parenting hacks of faith: what are your tips for church?

We were gathered around the table in our parish’s fellowship hall, and the boys were ready to tear into their donuts: the long-awaited, long-promised bribery for behaving themselves decently at Mass.

When it hit me: we could do something more here. Everyone finally quiet and happy? Ready to feed our rumbling tummies? Together at last after another morning of trading off the toddler?

It was a perfect moment to seize.

“Hey,” I began, my own mouth full of cinnamon sugar. “While we’re eating our donuts, let’s each say one thing we liked about church today.”

My husband’s eyebrows went up. I shrugged and mouthed why not?

To my surprise, our oldest jumped in immediately. “I liked the drumming. And I REALLY liked when that baby got dunked!”

I laughed. Me, too.

We went around the circle. The youngest declared he liked donut. (Big surprise.) The adults agreed they liked the music, since they both missed the homily. (Big surprise.)

Instead of scarfing down our treats and hustling to the car, we lingered for a change. And thanks to the beauty of baked goods, I actually got my family to participate in one of the forced “what did you do today?” conversations I futilely try to inflict over dinner.

It made me realize that the simplest changes are often the best. Take what works and try it in a new light. The brilliance of parenting hacks.

. . .

We all have hints and helps we learn along the way to make life easier. Even now when I have no time to read a cereal box, let alone an entire magazine, I still tear open Parents to read the monthly “It Worked For Me!” round-up of clever tips from crafty parents. I love these handy hacks, and I’d love to hear yours.

What “hacks of faith” do you use with little ones at church? Not only to keep kids quiet, but to keep them engaged.

A hack is by definition an inelegant yet creative solution, and I can think of a handful I’ve learned from friends along the years to make our faith life infinitely easier with the under-5 crowd:

1. Sit in the front. If you slip in the back, it’s all too tempting to slip out. Kids can’t see a thing if they’re staring at adult backsides. But in the front pews, there’s always action to grab their attention. It doesn’t work all the time, and we often end up walking the youngest out anyway. But it works enough to make me muster confidence to walk all the way down the aisle even when we’re rolling in at the Alleluia. Kids love to be front and center to see what’s going on.
2. Stack the deck. My youngest boy’s godmother made the coolest holy-cards-on-a-key-ring toy for her son, and as soon as I saw it I knew I had to copy it. I am not crafty in the least, but this clever project took me about 5 minutes and cost about $5. Perfect. I get tired of trying to listen to the Gospel and whisper-read books about farm animals, so I figure if the church toys offer at least a couple connections to what’s going on around us, it’s better for all of us.
3. Make your own. The best busy book I’ve come up with for church is one I made myself. (I repeat, folks: if my un-Pinterest-worthy self can hack it, so can you.) I took a bunch of pictures around our parish one Sunday after Mass and stuck them in a small photo album. (A top ten Target purchase of my life, for all it’s bought me in return.) It’s a great tool to help toddlers point and name what they see. And a picture of a statue, a stained glass window, or a station of the cross offers plenty of possibilities for going deeper with preschoolers. Over the years I’ve added photos from both boys’ baptisms so we could remember them whenever a baby gets baptized at Mass. I’ve also slowly taken pictures of how the church looks in each liturgical season so that we can talk about the colors and environment change. Easy as pie. (Or church donuts.)

They’re hacks, not perfect solutions to be sure. (Ain’t much elegant about wrangling squirmy boys in the front pew, I’ll tell you that much.) But more often than not, they work.

And I am all about helping things work.

What clever tricks are hiding up your sleeves? Let’s share some ideas for sanity next Sunday!

gospel, interrupted

How I heard Palm Sunday:

When the hour came, Jesus took his place at table with the apostles.

Mama, I need Polar Bear. Read Polar Bear. Read. Please.

I tell you, Peter. Before the cock crows this day, you will deny three times that you know me.

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, what do you hear? I hear a lion roaring in my ear.

Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still not my will but yours be done.

Big Trucks and Diggers! I need Big Trucks and Diggers!

