Why Breastmilk is Like Manna

Parenting can be stressful. Like that moment when your pediatrician tells you that your baby has only put on one ounce in the last two weeks. Suddenly you realize that you are probably the worse parent the world has ever seen, and that you are failing this helpless little creature who looks to you for everything. Nevermind that she is a healthy, active baby who can push herself up into a standing position in your hands, make eye contact, babble, mimic faces, laugh, and blow the sides out of a diaper with the best of them. Never mind that she grew an inch in length and a centimeter in head circumference. One ounce of weight gain, and immediately you begin to doubt your competency even to be a parent.

Then you start wondering, “How do I tell my parents? How do I tell my in-laws? Won’t they just pounce on us with more advice than we can shake a stick at? Will we have to rehash every parenting decision since conception and justify them all?”

But most of all, the all-consuming question is, “How do we get the breastmilk to come in more plentifully?”

Of course the answer is simple, and not too far off from what we were already doing. The plan is mostly a scheduling thing, basically just make her eat every 2 ½ - 3 hours, whether she wants to or not. This means stop letting her sleep through the night (sad face) and wake her up for a feeding every 3 hours minimum until she bulks up and has the fat reserves to go longer.

What that simple plan adds up to in real life, though, is a lot of anxiety, and almost no sleep for the first couple of days. Since my wife is pumping after every feeding, we usually have an extra half an ounce or so of milk in a bottle at the end of the feeding, and the temptation is to save those little scraps up, add them together, and give Evie a monster feeding at the end of the day, and give Mommy a rest.

But “No” says the lactation consultant, “That’s not what you want to do.” Instead she wants us to use it as we go. Just feed it to her from the bottle, because it takes less work than the breast and she will swallow it even when she is tired. So now, unlike a few days ago when I could look in the fridge and see at least a couple of ounces chilling there that we could fall back on in an emergency, now there is nothing. There is only one feeding at a time.

There are moments when I see the appeal of formula, not as a supplement or as a replacement in emergencies, but as a full time strategy. Formula is 100% in my control. I can go out and buy it when we need it, I can stockpile it, I can mix as much as I want, and we can always see it, there on the counter, ready to go. There is no fear that maybe this time, there just won’t be enough. This despite all my medical training and having done multiple research papers on the benefits of breastmilk over formula, still, it is attractive because it is 100% in my control. I can forcefeed that baby and make her put on the rolls!

It shouldn’t be too hard to see where I am going with this, should it?

Well, lo and behold, yesterday morning after less sleep than I could conveniently count I turned on the Divine Office podcast while we fed Evie her morning meal, which we refer to as first breakfast. The whole series of psalms and readings was so perfect I am linking you to the page here (go to Office of Readings tab).

Yet still they sinned against him;

They defied the Most High in the desert.

In their heart they put God to the test

By demanding the food they craved.

They even spoke against God.

They said: Is it possible for God

To prepare a table in the desert?

It was He who struck the rock,

Water flowed and swept down in torrents.

But can He also give us bread?

Can He provide meat for his people?”

When He heard this the Lord was angry.

A fire was kindled against Jacob,

His anger rose against Israel

For having no faith in God;

For refusing to trust in his help.

Yet he commanded the clouds above

And opened the gates of heaven.

He rained down manna for their food,

And gave them bread from heaven.

Mere men ate the bread of angels.

He sent them abundance of food;

He made the east wind blow from heaven

And roused the south wind by his might.

He rained food on them like dust,

Winged fowl like the sands of the sea.

He let it fall in the midst of their camp

And all around their tents.

So they ate and had their fill;

And He gave them all they craved.

Psalm 78:17-29

When I read this, two feelings immediately struck me. The first was renewed hope and gratitude. Trust. God is trustworthy. He designed the whole breastfeeding system, He loves Evie far more than we do, and we can safely trust her with Him.

The second was shame. I had not been trusting. I had been freaking out, at least deep down inside, if not actually in words or actions. I mean really, what is your trust worth if you only trust Him when everything is going right?

Of course, as I type this a little voice in my head whispers, “Oh, it’s all very well to trust God in most things, but this is different. This is serious. Too much is riding on this to sit back and do nothing.”

But what about the Israelites in the desert? What did God tell them?

“And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing,

fine as frost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’” And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank.”

