Nativity House: 2018 Year in Review

For the years that we have been offering hospitality to expectant mothers and living in intentional community at Nativity House - December is a special time. 

This December marks the 9th anniversary of publishing The Visitation. It was also December 2014 that we accepted the application of our first intern. 

Looking back over this last year, we have much to celebrate. In December, last year our guest mom, Alexis, was gifted with a car from Cars of Hope. This gift was just in the nick of time as baby Charlotte Rae was born January 15. This is always a special time at Nativity House. The community gathers around our guest mom with much love and care. Mom and baby are given the support they need for a great start. As the Director of Nativity House, I am always humbled at how our intern/staff community gathers around our new moms. The bonds that are formed during these times are strong and rich.

February we grew again - welcoming Kirk, a baby nubian buck. He joined our doesIvy and Rua making our flock a family. Breaking News! We just found out this week that Rua is expecting. We are looking forward to goat kids in the new year!

In March, we saw the kick off of our 4th CSA season! We expanded the garden this year with 6 new apple trees and many new varieties of veggies. We also welcomed 3 new families to the garden this year bringing our membership to 8 families. We also had a steady stream of garden volunteers this year. 

One major first for Nativity House this year was bees! We welcomed our first beehive and beekeeper, Erik Olson. What a tremendous blessing to understand the life of these pollinators better! (not to mention the fabulous honey harvest) We are looking forward to adding 2 more hives this coming season. 

 The end of summer was celebrated with our annual Farm to Table Celebration. This year started off the celebration with Mass presided over by newly ordained, Fr. Mike McMahon. We served 100 guests (a record!) a sit down, farm to table 5 course feast. Each course was more delectable that the last.  We ended the night with a festive barn dance called by our friends from St. Isidore Catholic Worker. It is always amazing to see the Nativity House community - near and far - come together for is wonderful event. 

In August our two interns moved on: Annemarie completing one year of service, Sarah completing two. Mid-September, Alexis, having earned her Certified Nursing Assistant's licence and finding full time employment also moved on. 

With the fall comes garden clean up and volunteer groups from the area universities. This year we were blessed with groups from Benedictine, Lewis, Joliet Montessori, Net Teams, and Notre Dame. Work on the farm takes many hands! For these groups we are very grateful.

Fall also brought an Eagle Scout Project to Nativity House. Danny Donohue and his scouting friends built a new bridge so that our guests and staff can better utilize our beautiful wooded space.

In the new year we look forward to new interns coming on staff. We hope to welcome a new guest mom early February. 

*****

With the close of the Liturgical year and the start of Advent just around the corner, there is always cause for reflection. The life of Nativity House runs deep with abundance, blessing and friendship. It has been 9 years of publishing the newspaper, three and a half years of intentional community and hospitality to guest moms and a lifetime of memories, loves, joys, tears, laughter. 

Over these years we have met and come in contact with so many amazing beautiful friends - some long term, some just passing through. We carry all of you with us. You are our community.

Thank you for allowing us to be part of your lives.

Just Be

When was the last time you spent 24 hours of uninterrupted time with the one you love? Or one of the someones you love?

24 hours of uninterrupted time? It sounds ludicrous! How? When? This is not possible.

Humans in the 21st century - modern times - are skilled at filling every minute of the day with activity, obligation, tasks. And we are always struggling against the grind that we have set up for ourselves.

I find that I am always looking for a window out!

The window came this last week. Gracie was to be at camp for the week. The house is empty of interns and guest moms. I just needed to enlist a small army of people to care for the myriad of animals that live at Nativity House. (a house of hospitality not just for humans!)

Tuesday after work we jumped in Rosie (our red prius) and headed north to Racine, WI, Eco-Justice Center. It just so happened that we were there 7 years to-the-day! of our very first visit to their hermitage. Our treks to the one room cabin in the woods began as 24 hours or a full weekend - if we were lucky - to get away and prepare in prayer for the project that would become Nativity House. It has now become a whole family affair. Once or twice a year Justin and I go. Once or twice a year Gracie and I go.

This time Justin were blessed to have a full 48 hours of time away. We spent our time reading, hiking, exploring the southern Wisconsin coast, drawing, writing. It was time to just be in each other's presence. There was no elaborate plan, there wasn't non-stop deep conversation, it wasn't all about romance.

The task at hand was to  just be. 

