Daughter-Father Dance Podcast
Episode 4: “Offer It Up, Née Née”
TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Jenée Arthur:
Hey, welcome back. Are we having fun yet?

Today, Dad and I are going to discuss something he and my mom referred to a lot when me and my siblings were young. Now, as you can likely imagine by now, my father has the tenacity of a beaver and the focus of an entranced cobra. When it comes to anything he is attempting to accomplish or complete.

He can stick with a task for longer than most people would ever care to endure. Case in point— while walking on a beach made a shell shards on a vacation in DoorCounty several years ago,Dad located a fully intact shell and gave it to my Mom with the enthusiasm of a little boy finding a caterpillar for the first time.

He was so excited that he insisted upon finding one for me. This search took an hour and a half, and my mom and I nearly died of starvation.

Dad's tenacity and endurance was likely fortified by one of his and my mom's greatest examples to their children growing up. My siblings and I typically heard “Offer it up!” anytime we complained about anything. It would follow our whining about being too hot ,or still being hungry after a meal. Or, you know, while lying on the ground, writing in pain after slicing our calf muscle on a sharp protruding piece of metal from a neighbor slide.

Yeah. I'm certain it's why as adults, the four of us kids rarely complain.

We can carry out daily functions like finishing mowing a lawn after applying a tourniquet to our femoral artery. While other kids in our neighborhood were motivating themselves by referring to things like The Little Engine That Could and repeating the, “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.” mantra, the Arthur kids were “offering up” and overcoming their discomfort by envisioning Christ, lifeless and bleeding on a cross.

Yep. You get the idea. Now, let's talk to my father about this. 

[00:02:46] Jenée Arthur:
As a child, all four of us kids were at the mercy of one command. If you will, that you instilled in us, um, that I think we all sort of nod to still today. And that is your famous quote of offer it up. Will you talk a little bit about that, about why that was such a prevalent focus for you and as kids?

[00:02:59] Gene Arthur:
I believe it has to do. How I was raised and the nuns in the orphanage would use that phrase when we would complain about something.

[00:03:12] Jenée Arthur:
You didn't come up with that phrase?

[00:03:14] Gene Arthur:
No, I didn't come up with that. That was something that was told to me that my earliest recollection was the nuns in the orphanage telling us to offer it up.

And because I think that was a normal expression in the forties and the fifties to quit complaining and offer it up. 

[00:03:36] Jenée Arthur:
Right. But when we were kids, I had no idea like that's new news to me that it was, it was something you learned in the orphan. 'cause, you know, I can talk about it really quippy, like I did in my blog post about how, you know, if I severed my Achilles tendon and had to walk a mile, I just had to offer it up because you know, Jesus laid hanging on a cross all day and died for me.

So if he could do that, I could offer up the, you know, a torn Achilles tendon, or, and I'm being tongue-and-cheek… I'm making that up. But talk about that because I, to this day, it affects me. Cause if I'm struggling with something, instead of whining, like whining, wasn't really accepted in our family because we always were met with, "Hey, offer it up."

[00:04:20] Gene Arthur:
You're right. That offering it up I believe has a couple of purposes behind it. The first purpose would be to have you think about someone other than yourself. And that other someone would be, in my suggestion, would be God. When I would say it to you children, I was just repeating what I had been told when I was young.

And it must have been very common back then because it was not a great revelation to me the first time I heard it, because it must have been explained, like, I'm trying to explain it to you, offer this up with the sufferings of Jesus Christ on the cross. Well, you don't mention that every time you say offer it up and then give an explanation.

You just. Offer it up. And you assume that the person that you're saying it to has an understanding of what that means.

[00:05:22] Jenée Arthur:
But, think about that though. Like if, if you didn't have reference for what the hell does offer it up mean, you kind of would be like, “What do you mean, offer it up?” Because think about like a whining kid, whatever the reason they're complaining or whatever.

And you say, "Hey, offer it up," that kind of sounds a little foreign. Like what,"What do you mean offer it up?" So for you and I, it's a familiar term that we recognize its meaning of, and again, you're saying it was common back in the fifties and the sixties, so I could be wrong, but it seems to me like most people would be like, "What?!"

[00:05:58] Gene Arthur:
Jenée, I think, because we are in a Catholic environment, a Catholic upbringing, that was pretty common. And for you to understand what it meant, it's because you had an upbringing that reflected. The originality of that particular statement. 

[00:06:19] Jenée Arthur:
Right.