I am pretty sure the Israelites were far more desperate than we are. They had no reserves, their very lives were at stake. If the manna failed to come, they were literally going to starve to death! Is it any wonder some tried to hoard up a supply? And yet God was requiring trust of them. He was requiring them to trust Him with their lives, to give up their attempts at control and just enjoy His providence.

This is what He is requiring of us. Absolute trust. That little voice is right. It is all well and good to trust God most of the time, but until I trust Him with something that really matters, when my life or the life of someone I love is at stake, I have not really trusted Him.

So I thank Him for this trial of trust, and I am sorry for not having seized it more fully. But all things work together for good to them that love Him, even my slowness of heart. Glory be to Him!

Chemistry, Wisdom, and Pope Francis

Yesterday was the mid-term for my first ever college chemistry course. After the mid-term, during the lecture which was on conversions of mass to moles (which I learned how to do in high school) I was amusing myself by following various forms of nuclear decay down the wikipedia rabbit hole. Before I knew it I was up to my neck in electron neutrinos, positrons, muons, tauons, and leptons and anti-leptons of all varieties. Sheesh! I remember when the only subatomic particles were protons, neutrons and electrons, and the only ones you really worried about were electrons, because they are the only ones that interact with other atoms. As far as chemistry was concerned, the rest may as well not exist.

That, of course, was high school chemistry 14 or 15 years ago.

Ah, but they do exist. And apparently they do matter (if you'll excuse the pun). These particles do interact with other particles through fundamental forces such as gravity and electromagnetism, and exert a small but measurable influence on the universe. Or perhaps even a huge influence. Who really knows?

It seems that every time scientists think they've gotten to the bottom of this whole reality thing, another layer of complexity reveals itself. In light of that minor indulgence in a little casual reading, I was particularly struck by this passage from the book of Wisdom which was the scripture for the Office of Readings this morning.

Now God grant I speak suitably
and value these endowments at their worth:
For he is the guide of Wisdom
and the director of the wise.
For both we and our words are in his hand,
as well as all prudence and knowledge of crafts.
For he gave me sound knowledge of existing things,
that I might know the organization of the universe and the force of its elements,
The beginning and the end and the midpoint of times,
the changes in the sun’s course and the variations of the seasons.
Cycles of years, positions of the stars,
natures of animals, tempers of beasts,
Powers of the winds and thoughts of men,
uses of plants and virtues of roots-
Such things as are hidden I learned and such as are plain;
for Wisdom, the artificer of all, taught me. 

 This just blows my mind, and reminds me of the kerfuffle in the news over Pope Francis' statements that evolution and the big bang theories are not incompatible with belief in a creator. Apparently this has some atheists and fundamentalists who understand neither evolution nor Catholic theology up in arms. The literal seven-day creation interpretation is really more of a protestant thing than a Catholic thing, and always has been. In fact, literalism itself is not Catholic. There is something striking that this passage from the book of Wisdom is to be found in the Catholic Bible, but not in the Protestant Bible.

Did the writer of wisdom know everything, or even a percent, of what we know about astronomy, physics, chemistry, medicine, biology, etc? No. Not even a percent of a percent. And we make a grave mistake if we think we have done more than merely scratch the surface.

The writer of Wisdom, however, did know the one thing that is proper to the true scientist. He knew enough to stand in humble awe before the majesty and complexity of creation. He kneel enough to kneel and listen and not to assume that he knew all things by his own cleverness. He knew that the Mystery continues forever. 

He knew more than we do.

Holy Crap: A Post Chiefly About Poop

This morning, as is I my habit, I awoke and made my way to the chapel for morning prayer. On the way there I paused at the chowhall to mix myself a bottle of instant coffee. Yes, it is quite as disgusting as it sounds, but I had a reason for it. I usually do not stoop to such depths of degradation, however, today I was planning a run down to the river (not, alas, to pray and study about that good old way, but merely to turn around and come back. At least I did not stay to live down there in a van... but I digress.)

Now, the run route leads through a local village for a mile and a half, and then into the jungle for a about half a mile, but even in the jungle there are several little bamboo huts with people living in them. With this information, the discerning reader will readily see why it would behoove the early morning runner to take care of business (from a solid waste perspective) prior to embarking on this run. It has been my experience in most Asian countries that defecation tends to be an all or nothing proposition. I do not react as violently to the local food as most white people do (not racist, just saying) but still, when it is time IT IS TIME!

