Lenten Traditon BEach Via Crucis

Yesterday, I attended one of my favorite Lenten activities, our RCIA Via Crucis at the beach.  Thanks to working from home, I was able to meet my friends afterward to help with the setup of each station.  This year, while waiting for the students to arrive I saw a family of dolphins jumping delightfully close to the shore.  During the Via Crucis I got to see a beautiful a sunset, the moon rise and the beach empty becoming only ours while we prayed.  It was extremely cold around  9PM when we concluded, but the fruits of our labors were evident in the hearts of our students.  They were delighted by such a beautifully set introduction to our Lenten prayer and shared with us how they felt God’s presence intimately. 

Usually, I am in charge of taking pictures, but yesterday I wanted or rather needed to just focus on the prayer without any distractions because I so needed that moment with God.  Lately, I have been struggling keeping the flame alive in my spiritual life.  Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by my job and the isolation and lockup due to the pandemic that I just have enough energy to get through my work day.  I am not only dealing with my personal feelings of anxiety, but also the emotional rollercoaster of the teens and the parents that I work with.  Before I was able to attend weekly bible study meetings and social events that filled me up.  I could run into a parish and be with Jesus or just sit in silence in a pew. My coping mechanisms and spiritual therapy were put on hold this past year and I have been running close to empty.  

Thus, being able to pray at the beach with my friends and students was the biggest Lenten blessing. I needed to be there in the company of faith friends worshipping God.  Last year we were unable to do our beach Via Crucis and so yesterday it was that much more special, a sign that life is slowly going back to normal.  In the years that I have done it I have never seen dolphins join us and seeing them yesterday warmed my heart.  I felt like God gave me a late Valentine by giving me a glimpse of the dolphins doing summersaults in the air.  I realized there’s a big world out there one with waves, sunsets and creatures living under water and sometimes I get lost in the small bubble that is my life.  The beach reminded me of my smallness and in doing so pointed me towards the greatness of our Lord. 

"Look at the birds of the air that they do not nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?" 

Pathway to SFO Profession

On Friday, after work I had my interview to enter into the new phase of candidacy in my Secular Franciscan Order journey.  Now after the Rite of Admission, I will have moved from my prolonged Inquiry State to the next level before my Rite of Profession.  The interview had me recall my journey, specifically the calling of the Holy Spirit towards the Franciscan life and I loved looking back at all the moments that I recall Saint Francis calling me towards his way of life.  To be honest, it was so refreshing and inspiring at a time like this to look back because during this quarantine I have felt so empty and void of sustenance.  COVID took away my bible study groups and Mass- it took away my tangible relationship with my faith community and with the Eucharist- making it such a challenging year without the things that keep sane and healthy mind, body and soul.

My story with Saint Francis is your typical love story, he just showed up in my life and slowly wooed me into the Franciscan life.  I remember not understanding and being quite apprehensive about the saints and one day in the first prayer group that I joined I heard “Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace,” which is often attributed to Francis and I loved the hymn so much that I wanted to know more about the composer.  Finding that he loved animals and nature (something that I do too) made me open my heart to him and slowly I began to find how beautifully original he was.  When I returned to the Catholic faith I feared losing myself and becoming a la Nietzsche a “brainless sheep follower…” I wanted so much to be able to be Penny and love God.  Francis showed me that I could continue being me because God made me uniquely me for a purpose.  I soon found I loved nativities and when I discovered that Francis had been the first one to create one, I loved him even more. 

After returning to the Church I desired to enter into a community that would help me live out my faith and a friend took me to a Dominican Third Order meeting and though the people were really sweet I didn’t feel like that was the path for me.  When I finally found the SFO Fraternity near my home, I attended my first meeting and even though all the members have white hair I knew that I was home.  I knew that I wanted to grow roots and live out the rest of my life as a Franciscan.  I think that God has been challenging me to see how strong my desire is for joining the SFO that I have been in formation for longer than usual first because we lost our Spiritual Leader and then because of a pandemic.  Like I told my fraternity members, “you better let me in, because I am not going away.”           

Hoarding The Beginnings

I grew up with the bare minimum, shopping from the sale racks for basic necessities.  While my classmates had school supplies with the latest Sanrio characters my materials were without adornment.  They would return from Winter & Spring Break wearing new clothes (that their grandparents had gotten), but I had no one spoiling me with material possessions.  The day after Spring Break the most popular girl in elementary twirled in what she called her “Easter dress,” proudly sharing with everyone that her grandma had taken her to Robinson’s May to pick it out.  My grandparents lived in Mexico and I rarely got to see them and when I did my parents were usually the ones providing for them…  My parents too grew up in Mexico sometimes lacking the basic needs.     

I lied on a job application and began working when I was fifteen-years-old as a cashier at a fast food joint.  Since, it's as Tupac would sing, “…I love payin’ rent when the rent’s due…”  Most of my life I would go to stores and look at items and think I can’t afford that and probably never will, but soon as I began providing for myself I began to buy the material luxuries that I went without. However, I couldn’t make peace with paying so much money for designer pieces and often I went with cheaper versions.  Until, I came into the world of buying preloved items.  At thrift stores I found treasures for a few bucks and thus my hoarding began.

