All posts by CadyLy

How Prayer is Like Sex

Prayer/Prayer Requests, Theology of the Body

It is commonly thought that sex can chemically bind the two partners.

“In humans, oxytocin is thought to be released during hugging, touching, and orgasm in both sexes. In the brain, oxytocin is involved in social recognition and bonding, and may be involved in the formation of trust between people and generosity.” “Bonding. In the Prairie Vole, oxytocin released into the brain of the female during sexual activity is important for forming a monogamous pair bond with her sexual partner. Vasopressin appears to have a similar effect in males. In people, plasma concentrations of oxytocin have been reported to be higher amongst people who claim to be falling in love.”  Quotes from Wikipedia entry:  Oxytocin

Prayer, I think, binds you to those people for whom you are praying.  You are taking an active interest in their lives, if you are praying in sincerity and not just saying words for the sake of saying words, but actually directing your will in your thoughts in supplication to the Lord for the benefit of another.  Not to say that there is some physiologic something that is going on, but when you bring another person’s interests before the Lord in a sincere and unselfish way, I think there is a relational connection made there.  Some type of grace.  Perhaps in recognition of your unselfish act, your gift of self, as it were, in that moment; perhaps as a help to foster relationships between people, for communion, as we are all called to communion with God and each other.

“Don’t you know that when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not.”  From the movie “Vanilla Sky,” 2001.

 Take this as it is, my own late night musings, but it seems to me that as I pray for others, and especially as I pray repeatedly for them, I develop a connection with these people — a deep interest in their life and well-being.  And this draws me to want to know them more and to give more of myself out to them.  Which usually results in my praying for them even more.  This also seems to happen more when if you pray for them in secret or for a specific person whom you have not met.  Perhaps because in these ways, your prayer is more of a gift of self than if you are praying for one for whom you already care deeply.

World Kidney Day

Health and Medicine

Today is World Kidney Day!  Whoo-hoo! 

Why am I so excited, do you ask?  Okay, well I guess any reason to celebrate….  🙂  But no, I *passed* my kidney function tests!  🙂  Who would have thought?  I am notoriously bad to my kidneys.  I think they continue to function just to spite me, some days.  They ignore my coffee-drinking, water-avoiding ways.  They have adapted to my chronically dehydrated state.

 So, today at work, there is a bulletin posted about World Kidney Day with a link to their own website.

Oddly, I have failed my liver function tests.  How bizarre is that?  I would say that I don’t really tax my liver, as I do not really drink, and have not yet been drunk — ever.  However, liver also helps to deal with sugar issues and I suppose that I am defective in that department, along with the whole clotting thing, and the liver makes the clotting factors, and mine are all kinds of wonky.  🙂

 As a P.S., I will have to note that I am starting (again) my medicine.  [Insert whining, kicking and screaming here.]  Just saying, isn’t medicine supposed to make you feel *better*???  /rant

One Fish, Two Fish

Prayer/Prayer Requests, St. Anastasia

It’s kind of like the blind leading the blind, but this year (my neophyte year) I am sponsoring someone into the Catholic church.  I didn’t know her before the initial RCIA meeting this fall, but she is amazing.  We are so much alike, which as you know, is dangerous…for society.

Earlier this week, Karen told me that Steve had been coming to RCIA meetings without having had anything to eat all day.  And she would not stand for this any longer.  I offered to try and make something for him, but the night before I realized that I had nothing in the house and it was already 11:30 pm.  I had to get up at 4:30 am, and I just couldn’t make myself run out to the grocery store and then cook a meal.  So, after a flurry of text messages late Tuesday afternoon, we showed up at church; Karen had brought lasagna from home, Lindsay brought veggies and milk, I had gotten bread, dessert and Starbucks for us all.  How fun!

It was all on Karen’s initiative.  See?  Didn’t I say she was amazing?

We have been having fun with our name tags.  Yesterday, we decided to go as One Fish and Two Fish, and we got Lindsay and Tania to be Red Fish and Blue Fish.  🙂  Karen stated, “I am the One Fish!”  And I thought that “Two Fish” was horribly appropriate for me, since I tend to like the #2 position in any official hierarchical structure.

 If you would not mind, since you obviously have tons of free time, as you are reading MY blog :), please pray for Karen and her fiancé, Brian.  Brian has applied to medical school here and we would really like him to be accepted, so that he and Karen can stay in Michigan.  Thank you!

Sacraments of Healing

Sacraments, Tales of My Amazing Priests

Last week at RCIA, we covered Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick.  Saturday, I went to confession.  Yesterday (Monday), we taught about Reconciliation in my 5th grade catechism class, and since there was a Vicariate Reconciliation service going on and we had some extra time at the end of our session, I took the kids down and those that wanted to, received the sacrament.  It was very cute, they were as nervous as I get before confession, but they were awesome!  It was a good night, and hopefully the hands-on helped them to understand the sacrament a little more.