Accordingly it becomes necessary, when a run is planned, to attempt to coordinate the morning poop for sometime before the run. Just my luck to have it hit in the middle of the village, a mile and a half from a civilized toilet. Not that I would not use the local facilities. I have before. However, that would certainly be disruptive to the locals' routine, and I try to avoid being disruptive.

Well, about two minutes into my chapel time, the criminally dreadful instant coffee accomplished the end for which it was consumed. There are, unfortunately, no bathroom facilities in that chapel, so I began my morning fitness routine with a record setting 400 meter clench-and-waddle, and finished morning prayer and the office of readings in my room. As I was making for the only refuge available to me at the fastest pace I could safely maintain, this clever little couplet introduced itself into my brain and danced around and around in high glee at my predicament:

"Even your morning poop can be poetic
If you start your day with a diarrhetic!" 

The Office of Readings today consisted of Ecclesiastes (yeah!) 5:9-6:8 which is cleverly summed up in the one line, "The Vanity of Riches!" The first responsorial is:

"Keep falsehood and lying far from me, O Lord
  --Give me neither poverty nor riches, provide me only with the food I need
I have put my trust in you, O Lord; my destiny is in your hands.
  --Give me neither poverty nor riches, provide me only with the food I need." 
(Proverbs 30:8, Psalm 31:15)

My brain immediately inserted that quote from Hello Dolly: "Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It ain't worth a thing unless it's spread around, encouraging young things to grow."

My brain then asserted that human manure was definitely not appropriate for that function. Of course Victor Hugo, in his book Les Miserables, in the chapter in which Jon Valjean escapes through the sewers, digresses for a good chapter or two on the benefits of human manure as a fertilizer for crops and laments the financial waste that was the sewers of Paris. I particularly remember him vehemently

asserting that gold is lost to the agriculture of France "with every cough of our cloaca." Victor Hugo, however, was not aware of the serious health risks of using night soil as a fertilizer, (i.e. Chinese liver flukes, cholera, and any number of other fecal contaminants, which are a constant concern when buying produce in many rural Asian countries. But I digress.

So according to both Solomon and Dolly Levi, riches are basically crap and hording them makes about as much sense as hording big steaming piles of $#!+. Of course, I have hoarded big steaming piles of manure before. My family could never have been accused of hoarding money. Indeed, my father's pay check was purely theoretical money. It was always budgeted, allocated and spent before it even hit the bank. Poop we did collect, though. I remember the twice annual manure spreading that we used to do on the farm, in which we would load 4-8 months (depending on whether it was spring or fall) worth of manure from the manure barn onto spreaders and take them out and spread them all over the fields. I never minded the smell. It was a strong smell, but not a bad one. It smelled of fecundity, richness, and all the potential for life and green growing things, that was secreted (and excreted) by its myriad marvelous microbes with their curious chemical conversions. Have the humility to find humorous the humble, rich black humus deposited under a pile of manure after a year of the action of such benevolent bugs. (Humus is not the same as hummus, but I suppose if you were to feed your livestock on hummus for a year, then hummus could become humus. And then if you grew garbanzo beans in the humus, mashed them up into a paste, and flavored them with basil and sun dried tomatoes you might make some very excellent hummus from the humus.)


Money is more or less the same. It can be hoarded for a time, to be spread later, but spread it must be or else it becomes a terrible waste, and it stinks.

As I think back, I inherently grasped this principle when I was a child. I felt like poop ought to be spread, and some of my siblings even invented the art form known as the "fecal mural." Alas, as with most avant garde artistes, our visionary methods were ridiculed, discouraged, and even actively suppressed by the staid, stuffy establishment.

I have never minded poop. I have even written before, in my book for guys, about the necessity of changing diapers for a full growth in humanity. There is something about taking care of such an aspect of human nature that really encourages a beautiful, cheerful humility without which there is no true humanity.

As my morning prayer came to a close and I prepared for my run, I couldn't help but reflect with some ruefulness, almost apologetically to God, on the slight oddity of my meditations for the day. On the other hand, I felt like God replied, these meditations are no odder than His own original move, which was to stick a spiritual (and therefore meditative) soul into a physical (and therefore defecative) body. As surprising as these thoughts might be to me, they are not to Him. If anything, He is amused by my amusement. I suppose that's a good thing.

