Bodies. Blood. Bread. Brokenness. My children bring all of this into my life. Care for their bodies takes up hours of my day: washing faces, changing diapers, giving baths. Boyhood brings bloodied knees, scraped elbows, tears and band aids and doctor's visits. Feeding our family is nearly a full-time job in itself: planning meals, buying groceries, cooking dinner, baking bread. And brokenness? Well, families don't have to go far to find proof of faults and flaws and failings. We rub up against each other all day long. The Eucharist has never felt more real than it has since I became a mother. This is my body; take and eat; blessed and broken - almost everything I have learned about the love and sacrifice of parenting is wrapped up this sacrament at the center of my faith. So in celebration of this Sunday's Feast of Corpus Christi (the Body and Blood of Christ), here are 7 reasons I love the Eucharist - and 7 favorite posts to explain why... It re-members me back … [Read more...] about 7 reasons I love the Eucharist {the feast of corpus christi}
body of Christ
we care about the crumbs
In our family's parish, we eat bread. (This is not a theological discourse on the real presence; this is a simple recipe.) Each Sunday, instead of the thin white wafers traditional to Catholic communion, our priest breaks brown bread. It is held high in his hands for all of us to see and heaped high on silver plates for all of us to eat. It wasn't what I was used to as a cradle Catholic. But I have come to love everything about this practice. I love that the simple bread is baked each week by members of our parish. It tastes like loving service. I love how our priests have to take time to break the wide flat circles into hundred of tiny squares. It tastes like holy transformation. I love that the Eucharistic ministers need the help of altar servers to hold the plates while they offer the Body of Christ. It tastes like living community. Most of all, I love what real bread requires of those of us who eat it. You have to hold it carefully in your hands so you don't drop whatever … [Read more...] about we care about the crumbs
what your kids taught me about God
It's not all about my kids. I know I'm breaking a cardinal rule of mommy blogging with that one. But this truth runs deep in my tired mama bones: It's not about me and mine. I can't shake the stubborn, squirming fact that this call to motherhood - this gift I took into two shaking hands when the two lines on the test blurred clear to pregnant and I flung open the bathroom door to tell a father (because he was finally a father!) that everything had changed - this beautiful, exhausting vocation is not simply to the three children whose scuffed shoes are tumbled across our front hall rug. It's a call to stretch my heart into a mother's love for all children. To burst beyond the limits of what I want to cling to as mine, safe and small. To peer into the pain of how the world's violence and brokenness can crush millions of hearts just like mine - mothers who carried babies and nursed babies and soothed babies and loved babies. To remember how small but mighty shifts can … [Read more...] about what your kids taught me about God
the magic of cousins
Their eyes light up the instant the door opens. Maybe a moment's hesitation of shyness for the youngest, but once they recognize who's here, the grins burst forth: cousins! In their bright eyes and squealing smiles I see flashes of family parties from my own childhood, noses pressed up against cold winter windows waiting for a pack of cousins to tumble into the house. Coats flung off, wet boots kicked into corners, and suddenly we're all running in a wild pack to the basement, weaving around adults and their ice-cubed drinks and their boring conversations. Off to the land of playroom sword fights and pool table battles and plotting elaborate make-believe and begging for a sleepover by the end of the night. What's more magical than cousins? Already I see the same spark of recognition in my children's eyes. Whether it's been a week or a year since they've seen their kin, they click almost instantly, in a different way than they connect with friends or other children. Perhaps they see … [Read more...] about the magic of cousins