I developed this love for things.  Shoes first because no matter what size the scale reads shoes are forgiving and continue to slide on the foot. That and the fact that I always saw kids wearing Nike sneakers and mine were always dupes.  As an adult secondhand shopper, I packed my closet full of the best material goods that only a few people can afford.  The thrill of excavating and finding the one-dollar Jimmy Choo’s was as much fun as putting the found treasure in a nice storage box in my closet.  Looking at all the wonderful designer goods and buying more and more made me happy for the longest time, but now my possessions are starting to give me anxiety.  I have too much and many of the items just sit like forgotten artifacts in an over packed closet.  Yet, equally anxious ridden is the thought of letting them go.  I think I have some hoarding symptoms that I need to work out in order to slowly simplify my life as I enter into the cadency phase of my (over-extended) Secular Franciscan process...           

Seriously who needs this many sunglasses?

Our First Snow Day

I went to the snow for my first time in over twenty years!  My first time was during my high school’s Senior Ditch Day.  Four of us drove up to Big Bear and found a cheap place near the bottom of the mountain to play in the snow.  I had my Nike sneakers on and I recall how wet my feet got, but even without the proper wardrobe seeing the snow for the first time was such a joy!  I, like many of my childhood friends didn’t grow up in families that made these trips or got to experience the many holiday adventures that other kids got.  I was from the barrio, living in a two-bedroom apartment with eighteen other people- our fun was going to Thrifty’s drugstores after Easter or Halloween with a couple bucks to raid all the holiday candy on sale.  My social highlights were weddings and quinceañeras were I sat on a chair taking care of the kids that fell asleep because the parties lasted way past their bedtimes. 

Now as an adult, I like to do things to make-up for the many experiences that I didn’t get to have.  Hitting the snow yesterday was such a joy to the little deprived child inside.  We went to Mount Baldy because it was close enough and didn’t require me to get chains on my tires. While there wasn’t as much snow as I hoped it was still such a delight to be out in nature.  My friend and I had quite a laugh riding the lift up for our very first time, because we got on the bench without directions and forgot to pull down the safety bar.  The park attendant was screaming at us to pull it down as we were quickly moving up the mountain.  After pulling the lever down we laughed terrified at our ignorance.

At the top we got to participate in snow tubing.  Though mostly parents with their children were the ones on this part of the park, my friend and I had a blast being children. Sliding down and then making the trek back up left us winded, but in a good way.  Due to Covid we were there with only a small group of people, thus we were able to go down the snow slide as much as we wanted.  Then we took a little break to build our very first mini snowman.  Working with the snow trying to shape a little figure was again an experience full of laughter.  I think for both of us it was our first making a snowman.  We finally, traded the idea of a hot chocolate for local ale and enjoyed the white mountain beauty as we sipped our beers.    

High Heels No More

Do you ever feel like wearing high heels? 

I do. 

Especially right now that I don’t have any type of social life. I look at my closet filled with shoes that would make Cinderella jealous, but they are parked lined like boats on a dock.  Even when things are normal and I have more places to go to most of my two-hundred pairs go unworn.  Some are so beautiful, but way too painful or come with a silent warning of "possibility of falling."  I took the risk of falling for the pure joy of wearing the towering beauties, but much has changed.

It all began with me falling down a staircase twice, while wearing what I considered to be sensible four-inch platforms or more commonly known as wedges.  Both incidents happened when I had my office job, I was coming down the stairs and forgot to hold on to the railing and I fell - my butt hitting the stair and one of my wedge sandals flying towards a civilian that was on the lower floor.  My embarrassment over the flying shoe made me jump back up from where I had fallen, hoping to grab the predator shoe before it caused more harm…

The second incident occurred on those same stairs a month later with a different pair of wedges.  Again, I was walking down the stairs, this time the shoes remained on my feet, but there were more people around who suppressed laughter in trying to help me get up from the floor.   Since, I have lost my confidence, my high heel mojo is gone. 

The nail on high heel coffin, came when in Mexico I sprained my ankle.  I went into my grandmother’s room to kiss her good morning and inform her that I was going to Sunday Mass and when I stepped outside of her room, this fickle stair played a trick and my ankle snapped followed by great pain.  It was Sunday and in the small pueblo doctors' offices were closed so I had to go to the emergency room where I was told that it was only a sprain and not a fracture.  After, I returned to the States I visited my doctor for more scans and the diagnoses was the same.

However, since that sprain I can’t tolerate heels over three inches.  Which means that I will have to part with many of my shoe friends.  My lifestyle even before the pandemic was one more consistent with flats, so though my mind knows that heels are no longer my go to, my heart just doesn’t want to part with a beautiful artistic shoe lifestyle.  Thus, I have created a Pinterest page so that I can store my beloved heels in a special place, so that even if they leave this home their memory will live on…  

To be continued…