They all asked, “Are you then the Son of God?” He replied to them, “You say that I am.”

The wheel loader scoops and lifts and loads – oops, no, don’t pull the pages too hard or the dump truck part will break.

But they continued their shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Can you use your quiet voice in church? Shhh…no. Quiet. We use quiet voices while we’re listening.

Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

Mama, do they have donuts today? Should we go check to see if there are donuts?

Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

Shhh. Use your QUIET VOICE IN CHURCH. If you cannot use your quiet voice, you are going to have to leave aga – ok, that’s it. You’re leaving. Here, take him.

And when he had said this, he breathed his last.

Mama, home. Let’s go home. I’m hungry. I’m tired. Home.

. . .

A mother’s distraction? Maybe.

But aren’t all our hearings of the Gospel interrupted?

We pick up the book after making the coffee and before loading the dishwasher. We squeeze in church between breakfast and a birthday party. We listen to a sermon while plotting our to-do list and planning our errands.

We are always humans trying to hear the divine, listening with half an ear amidst all the chatter and clutter. We are never gods ourselves, with undisturbed attention, uninterrupted time, undistracted minds. We are creatures of distraction, people of interruption.

But might this be precisely the point?

Incarnation was interruption: God breaking into our world, becoming human. Resurrection was a wrench-in-the-works of reality, too: death becoming life, transformed and brand-new.

The Gospel was always meant to interrupt us. To interrupt injustice with truth. To interrupt guilt with forgiveness. To interrupt violence with peace. To interrupt ambition with humility. To interrupt selfishness with love.

No wonder it still interrupts today. Even this holiest of weeks is still full of work deadlines and school drop-offs and vacuuming and vet visits.

And the little ones can’t sit silent for the sacred mystery of holy days. They still fidget and squirm, whine and yawn. (So do adults sometimes, if we’re honest.)

Proof of all the human he came to save.

. . .

In case you missed it, I’m now a contributor at CatholicMom.com. Click here to check out my first post on how to live Lent as a busy mom. 

May you have a peaceful, prayerful Holy Week! (Amidst the chaos and craziness of daily life, of course.)

on surprises: lenten and papal

For over a week, half a post for Ash Wednesday sat waiting for me to finish it. And it started like this:

Anyone else feel like the gentle green of Ordinary Time just got yanked out from under their feet, and now they’re sitting plop in the purple of Lent, scratching their head and wondering how we got here so fast?

Is it even allowed to be Mardi Gras before Valentine’s Day?

Or am I the only anxious one who still has Christmas thank-yous on her to-do list?

From whence it wandered into ramblings about how maybe the fact that the dates for Easter and Lent change every year keeps us on our toes, on edge even, makes us more mindful or less likely to lull into complacency.

Which bumped into Scriptural allusions about how you know neither the day nor the hour.

(Which was apparently going to wrap back round to parenting or family life or something else that this blog claims to be about.)

But then we all woke up to the papal game-changer of the century (or rather, six centuries) and the looming start of Lent seemed even more surprising as we all sat around puzzling and pontificating (ha) about how we could possibly have a new pontiff by the time these forty days finished.

So now what are we supposed to do, I wondered. I thought about scrapping this post completely. But then it struck me that if this news is the Hayley’s Comet of ex cathedra announcements, I better scrape together two words about an all-points-bulletin Catholic news story that will surely never come again in my lifetime.

And that was precisely when it hit me:

Perhaps the early Ash Wednesday and the unexpected announcement from Benedict aren’t so far apart after all.

Both remind us of mortality, a sobering reminder that we are all dust and to dust we shall return.

Both mark the beginning of a time of great change, a season of renewal.

Both capture the popular imagination in surprising ways.

Ever try to find a parking spot at an Ash Wednesday service five minutes before it starts? Good luck. Catholic churches are crammed on this unofficial holy day. Every year I notice more and more people packed into the pews. Something about this simple penitential practice, this smear of ash on foreheads, touches us deeply.

