reconciling things

Building the life you want…with the stuff you have

Daja Steuer

February 5, 2021

When I moved to Mongolia twenty years ago, like any new bride, I brought my collection of family recipes to my new home—those trusty old standbys of comfort foods. Problem was, I was now living in the frozen tundra, a post-soviet country that was just finding her beautiful way. Half the ingredients in my recipes were not to be found. Holidays were the most challenging. Those are the times you really want your traditional foods, but if they don’t exist in the country in which you abide, you have to learn to let it go and to do without.

Or maybe you just find a work-around.

I became the queen of substitutions. I learned to adapt and adjust and get the end result I wanted with the stuff I could actually find.

My kids do the same thing with their LEGO blocks. If they decide that they are building a ship and don’t have the pieces they need, they improvise brilliantly.

It’s like life.

January Highlights

Daja Steuer

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February 1, 2021

Just a few bits from the Tribe’s highlight reel for January.

Went to evening prayers at the Russian Orthodox Church.

Climbed a little mountain under the full moon with these adventurers!

Hiked Kearsarge Mountain with this little brother

Adopted this darling into the family. Meet Madame Zeroni!

Watched the inauguration and cried so many heartbroken tears for the world, lit candles, and prayed acts of reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

This young man started guitar lessons with my big brother

Made some herbal magic. No really. I did.

Went to a little rebel March For Life after Hands Around The Capitol was canceled.

Did yoga nearly every day and found my home in my body again.

You know the date of the calendar whether 2020 or 2021 does not matter. How much better to spend time doing interior work of conversion than to wait fo the calendar to deliver us from the present evil. There are mountains to climb, dear friends. There is work to do. There is magic to be made. Let us begin. And as Rilke says, “Resolve to be always beginning—to be a beginner.”

Hello February. What lessons do you have for us?

On Grief and Bliss

Daja Steuer

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January 30, 2021

Social media has this delightful little gimmick that reminds you of what you posted on this day in past years. All is well and good when the memory was a refreshing green smoothie enjoyed after a run. It’s a little tougher when the memory hits a raw spot in your heart.

Thomas Merton wrote that short of perfection, “created things do not bring us joy but pain. Until we love God perfectly, everything in the world will be able to hurt us. And the greatest misfortune is to be dead to the pain they inflict on us, and not realize what it is.” [New Seeds of Contemplation]

An Inconvenient Life

Daja Steuer

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January 23, 2021

As I grate cheese by hand, “You know the store sells cheese that is already grated, right?”

As I chop piles of vegetables for fermenting, “Why don’t you own a food processor?”

As I light dozens of candles in the evening, “Why don’t you just turn on the lights?”

As I mix herbs and store them in jars and soak them in vodka to use later, “You know there is such a thing as Advil?”

My choices are not always the easy ones, the quick ones, or the convenient ones. However, I am far from being the self-sufficient die-hard. I like my hot showers, my WiFi, and my Kitchen Aid mixer. Yet, often I find myself doing things the inconvenient way. And I like it. I choose it. I wouldn’t trade it, even if you offered to buy me a microwave.

I had dinner out with one of my teenage sons last night. I love those longish car rides when we just talk about anything and everything. I asked him why he wasn’t interested in a certain youth activity much anymore. He said it was because they try too hard to be cool and to appeal to teens. “They try to make everything fun. I mean, if we were doing something boring like praying the Rosary, I would be there for that. But, trying to make religion into something entertaining doesn’t interest me. I can play games at home.”

“Say the Holy Rosary. Blessed be that monotony of Hail Mary’s which purifies the monotony of your sins!” (St. Josemaria Escriva)

My heart was so convicted. Yes, it is true. We were not given a very convenient religion that caters to our feelings, the trends, or that cares about being cool. Christianity has never been perceived as relevant by the world. Which is precisely why the world needs it.

Reasonable Illusions

Daja Steuer

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January 15, 2021

“Between the forces of terror and the forces of dialogue, a great unequal battle has begun. I have nothing but reasonable illusions as to the outcome of that battle. But I believe it must be fought, and I know that certain men at least have resolved to do so. I merely fear that they will occasionally feel somewhat alone, that they are in fact alone, and that after an interval of two thousand years we may see the sacrifice of Socrates repeated several times. The program for the future is either a permanent dialogue or the solemn and significant putting to death of any who have experienced dialogue.” (Albert Camus, The Unbeliever and Christians)

About a decade ago when my kids were still quite small, I felt the need to prepare them for potential martyrdom. I read the story of Blessed Miguel Pro, a martyr of the Revolution in Mexico and I started thinking. And once I get to thinking…

How could such a thing happen?

Less than 100 years ago.

In a Christian country.

With a democratically elected president.

The Glorification of Grit

Daja Steuer

4 comments

January 13, 2021

Today I had to read the first chapter of a book called De-Romanticizing the Domestic Church by Timothy O’Malley. I say “had to” because there is no way I would have picked up a book with this title. Today I read that first chapter and disliked it just as much, if not more, than I thought I would.

O’Malley begins by creating a false dichotomy between romance and mundane. He pits the idyllic family times spent in the embrace of hearth and home against the hard work of hard-loving. He pits obligation against affinity, as if the two cannot co-exist.

What he describes as “affinity” could rightly be called storge, which CS Lewis so highly praises. “In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who ‘happen to be there.’” In fact CS Lewis says affection is “responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.”

Maybe we are missing the point

littlesisterofhildegard

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December 30, 2020

It seems to me that the waters are getting muddy as a myriad of things are being redefined and labeled incorrectly.

Yes, we can believe it’s not butter.

And we also don’t buy that wearing a mask and masking our children is the most pro-life thing we can do.

I have taught my children that at its most basic level the pro-life position is that each person has an inherent dignity and the right to exist without having their freedom to do so impeded. I tell my kids that they are valuable and they are a force for good in the world, that their existence is celebrated not only by me but by the world itself and by the God who made and loves them.

How is that message compatible with, “By your very living and breathing you are a danger to the world. Your very breath could literally kill someone without you knowing it. So, put a mask on and hide your face”?

We are not prisoners

littlesisterofhildegard

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December 21, 2020

Today I deactivated Facebook. I have been on Facebook since around 2006, I think. Today I broke free.

It actually had little to nothing to do with terms and conditions or people who talk about politics too much or the variety of “Karens” in my feed. It was something else.

What I am feeling about the world, about my life, about my country, my freedoms, my beautiful Church….I can do nothing about so many things that disturb my heart and rob my peace. But one thing I can do is find out what they each want from me and show up. It is this showing up in my life and for myself of my own freewill…

It is this being unafraid to see the world around me as a mirror of my interior life or lack thereof…

It is the desire to set dragons free to be princesses, even if the only dragon I can free is my own tethered heart…

“We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of year of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)

The Matter Is Not Settled…Not In My Heart

littlesisterofhildegard

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December 17, 2020

I am not going to lie. This was going to be an angry rant. A very angry, passionate, spitfire rant—full of the full piss and vinegar of my personality.

But I gave it a few days. I now feel more sad than angry. And what I want to express is more the grieving of my heart which has more tenderness and brokenness than fisticuffs.

Let’s chat over a cup of coffee and let our tears pour out, trusting God to gather them up and turn them into an intercession.

In a nutshell…

October 26, 2017

Last night I got to share my conversion story with the women’s group at my parish. It was the first time I have given my testimony in a public way. It was a blessing to be able to share my excitement and the honor I feel in being Catholic.

(I apologize for how fast I talk and for hand movements that when seen without the audio look something like interpretive dance.)