Our Polish life - year one

One July 31, 2011 Renata and I and our children Emilia and Adam left the rented townhouse we had called home for 5 years for the final time.  I quietly gave a blessing to all future inhabitants, praying for the same health and happiness for them that we enjoyed there.  The words caught in my throat.  So many memories.  With a mixture of heavy hearts and anticipation, we drove away from 209-A Pate Orr Road.

We should have arrived in Poland on August 1, but due to flooding in Warsaw our flight out of Chicago that evening was canceled.  The airline put us up for the night in Chicago, which was a great adventure for the kids.  For Renata and I it was a night in limbo between the old and the new.  We were leaving behind job, friends, my side of the family and dreams of a new house.  We weren't sure we had made the right decision.

We finally arrived in Zarczyce Duze in Poland, to Renata's childhood home where her mother still lives, on August 2.  Grandma was excited to see the kids and the kids were excited to be in their new home.  Adam exclaimed, "Grandma, you can live here too!" 

What can I say about our first year here?  It's been stressful, fun, frustrating, difficult, interesting, joyful and dull.  Life in Poland is very different from life in the USA.  Just one example: to get a fishing license in the USA you go to any Walmart sporting goods department, fill out a form, pay your money (a mere $35 in Texas) and in about 20 minutes you walk out with your license.  In Poland you have to locate the one office in the city that issues fishing licenses.  You have to take a test (which involves identifying species of fish).  You have to fill out forms (plural).  You pay your money (180 PLN, or about $50).  And that's not the end of the bureaucracy.  With your license comes a strip of paper where, each time you go fishing, you write the date and place where you fish and the number and type of any fish you catch.  If a game warden checks and you haven't filled out the paper for that particular day you will be fined.  As a foreigner I was able to avoid taking the test, but everything else applies.

We miss the USA, even the Texas heat.  We miss family and friends.  We miss our old parish church.  We miss the general ease of living in the USA.  I miss being able to talk to people in English and going to an English library.  Since I don't speak Polish so well I often feel at a loss and less in control of my life here than in the USA.  The house we live in requires a disheartening amount of time and money in renovation.

But on the plus side of the ledger: living in the same house with grandma has been great for Emilia and Adam.  They've grown very close to grandma as well as to aunts, uncles and cousins who all live relatively close (most of my family in the USA lived far from us and we rarely, if ever, saw them).  We have a large yard which includes a garden, orchard, chickens and a barn with rabbits.  There's a large forest just 5 minutes walk from our back fence.  The kids' primary school is a 10-minute walk down the road.  There's lots of home-grown food from the garden, orchard and animals as well as various berries and mushrooms from the forest; not to mention all the wonderful cakes and sweet rolls that grandma bakes.  We buy fresh milk from the neighbors, honey from beekeepers up the road and fresh locally baked bread from the little store just a few houses down the street.  Emilia and Adam can now speak Polish.  My own facility with the language is improving.

I enjoy teaching English more than "chasing trucks" like I did in my transportation logistics job in Texas.  My students come from many walks of life and talking with them as I teach them English has enriched my life.  Renata studied for and received her teaching license this year.  She will start teaching English in the local primary school in September.  I think she will find this work fulfilling.

We have so many priceless memories from the past year.  There was Emilia and Adam's first day at school.  Emilia memorized lines of poems for various school presentations, including one for Christmas where Emilia spoke of "welcoming baby Jesus with carols."  I bet you'll never hear that at a public school in the USA!  There have been walks in the forest where Emilia loves to gather autumn leaves or spring and summer wildflowers, pedal-boat rides in a small lake at a nearby park, hours at an indoor swimming pool with a great big water slide, sledding down a hill and building snowmen, sausage roasts at a fire in the orchard, Adam trying to kick a soccer ball like his older cousins . . .

If the truth be told, Renata and I would not choose to move here again if we could rewind time.  But then none of those memories listed in the previous paragraph would have happened if we hadn't moved here.

All in all, this past year has required patience and reliance on the Lord.  It's been hard not having as much control over things as I'd like.  I'm not where I ought to be yet, but God is working on me.  I'm having to learn to cooperate with Him like never before.

The problem with porn

Sex is good.  (Got your attention?)  Sex serves the purpose of the procreation of children.  Sex also serves to unite in the most intimate way a man and a woman in love physically, emotionally and spiritually (ideally within the bounds of holy matrimony).  The Church teaches that the loving union of a husband and wife, open to the creation of life - that is, the procreation of children - mirrors in an earthly way the creative exchange of love within the Holy Trinity.  Through true love making a man and a woman can transcend their merely physical selves.

Adam and Eve newly created

G. K. Chesterton wrote somewhere that a man knocking on a brothel door is searching for heaven.  But surely that man is looking in the wrong place? 


Evil has been defined as the mis-use of good.  Food is good.  It nourishes the body, adds pleasure to life and can be shared with others in celebration.  But too much food results in obesity or other illnesses.  Knives are good.  They're very useful for cutting food or wood or even for legitimate self defense.  But putting a knife through another's heart in order to take his property or in a fit of jealously is a mis-use of a good knife.