Ditto Benedict’s decision. Sure, yesterday was full of ignorant chatter and conspiracy theories and snarky Catholic jokes. But it was also full of surprising resonance, of reporters and religion professors and regular church-goers agreeing that resignation could be wise, that retirement could be well-deserved, that respect was due to a powerful leader who knew when to step down, when to take leave of a calling that was ending.

It’s the eve of ashes, and it all feels surprising. But it’s always jarring when death interrupts life, isn’t it? When reminders of mortality upend our neatly planned calendars of The Way Things Are Supposed to Go?

Weren’t we were just waving our palms to welcome him in? Are they really so quickly burned to ash again?

ordinary time

It was an ordinary moment, during an ordinary day, in an ordinary week.

(Which, in the midst of life with littles, means complete chaos.)

Ordinary is never boring, never dragging these days. Our ordinary is unexpected, our mundane is a mess.

With each new dawn, schedules get shifted and plans get changed. One boy rises early, the other sleeps late; one naps like a dream, one wrestles like a nightmare; one gobbles three plates, the other shoves the spoon away. The next day they switch roles and everything changes again. Never a dull moment.

It was one of these everyday-crazy moments that I paused, my attention caught by turning leaves on the tree near our window, flashing orange in afternoon sun. Ordinary, I thought, such an ordinary day.

Even in the midst of mania – one child spilling CDs from the cabinet, the other pulling paints from a drawer – my thoughts tended theological, as they often do.

I thought about ordinary time, where the church spends most of its year. I thought about all of Jesus’ ordinary time, the years before his public ministry. So much of what matters is ordinary – the regular season, the everyday work.

In a season of life when so much seems ordinary, preparation for what’s ahead or maintenance of what’s right now, I sometimes think about all the ordinary years that Jesus spent. Scripture goes silent on the subject; the Gospels skip from twelve-in-the-temple to thirty-in-the-desert in the flip of a page. But those long lost years must have held quiet growth, careful learning, hard work, cultivated relationships, deep prayer. It made all the difference how Jesus lived his ordinary years.

So many days I dream, amidst the cries and chaos, about the years to come. When the house is finished. When my kids are in school. When I have more time to write. I often wrestle with the waiting, the reality of so much ordinary stretching out in front of me.

But when I stop, seized by an extraordinary ordinary like autumn leaves in October sun, I realize how much God must love ordinary. Because all of life is wrapped around it.

The sacred ordinary of every day.

where i saw christ: back pew, pink coat

I glimpsed her at the back of a long line trailing down the aisle, shuffling forward in the slow side-to-side dance of people waiting their turn.

She wore a bright fuchsia trench coat, hair coiffed in a cute side sweep. Behind her bobbed the heads of two bright-eyed daughters, brunettes like their mother. In her arms she held another girl. The smallest, hair pinned back with a pink bow to match.

Did you see them come in? he whispered when he saw where I was staring. She was pushing that little one in a tiny wheelchair.

The family made their way to the front of the line. She swung the tiny girl with limp legs into the wooden chair and knelt down at her feet. Took a pitcher of water and began to pour it slowly over her daughter’s toes.

As she washed, she looked up into the girl’s face and smiled, her eyes bright. Then she dried each small foot with a fluffy white towel and gathered the child back into her arms, setting her gently on the floor. One by one her other daughters eagerly jumped into the chair. Each one received the same wide smile, the same loving attention.

While her sisters’ feet were being washed, the smallest girl began to crawl back down the aisle, dragging her legs behind her. An older woman in the front pew frowned. Without the wheelchair, she was just another antsy child.

But without a word, the mother turned and smiled, bent down to sweep the girl up into her arms and led the group back to their places in the last pew.

That’s what she does all day long, I realized, tears springing into the corners of my eyes.

She washes feet.

stubborn alleluias

A few days before Lent, I sat my son down for a serious conversation over crackers.

“So buddy, Lent starts on Wednesday. Lent is a time when we get ready for Easter. And during Lent we don’t sing Alleluia. So we’re not going to sing Alleluia for a while.”

His sea-blue eyes sparkled up at mine. His milk-smeared mouth turned up at the corners, and he cocked his head full of curls to one side.

