On this feast day celebrating Your Triumph on the Cross, Lord Jesus, thank You for sharing the frailty of humanity, and for sharing Your strength with us.

“The prayer station helps people see, whether it’s 9/11 or Chrysler or GM about to go into bankruptcy, we always share a need for God…. The station becomes a vehicle toward life change, not just offering a prayer.”  - Tom Grassano,  member of Urban Harvest Ministries

Christine Ferretti, a Detroit News reporter, wrote an interesting and well-balanced story. A nonprofit set up a prayer booth in Warren City Hall as a place for unemployed or financially-distressed people who might want prayers or spiritual comfort.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) has raised a hue and cry, but it sounds like Mayor Fouts isn’t giving in.    

As a former resident of Warren, where I had my first apartment, I opine that FFRF isn’t going to win the hearts and minds of residents.  The FFRF is based in Wisconsin, so perhaps their members are unaware that Michigan has been in a one-state recession for several years before the current economic downturn. As an added bonus, the GM Tech Center is in Warren.

Not that I’m trying to support FFRF’s agenda, but strictly as a practical and rational matter, its leadership should take a different tact. They could set up an atheistic alternative support booth for the unemployed and financially-teetering. Heck, they wouldn’t even have to rent it from City Hall – there are plenty of vacant buildings for rent!

Instead, the FFRF is providing a valuable advertisement for Christianity.  The Christians are letting people come to the booth of their own volition. They offer prayer, but they don’t force it on anyone.

In contrast, the FFRF isn’t concerning itself with the needs of the unemployed, let alone those most pathetic losers - those who seek spiritual comfort (aka “superstition”).  They’re more concerned with people who believe as they do, people who might be “uncomfortable” by public displays of (religious) affection.  They have a different take on the Establishment Clause** :

This is ridiculous. Prayer should be private. -  Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president

(Note to my non-Americentric readers: In the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, there is a clause that forbids Congress from establishing a state religion.)

Anyway, I got a really interesting penance. No, it doesn’t involving DOING the Stations of the Cross (from one of my family’s favorite Dave Allen skits).  Instead, I’m supposed to say “No” once a week during Lent.

The good father (and he is good) determined that my Sinning Streak(tm) is related to my reluctance to say “no” to any extra work, any project, any person, etc.  He really hit it out of the park when he said, “You’re forgetting how to relax and spend time with the Lord.”     

So my penance is this: At least once a week during Lent, I must say “no” to a request and spend that time instead with the Lord.

“Do you think you can do that?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. (The irony of my response was lost on me until just now. D’oh!)

Perhaps I said it too enthusiastically, because he added, “I must be losing my touch if that penance seems easy.”

“Well, it’s easier than putting rocks in my shoes,” I said, vaguely remembering a saint who imposed that penance on himself.

“Maybe next year I’ll add that,” he said. (Hope he was kidding… yipes.) 

I have the perfect opportunity this coming week, when our school has scheduled an informational meeting for parents on Wednesday evening. (Yes, Ash Wednesday. I’m seeing a pattern here.) No doubt my principal will ask me to come, since both the parent meeting and the conference are related to a new academic program.

Because I have a bad temper and forget I’m a Christian VERY OFTEN, it’s good when others remind me. Prayer is the greatest weapon we have against our enemies, since God changes our hearts, too.

I read about him in the Sunday paper and just about cried.* With all the people in the world who would love and cherish a baby, he had the misfortune of being born to monsters.

If you would, my friends, please say a prayer for him.

If you can stomach it, there is more information here: http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=94956948

*I did cry, and for a long time, after I read about the father who punched and kicked his 2-year-old son to death this past summer. A police officer shot and killed the man, but the child was already dead. All I could ask is “Why would anyone hurt a baby?”

Note to siblings and cousins: When he says “Go to Mass”, it’s eerily like Dad ordering us kids “Go to bed”.   It made me sit up, that’s for sure!

I used to pray the old Guardian Angel prayer every day when I was a kid. In the first grade classroom, Sister Agnesita had a print of an angel watching over two children crossing over a rickety bridge.  The angel was female and dressed very prettily. However, I thought of my Phred as male – a nice young fellow who wasn’t ready to clobber me like my brothers.  I also figured Phred was kind of plainly dressed and silent, ready to jump into action. Except when I was taking a bath. Then I thought he waited outside the bathroom door (with the dog) and I’d have to holler for Mom if I got my big toe stuck in the faucet or something.

But for many years (decades) I completely neglected to talk to or even think about Phred.  There was also a New Agey “angel movement”  which seemed to infiltrate even retreats. It marketed guardian angels as subservient beings, at worst a tool for getting one’s desire and at best a Jeeves-like personal assistant, constantly pulling his master out of a scrapes. I felt sort of embarrassed to be talking to him, as if I’d catch some  sort of cosmic cooties.

