found herself on the right side of justice and helped to build the kindom.

In our community, she was a leader in ways we never even knew until her wake, when person after person came up to us to tell us how she helped them with x, y and z.  So unassuming, she just did what needed to be done.

At home, journeying with her own parents through chronic illness and death, welcoming them into her own home, raising five kids, supporting her husband’s call to serve the wider world, she was most always grounded and exuding love.

Even when she herself was very ill, she would sit and ponder and teach us how to love and be loved.

I still miss you mom, and always will, but I will also always be grateful for your lessons in contemplation, action, and love.

This Must Stop

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Stop Gun Violence Now.pngLast night I was perusing the CNN Exit Polls and discovered that 59% of midterm voters polled support stricter gun control measures.  I was sad to see that number so low, especially after all the amazing activism of young people after the Parkland Shooting and countless other senseless mass shootings.

Then today, just after reading about the latest shooting at a nightclub in California, I received a text from my sister.  It started out saying that my niece Eileen was dancing at the Borderline last night … the nightclub where the shooting I’d just been reading about happened.

my heart stopped.  what if?

I closed my eyes, said a prayer, and went back to reading the text.  She and the friends she was dancing with escaped with their lives after the first shots were fired. They have since discovered that at least one high school friend is among those killed.

Active shooter drills were not a thing when I was in school. I guess I should be grateful that my niece and her friends knew what to do in the moment.  Eileen told me that she’s not hurt, except for rug burns on her knees from crawling her way out to escape, close to the ground.  Of course her spirit is wounded.  As should ours be.  We allow this to continue to happen.

Yes, it’s a cliche that it’s different when something like this happens close to home.  And this certainly did.  My other niece lives down the hill from the club.  My sister is a professor up the hill from the club.  The shooter is from the town where they went to high school and where their little sister goes to middle school.

Given the lack of common sense gun laws, this will happen close to you one day too.

We must pray.  We must act.  We must join together.  We must make gun violence stop. Now. Seriously. Now.

If I haven’t convinced you yet, please read this column written by Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, two of the students from Parkland, that appeared in the Washington Post the day before election day and a few days before my niece escaped the Borderline with her life.

Over eighteen months before the shooting at our school, 49 people were killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Four months before Parkland, 58 people were killed at a concert in Las Vegas. And on Oct. 27, 11 people were killed at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. In all that time, not a single federal law has been passed that addresses gun violence. Not a single law. Our nation’s leaders have failed to protect citizens where they live, where they learn and where they pray.

As they note in their last sentence:  not only must young people (and All people) vote, “the day after the election, the real work begins.”
  • Be the voice of reason.  If you have friends who are part of the 37% who do not think we need stricter more common sense gun laws, tell them about my niece and her friends.
  • Bother the you know what out of your representatives in Congress, no matter what their party.

    My niece lived in Alabama as a child, and her Godmother who still lives there just posted on Facebook that she tried to call her representatives to call them to support gun reform that would have protected her Goddaughter and was HUNG UP ON.

    Not ok.  But they hang up … we call back.

  • We write.  We text.  We march.  We become a broken record and a strong loud voice speaking for every man, woman, and child who can no longer speak for themselves.
Because silence is not an option.

On Retreat

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Time away you need ... hmmm. Retreat you must go on.
Time away you need … hmmm. Retreat you must go on.

The summer months are a good time for rest, relaxation, and renewal.  Growing up on the East Coast, my family always spent time each summer at the beach. Our preferred beach in question (Ocean City, Maryland) was somewhat busy and offered many opportunities for fun, from skeeball to movies to miniature golf.  Given that I have a late July birthday, I spent many birthdays at the beach.

In addition to the regular summer beach fun, I also learned the value and beauty of the contemplative opportunities the ocean provides from my mother.  While we kids were out and about doing who knows what, my mother was generally settled in on the balcony. Sometimes she’d be reading a book, but most often she would just sit there, gaze out at the ocean, and bask in the freedom to simply be.