“Should we sing Alleluia?” he cooed.

“No,” I replied patiently. “I just said we’re NOT going to sing it for a while. Because it’s Lent. And we don’t sing Alleluias during Lent. We save our Alleluias for Easter.”

“Should we sing Alleluia?” “No.”

“Should we – ” “NO.”

“Sh-” “NO! I SAID NO ALLELUIAS DURING LENT!”

Snack and failed attempt at liturgical catechesis both met an untimely end. The cherub scampered out of the kitchen and raced up the stairs, warbling as he went: “AH-AH-YAY-YOO-YA, AHHHH-YAY-YOO-YA!”

The rest of Lent? You guessed it. Our house has been filled with Alleluias. Cranky Alleluias and cheerful Alleluias. New lyrics sung to Alleluia tunes. Alleluia lyrics slapped onto nursery rhyme songs.

You would think we were already stuffing our cheeks full of Easter chocolates the way Alleluias are resounding round here.

I was annoyed for a while. Ok, I foisted my Lenten disciplines on my child and it failed. I tried to teach a two-year old about the somber tenor of a solemn season and it was a total flop. I realize now that if I had never uttered the A word on Ash Wednesday, I probably would have had a Alleluia-free Lent. I get it.

Silly, silly new mama.

But in the dusty midst of spring cleaning last weekend, a piece of paper fluttered to the floor as I swept a pile across my desk. I picked up the small scrap, its edges taped and retaped, remnants of a journey from childhood mirror to dorm room wall:

Let nothing so fill you with sorrow that you forget the joy of Christ risen.

(Dear Mother Teresa. That little lady had a gift for summing up the Gospel.*)

I thought about the stubborn persistence of joy.

Scraggly green shoots that push up through concrete cracks. Bandaged children who squeal with delight as they play in bombed-out buildings. Cancer patients who crack jokes with their nurses.

Something small and resilient within the human spirit seeks joy at any cost. Alleluia is a stubborn word to purge from our vocabulary. Our tongues ache for it during Lent: the forty days seem too long, and we’re cranky and tired by the end. We need more joy. Which is precisely the point: to do without so we remember how to do with.

This year, we’re plagued with an abundance of Alleluias, courtesy of one cheeky toddler. But I’ve given up fighting with joy. I figure God thought we could use an extra dose of delight in our days, and I’m done complaining. Aren’t all our Lents supposed to be lived in the light of Easter joy?

*For a little Lenten inspiration, check out these quick reads from some great theological minds on the Gospel in seven words or less. 

And if you want my spin?

“See those people?” God asks. “Love them.”

(Coincidentally, it also applies to parenting.)

ash wednesday: every parent’s nightmare

Last night I lingered in a long line of blinking tail lights to turn into the parking lot. I wondered about the growing crowds at each year’s Ash Wednesday services. What packs the pews this evening every Lent?

As I waited, I thought of four young girls killed in a weekend car crash. Freshmen roommates, victims of a mild winter’s rare snow storm. One was from our town. Another was our sitter’s co-worker. Shiny senior portraits show girls on the brink of adulthood, bright-eyed and smiling. Lots of ashes at their loss.

I looked around at faces, young and old, as I entered the church. Many at Mass knew and loved those girls. What does Lent mean when we’re staring at death?

Before I left home that evening, my husband had told me a story he’d heard about the American reporter killed in Syria. The night before she died in the bomb blast, she told of the suffering of women and children, often the focus of her wartime front-line reporting.

“I watched a little baby die today,” she told the BBC on Tuesday. “Absolutely horrific, a 2-year old child had been hit. They stripped it and found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest and the doctor said ‘I can’t do anything.’ His little tummy just kept heaving until he died.”

“Stop,” I cut him off before he finished telling me the story. “Stop. I literally cannot hear that.” I scooped up my own 2 year-old and squeezed his squirming limbs to my chest.

“My love,” I whispered into his hair as he wrestled out of my grasp. Overwhelmed at the thought of losing life closest to my own.