On our jaunt up the coast of Lake Michigan coast we stumbled upon a brewery: St Francis Brewery. Yum!

we have to make time, take time, reclaim time

to just be in each other's presence

your spouse, your child, your mother, your father

Unlikely Friendship: My Solidarity Story

Gracie engages one of our Nativity House infants - friendship

We were young and impressionable, wide-eyed and eager to serve.

During our on the ground training we were given an intense over view of Catholic Social Teaching. We were given a new worldview that was to prepare us for our work in the trenches.  We were to be working with the poor and marginalized: the mentally ill, the homeless, child-survivors of abuse, the addicted.

Edwin, Frankie, Mary, Pam, Brenda, Jim: just to name a few of those we worked alongside, those we served, those who served us.

We got to know them. We listened to their stories. They listened to ours. We learned each other’s likes and dislikes.  We exchanged knowledge, taught each other things. We celebrated each other’s joys and triumphs. We mourned each other’s losses.

Does this sound familiar?

It really is as simple as it sounds: friendship and relationship.

***

Justin and I lived for a year as Jesuit Volunteers in California in 2000-2001. We were steeped in Catholic Social Teaching, service to the poor and intentional community living.  The friendships formed and lifestyle lived that year left a lasting impression.

After that formative year we committed to continue this lifestyle. Reality quickly set in.  We would talk about our goals of living with and serving the poor and intentional community and people who nod their heads in agreement and quickly change the subject.

It was a few years later, I was talking with my dad about our dreams of living out the Gospel: living intentional community and living with and serving the poor and how it was frustrating because largely our societal system made it completely unconducive. My dad sympathetically responded, “Venus, your intentions are good. But you are young and idealistic. You will see you have to make some ideological compromises.”

***

Eighteen years later, we continue the quest. We live in a small intentional community rooted in Catholic Social Teaching, prayer, and hospitality to expectant mothers. We are steeped in issues facing abortion-minded single mothers on a daily basis. In the three years that we have been offering hospitality we have become friends with 5 expectant mothers that have struggled with unplanned pregnancies, homelessness, and lack of support. Through these relationships I have come to honestly understand the difficulty in making the bold and courageous choice to bring life into the world.

Without these relationships I would have no idea just how courageous these women are. This is the work of Nativity House. At Nativity House we are an intentional Catholic community and house of hospitality for expectant mothers. Our house is situated on a small farm with chickens, goats, dogs, cats and a large farm garden where 8 families  come weekly to work the land and nurture their families with organic produce and community. Nativity House is all about community, friendship, relationship. In the grand scheme of things it was easy to get this started - the Christian life. Doing things differently than the status quo: we strive to live out the Gospel as those early Christians did.

***

Idealist? Yes.

Compromise my beliefs as a Catholic to fit into the societal norms? No, thank you.

In today’s American society it is pretty clear that I need to take a side – one of two. How unfortunate. What I have learned about the honest struggle to live the Gospel is that one of the two sides available to me is not adequate. I will never fit into the socio-political system. I will never identify as a Republican or Democrat; nor do I want to. Both are sorely lacking when it comes to representing anyone who is striving to live the Gospel.

We as Christians are called to transform society; or as Peter Maurin said “create a new society within the shell of the old.” The first step to doing this is friendship and relationship.This is why Nativity House exists. One way we can answer to the new within the shell of the old.

We do not have to choose one of two sides. We can stand firm in the Gospel. We are creating a new society within the shell of the old. And finally, there is a group of people who are standing firm - The American Solidarity Party. Finally out of this poor political system of two lackluster sides that are the main undercurrent of American Society we have an honorable third choice. 

We are a party that seeks the common good, on common ground, through common sense. We believe in the sanctity of human life, the necessity of social justice, our responsibility to care for the environment, and promotion of a more peaceful world....

 This sounds like a new society in the shell of the old to me. We just need more people join the work in unlikely friendship.  

Will you be the one? And will you bring your friends?

Nativity House: the outcome is always abundance...

Life at Nativity House has it's ups and downs. Community living and serving expectant mothers in need are two cornerstones framed within the context of deep faith. 

Framed within the context of deep faith... This is what makes community living and serving expectant mothers possible.

Quite frankly, living and working at Nativity House is hard work. Living with other people - not immediate family - is not for the faint of heart. Living with and serving those in need is messy.

So why do we do it. 