[VOICEOVER] I understood it all right, but I didn't always like it, especially in my bratty teenage years when I had pretty much had it with Mom and Dad’s seemingly canned response to any and all my complaints. 

"Gosh, Dad, is that all you can ever say? I'm bleeding here!"

"Oh, God, Mom, not you too! Unbelievable." 

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, Dad, I'm not Jesus."

[[Sound of Dad's voice] "Offer this up."

 "Offer it up. YOU offer it up." 

"Well fine, Dad, but I happen to have a broken heart and I think Jesus would cut me some slack this time." 

"Okay. Come here, buddy. You better stop crying though. Or you're going to get the, "offer it up" lecture. You know how much fun that is.” 

"Yeah. Yeah. I know. Offer it up . I'd like to offer you up."

[VOICEOVER] Yeah. I complained a lot as a teenager, but as kids and adults “offering it up” was just part of our lives.

[00:07:26] Gene Arthur:
I've never heard anybody in the business world or in sports say anything close to that. It's always been in the context of you're doing this. You're going to stop complaining because you want to. Offer it up and not be a pain in the ass to your mother or your father from your complaining and said, offer it up.

[00:07:55] Jenée Arthur:
This goes kind of into that whole conversation that you and I, and most likely you've had it with my siblings about palanca, which obviously you love. 

Dad, whatever you're doing. You're you're going to be able to hear that on the recording. 

[00:08:11] Gene Arthur:
Okay. I was just smashing an ant.

[00:08:13] Jenée Arthur:
Oh, great. Okay.

[00:08:15] Gene Arthur:
Excuse me. That when this is on, when we're, when we're live on the podcast, I won't do anythin

[00:08:20] Jenée Arthur:
Dad.

[00:08:21] Gene Arthur:
I’ll sit like a frozen person with my hands in my lap and my eyes on the microphone 

[00:08:33] Jenée Arthur:
Dad. We are live in the podcast.

[00:08:35] Gene Arthur: Oh we are? 

[00:08:36] Jenée Arthur:
Yeah. Okay. Wait a minute. So let me go back to the whole thing I was getting ready to say. Um, before you killed the ant.

So this whole offer it up —, again, common in our household, you're saying likely common in a lot of Catholic households in the forties, or excuse me, the fifties and sixties. But then there's also this thing that came in later in life about palanca, which, um, you know, not growing up in a Hispanic family, I didn't know Spanish, but palanca is very Spanish word, meaning "lever", was another very common kind of conversation with you. Um, will you talk a little bit about the, how you came upon that? It's meaning for you? 

[00:09:32] Gene Arthur:
Sure. Well, it all started when I decided to make a weekend retreat at a local Catholic convent and that retreat was called Cursillo de Cristiandad. The word Palanca, as you said, is a Spanish word meaning lever and the lever would be what I would call… I'm trying to think of a word that

[00:09:47] Jenée Arthur:
ike to raise something up?

[00:09:49] Gene Arthur:
No, I'm trying to think of when I actually heard that word for the first time. On the Cursillo weekend retreat, it was explained to us men who were on that retreat weekend, that it meant lever. And from the explanation that was given to us is an advantage that we could use in telling God our desires or our dream.

Or our hopes or prayers that we wanted answered. So Palanca is a way of sacrificing your body, your attitude, your conduct, as a prayer, to hope that your prayer is answered. Now, that's about the best example I could give you of what palanca means. 

[00:10:56] Jenée Arthur:
'cause I remember even as a small child, after you made the Cursillo, that you would go, we would go to the blessed sacrament nightly to me, it seemed like every night, it probably wasn't every night, but I would often be up playing on the alter or trying to like emulate mass because, you know, I had that great fantasy of being the first female priest and I would look down and I would see you with your arms out, stretched kneeling at the, on the kneeler, in the pew.

Not even in the comfort of the kneeler on the pew that was padded, you'd be on like the stair of the alter and you'd stay like that for God knows how long. And I find out later in inquiring about why you were doing that, that you were offering up, you were doing palanca for a certain intention for someone.

And that was like riveting to a kid and riveting in that once you explained what you were doing, It was, it was affecting, it was touching and kind of amazing for a kid to witness their dad sort of uncomfortable because it didn't look fun what you were doing. You're holding your arms up for what felt like 20 minutes or something.

So I wanna, I want to kind of talk about that because I think for me personally, it's affected my life and the decisions I make. 