But surely if consenting adults want to perform sexual acts for other consenting adults to watch, that's nobody else's business. There are no victims.


Pornography, as defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2354, consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties.  It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other.  It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others.


According to one study I read about, the number of men aged to 18-25 who have viewed pornagraphy is practically 100%.  No big deal, boys will be boys.  We've all peeped once or twice, eh?  Surely a large number of those men have looked at porn only a couple of times, then grown up and moved on with their lives.  And yet, it's reported that the porn industry is the largest grossing industry in the United States, as well as this country's biggest export.   Porn addiction is now a widely recognised psychological problem.  In my opening paragraph I purposely repeated the syntax "sex serves."  The problem with porn is that the viewer becomes enslaved to the sexual imagery.  Countless men have travelled the road from "mainstream" porn to ever more bizarre and perverted displays of sex in a soul corroding search for sexual thrill and novelty.  But the law of diminishing returns rules there.


Furthermore, I would argue that porn and its effects go beyond the hard core yuck most of us associate with the word.  Is anyone bothered by the picture displays in Target's underclothes for girls section?  Aren't the poses of those young girl models rather provocative?  Or how about walking through the mall past the Frederick's of Hollywood or Victoria's Secret shops with their soft porn window displays?  And finally, what is with the plague of stories of schoolgirls circulating photos of themselves nude or in lingerie via their cell phones?  What motivates them to do this?

It doesn't take a leap of the imagination to understand that frequent viewing of pornography colors the view boys and men have of women. 


There is a mass of literature ranging from formal studies to anecdotal evidence that portrays college-aged men and woman as living in a sexual jungle.  Women view porn at lower rates than men and when woman do view porn it's typically at the instigation of a male; go along to get along - don't want to be seen as a sexual prude - rather this than the terrible fate of being alone.  There is now a prevalent "hook up" culture of one night stands on college campuses.  Like sexual wolves, male students prey on female students.  The incidences of rape, unplanned pregnancy and STDs have soared among this age group.  No doubt related, so has the rate of attempted suicide.  There seems to often be a moral hangover as well an alcohol hangover "the morning after."  Obviously pornography isn't the only thing contributing to this state of affairs, but it pollutes our cultural atmosphere and does NOT lead to loving thoughts and actions.


This is the kind (of demon) that can only be driven out by prayer.  Mark 9:29


So, what do we do about the "pornographication of culture?"  There are parental controls for internet and television.  We can notify Target of our discomfort with their display of young girls or choose not to shop there.  We can avoid the mall.  One of my sisters managed a drug store years ago where she was required to stock certain pornographic magazines.  Since these magazines were offensive to her to decided she wouldn't display them but keep them under the counter; if anybody asked for one she would retrieve one from its hiding place.  In the film Fireproof, the main character Caleb Holt, who is in danger of losing his wife because of his internet porn addiction, eventually hauls his computer to the yard and takes a ball bat to it.  Rather drastic, isn't it?  And if your eye should be your downfall, tear it out and throw it away: it is better for you to enter into life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be thrown into the hell of fire.  Matthew 18:9


An admission: I am one who struggled with porn.  Thank God I didn't become enslaved to it.  But the potential was clearly there.  The images became seared into my memory and the sin of lust is a constant temptation.  On two different occasions in the confessional, two different priests - one young and one old - gave me as penance the praying of two thousand Hail Mary's.  I thought, How am I supposed to pray so many Hail Mary's?  I can't do that in one sitting.  It'll take me many, many days.


Ah!  Those priests are very wise.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Hail Mary, particularly in the context of the rosary, is a prayer where we meditate on various aspects of the life of Jesus or his mother, Mary, while also reciting the Our Father and Glory Be.  It's a very effective prayer when approached the right way.  Those priests know it's necessary to remain focused on our Lord Jesus Christ and our Lady, the Virgin Mary in order to attain a pure heart.  And by setting 2,000 prayers as penance they knew full well I couldn't do it in one sitting and then quickly forget about it.  No normal person is going to try to count out 2,000 Hail Mary's.  The idea is to get into the habit of daily, meditative prayer; to remain focused on God and not let Satan get a foothold in your heart.


God, create in me a clean heart, renew within me a resolute spirit.  Psalm 51:10

A Good Beginning

I would like to make my first posting on this blog a prayer to Our Lady of Perpetual Help.  The favor I ask of Our Lady is that everything that I ever post on this blog is to the Greater Glory of God.

Oh Mother of Perpetual Help, grant that I may ever invoke your powerful name, the protection of the living and the salvation of the dying. Purest Mary, let your name henceforth be ever on my lips. Delay not, Blessed Lady, to rescue me whenever I call on you. In my temptations, in my needs, I will never cease to call on you, ever repeating your sacred name, Mary, Mary. What a consolation, what sweetness, what confidence fills my soul when I utter your sacred name or even only think of you! I thank the Lord for having given you so sweet, so powerful, so lovely a name. But I will not be content with merely uttering your name. Let my love for you prompt me ever to hail you Mother of Perpetual Help. Mother of Perpetual Help, pray for me and grant me the favor I confidently ask of you.