The Gospel offers us the chance to live life on a higher plane but with no less intensity: life grows by being given away, and weakens in isolation and comfort. Indeed, those who enjoy life most are those who leave security on the shore and become excited by the mission of communicating life to others (Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel #10)

When you commit to sharing life - to a life of Encounter - Every - Single - Time - God meets our weakness, our shortcomings, our doubt, our worry, - with abundance. 

***

One example of this abundance is this year's CSA members. Our membership was low pretty late in the game. We just kept praying that God would send us new members for the garden. And then we trusted (that's the hard part.) Then, as if coming out of the wood work, God provided some wonderful new families.  

And one of those new families? A bee keeper! Erik is a wealth of knowledge in the garden. And he joyfully shares his love of beekeeping with us! This weekend we had our first honey harvest. Abundance.

Opening the hive! The bees filled one whole super of 10 frames in one week!

Annemarie is suited up and ready for honey harvest action

20 frames of honeycomb ready for processing

Rolling the frames to release the honey

Liturgy = Work

I hear it all the time. "I don't know how you do what you do."  "You have so much going on, I don't know how you have time for sleep."  "If I did all of what you do, I would be overwhelmed all the time."

I have heard these comments a little more frequently lately and they have led to me reflect on the notion of work. 

For many of us work is drudgery. Work is the menial, or gargantuan tasks that weigh us down: folding the laundry, doing the dishes, getting that project done before the deadline, presenting before the big boss. And let's not forget the workplace drama that comes with work: smelly diapers, sibling rivalry, filling in for the person who doesn't pull their own weight, etc.

As I reflect on the work of our nubian goats - Ivy, Rua, and Kirk - I notice how they go about their work of clearing brush.  With vigor and joy.  It is no doubt that they are doing what they were created to do.

Work

I think of the work of the Apostles after the Ascension. They went about their work of building up the church, the kingdom of God on Earth, with joy and vigor and confidence!

Is it a coincidence that the word liturgy means work?Liturgy is the very work of building God's kingdom right here on earth. 

I am calling for a paradigm shift.

It's true. I am a busy person. I work much and hard. But I take great joy in knowing that my work is indeed building up God's kingdom. All the way down to folding and sorting socks, cleaning out the chicken coop, planting tomatoes, cooking dinner, reading a bedtime story - whatever the work, I do it with vigor and joy.

Paradigm shift

Liturgy = work

What is your work?

***

Kirk, Our Nubian Buckling

Kirk chows down on his afternoon snack, donning a Bears tee

Ivy and Rua share a twig from a wild rose bush

Ivy, Queen of the Mountain!

Nativity House: 3 Years and Counting

It was this week four years ago that Nativity House accepted it's first guest mom. In these last three years we have had 5 guest moms, 5 babies, and 5 interns come and go.  Not to mention the countless volunteer work groups that have come through and let's not forget the Nativity House garden community. 

Looking  back over these last four years there is a theme: wonder and awe.

Wonder and awe 

- when you say "yes" to God, He will put that "yes" to action

Wonder and awe 

- when we utter a prayer, there has always been an answer

Wonder and awe 

- God has sent us interns: young women who are rooted in prayer, motivated by the Gospel call 

Wonder and awe 

- when times have been challenging, God has sustained us

Wonder and awe 

- through the Nativity House community of prayer warriors and supporters God has provided for each of the 5 guest moms, always

Wonder and Awe

***

Here are just a few pictures to recap the last 3 years

Our First Baby Shower (August 2015)

Welcome Home Baby (April 2016)

Baby Keanu's Birthday (November 2016)

A Christmas Tradition: Christmas Brunch with past and present Nativity House Community Members (Christmas 2016)

 

Back for a Mother's Day Visit (Mother's Day 2017)

Community Day at Kuiper's Pumpkin Farm (Fall 2017)

Community Night Bowling (Spring 2018)

Nativity House: Growing Again

The shipment of seeds; promise of food to come!

***

This is the start of my most favorite time of year! The growing season. Today was the start!

Annemarie and I met up with Lee Witkowski, an environmental science professor at Lewis University. We got our hands dirty and put some seeds in the dirt. We started tomatoes, eggplant, basil, ground cherries, and wonder berries. 

With names like Aunt Molly's Cherries,  Hungarian Heart, Pineapple Tomato, and Black Krim you can't help but wonder at the seeds planted down in the darkness. Will they in fact yield sweet fantastical fruits promised on the seed packets? It is an experiment in hope!