 Last week, I was [told sternly] that I should receive the Anointing of the Sick.  I waited about a week, until I knew I’d be seeing that person again and couldn’t go up to them without at least having asked about it, if not actually having had scheduled an appointment.  So, last Friday, I sneaked over to Fr. John (I feel bad about asking for things for myself), and said, “I have something to ask you….  Before I get yelled at….”
“Yes?”
“So….  About this Anointing of the Sick….”
“Yes?”
“I was told to ask about it….”
“??”
“For me….”
“??”
“Doyouthinkit’ssomethingIshoulddo?” [Talk about having to pull teeth to get it out of me….]

He replied something that he would do it then, but had to go to the school and that we could do it next week, or if I were around Sunday — no — then, I could ask either Fr. JJ or the celebrant to anoint me after Mass on Sunday.  [Insert Jenn hyperventilating at the thought of going up to a priest she doesn’t know and asking about receiving a sacrament.  Ha!  She doesn’t like to go to churches she’s not familiar with.]

So, I reply, “So….  Sometime next week?”  Very slick, eh?  🙂

As we were separating to go to our cars, he calls across the lot, “You wouldn’t have gotten yelled at for that!”  And I said, “Oh, yes, I would have!  If I didn’t ask!”

 Fast forward to today.  I arrive at the church and see his car.  Hmm.  Maybe today.  Of course, I hate to be a bug, so I’m not wanting to go up to him and ask him if he wanted to anoint me today or a different day this week.  So after Mass, in front of the Blessed Sacrament, I’m kneeling there talking to God, “Okay God, I don’t think I can go over and ask for this again.  I asked as well as I could last week.  So, if you want me to do this, you are going to have to have him grab me or something and offer it.”  Again, not that I didn’t want this, but that I feel really funny asking for something for myself like that.  I feel undeserving or selfish or something.

So, I leave the chapel, thinking that maybe he’s waiting for me in the hall.  Nope.  Hmmm.  First instinct is to run out the door and jump into my car and go to work.  What?  None of you get scared?  Okay, maybe it’s just me.  See how fast Jenn can run, especially away from something that’s good for me.  But I don’t.  I lurk outside the door of the sacristy.  I’m getting good at lurking.  He comes out with his coat on, so we move toward the door to the parking lot and exchange ‘Hi! How are you?’s.  He asks how I am (nothing new to report). 

We get about to his car and he asks, “So, when are we going to anoint you?”
“You said, ‘sometime’.”
“How about now?”
“Okay.”  See how God works like that?  Ask –> receive.  Just like it says in the Bible.  Goodie for me, since I’m such a chicken.  🙂  He said something about “parking lot anointing” — too funny!  🙂

I’m sure I could look up how the sacrament goes and give you a much more detailed account, but experientially from what I remember (and funny, isn’t it, the more you try to remember everything, the less you actually recall), he traced the Sign of the Cross on my forehead and each palm with the oil, and then put his hand on my head, praying over me, referencing Our Lady of Good Counsel and St. Anastasia (See!  I do belong to both!).

Now’s the fun part.  (Okay, not that that wasn’t fun… but… you’ll see what I mean….)  “They” say that with an anointing, God always heals something that you need to be healed.  Not necessarily what you think it will be, however.  So, I wonder what it will be.  🙂  How exciting to wait and find out!  🙂  Kind of like Christmas all over again!  You are going to get this great gift, you just don’t know what the gift will be, but it will be just perfect for you!

Marian Humor

Humor of the Day, Tales of My Amazing Priests

Fr. Machej was celebrating Mass Saturday morning and he was telling us about Mary being co-redemptrix.  He says, “She was there when Jesus was born, and through his young adulthood.  She was there when the disciples were gathered.  Of course, she was there!  After all, they had to eat!  I don’t think Saint Peter was getting up in the morning making scrambled eggs for Jesus…”

For My Priests

Tales of My Amazing Priests

For my priests, these wonderful men of faith, who help me draw closer to God in so many ways.  Thank you and I love you!

1 Thessalonians 1:2-4

We give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers,  remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.  For we know, brethren beloved by God, that he has chosen you;

Urban Dictionary

Jennspeak

While I sometimes use urbandictionary.com to try and translate Jennspeak for my doctors, I must recognise that much of the vocabulary and related examples are extremely morally objectionable.

So, as a warning, you probably don’t want to look up “catholic” or any of the related entries, as most of them are simply awful, and completely based on negative popular opinion instead of anything based in truth (as one would expect from this type of site, defining all the slang).