Totality

"I am the Lord's poor servant; to Him alone, the living God, I have offered all in sacrifice; I have

St. Lucy, after her eyes got gouged out during her martyrdom.

nothing else to give; I offer Him myself." Antiphon for the Canticle of Zechariah from the Divine Office for the feast of St. Lucy.

This morning during my Holy Hour the antiphon above really stuck in my mind. It is fitting for Saint Lucy, since she is both virgin and martyr. She truly did give everything to God, both during her life and at the end of her life. By including this antiphon in Morning Prayer, the Church obviously means me to pray it, but the truth is I cannot honestly apply it to myself. In truth, I doubt anyone ever could strictly apply it to themselves, except for Jesus and the Blessed Mother. No one else can claim truly to have given everything to God. Even the greatest saints have held something back at one time or another. All are conscious of their sinfulness.

If this is true even of the greatest saints, how much more so of myself? I cannot even give him a full hour totally. Even thinking about this during my Holy Hour I noted the trend I have to be extremely distracted for about the first 50 minutes. It is generally only the last ten minutes or so that I really feel like I engage in on any affective level. The first 45-50 minutes are just me trying not to be distracted as I work through the Liturgy of the Hours. I cannot even claim ever to have given Him an undivided hour. Can I really claim to have "offered all in sacrifice?"

In thinking about this another similar experience came to mind. I have been doing a lot of kickboxing lately, working the heavy bag a couple of hours every week. I am right handed but I box left handed because I got into that habit when I first started out. My left hand would not learn to jab very well, so I just jabbed with my right and used my left for power punches. I also liked having that surprise power shot with the right, and I liked messing with right handed sparring partners who aren't used to fighting a southpaw.

In my sessions on the heavy bag I have been having trouble getting my left cross up to scratch. It doesn't have the speed or power that I want at first, it is slow and stiff. It takes about four or five rounds on the bag to get it snapping the way I want it to, and only then does the real practice begin.

I sometimes wonder if my distracted prayer isn't a bit like that. I only really get into the last bit because it takes me the first 45 minutes just to get warmed up. With the boxing the cause is fairly straightforward. A punch flies properly when it is loose. It starts from the feet, legs and hips and translates out from there to the end of the fist, but in order to do that the power must be generated in the large muscles of the lower body and transferred smoothly through the muscles and joints of the lower body. It isn't hard to teach those muscles all to fire. That takes about five minutes to learn. What takes much longer, years and years in fact, is teaching the other muscles not to fire. When I throw that punch, my body wants to tense up and push harder, thinking that will make my strike more powerful; but that simply does not work. Instead, muscles end up fighting each other, competing instead of cooperating. Instead of transferring smoothly back and forth between different groups at different points in the movement, all groups want to be controlling all parts of the punch. I have the strength. I can deadlift 400Lbs quite easily and do multiple sets with it. That is more than enough power to hit as hard as I want, if only I would stop getting in my own way.

This, ironically, is why small, lean fighters often hit with more force than large, muscular ones. They have less muscle to get tangled up with itself, and it is easier to train them to work in cooperation. This is the secret behind Bruce Lee's incredible"one-inch" punch that was reported to be able to knock a sumo-wrestler off his feet (note the guy in the picture is not a sumo-wrestler.)

To apply this to my prayer life, what the antiphon is talking about is a similar kind of totality, where every single part of me, body, mind, emotions, will are all engaged in just one thing. As with boxing, I am beginning to think that perhaps it is less a matter of training myself to do and more a matter of learning not to interfere. The simple decision of the will is there. I get up in the morning. I go to the chapel. I kneel down. I make the decision to pray, which is a response to the call of God to pray. That call is the power. That generates all the power needed to crash through any barrier or overcome any enemy, if only I wouldn't get in the way. But my mind refuses to be still. It wants to think, because when you are a mind that is all you know how to do. My body wants to move, because that is what a body does. My emotions want to feel things, because that is their only experience of life. My will wants to choose things, without knowing that all that is required is not to un-choose.

