From My Air-conditioned Caravan

Here I am in the desert...riding along in my air-conditioned caravan! Some desert, huh? No camel-riding, no thirst, the ultimate in physical comforts; although there sure is a lot of sand.

My allegory refers to a previous post about our having to go through the desert yet. Do I see an oasis coming up or a mirage? We THINK we have found our place to live! I will post back when I know for sure.

For anyone who has not read the previous posts about our relocation, I am not talking about a literal desert. No, we are not in Palm Desert or the Saharas. We are here in Baltimore, and it's a beautiful city. It grows more beautiful as the strangeness, and the loneliness of leaving our community behind, fade a bit. It might help, too, that the torrential rains stopped. It also helped that a new friend I met through an egroup had our family over for breakfast with her family. And another new email friend from the same egroup (whom I haven't yet met) gave me the name of a doctor when one of the boys needed one (something important but minor; not to worry). Although this is a pediatrician, so will only "work" for two of the five of us, there's something comforting about knowing a doctor. And he and his staff were very nice and are in a great location.

Anyone want to buy a lovely house in Northern Kentucky? Could I ask you to say a prayer that someone will? Please? (smile)

When we have our new place to live and our "old place" disposed of, then I won't worry about anything, anymore, ever again. Anyone believe that one? (smile). If you believe that, I have some desert property to sell you, too.

God bless.

Margaret Mary

Things are Not Always as They Appear

Come with me down the lane of "philosophizing", if you don't mind, and I hope you will learn with me. I am thinking as I go along, and learning as I write.

Things are not always as they appear. Nor are they always clear-cut. For example, right now, where and who are we? Are we rich or poor? (neither end of the spectrum, of course, though some might look at our situation and say one, and some might look at us and say the other). Do we rent or own our own home? (The last is a question I had to ask when someone would apply for a charge card at the department store where I recently worked). Here we sit in an upscale apartment in Baltimore County (with a two car garage!), which is being paid for by the new company my husband works for. But the apartment is only temporary and each night I look for an apartment where we can live after that. Back in Kentucky we own a home, but we are praying that it sells quickly and for a good price. It's absolutely essential that it sell quickly. So, is owning a home always a good thing? It was, but it isn't in a month or two.

Of course, the ultimate question right now regarding how much someone makes (a lot), what their owning/renting status is (questionable), and so on, is "Does it really matter?" And - for purposes of comparison but also for who the person is as a person - the answer is: no! It doesn't matter. We are all the same, regardless of whether we have a job, what our income is, how much we possess. All of that is not what makes us who we are. All of that is a house of cards. A person can one day be riding high financially and the next day be jobless. A person can one day be jobless (or have a business that is not adequate or is even draining their resources), and the next day have a wonderful job.

I was thinking of going on to say that what does matter, what makes us who we are, is character. And that is partially true. But even that - as it appears - is not all there is. Look at St. Paul who persecuted the Christians before He was knocked off his horse. Look at St. Augustine who was a player before his conversion (or so I've heard). They didn't suddenly go from a "bad person" to a "good person". The God-given potential was there all along, yes, but so were some good traits. Saul was very dedicated, we have to say that for him.

There are two (opposite) things that I've had brought home to me recently in a big way: One is that people WILL try to cheat. I learned that one while working at a department store...from observation and from my supervisor telling me that yes, it's really true (I needed to be aware, and I became aware). Those same people came to my register and were very human. The other thing that I have learned very profoundly, just recently, is how very, very mistaken we can be about someone's actions and choices. Things are not always as they appear. I found out recently that the gossip I had heard about someone in my youth was totally untrue...and here I had believed it for 37 years. I had seen not only the potential but the very real good in this person (like St. Paul with his dedication), but what I hadn't realized was that the "bad" I had heard, wasn't.

I was thinking just now: So, if someone is standing before us with a gun, THEN we can judge that person. But then I remembered a recent story in the Readers Digest. I think it was a hold-up in Indiana. At any rate, a young mother was held hostage. She told the man that she wanted to live for her young daughter. She treated him as a human being with feelings, who would have the compassion and understanding to save her life for her child. And he did.

As Mother Mary Potter wrote in a little devotional book (and I am paraphrasing, as the book is packed away in a box): We see someone who is a sinner and we wonder at them...when we could do them good by praying for them.