As I’ve gotten older, and especially since I’ve entered religious life, the contemplative opportunities of the ocean have become a greater draw for me.

This afternoon I will be heading to the ocean for just such a purpose.  You see, it is time for my annual retreat.  In our CSJP Constitutions we say:

We nurture our life of prayer
by reflective reading, particularly Scripture,
by periods of solitude and silence,
and by an annual retreat. (Constitution 30).

Retreat is a special time to reconnect with my loving God.  No email or Facebook. No meetings or to-do lists. IT is simply a time to pray and reflect on God’s daily invitation to seek justice, love tenderly, and walk in the way of peace.

As it happens, I will also be on retreat on Monday when I turn 43 years old.  I look forward to waking up early to watch the sun rise on this next year of life.

Pure gift.

A Rose by any name

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srrosefrancoisI was thinking this morning of Sister Rose Francois, FSPA, my great-great aunt. My friend Julia is making final profession today as an FSPA Sister.  But I’ve also just found myself thinking more and more of Sister Rose of late, even though of course she’s not a person I ever knew.

Sister Rose was born Elizabeth Francois in Weiskirchen, Germany (then Prussia) in 1842. She emigrated to the United States as a toddler with her father, my great-grandfather Peter Francois and his new wife.  The family settled in Wisconsin where they continued the family tradition of farming and the family grew. Their youngest child, my grandfather Joseph Francois, was born in 1852.

Five years later, at the ripe old age of 15, Elizabeth joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Wisconsin.  Thanks to the efforts of my father and brother to gather our family history, I have a copy of her file from the community archivist.  Sister Rose was really one of their pioneer Sisters, joining the community a mere eight years after the first Sisters arrived in Wisconsin from Bavaria.

According to her obituary, she held many positions of responsibility in the new Congregation. Shortly after professing first vows she was named superior of St. Ameliana’s Orphanage. She was Novice Mistress, and in 1865 (at the age of 23 and after just eight years after entering the community), she was elected Assistant to the Mother General, a position she held for a total of 32 and 1/2 years!

So perhaps by now it is obvious why I feel a growing connection with Sister Rose, especially given that I was recently elected to the leadership team of my religious congregation about eight years after I entered.  There’s also another twist … family lore has always held that my middle name (Rose) is after my mother’s Aunt Rose and my Dad’s great-aunt Sister Rose, so she’s always been on my radar.  In any case, I’ve found myself thinking of her from time to time, as a spiritual companion of sorts on my own journey and adventures in leadership.  According to her obituary:

“Everyone felt at home and secure with her, for she was sincerely humble and approachable.  She always regarded failures that occurred from the best side and was indulgent in reprimanding.  It is evident that the good Lord directed her on the thorny path of life, but who ever saw her discouraged or dejected? It was just such equanimity in the most difficult situations that made Archbishop [Michael] Heiss of blessed memory, founder of our community, say: ‘One never knew when anything went crosswise with Sister Rose, she looked always the same. That was the characteristic trend of her life.”

Sister Rose was also administrator of St. Francis Hospital in La Crosse for 20 years.  Her obituary in the local newspaper had this to say:

“The predominant unity and progress in this institution is due to a great extent to her indefatigable activity. She worked faithfully and zealously in the service of the sick, was outstanding for her peaceful disposition and her vivacious congeniality.With exceptional skill she directed the administration of the hospital, and it won’t be easy to replace her.”

St Francis Hospital was also the setting for perhaps the most touching episode I read in her file, when her father (my great-grandfather) died in her arms:

“Mr. Francois  who was suffering for several days happily expired at 4:30 PM. About three o’clock he began to fail rapidly. Father Rheinhardt was sent for, he said the prayers for the dying. Mr. Francois answered the prayers with great fervor, then sat up to recover breath, in a few minutes he was supported by Sister Assistant (Sister Rose) and died in her arms. Rev. Mother and several sisters were present. Funeral will be Saturday.”

