An open letter to Secretary Sebelius.

Below is a copy of what the Scientist Dad and I sent in. Please email the Department of Health and Human Services (Kathleen.Sebelius@hhs.gov) by Friday to comment on the health care reform regulations. It may be "but a drop in the bucket," but I will in future years be glad I said something rather than nothing.


Dear Secretary Sebelius,

We would like to express our opposition to the current religious exemption which Health and Human Services has granted to healthcare institutions in reference to the new health care reform law. As Roman Catholics, we are deeply concerned about the implications and precedence this regulation holds for religious freedom and the free exercise of conscience.

The current proposed religious exemption applies only to those organizations employing and serving primarily members of their own faith community. It requires these institutions, such as Catholic hospitals, to proselytize those citizens coming to them for help.

We are aware, Madame Secretary, that you are yourself a professed Roman Catholic. Although we also understand that you hold a very different view of human reproduction and fertility than we do, we hope that we can appeal to you and your Department on the level of fellow citizens and members of the same faith community. It would violate the whole purpose of the Catholic Church's service to the poor for the government to require that we provide services (e.g., contraception and sterilization) that violate our deepest held beliefs about the human person. It would also violate the American view of public service to require Catholic institutions to either close their doors to the poor or proselytize those coming to seek comfort and aide. Please remember what you do love about your own faith community--it's free service to the poorest of the poor--which cannot be forcibly divorced from its ancient respect for the human person.

We disagree with your political stance on reproductive rights, but we are also glad that you are free to exercise the dictates of your conscience. Please protect the rights of Catholic healthcare workers and administrators to do the same.

Expand the religious exemption to allow Catholic institutions (and all other religious institutions) to serve and employ the entire population without recourse to indoctrination.

Thank you for your service to our country and for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Etc....

Oh, those eyes.

...look so much like my Belle's.

Let it all hang out!

Head on over to Catholic Exchange today for my article (post?) on abstinence in marriage. This is a sort of combination of my two previous posts here and here, with some added twists thanks to y'all's profound commentary.

Feminine Genius: We know D.R.A.M.A.

Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa: Girls are OK.

(First, a note! Some commenters on "Abstinence in Marriage: Que Pasa?" were unceremoniusly dumped into my spam folder. Sorry! Now you're published, as you should have been long ago. Y'all are brilliant.)

After confirming that I "really have three girls," the next insight offered me by most strangers is, "Oh, your poor husband."

The third apothegm runs along the lines of consolation to the downtrodden, "Oh, well, don't worry. Girls are so much easier than boys."

If I have allowed the conversation to get this far, I am obviously too weary to deflect their advances with humor. Either that, or I have become so accustomed to the inane babblings of the pre-schooler mind that two or three more idiocies aren't likely to bother me.

But, really, people. Girls are easier than boys? Have you spent much time with a 12-year-old girl? Have you spent much time with any woman between, say, the ages of 10 1/2 and 51? I hear echoing in my head, "The days are coming, sayeth the Lord, when I shall strike the land with doom."

We are sugar and spice for about 5 years, then fade into a sweet sort of lemon-zest dessert, and then. Just plain lemon juice.

Poor Miriam. She's had a brilliant 5 weeks (almost) of homeschool. She's had a brilliant childhood, in general, to be honest. She's smart. She's gorgeous. She's good at almost anything (except opening doors or jars). She is sweet and eager to please.

But oh, the drama.

Today the world fell apart. I asked her to narrate for me (just me! her mother!) the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. She knows this story (we've been reading it since she could talk!), she loves to narrate (she's been talking since she was 10 months!), and she has memory like glue (when she was four, she memorized an entire Dr. Seuss book!).

But today, she froze. She couldn't even begin. Because I was asking her to do something different: "Just tell me the story."

"Mommy, I can only think if you're writing it down!"

"Miriam, I'm not going to write this one down. I'm helping Belly build her Lego house, and this is also an important way of telling for you to learn. Just tell me."

Tears. A full-out fit. Neither of us backed down. But what struck me was her (ir)rationale: "Mommy, it's too embarrassing!"

Embarrassing is her code word for: I might mess up. I'm going to make a mistake. It's not worth trying, because I can't do it perfectly.