The truth is that the prayer is not any of these things. All of these things may enter into the prayer at any point, for a specific purpose and then they must be prepared to give their all in that moment, but they are not the prayer. The prayer is that single, downward rushing desire of God to come to me and dwell in me and make His home with me.

The rest is just me learning not to get in the way.

Come Examine

Daytime prayer from the Divine Office for today had a phrase in one of the psalm prayers that caught my attention: "Come, examine your Church and wash her clean of sin." When I read that phrase it hit me like a ton of bricks, effecting an instant paradigm change.

You see, when I read the first part my first reaction was one of fear. I recoiled. I don't want to be examined. For some reason I have always had a fear of anyone looking at me too closely, especially people I care about; most especially God. I am afraid of what they will see. There is a lot about me that I don't like. I expect others to dislike it as much as I do. I expect rejection, or condemnation. Especially from God, I feel like if someone else sees how unworthy I am, I will stand condemned.

The more I read and talk to other people, the more convinced I am that this is not an unusual feeling. In fact, I have come to believe that everyone in the world feels this deep seated sense of unworthiness. As in my case, growing up as I did with incredibly supportive parents who take immeasurable pride in every good thing I have ever done and never hesitate to tell me so, you would think if anyone would be free of it, I ought to be but that is not the case, because that is not the source. It is not a product of upbringing or childhood neglect or an insufficient education. All of these can compound or mitigate it, but the thing itself is much deeper. It is, quite simply, Original Sin.

It takes so many shapes, this existential shame. Every human being experiences it, because every human being, deep down at his core, is in fact unworthy. No one can be worthy of what we were created for. It is sheer gift, unearned and unasked for. In the beginning, in Eden, this unworthiness was not a source of shame, but of joy. Adam and Eve delighted to receive the gifts they had not earned, and joyfully accepted being eternally in His debt. That is our nature. We were created to be cheerful beggars.

Perhaps it was rejection of that joy, and seeking to be self sufficient, equal with God, that was the core of their sin. Certainly the first thing that they did after sinning was to hide. First they hid from each other by making clothes, and then they hid from God. Why? Their hiding was the root of our fear of being examined. We desperately want to be seen intimately and loved totally, and we desperately fear being seen intimately and found unworthy, rejected, or treated as an object. And because each human being is born with that deep seated awareness of unworthiness, we assume on some level that anyone who does really see us will see our unworthiness.

It takes many forms. The husband who can't understand why, no matter how many times he tells his wife that she is beautiful, that she is precious to him, she brushes him off or doesn't seem to believe him, but she gets upset with him if he never says it. This is because she deeply needs to be told that she is worthy but only one voice is strong enough to tell her permanently, and that is God's voice. That is why she needs to hear it from her husband, but his voice alone will never fully convince her. However, if his love is true love, meaning that God is teaching him how to love, then his voice will become more and more convincing, because more and more it will be God's voice speaking through his. The same is true for the husband who never believes he is good enough, or makes enough money, or whatever. He needs to trust that when his wife speaks to him out of true love, it is a way in which God speaks to him.

But when I read the second half of that phrase, "And wash her clean of sin," something shifted in my head and my eyes opened. I was willing to allow God to examine me, endure it as a necessity, but the prayer of the Church invites me to look forward to His examination and welcome it with joy and even eagerness. Why? Because the purpose of that examination is precisely to heal me of my sin. God wants to heal that deep, fundamental skew that makes me so afraid. The purpose of the examination makes all the difference, and His purpose is not to condemn. It has never been to condemn. It is to heal.

It is as if we said to the doctor, "No! Don't look at me! I am sick!" "Well of course you are sick, you dunce! And if I do not look at you, you will stay that way." In her daily prayer the Church is inviting me to trust in God's desire and ability to make me clean, and to be so eager for that cleansing that I accept, and invite, and welcome with open arms that vulnerabilityof being seen in all my naked unworthiness.

I wonder if that isn't what life is all about. Certain parts of it do seem to be in preparation for that vulnerability. Opening up and allowing friends to see into your heart a little bit; the nakedness of husband and wife, (physical and emotional); most especially the sacrament of Confession; heck, even the decrepitude of old age, and allowing someone else to wipe your but for you, if accepted graciously and joyfully, even that is a preparation for meeting God.

There is much to be learned from just that one phrase, but mostly I guess it can be summed up by saying, "Be not afraid."

He loves us.