How planning a wedding is sort-of like writing a master's thesis.

Via StyleMePretty.com

It's true, I met my future husband on only the second week of grad school. If I hadn't moved to Delaware, we would have never crossed paths on OK Cupid. Still, I don't like to think that the purpose of those two years in the library were just to get my Mrs. degree. When I applied to my grad program, I had never been so sure that God was calling me to a place where I could develop the gifts and talents He gave me. My M.A. helped me grow intellectually and aesthetically. Even if I haven't found a job in my field yet, the benefits of grad school go beyond the ring on my finger.

But, I have to admit, writing that vestment thesis was really good training for getting hitched. Sure I can do this wedding planning stuff; I spent an entire year on a massive project that required organization, calls to dozens of sites, and hundred of images for inspiration. As I told The Betrothed last week, it's like we have our thesis statement and rough outline, now we have to do background research.

Preliminary literature review = the pile of wedding and marriage-prep books on my mom's end table
Advisor meetings = Pre-Cana
Dozens of emails to Episcopal churches asking if they had any cool old vestments = the almighty Google docs spreadsheets of potential venues and caterers
Taking pictures of every potentially useful archives document = Pinterest, Pinterest, and more Pinterest (There are DRESS SPOILERS on that last one.)
Navigating the graduate office's page format template = figuring out if the parish music director will let us use the music we want
Footnotes that I fixed in the last month = what the table centerpieces will actually look like

Next week The Betrothed flies off to London for two months of dissertation research. I'll be here, writing him letters and hoping all these spreadsheets distract me from loneliness. Along the way I'll know we are both preparing for our life together, the greatest long-term project we could ever undertake. I'm sure God will continue to use our talents in unexpected ways.

We're getting married!

Now for the good news: what I held off announcing on Ash Wednesday is that The Beau and I are engaged! (Should I call him The Betrothed now?) He popped the question on Friday night, starting off what was definitely the best Birthday/President's Day/Mardi Gras weekend ever.

I had suspected something might be up, but Mark completely surprised me by asking the minute I arrived in New Jersey. My Bolt bus was late, we had to reschedule dinner, the Newark train station was confusing, and then I couldn't find him on the train platform when I arrived. Once the crowd cleared and we met up I was ready to lug my bags off. 

But then he said "Wait, I want to ask you something...do you like sacraments?" 

Then in a moment that was both in slow motion and over too fast, he knelt down and asked if I would like to enter into the sacrament of matrimony with him. I dropped all my bags and managed to squeak out "Are you serious?!?!" and then "Yes, of course!" I proceeded to laugh uncontrollably in disbelief for the next five minutes as we ran to catch our dinner reservation. The next day we called our families, and then hosted a dinner party where we told most of The Betrothed's friends. (This engagement party had been cleverly disguised as a birthday party for me. Sneaky!)

The train platform was really the perfect spot. Not only are trains romantic locations in old movies, but this one is next door to his church. It's the same place where I spied him in the campus ministry center, waiting for me to get back from thesis research in New York. And it's pretty symbolic of our 2.5 year long-distance relationship, punctuated by trips up and down the eastern seaboard. 

My ring is also perfect, which shows how well he knows me. The diamonds are from his grandmother's engagement ring, and he had the setting custom made based on a 1940s design he liked. I'd be a fool to reject a man who can invest such great material culture research. 

Being engaged feels both normal and surreal at the same time. In many ways our relationship is the same it has always been, and yet we can finally speak of hopes and dreams that were under wraps until now. It's so great to talk openly about things from wedding readings to our future children to what kind of drapes we would buy for our home. So the past few days have been full of "OMG we're getting married," "future husband," "future wife," and of course, many recitations of this classic Seinfeld scene. 

Ashes and Hope

It doesn't really feel like Ash Wednesday. Here in NOVA it's a balmy 60 degrees and the sun is shining. Despite the high Catholic population of my office, I'm the only one sporting a forehead smudge since everyone is planning on evening Mass. Finally, there are some exciting new developments in my personal life, which I shall elaborate on a less solemn occasion.

On the other hand, today feels awfully penitential. I'm tired, hungry, and bothered with all sorts of temptations to be anxious, bitter, discouraged, and worried. Can I call it "spiritual warfare"? Because that's what it feels like. The past 24 hours have been a battle. God has blessed me, but "the world, the flesh, and the devil" are trying to take away my joy. There's a reason "Counsel the doubtful" is a spiritual work of mercy; that nasty stuff doesn't go away easily.