I prayed about both stories in the pew. Death close to home and far away. Parents living my worst nightmare. Mothers watching their babies blown apart, fathers sobbing at their daughters’ death. I hated to think about it. But I made myself sit with the terror of such loss.

Who doesn’t want to flip the page when they see the news? Who doesn’t want to turn their head from the TV’s wail? We shy away from the horror because it is too much for us to bear. And yet each day parents wake to our worst nightmare. Cancer. Suicide. Car crash. Overdose. Babies born too early; teenagers gone too soon.

I stared up at the cross while people shuffled forward to get their ashes. I remembered that at the heart of Christ’s story, too, stands this terrible tension. A mother holding her dead son’s body.

We have to sit with this image, this terror and sorrow. And not only on Good Friday, the day of death that makes us squirm so uncomfortably in the pews. But also Ash Wednesday. Ashes on our foreheads, burnt and smeared, remind us that we each will meet death. Even the young and the lovely among us.

A family filed down the aisle in front of me. In the mother’s arms was a tiny girl with blond curls. She, too, was marked with dark ash. What did her mother see when she looked down at the sweet face smeared with soot? A reminder of her child’s mortality? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Why do so many people come back to church this night? Perhaps because Ash Wednesday helps us make sense of life’s fragility. We ritualize our own mortality to remind us to turn from sin to life-giving love.

Ash Wednesday gathers us together as a church and reminds us that our community cares about the deepest realities of our lives. It gently leads us to the edge of our fears and shows us a way to live through the suffering. It shakes us loose from the clench of loss and speaks truth of rising after dying.

A stranger smudges soot on our skin, and the traces tickle our nose. Teenagers elbow each other and snicker at the size of each others’ crosses. Wide-eyed children peer over their parent’s shoulder, innocent of the dark sign they now bear on their forehead, as mortal as the rest of us.

This sacramental sign holds us in tensions we’d rather shudder off – we’re sinful, we’re mortal, we’re human – and transforms them from terrifying to something holy. Something we can hold.

If even for one night.

learning as a family: the new translation

Bet you thought I forgot about this one…

Back when the new translation of the Roman missal was front-page news, I wrote about my struggles in coming to terms with the change. I celebrated words I loved and would miss. And I promised I’d turn to what I could embrace in the new prayers at Mass.

And then life – and work and holidays and travel and illness and everyday chaos-with-kids – interrupted. And I never got to that third post, the hopeful one. Despite its persistent nagging at me every time we slid into the pew on Sunday.

But as the weeks passed and I guiltily thought of how I hadn’t made good on my promise, I started to see that perhaps it was better this way.

I needed time for the new words to bounce off my ear, roll off my tongue, rattle around in my head. I needed space to accept the awkwardness of “chalice” instead of “cup,” “consubstantial” instead of “one in being,” “was incarnate” instead of “born.”

I needed to grumble a bit. I’ll always miss “protect us from all anxiety,” among others.

I needed to stumble a lot. I still mangle the “enter under my roof” prayer every single Sunday.

And through my grumbling and stumbling, I came to realize something important about the new words we now say and pray at Mass each week:

We are learning them together.

It’s rare for a whole family to learn something brand-new. Usually the expert teaches and the novice learns. But as a young family in today’s Catholic Church, we find ourselves in the unique position of learning right alongside our children.

At this point I don’t know the words of the Mass any better than my toddler. We both scramble for pew cards: he pretends to read them, I pretend to memorize. He chimes in on the creed; I jump in late to stutter ”and with your spirit.” We each make mistakes, and what can we do but smile? We’re learning as a family. Adults and children alike, back to the beginning together.

Our kids will never know anything but this Mass. For a while that brought me sadness. I liked the words I knew and I didn’t like the reasons behind the change. But now I find myself turning to hope, because that is our Christian calling. I hope that my children will come to love church: listening to Scripture, breaking bread, going forth to serve. I hope that our praying together as community will both comfort and challenge our family. And I hope that my wrestling with the new translation will give my kids a glimpse of what it means to be Catholic.