We are looking for a few good families to join us in this experiment. Would you like to come and grow with us? And partake in the pineapple tomato? It was the sweetest tomato I have ever tasted!

***

Ping Tung Eggplant, Malaysia Eggplant, Blackberry Wonderberries, Early Wonder Cucumbers!

Annemarie adds finishing touches of vermiculite to the tops of our plantings.

Lee has nurtured our seedlings in the Lewis University green house now for 5 seasons!

On the Farm - Winter Edition - Snow Day!

This winter has been frigid and appropriately snowy. I am not one to complain about the weather. My mantra is "there is no bad weather, just bad clothing choices." There is too much wonder in our natural world to stay away in the winter.

I have been spending my outside time these last weeks with the goats and chickens and for the most fun - on the tractor. I am sure that I am not as efficient a plower as my husband, Justin, but it is a very satisfying chore.

 Just a girl and a tractor and 6 inches of snow

Lunch time

The afternoon sun through the cherry tree

UPDATE! SNOW DAY!

What did you do on your snow day?

Coffee in bed with some prepatory reading for our trip. We leave SUNDAY! ACK

Sarah, Annemarie, Gracie and I rewarded ourselves after shoveling for a little light sledding.

Getting warm with some hot cocoa and jam making! 

I finally  had time to turn the strawberry harvest into jam! And it is SOOOOO good.

Growing your Own

Back in September we harvested Strawberry Corn. This was our first attempt at corn of any kind. I was very happy with the returns for it being the first time in a not super ideal spot in the garden. We all took turns shucking the corn.  Then we promptly stored it away in the pantry.

This week, it was time to pull out the strawberry corn for a snack. And boy was it delicious.

It's absolutely true. It tastes so much better when you grow it yourself!

 The Happy Taste Testers!

What hit me

The view from the 4th floor of Loyola's Information Commons - site of the symposium on Friday. 

For the last two days, I spent my days exploring the University of Loyola at the Dorothy Day Symposium. There were so many wonderful things about the symposium. Through all of the various presentations by those who knew her, those who  were her family  members, scholars, dreamers what I heard were two things.

I heard her voice. In the quotes of her writing and first-hand stories of her life. The picture of this woman devoted to a harsh and dreadful love in action was presented and we were urged toward a continuing revolution of the heart.

First 
Kate Hennessy, Dorothy Day's youngest granddaughter was present and she talked about the impetus for her new book,  The World will be Saved by Beauty. I look forward to reading the book and sharing the story of Dorothy Day, her daughter and her granddaughter - this strong womanhood - with Gracie Day. One quote from the reading of the preface touched me:

We all need to live our lives as if we are Dorothy's children and grandchildren, being comforted and discomforted by her as she invites us to be so much more than how we ordinarily see ourselves and, perhaps more important, how we see each other.

Second
Justin re-introduced me to Dorothy Day through her writings, through the Sacramento Catholic Worker, Loaves and Fishes over 15 years ago.  In the grand scheme of things its really a short time ago but, it was the start of a new journey. It set Justin and I on a new path. 

Robert Ellsberg, quoting Kate Hennessy closed his talk "when you meet her [Dorothy Day], you spend the rest of your life wondering what hit you."  And he said, "I met her over thirty years ago and I am still wondering what hit me."

Life in Pictures - Summer 2016: Episode 1

Crunchy Catholic Mom - Celebrations of daily life of this radical Catholic, wife and mother, Catholic Worker Farm Girl, House of Hospitality Host, and Catechist...

For these summer months, I will be posting weekly pictorial posts - documenting life. Life truly is beautiful.

***

Feisty, the Rooster

Tulips are blooming. Planted by volunteers last fall. 

Remembering all the friends that support Nativity House.

May 7 - First Eucharist for 75 children at St. Dennis.

 

Farm Life = Lot's of Brush Fires, Burning out Stumps

Mother's Day Tradition - planting in the Mary Garden with my mom

Bike ride - one of many on these fair spring evenings.

Harvest

Holy Door - Holy Name Cathedral

Some of my partners in ministry

Holy Name Cathedral

Friend in the Garden - First Harvest

BFFs prepare flowers for the Mary Garden.

Two Grandmas - Planting for the Mary Garden

Preparing for Mass of  Confirmation - Come, Holy Spirit Flowers