That being the case, you know how easily I am amused, so I came across this one, and thought that I’d share:

Catholisthenics:  The physical regime involved in attending catholic services.

That, by the way, is the least offensive thing on there relating to the Catholic church.  Everything else is repugnant.  And this, while seemingly benign, actually is very flip about the meaning behind the different postures during the liturgy.

Hello? Jenn? Do You Hear Me? Hello?

Prayer/Prayer Requests

Continuing in my avoidance of doing work, I am browsing through some other blogs.  One I happen to like a lot is Jen’s “Et tu?” (She has my name, it’s French, she was an atheist who joined the Church on Easter 2007 — same as me, she says a lot of the things that I think, but never have the time to write down or the eloquence to state them as well.)

She wrote this entry on listening to God, instead of falling into despair.  He may be answering your prayers when you aren’t paying attention.  I have found what Jen has found — that often I’ll have a day, and I’ll open up my Bible or a prayer book, and right there will be something that speaks to my situation.  God’s pretty amazing like that.  Sometimes, I can see it, but not see it.  And sometimes, I need to be whapped on the head.  I can be very contrary when it comes to things that are good for me.  I can a very stupid sheep sometimes (a lot of the time?).

Here’s one of these moments:  yesterday, I went to church after work for the Stations of the Cross.  On top of my recent health issues, I have come down with some sort of malaise.  Due to the health issues, two friends of mine (a husband and a wife) took me into the chapel after Stations to pray over me.  I can’t put into words what that experience was like, being in the presence of the Lord with these two wonderful people.  Toward the end, the husband leaned over to me and told me to note which Station we were sitting next to in the chapel.  Then he said that he felt that God was telling him to tell me this (and I’ll probably get the quote wrong):  that I didn’t have to crucify myself, that Christ had already done that for us.  Then he said that he didn’t know what that meant for me, but that it was something that he felt he had to tell me.

After they left, I pondered this for a while.  What I finally came up with was a different phrase, but one that I think relates, “Don’t try to grasp at what is being freely given to you.”  Kinda goes back to one of my core issues.  “Maybe if I am good enough, God will love me.”  “Maybe if I do enough things, succeed, my parents will be proud of me.”  “Maybe if I am happy and nice, people will love me.”  Some action is required on my part to be worthy of love or to have any value at all.

So, “Don’t try to grasp at what is being freely given to you.”

Don’t try to do-do-do to get God/people to love you, He/they love you already.

What a hard thing to me to try and wrap my head around.

You mean…I have inherent worth and value?  Other people, certainly, but not *me*, right?

Similar things have been said along this vein to me this weekend, like:

“You should get anointed.”
Jenn:  “Isn’t that for really sick people?”
“You need healing.  Get the Anointing!”
Jenn:  “I don’t know….  I don’t want to make a big thing of this.  Isn’t the Anointing on a Friday morning?”
“Any priest can do it at any time.  Call Becky.  Make an appointment.  You will call, won’t you?”
Jenn the stupid sheep:  “Mmmm….”
“It’s a sacrament.  Sacraments give grace, right?”
Jenn:  “Yes…”
“I’m serious — get the Anointing!”

See how Jenn the Stupid Sheep shies away from things that are good for her….  She is amazed she wasn’t hit with a ClueBat. (ClueBat – definition per urbandictionary.com: A metaphorical bat used to ‘beat some sense into’ someone who is blatantly stupid.)  Surely, she’s not sick enough for *that*, is she?

And again:

“Do you have a fever?”
Jenn:  “I don’t know.  I don’t feel as hot as I did yesterday, but I didn’t take my temperature.”
“Do you have a thermometer?”
Jenn:  “Yes.”
“Well, you should check.  And if you have a fever, you should take a Tylenol.”
Jenn:  “Nnnnn.  I don’t like taking things.  My mom never took anything or gave us anything unless we were nearly dead.”
“You are not your mother.  You should get the fever down.”
Jenn:  “Nnnnn.”  *Jenn feel another ClueBat-ing being scheduled for her….*

Aside:  I *did* check my temperature, although I was fairly sure I didn’t have a fever.  Normal body temp is 98.6 degrees F.  I am currently 97.7 degrees F.

Back to that listening thing….

Shopping Spree!

Of Vice and Virtue

Okay, it was a short spree.  🙂

 I woke up this morning feeling moderately yukki.  Definitely worse than yesterday.  Which is a good thing.  My immune system is working on whatever bug this may be.  (Dr. Knol confirmed that it was NOT strep.  Perhaps it is something like the African Sleeping Sickness — always a favorite, or Lassa Fever:

There is a range of laboratory investigations that are performed to diagnose the disease and assess its course and complications. ELISA test for antigen and IgM antibodies gives 88% sensitivity and 90% specificity for the presence of the infection. Other laboratory findings in Lassa fever include lymphopenia (low white blood cell count), thrombocytopenia (low platelets), and elevated aspartate aminotransferase (AST) levels in the blood.