It's the same reason she won't try her new bike: I might mess up. I might get hurt. It's not worth trying.

It's the same reason she won't play the new piano song: I might mess up. It's not worth trying.

Embarrassing.

This runs deep in the family: It's too hard. Our over-achiever front belies a deep insecurity: What if I mess up? It's better not to try.

I remember piano pieces I refused to learn, races I refused to run, classes I quit, and professors I never went to for help. All because of this fear, paralyzing and ugly. The woman hates to be wrong, but even more so to be caught being wrong. I don't mind a mistake that no one can see, that I can fix on my own (Spanx, anyone?), but oh! to be seen in my imperfection. That makes me throw a fit.

So, today's drama was less about my daughter than about me: I can see with a magnifying glass into her soul, even at the moment she feels most alone.

And that, too, is a mark of a woman. We hate to be caught in the fault (as do men), and all those hormones and intensity of feelings can make us cry and fight and throw ourselves to the floor in despair. But that intensity also gives us--poor children of Eve--the possibility of that deeply personal bridge: I know you. I have been where you are. I will be there with you again.

I want to try to teach my daughter, poor little daughter of me, to take that drama all locked up inside herself and let it out. Let her recognize that her struggle goes on in the hearts of so many others. Let the drama breed, not more drama, but womanly compassion and a fierce devotion to the weakest souls still in the grip of that struggle. Let her drama and fear of embarrassment translate into understanding and gentleness.

The feminine genius, without which the world could not be saved.

Image source: Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa.

Image source: The Repentant.

If you came this way.

Here is Eliot for Thursday. Ten years ago, I was studying in England and coping with being abroad for 9/11. I will always think of England as "the end of the world" and of Eliot as my voice of those days.

From "Little Gidding," No. 4 of 'Four Quartets'

"I. .... There are other places

Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always."

Image source.

The Difficult Lesson.

We read whole chapters of the Gospels aloud. I let the girls color and play, and I just sit and read the words. I don't ask them to narrate the stories or sayings, but just to listen as they can while they play. Today we read Matthew 10. I didn't think Miriam was listening (she was coloring the Hagia Sophia and singing about the "barbarians who stole your tabernacle").

But she was.

Miriam: "Mommy, why does Jesus say he comes to bring a sword and not peace? Because, he is the Prince of Peace. I am confused."

That is confusing. So, here's what I tried for a little exegesis.

"Well, it is confusing. Let's think about Jesus' commandments. If we love Him, He says, we will follow His commandments."

"Yes," she said, still coloring and humming.

"So, people have to make a choice: they can either walk to Jesus in the light or turn around and walk the other way into the dark."

"Yes," she stopped coloring.

"I think that is the sword he might mean: If some people choose to walk to Jesus and other people choose to walk away from Jesus, then who has the Peace of Christ?"

"The people walking to the light," she nodded.

"Yes. But what happens if you choose something dark?"

"Then you don't have the Peace of Christ!" she was very happy now.

"And not having peace is like a sword?"

And we were both happy. This is why she's at home this year.

Miriam the Dominican.

Four little girls in pink and white, seated on the hardwood floor at the feet of their ballet teacher, listening with rapt attention to Angelina in the Palace.

"... and Angelina said, 'I won't make a mistake! I will be perfect!'" reads the lovely lady. "But, girls! No one is perfect, isn't that right?"

Noooo, three little heads shake.

Noooo, all the watching parents shake their heads.

Noooo, the ballet teacher approvingly shakes her head.

"That's not true!" says one little girl named Miriam, offended.

Everyone looks at her, the tallest girl dressed all in white.

"Well, I wonder..." begins the teacher.

"Jesus never makes mistakes. He is perfect." Miriam's eyes are anxious, but firm. Her cheeks and neck are flushed. I wince. I've been right there in her seat.

"Well, I wonder," says the teacher, "I really wonder..." She continues the story and it all brushes past.

Miriam sits stolidly in her rightness and in the immutable rightness of God. I am in the corner of the room, hugging my toddler, throwing graham crackers to placate the baby, and wondering... "I wonder.... I wonder." I wonder at the perfect Word made flesh. I wonder at the spine of steel in my little girl, and I wonder how it will all be for her.

Image source.