Learning to really trust God through this uncertainty is one of my goals this Lent. I'm sure He and I will have some very forthright talks on my silent Ignatian retreat in two weekends. (I'm both excited and terrified. Anybody have advice about preparing for one of these things?) I'm also going to work on some spiritual reading I've been meaning to do.

Other than that, here's the formal "What am I doing for Lent" list

• No sweets or secular TV (a family tradition.) This means it's time to review a bunch more Jesus movies. 
• Attending daily Mass once a week
• Praying the Rosary every day during my commute
• Sending out at least one job application a week - if I want God to help my future, I better do something about it. 

What are you giving up this year? How do you build trust in God?

Conscience does not equal oppression

It's been a wild few weeks hasn't it? At first everything was so blissfully black and white. Finally, here was something liberal and conservative Catholics could agree upon. We might debate among ourselves, but don't you dare mess with our 1st Amendment rights. Surely even good 'ol Thomas "I cut-and-paste my own version of the Bible" Jefferson would think this law was bogus.

Via American Papist

But life became  gray-colored. I read too many news articles, too many tweets, too many Facebook newsfeed debates. I got very discouraged - am I just a hateful idiot to the rest of the world? Is it even worth fighting over such a tiny financial technicality? Do I belong to a Church that wants to infringe on other people's rights?

Not really. By refusing to include insurance coverage for birth control and sterilization, the Church is hindering, but by no means stopping women from using such services. Catholic hospitals don't fire employees for having an IUD or vasectomy. Nor do Catholic universities inspect student's purses to make sure The Pill isn't in there. People can do whatever they want with their paychecks on their own time. As the greatly exaggerated, but real, contraceptive habits of some Catholic women indicate, parish priests don't spend their days batting birth control from people's hands.

In a modern society where birth control is considered basic adult hygiene and an inalienable right, it's hard to explain the Catholic church's moral abhorrence to it. One of my Facebook friends compared conscience objections to a soup kitchen refusing to follow health codes, a basic part of living in a modern secular society. How do Catholics explain what a moral objection even feels like when modernity maintains few taboos?

The best comparison I could think up is the genital mutilation aka "female circumcision" practiced in some parts of Africa. If you lived in a country where it was accepted, you'd be sad to see your neighbors do it. Despite the side effect risks, they'd insist that it was essential for a young woman's healthy adolescence and happy marriage. You probably wouldn't judge them as terrible people, just be sad that they bought into an ideology that rejects the normal female body.

But if a law in that country required employee bonuses to include gift certificates for female genital mutilation, you'd want no part of that. Sure, some women need to go under the knife to remove tumors or ovarian cysts, but that's different. You'd refuse to enable something so repulsive to you. So the government rolls its eyes and offers an "accommodation." Good news - now your payroll admin company will just include those circumcision gift certs for free! Everyone wins!

Yeah right. You would't buy that. Neither would the payroll company.

Comparing contraception and sterilization to genital mutilation might seem extreme, but opposition to both comes from the same idea: respecting the female body. If you think the Church is all about controlling women, you should check out the hundreds of Catholic mommy blog posts about Natural Family Planning.  My church friends and I have heard about fertility cycles so much it's coming out of our ears. NFP is all cervixes and lady parts and menstrual cycles and how the female body works. When it's not controlled by chemicals. The Catholic Church is not just a bunch of old celibate guys in robes. It's also full of equally devoted women who feel empowered and self-aware, not oppressed.

Coffee with Literary Crushes

Happy feast of St. Valentine, everyone!
I am excited about this week's nerdtastic Bright Maidens topic: literary crushes. It's too hard for me to choose just one, so here's a craft project that mentions almost all my favorites. Do check out graphic designer Sarah Fritzler's  post about how to make DIY literary quote mugs on the cheap. She quotes heroes of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Little Women, Jane Eyre, Anne of Green Gables and Casablanca. 

Messers Darcy and Knightly are totally swoonworthy, but let's not forget Jane Austen's other romantic heroes, like the ever-so-steadfast Captain Wentworth: 

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. ... I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?" Persuasion, Ch. 11

And then there's Henry Tilney, the totally underrated hero of Northanger Abbey. He's the king of witty banter. 

“Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again." 

If he were around today, he'd be into blogging. (Emphasis mine.)

"Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath without one? ... How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal? ...Everybody allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. Nature may have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.”

And he likes to read.

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” 

I've mentioned before how fictional falling in love pales in comparison to the real thing, but that doesn't mind I don't find pleasure in a good novel. It doesn't have to be Jane Austen either.