I must make the trip to La Crosse some day, both to visit some younger Sister friends I have there and to visit the cemetary.  Apparently both Sister Rose and my great-grandfather are buried there, my great-grandfather in an unmarked grave and Sister Rose beneath a tall monument to her memory.

As for today, I send my prayers and support to my friend Julia, and I ask Sister Rose to pray for her and to pray for me on our journeys as women religious.

Shifting understandings of home

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DChitwood_TheresNoPlaceLikeHomeI lived the first 18 years of my life in the same house on Seabury Lane in Bowie, Maryland.  First the house was painted green, later yellow. We were a family of five children and two parents, later adding grandparents to the residential mix even as sibling after sibling went off to college, sometimes returning for a stint after graduation. (I’m the youngest.)

When I went away to college on the left coast in Portland, the Seabury Lane house was still home. As a young adult, I began to create my own home in Portland where I lived for 16 years until I entered community.  But I still spent many holidays back in Bowie with the family.  During the years when my mom was sick, the visits home were more and more frequent as my siblings and I provided a tag team support system.  My Dad sold the family house about a year after my Mom died.  I remember the last day I was there.  I had a little ritual of thanksgiving, thanking God for everything the house had represented as home.

So where is home now?  I’m often perplexed when people ask me where I’m from, or where is home.  I no longer have family in Maryland.  I have moved quite a bit since I entered community.  My home CSJP Western region is Seattle, but I’m also at home in our Eastern region where I’m now living or in our UK region where I just had the pleasure of visiting.  I just spent a few days in Portland for a meeting and visiting with friends.  I have so much history there that it is also a place where I am at home. I just spent 2 1/2 years in Chicago for grad school and my sister and dad now live there, so that place also is special to me.

I have literally been all over the map the past month, travelling for community meetings and leadership/vocation related meetings and a conference and graduation and visiting family and friends and CSJP community.  I’ve been in Seattle, Leicestershire and London, Chicago, and Portland.  Each stop on the journey held elements of home — roots, connection, relationships, past, present, and future. This afternoon as I was on the last flight of this long trip, I found myself once again offering prayers of gratitude for the many places that are home to me, even as my understanding of home continues to shift and evolve.

And now I am sitting in my chair in my room in the place I currently call home.  And it is good to be here, to stop moving and breathe deeply and sink into the present and presence of the people and place that right now make this community house my home.

This day in the history of the US, my family, and me!

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meGrandadOn this day 2016 years ago, Abraham Lincoln was born.

On this day, 113 years ago, my grandfather Ludwig Lincoln Schmelzer was born. Yes, his middle name was given to him by his German immigrant parents to honor the illustrious day of his birth in their new country.

On this day 10 years ago, I made the first official step toward becoming a Sister of St. Joseph of Peace and became a pre-candidate. From the way back machine that is my old blog:

Long story short, my discernment has reached the point where it’s time to start discerning whether I’m called to religious life in the context of a particular community. And there’s something about this group of fun dedicated women, working for justice and to spread the gospel of peace. Whereas every Star Wars book and movie has the line, “I have a bad feeling about this,” I can honestly say I have a very GOOD feeling about this. There’s just something about the groovy csjp sisters. Helps me make much more sense of what God might be calling me to.

Ten years later, of course the story continues, in new and interesting ways as I embark on month two of my adventure in elected leadership. Every day confirms what I knew then, that there is something about this group of fun dediated women, working for justice and to spread the gospel of peace. I feel privileged to be part of the mix, and indeed the past ten years has shown me that it is as a Sister of St. Joseph of Peace that I can become the me God dreams I can be.

The picture is of me with my grandfather on my 4th birthday. My grandparents were a special part of my early years, and lived with us for many years. He had a scratchy beard and a big heart. Happy birthday granddad!