So, if I'm saying we can't judge people, do I believe that sometimes we have to judge a situation? Definitely. When someone asks us for money, for example, perhaps we have to make a judgement about whether this a good time to give money. Perhaps they are cheating - just trying to get money without working. Or they might want the money to support a drug habit that we might not want to support. Would I help them more by giving them food? A friend told me that her father buys grocery store gift cards to give to people who ask for help. What a wonderful idea. Another friend told us of her sons buying breakfast at McDonald's for a homeless man and bringing it to him. But whether we have to say "no, I'm sorry, I can't help you today", or whether we can help in some way, let us look at that person and see that here is a human being with potential...and maybe more than potential, maybe great character right here and now. Most of all, here is "Jesus"; as He said that what we do to others, we do to Him.

And believe me, I am talking to myself as much or more than to you who read this. Let us pray for one another. And please pray for us, that our house will sell quickly and well, and we will find the "right" place to live in the Baltimore area. Thank you so much, and God bless!

Throwing Things Out of the Covered Wagon

As a child I always loved reading the pioneer stories in the readers. Then, as an adult, we started homeschooling when it was still in its pioneering days. When Peter became legally blind, my continuing to homeschool put us back into the pioneering days once again (in both cases, not one of the very first pioneers, but among the big move out West, metaphorically-speaking).

Well, after Ed's lay-off as he was trying to build a business in tough economic times, and we were going through our savings without substantial income in sight, I felt like we were pioneers in a wagon that was being pulled slowly but inexorably toward a cliff. I kept hoping that God was going to give us a way to turn those horses (or oxen, perhaps) at the last minute. And He did. Or, come to think of it, maybe instead, it had only looked like we were heading toward the edge of a cliff, but as we get closer, we see that the ground is downhill but not drastically so... there is a way to get down the hill. And of course, God had known all along. Up ahead we can see a desert, but beyond the desert are fertile hills like the ones we came from...somewhat different but still fertile.

But to get down those hills and across that desert, we need to put our shoulders to the wheel, and we also need to throw out some things, just as the pioneers had to do. (Hey, at least we can sell some of ours, not just throw it all out to rot in the weather.) Well, this lightening the load is not necessarily a bad thing. We have seen some houses of family members that were filled with things when the occupants died or became ill; and here we are with a chance to whittle down our belongings on our own.

For those relatives and friends who had not yet heard of Ed's new job and our plans to move, I apologize for not telling you before now. Once Ed was offered the job, things have been moving along "fast and furious". So, here is the news:

Ed has gotten a good job in his former profession (as an actuary)! He will be working for a company called Old Mutual in Baltimore, Maryland. We will be moving there soon, so we are busy, busy, busy.

Here are some of the many good things about our move:

Baltimore is on beautiful Chesapeake Bay, and Ed will be working in the Inner Harbor area...an area that has been upgraded by urban renewal.

Next door to Ed's office building is a large Whole Foods store (he will have a field day).

There is a lot to see and do in Baltimore. And, Washington D.C. is only an hour or so away. (I am going to have a hard time getting used to "Washington" - being spoken alone - as meaning Washington D.C., since I am originally from Washington State. On the West Coast we usually said "Washington" for Washington State, and "Washington D.C." for the home of our capitol.).

I won't have to work and so we'll be able to continue to homeschool, which is what Robert and Peter want.

The Maryland School for the Blind is in the Baltimore area, and we can get equipment from them, on loan, just as we did from Kentucky School for the Blind, only they will be much closer, possibly just down the road.

There is a diocesan Latin Mass in Baltimore at a beautiful old cathedral.

The weather will probably be somewhat similar to what it is here.

There should be pretty good public transportation.

Thank you, everyone, for your prayers. We can still use them, as we get down that hill and across the desert. And please know that you are all in ours, as well.

A Minor Change

Info for anyone interested in using the Rosary link in my sidebar. Although I made each of the links on the right open in a new window (which means that if you exit from them, you are right back here), I decided not to do that with the Rosary link. I changed it so that if you are there and want to come back to my blog, you will need to use the back button on your computer.

The reason I made this change? I don't know how much bandwidth Blogger allows for each blogger. In other words, I don't know if several people can access this page at one time. If someone goes to the Rosary site and says a Rosary, it might be fifteen or twenty minutes that this page is open behind it. So, that's why I decided to change that link.