John Waterhouse's 1888 painting of the Lady of Shalott.
Via  Wikimedia commons.

When I was a senior in high school, all the English poetry we were reading in class put us girls in a hyper-romantic state. When we weren't gushing over Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese ("God's plans put man's best dreams to shame"), we were fighting over who got to read "The Lady of Shalott" in class. 


Then one of the girls got us all hooked on Christian romance novels. Robin Jones Gunn's Glenbrooke series is about 8 different women who live in or pass through a small town in Oregon. One by one they confront problems in their lives, strengthen their relationships with Jesus, and find handsome husbands in the process. What's really fun about the series is how previous heroines show up in later stories. You get to see how their happily-ever-afters pan out. We all debated which love story was the best. Was it the girl running from her past rescued by the handsome firefighter in Book 1? Or the flight attendant in Book 5 who reunited with an old flame in Germany? 


My favorite was always Book 3, Echoes, where Lauren strikes up email correspondence with an anonymous fellow Christian. They bond over poetry and Irish Breakfast tea, but she chickens out when they arrange a meeting in person.Don't worry, (SPOILER) they run into each other in Hawaii later. 


 I don't know what drew me to the story; maybe it was the nerdtastic literary element. Maybe my historian brain liked the primary source documentary record of their courtship. Either way, I probably wouldn't have believed it if you told my 18-year old self that six years later I would fall into a long-distance romance that began online. Putting man's best dreams to shame  indeed. 

Things Your Denomination Says

A while back, some guy slapped on a blond wig and made a YouTube video called "Sh*t Girls Say." It wasn't long before it went viral and dozens of imitators popped up. You could waste hours watching different versions of "Stuff ___ Say" about every ethnic/social group under the sun. (Not that I've done that or anything...)

This kind of self-aware humor is loads of fun, so I was glad when the Catholic versions arrived. A friend of a friend filmed this one at (where else?) the Franciscan University of Steubenville.




I'm pretty sure I or a friend have said 90% of those things, particularly the ones about "discernment."

This one is also pretty good. "There were so many cute babies at Mass today!"
The main topics of conversation in these videos are liturgical correctness, sacramentals (religious artwork, jewelry, etc)  and relationships i.e. finding a spouse. Or making Jesus your spouse, in the case of becoming a nun. Having the alternative option of celibacy floating around does not make dating any easier.



In the spirit of ecumenical dialogue, here's one about our Protestant sisters in Christ. Here instead of Mass responses we hear about Old Testament male heroes as romantic icons. There are also Biblical catchphrases like "The Word" and "generation." But guess what? We all say "I'll pray for you."




And finally, my favorite pseudo-Christian sect. Eating jello and dating former missionaries are Mormon standards. I'm a little bummed that housewife blogs did not make it in there, but the part about movie nights just killed me. That's pretty much the scene at any Catholic Campus Ministry too. DTR (define the relationship) talks were also staples among my college friends.



One of my favorite things about this meme is that is shows us we are really all not that different. When I watch "Things Jamaican Dads say" I don't get half the jokes, but I still get "Parents, amirite?" Most people are willing to poke fun at their habits, and that includes us religious folk. There's a deeper anthropological analysis in there somewhere. Have at it, grad students of the future.

What I especially like about the videos I've posted here is how honestly they portray the ups and downs of finding a higher purpose in life. Just because finding your vocation/mission/anointed calling/whatever is important doesn't mean it's always fun. Sometimes you want to throw up your hands and "Just become a nun!" By laughing about it, women who follow Jesus can encourage each other. We might have different inside jokes and Sunday services, but deep down we all want to do the right thing and live happily ever after with our St. Joseph/Boaz/Eternal Companion. Hang in there ladies. I'll pray for you.

St. Monica Church, New York City

I'm emotionally exhausted from reading too much conflicting HHS coverage, so here are some pretty pictures instead.

During my upper east side adventure last weekend, I went to Sunday Mass at a parish that was conveniently located literally around the corner. St. Monica's church building was begun in the 1880s and completed in 1906. It's in a pretty standard Gothic revival style, but the decorative elements are exceptionally good.

Thanks to recent renovations, the interior really sparkles. The freestanding altar is obviously a post-Vatican II addition, but it complements the original nicely.

The stained glass windows were one of my favorite parts. They seemed very L. C. Tiffany-esque, with their intricate detailing and the soft edges of the pictures. I wish I had had time to photograph all of them.