But I began to rediscover what angels are and how blessed I am to have Phred. And I’ve been thinking a lot about angels, especially since I started making clay sculptures that incorporate Christian symbols. (More on that later.)

And so, for old time’s sake, Phred…

Angel of God,
my guardian dear,
to whom God’s love commits me here,
ever this day,
be at my side
to light and guard,
to rule and guide.

This is probably the last snow day until next year, so I used it to its full.

I slept.

I haven’t been feeling well since Friday. Because my eyes are bleary and my thinking is slightly off, it takes me longer to get through normal chores like grading essays. Since it takes longer, I get up earlier in order to do lesson plans, etc. Then I feel tired and react so much slower to everything. It’s a vicious cycle.

I didn’t want to blog today, but it’s part of my Lenten discipline. In some ways, it’s not a lot different than praying! Sometimes the last thing I want to do is pray.  Until I actually do, and then I realize how necessary it is.

So I blogged, just like I did all the other necessary tasks between bouts of napping: doing laundry, correcting quizzes,  shoveling, catching up on reading, shoveling, filling the birdfeeder, washing dishes – and did I mention shoveling?

 Now I’m going to go off and pray, then get some more sleep.

 Sometimes, however, I feel like a small child about prayer. And not in a good way. It’s more like being the kid who says, “I wanna do it myself!” And just like a kid, it’s usually right before everything comes crashing down around my ears.

Squalor is a high level of clutter. It can be hoarding, like the people you see on various organization shows who collect broken computers because they’re useful for “parts”. It can be chronic clutter that explodes into a huge mess because a person is too ill or stressed to prioritize it. It can be everyday items that gradually take over every horizontal surface (including the floor). 

In other words, squalor has a lot of levels.

What causes it? A number of factors play into it. Obsessive-compulsive disorder leads a lot of people into squalor. Perfectionism is a surprisingly common trait among squalorees, as we call ourselves (when we’re not calling ourselves worse names). We get paralyzed by thoughts like, “This has just one broken part, so I should fix it. I can’t clean part of this room unless I clean the whole room. I know the recycling center won’t take this, but I’d feel guilty if I don’t find a use for it.” 

The National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization developed a Clutter Hoarding Scale which the Squalor Survivors Community uses:

 http://www.squalorsurvivors.com/squalor/measuring.shtml

When I lived in my first apartment by myself, I was at Level One: chronic clutter. As friends and relatives moved in with me, I went to Level Two and stayed there for years.  But I didn’t know I was at Level Two. I thought I was a dirty slob. I knew I wasn’t lazy. I had a full-time job, a part-time job, and took evening classes.  Was it avarice? But I didn’t LIKE having so much stuff. Was it an organizational problem? A professional organizer told me that all I needed to do was switch from being a “piler” of papers to a “filer”.  (Instead, I did both.)

I didn’t know that other people were like me. Granted, I knew people who had trails of dirty dishes from the sink, across the countertops, over various tables, and into their home offices. But mostly those were young men, and everyone knows about ”bachelor housekeeping”. If a man’s bathroom smells like urine and has topless toothpaste tubes oozing over the sink, it’s not pleasant but it’s a manly foible. Similar conditions in a bachelorette’s home are unacceptable (unless she has a closet overflowing with shoes and clothes – that’s just the life of a fashionable single girl!) 

I knew a couple women who were sloppy housekeepers, but one suffered from depression and, conversely, the other was a highly successful businesswoman.  I also knew hoarders, but they tended to store everything so NEATLY that it wasn’t until later that I questioned why anyone would WANT an entire shelf of stacked empty cottage cheese containers.

I remember when I prayed for help. I had been a “secret slob” as Holden Caulfield put it in The Catcher in the Rye - looking neat on the outside but shoving boxes of stuff into the storage closet so company wouldn’t see it. Or getting the urge to clean and throwing out good stuff (like the year I threw out my tax return… eek!)  But I couldn’t hide it anymore. My younger brother moved in. He’d take his friends into my bedroom to use my computer and there was my squalor: boxes stacked next to the bed, dresser piled with stuff, overflowing file cabinet. I couldn’t hide it.

I prayed and even talked to someone at my church to ask for prayers. As usual, Our Father answered not with an instant ”cure”, but by steering me towards other people.

I had been reading business books about time management and organizing work-related items. I checked motivational tapes (Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, etc.) out of the library and listened to them on my commute. One day I came across a misfiled book, a funny book about ”Sidetracked Home Executives”. The “Slob Sisters”, Pam Young and Peggy Jones wrote about their own squalorous lives and how they invented a card system to keep them on track. 

The cards never worked well for me, but on their website did. There I ”met” other people who had similar challenges in staying organized. One of them was Marla Cilley, “The FlyLady” as she prepared to launch her daily FLY List. From there I made my way to OrganizedHome.com  and the Squalor Survivors Community (see my blogroll for links).

 So that’s my story. (And I’m sticking to it… but in a PostIt Note way, not like old bubblegum…)