Trans Border Community

This past weekend I participated in the 2007 Atlanta Eucharistic Congress via Ustream. It was great to see the people that I usually listen to. What was even better was to see that Catholic joy that most non-Catholics seem to think is non-existent.
If there is something that I have learned this past year, since getting my very own iPod and downloading every Catholic podcast that I can get my hands on, is that, yes, we Catholics are a "peculiar bunch", but we have stopped being afraid of living our faith in a very public sphere.
At least in the US. Europe, or at least Spain is a very different matter. That is why I hang on to this virtual community that has formed around this new technology. I often mention Greg and Jennifer, Father Roderick, Fathers Seraphim, Fr. Bill, Fr. Geek, Fr. Barron, Fr. Dave and Mike, Doctor Paul and others in my conversations with husband, family and friends. The SQPN has become the Catholic community that I am lacking here in Barcelona. For you see, in my home God is present in all things great and small. But stepping outside my door it is almost impossible to find someone that will own up to believing in anything.
This summer I look forward to going back home (I've lived in Barcelona for nine years and I still call Orange County home) and joining the Catholic community that I grew up with. The one that pray and sings in Spanish and English. The one where everybody still knows my name. The one that knows that I am C. and G's daughter and R's sister and D and M's auntie. The one where you can say "God bless you", "God willing" "Praise God" and nobody will call you fascist for doing so (perhaps they will call you other things, but not fascist).
So, the countdown begins for what I hope will be a relaxing and Spirit filled vacation.

May God be praised!

My Child

My son is six years old. He doesn't really understand what is happening to him yet. Like his mother and father, he is growing up in a home where more than one language is spoken daily. He knows that Mom speaks English (much to my chagrin, as it was always my intention to speak the sweet sounding Spanish that I heard from Mom, Mother, Grandmother and aunts), Dad speaks Spanish and Grandmother speaks Catalan (also the language used as school).
The difference between Mom and Dad is that Dad's two languages are not that different. Mom's two languages are worlds apart.
When he was a baby, he was soothed by the sweet sound of "Duérmete niño" and didn't really care for "Hush Little Baby". Was is the sound of Spanish that lulled him to sleep, or was it that those words has much more feeling behind them than her learned English.
Now that he is six, he's increasingly more discontent with English. It is a language that is imposed on him. He has to learn it. Mom and Dad don't speak it to each other. In school, he gets one hour of English a week.
He wants to speak better Spanish and Catalan. He is painfully aware that all his friends speak much better than he does. He just wants to fit in. (I can hear the hurt in his voice, it's the same hurt I felt for so many years when my thick accent and my limited vocabulary made me stick out like a cactus in a flower garden)
Should I really continue to teach him something that is not something I feel as mine? D. says yes.
Yo no lo tengo tan claro.