elizabeth

A Melting Pot

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​When I was a kid, I would occasionally say that I was Canadian. My father would not have it. He told me I was an American, not Canadian. I tried to argue. But Grandpa was born in Canada. His family still lives there. Why aren’t we Canadian? We’re American he would say. And that was the end of the discussion.

It wasn’t a diss against Canada or our Canadian relatives, but to him it was more than important; it was pride, it was honor, it was a patriotic act.

When my kids have done their genealogy or ancestry in school or for class projects, they’ve asked, and we’ve told them where their families have come from. We’re Jewish so for us it wasn’t that we came from Eastern Europe, but that we were Russian, German, Polish, but always prefaced by being Jewish. It was our ethnicity more than our religion despite being both.

My kids are all of those things, but their families also come from Canada, Russia, Germany, Poland, and Ireland. We eat foods and follow traditions from all of those family histories.

I’m an American. And some of my family is Canadian. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and neither takes away from the other.

When I heard the first time someone referred contemptuously to Elizabeth Warren’s nod to her Native American ancestry, I had to shake my head at their myopia. She wasn’t saying she was Native. She wasn’t saying she was Indigenous. She wasn’t asking for a government benefit or acknowledgment. She was simply relaying a family story that she’d heard her whole life about her heritage, about the traditions in her own family.

It was the President who made a political issue out of it, and then the racists jumped onboard with their laughter and their name-calling. The President continued with his name-calling just this week.

Even Democrats criticized her for bringing it up now, a distraction from the important midterms, although I would remind them that the President is the one who brought it up, and Senator Warren simply responded. I know what it’s like to have that continual gnawing inside when someone says something about you or your family. They say it, and it’s forgotten, but not by you, not by the aggrieved. The hurt remains and festers and dogs in to all those places that have been hurt before.

I think she also knew the President wouldn’t follow through with his promise of a charitable contribution; he has never kept his word, and he’s not about to start now, but still…

Was she supposed to ignore his taunts? Is she supposed to take it because the timing isn’t right for the election campaign cycle according to some pundits? Is she just supposed to sit down and be quiet little lady?

As someone who lives in a melting pot, I understand where Warren was initially coming from, and the more air we give to the nonsense that this President does and says, the more air he sucks out of the room, and the rest of us, the rest of us are suffocating.

So good for Elizabeth Warren.

One day my kids will be telling someone about their Canadian or Irish ancestry, and they will be mocked because they don’t have the proof; just a handful of family stories they cherish, and I hope they don’t back down either.

RCIA – First Day

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This morning was my first day as an RCIA teacher. It took me until last night to finally sit down with the readings and the notes from the Breaking Open the Word book that I’ve had sitting in my Adobe file for the better part of a month.

It’s not that I’m lazy – not when it comes to reading anyway, but in my subconscious I thought that if I prepared and read the readings and the papers, then I would have to go through with the class. Now, keep in mind that I was a teacher for over ten years, but those were kids, and in the end, it wasn’t for me. By last night I realized that whether or not I did the homework, the assignment wasn’t going away. I call it an assignment, but I did volunteer for it. To be honest, I want to do it. It wasn’t that long ago that I was on that side of the table in the RCIA program. Just like I brought something from my background as a catechumen, I think that I can offer something in return. I have a unique perspective, and I think everyone on the team has something special to bring to the new people.
They’ve been doing this since the fall. I was the new one again.

The catechumens are dismissed by the presider right after the Gospel is read and with me we go across the parking lot to the parish center. I glanced at my watch as Father C began his homily and tried to determine how much time I would have with them before they went on to part two of their weekly learning. Forty-five minutes. What would I say for forty-five minutes? I should have guessed that I overestimated my time when Father C said he doesn’t get to do this that often and he was going to use his time to talk about Mary.

I must admit that when he got to his fourth or fifth point about the Mother of G-d, I was almost gleeful at how much of my time had whittled away. Here I was worried that I’d run out of things to say before I ran out of time.

When we finally arrived at the parish center, the other team members were wondering what had happened to us. Father J was also there, asking if he could sit in.

Um, sure.

As it turned out, while it seemed as though he did a lot of the talking, it really was an even split between the four of us. And in retrospect, the point of breaking open the Word is to get the catechumens to think and to talk about their interpretations of the Scriptures and the Readings and to ask the questions that most concern them.

We talked about the prophet, Micah, and wondered why he wasn’t given more playing time so to speak. He’s the one who prophesies that the Messiah will come from Bethlehem. That’s a pretty important piece of information. We talked about the liturgical year and the three cycles, A, B, and C that the church follows. I didn’t get to add that this is my first C cycle. I started in A with Matthew.

We talked about Mary and Elizabeth. I added my own two cents about how through Advent, we’re waiting in our modern lives, and we know what we’re waiting for, but right there in the moment, Elizabeth also knew that she was waiting for her Lord and Savior, and was astonished that His Mother came to visit her. It’s kind of amazing to realize how they watched the prophesies come to fruition.

The one thing I didn’t get to say was about how the Incarnation is in tandem with the Death and Resurrection of Lent and Easter time. Jesus is born so that he may die and be reborn. Sometimes, it’s a lot to understand. That’s one of the reasons that I enjoy going over this with the catechumens and each year as we get another Gospel writer’s point of view.

I think having Father J at this, my first class and having Father C take up so much time before dismissing us was just the icebreaker that I needed to begin my role in this ministry. I will be better prepared, although I was ready today, but next time I won’t be as full of anxiety. I’ve already met the two women, and as I walk with them on this path, I am still learning and growing in my faith.

We also talked about the interconnectedness of everything that we do and see and how it all relates around us. Father J mentioned the Star Wars connection this week in his homily, and I’ve seen things on my journey that relate back across my entire life. I’ve been wondering what I was looking for with this year of mercy, and our parish’s holy doors. I still don’t know what I want for this year, not entirely, but tomorrow is when I’ll walk through the doors. I’ll have more about that tomorrow.