Our faith is beyond words. It is lives given in love and service to God and each other. You can call that by a thousand different names, but it remains truth. And yet all we have are words – imperfect, human words – with which to pray and wonder and celebrate and question. So without further ado, here are a few of the new words I’m learning to love.

We praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we glorify you, we give you thanks for your great glory, Lord God, heavenly King, O God, almighty Father. The words of the Gloria have been inverted. We used to address God first (“Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father”) and state our praise second (“we worship, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory”). But now we explode into this exultation of verbs – praise! bless! adore! glorify! give you thanks! – which crescendos into an explosion of God’s names. I love the build-up of phrases, heaping glory upon glory.

I also celebrate, here and elsewhere in the Mass, the change from “worship” to “adore.” More loving, more intimate, “adore” reminds me of the way I love my husband and my boys: with such sweet joy I can’t help but grin. I like the reminder to love God like that, too.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right and just. We used to respond to the priest’s opening of the Eucharistic Prayer by saying, “It is right to give God thanks and praise.” Which I always liked. Except that the addition of the word “just” has brought echoes of justice into the liturgy. We need more words that call us to justice, so I’ll take this small step.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. I can’t be the only faithful feminist out there who noticed that every “he” in the Creed which referred to the Spirit got replaced with “who”? Probably not the translators’ intention (ha!), but I celebrate it nonetheless. I love Spirit as Spirit – creative, powerful, life-giving, beyond-gender Spirit – so I secretly delight in stringing together clauses of “who.” Leaves a little to mystery and imagination, which are the root of faith.

I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. At the end of the Creed we used to say, “We look for the resurrection of the dead,” which for me evoked images of running around the house, searching for my keys (“What are you looking for?” “THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD! I CAN’T FIND IT ANYWHERE!” “Well, where did you last see it?”)

One directional adverb later, and suddenly I switch from scanning the horizon to focusing on the attitude with which I search. I look forward: I anticipate, I hope, I eagerly await. I like looking forward to things – Christmas, birthdays, my youngest child sleeping through the night - much more than I like looking for my keys. So Amen to moving forward.

How about you? What words of the new translation are you coming to love?

(And does anyone else just love the new Mass settings we’re singing? All praise to those liturgists who slogged through tangles of translation to create beauty out of unfamiliar territory. Our parish’s settings of the Hosanna and the Mystery of Faith are simply gorgeous – I’ll have to find out the composer and note it here…)

the old translation: what i will miss

The Catholic Church in the U.S. is on the cusp of change. Starting on Sunday, the new translation of the Roman Missal will go into effect, and all of us in the church – from pastor to pew – will begin learning new prayers and responses.

Last week I wrote about my need to grieve the loss of the well-loved words I won’t hear anymore, in order to turn and embrace new words. So today I give you a few of the changes that I’ll leave behind with longing…

[Words in bold are the part of the old translation that will be changed.]

We believe in one God…

I know that by definition, the “credo” of the creed means “I believe.” Yet I can’t help but miss how it feels to stand in a full church, shoulder to shoulder with family and stranger, and declare what we as a people hold true. Especially in a world as divided and contentious as ours, there is something powerful about proclaiming the truths that a wide and diverse group holds as sacred. We are liberal and conservative, we are practicing and lapsed, we are certain and unsure, but we all stand together and share the beliefs that make us church.

…by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

The loss of “born” (in favor of “was incarnate”) is one that I especially grieve. I love the moment in the creed when we bow in reverence of Jesus’ conception and birth, not only because it honors the wonder of the Incarnation but because it honors Mary’s role in God’s great plan. Ever since the births of my own babies, I have barely been able to speak the words of how Jesus was “born of the Virgin Mary” without a lump in my throat. To learn all that bearing and birthing a baby demands from a woman, to have lived through the pain and the power of those moments – I felt that I was honoring Mary and her strength every time I prayed those words of the creed.