Hmm….  I *HAVE* had bleeding issues and flunked my liver tests….)

Anyway…..  Getting away from my fascination with virology….

I went to Mass, trying not to share my little virii with everyone (wouldn’t want the Sign of Peace to become the Sign of the Plague); grabbed a Starbucks (completely therapeutic, really); drove to Ann Arbor; taught photography; ran out of and bought more windshield wiper fluid (Ah, here’s where the big spending begins.  My brother will be ecstatic to know that my windshield wiper fluid has a drawing of a superhero on it.); went to Our Lady of Grace Bookstore at DF, where I plagued the poor boy at the counter by browsing endlessly, but ended up walking out with 3 items (“Are you [FINALLY] ready to check out?”); drove back to Troy; got a haircut (more on that after this paragraph); came home; made Charred Cheese Sandwich and tomato soup (isn’t that supposed to be Grilled Cheese Sandwich?  Yeah, yeah, rub it in, mine had char…); read half of one of the books I had purchased; got a phone call; texted two friends; got bored playing on the internet for a few minutes; danced in the living room until I couldn’t breathe any more and felt that my head was on fire; drank my 6 oz of Gatorade, and stuck the rest in the fridge — wouldn’t want to be hydrated, now would we?; decided to work on some work; decided to check out Amazon.com first; bought stuff on Amazon; thought that I should probably get to that work before it got too late and I didn’t do it; and decided I should post on my blog. 

And now you see where I am, neither getting work done, nor resting to get better.  Rather, bouncing about the house like a Ping-Pong ball, until I collapse at some point this evening.  Ah, well.  If it makes you feel any better, I’m also reading about 9 books at the same time.  Perhaps I have a little ADHD.

So…  $2-3 on wiper fluid, $5 on crack (Starbucks), $20 at OLG, $50 on Amazon, $43 for a haircut — for a grand total of approximately $121.  Amazingly, that did not appear to have any effect on my sickness whatsoever.  As a small justification, all of my purchases from OLG and Amazon had to do with Theology….  That’s a good use of money, right?  (This is where you all agree with me….)  And the haircut….  Let’s talk about that expensive haircut….

Okay, I really don’t care about my hair.  I have hacked it off, blindly, just before midnight, dry and without looking to make sure that it’s even — about 6 inches that time — gone!  It’s been the color of Tang, cinnamon, and back to it’s normal brown/black.  If I go somewhere to get it cut, instead of doing it myself, I usually head for the cheapest place I can find.  Well, not today.  I suppose that even I have to act like a girl every once in a while, particularly when I feel like I could star in a horror flick — as the monster.  So, I told the girl that as long as she cut my bangs so that I could see again, I didn’t particularly care what she did with the rest of it.

We talked as she worked, and turns out she was baptized, but hasn’t finished her sacraments, so we talked about RCIA and she may join us in the fall!  How cool is that!  She walked me out as I left and gave me a big hug and wished me a good rest of the day!  🙂  So, it was an expensive haircut (for me), but totally worth it.  I’m glad I decided to go there today.

Cherokee Rite of Passage

Neat Things I Didn't Author, ,

Note: It has been brought to my attention that this story is not actually an authentic Cherokee rite of passage. It was not posted so as to be a factual representation of Cherokee culture, but I found it to be a cute story which gives a good example of fatherhood and of God our Father. I apologize to anyone I may have inadvertantly offended. Of note, I am Cherokee myself, so please do not think that I am disparaging Native Americans by any means.
WikiAnswer published one Cherokee member’s response to this e-mail forward.

This came from a co-worker (gotta love those e-mail forwards!):

Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth’s rite of passage? His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone.  He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. He cannot cry out for help to anyone.  Once he survives the night, he is a MAN.  He cannot tell the other boys of this experience because each lad must come into manhood on his own.  The boy is naturally terrified.  He can hear all kinds of noises.  Wild beasts must surely be all around him.  Maybe even some human might do him harm.  The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold.  It would be the only way he could become a man!  Finally, after a horrific night, the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold.  It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him.  He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm.

We, too, are never alone.  Even when we don’t know it, our Heavenly Father is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us.  When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him.

Moral of the Story:  Just because you can’t see God, doesn’t mean He is not there.

“For we walk by faith, not by sight.”  — 2 Corinthians 5:7 [Not the full verse.]