303/365 RCIA preparation

I sat in the dining room with Sarah, the intern from the divinity school who is working with Sr. Hildegard this semester. I needed someone to tell me what to do and she was as good as anybody, frankly. I have RCIA again this Sunday--we were going to be out of town this weekend but changed our minds last week sometime when we figured out that was a ludicrous plan. Every weekend from August to Christmas is full, so yeah, let's go camping in November. Yeah! So, not really. And I raised my hand to take this week's because I feel lots of guilt about RCIA and how not involved I am because, if you hadn't taken notice, I'm busy. Biz. Ee.

But I did and then looked at my choices. Heaven and Hell, Resurrection, and Life stuff (the Catholic view of life issues like abortion, murder, death penalty, etc). Ugh. I wasn't going to be good at the first, I probably wasn't going to be able to talk confidently about the second (seriously), and the third made me clench my jaw because it reminded me of oh so many bad family dinners and gatherings with my elderly aunt and her family and the angry anti-living-people pro-life attitudes around the table. Don't help the poor, don't help them AT ALL, even their children don't deserve health care or good educations, but you'd better never ever vote for someone who isn't unwaveringly holding the abolition of all abortions no matter what as the first and foremost and, frankly, only issue worth talking about. It nauseates me on so many levels, and I don't support abortion as a way of life, I think in vitro fertilization is a slippery slope to scary stuff, and so forth--but I believe personally that these things should be between a person and her doctor, not between angry foaming at the mouth pro-life advocates and politicians and misguided feminists and so forth. And the evangelical hijacking of this issue and the Republican hijacking of the benighted Catholic population and so forth just makes this whole thing like a recently scabbed over cut on my leg. Let's not pick at it, shall we?

But I reconsidered. I reconsidered because the catechism is really so good at things sometimes. Its chapter on God's Will is Life goes over the whole spectrum of life issues and frankly, we're bringing into the church one completely uncatechized young woman and two women from Africa with language barriers of one variety or another. Perhaps it would be good for me to tackle this with enthusiasm and bring forth to their presence the actual ideas the Church holds instead of what this or that bishop spouted off about or what annoying piece of crap propaganda showed up in their mailboxes or from friends and acquaintances with rigid opinions.

So tonight I'm going to sit down and make a handout and an outline for myself. And it'll be ok.

After preparing and hashing things out with Sarah, we chatted about her future plans and then I gathered up Leo to get ready to leave. Fr. Miguel had me smell and guess the flavor of the coffee creamer in his fridge, which was peculiar and I couldn't quite place. While doing this, Leo went into his office and dialed Nairobi on the phone. Then Sarah showed us pictures of her dog's halloween costume and I went home thinking about all this and kept smiling. The things that keep me here...