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

Powerful and poetic, simple and succinct. Yes, there are many ways to proclaim the mystery of our faith, but I’m saddened that I’ll never hear these three phrases prayed in the Mass again. They always reminded me of the constancy and consistency of Christ: everywhere and always, in time and beyond time, past/present/future.

Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

At a family wedding years ago, I overheard the guest behind me whisper to her date right after the assembly prayed these words before Communion. “That is my favorite part of what Catholics say at church,” she said. “I don’t really get what they’re saying a lot of the time, but I love that part – ‘I’m not worthy to receive you, but I shall be healed.’”

I never forgot her words, how she recognized the power of humility and certainty of faith, all wrapped into one. At times in my life, I didn’t feel worthy to receive – but I could, so I did. Unworthy but grateful and hopeful – and therefore worthy in ways I couldn’t see. I know that the change to “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof” is more Scripturally sound, but I mourn the loss of the intimacy of simply saying “receive you.”

These are just a few of the changes come Sunday, words that will pass from everyday use into the history books. But they are words that shaped my faith, prayers that guided me through dark moments and showed me glimmers of light. Maybe it’s not too dramatic to say that losing them is like losing an old friend. Because words matter. And we loved the ones we lost.

What words will you miss?

wrestling with the new missal (because words matter)

Life is full of firsts and lasts. But sometimes even when we see change looming on the horizon, it’s no easier to accept.

This weekend is the last Sunday of the Catholic Mass as I’ve known it since I was a child. Starting on the First Sunday in Advent, a new missal translation will go into effect. And as a church, we’ll go from flying through rote memorization to stumbling over new words and prayers in the pews.

I am not looking forward to this.

The changes are no surprise. They were in the works when I graduated from divinity school, and all the liturgy students were a-twitter about new Mass parts and catechizing the changes. But with such drama and politics and ups and downs about how when (and even whether) the new translation would be put into place, I did what any wordsmith faced with the prospect of drastic change in well-loved prayers would do.

I ignored it.

I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. I hoped it would get caught up for years – or even decades – with bishops bickering or committees quibbling. I prayed that the Spirit would move the church to invest its energy in debates other than “consubstantial” vs. “one-in-being.”

And – surprise! – it turns out that this was a foolish way to go. Because just like denying that your baby is growing up or your teenager is heading off to college, the change was coming. Whether I liked it or not.

So for the past few weeks, I’ve been moping around Mass. As our choir started singing the new Gloria in preparation for Advent, I frowned. As the bulletin grew fat with inserts about relearning the Mass parts, I grumbled. As priests preached from the pulpit about the coming changes, I sighed.

And then on the drive home from church one Sunday, I got that unmistakable itch. The uncomfortable restlessness that means God is speaking and I’m not listening.

Dang, I hate that itch.

I realized that I needed to figure out a way to embrace the change. To see good. To find peace. Because change was coming and I’d have to live with it.

So I sighed and pulled out a stack of papers that I’d stuffed in a drawer. A copy of the changes to the Mass parts. A list of FAQs about why this is happening now. Commentaries on the meaning of the new translations.

I sat down and read them all. And decided that if I had any hope of embracing the new, I first had to grieve the loss of what was old and comfortable.

Before you roll your eyes – it’s just some new words! who cares? does it really matter? - let me remind you that anyone who dares to call themselves a writer, even in the most amateur use of the term, believes that words matter. That beauty and poetry matter. That the power of words to shape our thoughts and beliefs matters.

And because I believe words matter, when I finally sat down and faced the new words right in front of me, I discovered – surprise! – that I actually appreciated some of the changes. If I could lovingly let go of the past, I might just be able to peacefully accept the future.

So this week and next, I’m going to spend some time on both sides of the changes. One post on what I will miss from the old translation and one post on what I can embrace in the new.

If you’re Catholic, I hope this sparks a new wrestling with the words on the page. Because words matter. And if you’re not, I hope this inspires a new reflection on what you profess and believe. Because words matter.

As any parent of a frustrated toddler will patiently remind you, you have to use your words. And use them well. My prayer for our church as we push into this period of transition with translation is that we can use our words and use them well.

Because words matter.