[00:12:13] Gene Arthur:
I want you to picture in your mind, a big boulder. Eight to 10 feet tall. Eight to 10 feet wide. You have to move it because you're going to build your house right where that big rock is.

So you don't have machinery. You have to use your own mind to figure out how you can move that rock so it will roll down the hill that it sits next to. So if you had a plank long enough, thick enough, wide enough that you could stick under one corner of that huge rock and then put another rock about halfway away from that big boulder you want to move, and halfway in between the distance of that plank, all you would need is some weight on the opposite end of that lever to move that boulder. Well, palanca in the spiritual sense is the lever or the plank to accomplish a prayer request or an endeavor in your life that you want to go the right way.

So when you saw your dad kneeling on the marble steps with my arms stretched out like our Lord Jesus was stretched out on the cross. Physically, you do notice some discomfort either in your back or shoulders or your arms. Well, your knees, but you're praying in that position, either rosaries, some devotional novena, while you maintain that posture and you are praying for a special intention— family, friends work, the world, neighbors, anything that your heart desires. You really want this and you are willing to go through physical pain and discomfort. And so that's what I wanted to convey to my children. That if you want something and it's God's, will you show God how much you want what you're wanting by offering up the sacrifice. Palanca is the lever of sacrifice. And palanca can be done in ways other than physical, uh, can be done by like we experienced during the Lenten season, not just denying ourselves, but doing things that we wouldn't normally do.

[00:15:01] Jenée Arthur:
One of the things that stood out for me, Dad, was how you would offer your palanca not so much for things that you wanted, but things that other people needed.

And that was affecting as a kid to be witnessing a father and a mother who put themselves in uncomfortable situations, not just for the sake of uncomfortable situations, but to help as a, as a.

As a sacrifice or as a fasting or as a, like you just said a doing as something extra for the sake of another person, it's almost like, you know, you've taught us that the power of prayer, you know, the supernatural power of prayer. It's a, it's a, it's almost, even scientific. Prayer is powerful. So in those moments, when you were sacrificing for the sake of another person, your whole analogy of the lever or the definition of palanca visually makes sense, because you're literally lifting up that other person in prayer and in sacrifice this.

[00:16:06] Gene Arthur:
This is what we are called to do is to think of the good. Your palanca or your sacrifices could be for the common good of your own family, extended family, distant relatives, neighbors, communities, the common good is expressed in the desire for someone to be better off healed.

Well, does that help? 

[00:16:35] Jenée Arthur:
Yeah. And I think we'll always nod to the Christianity because of our Catholicism. But even if you separated that out, even though it's almost impossible to separate the palanca and the “Offer it up,” because it it's grounded in Christ, right? Like that was the example. You said as a father to offer it up like Jesus did, basically.

But the thing that's really amazing about this concept of offering it up and palanca is it's not confined to a religion. It's how we should act as humans. It's the power that we all have collectively and respectively within a group of human beings to help each other. And so, for listeners who don't necessarily feel, you know, you know how I feel— Christianity for me unfortunately, has become cringe-worthy like when people say, “oh, you're a Christian.”

I'm like, "No, I'm Catholic” because the word Christian alone kind of makes me think of the antithesis of Christ, sadly, because there's just so much corruption in Christianity. 

[VOICEOVER] I know what you're thinking. There's a heck of a lot of corruption in the Catholic church. And you're right. There always has been, but Dad and I will be discussing that in another episode. Hold onto your hat for that one.

[00:17:15] Jenée Arthur:
But if you take that away, right, strip it down and pull the Christianity piece, not the Christ piece, but Christianity— It's really about a universal concept of humanity that we, like you said, Dad, that we are doing things for others. It's not just a me, me me, I, I, I world. We live in a collection of humans. We are together in this experience and it'd be good if division and divisiveness would start to melt away if we started doing things for others, rather than just for ourselves, you know? I think it's like, the little mustard seed of division is this egotistical “his is just about me” kind of way. And palanca and offering it up, strips you from that, it takes you out of that mindset. It says, “Hey, this isn't just about you and what you need and want.” This is about what if you could just offer this moment when you can't really get what you want up for another human and their suffering and their cancer diagnosis. The fact that they just lost a child to suicide or whatever it is, right. Or offer it up for the world in general, that it recognizes its connection and its oneness.

And the reason I say this is that not everybody can relate to the Christianity piece, but they can relate to human kindness and human nature of love and doing things for others.

[00:19:36] Gene Arthur:
Well said,

[00:19:38] Jenée Arthur:
Why, thank you, father.

[00:19:40] Gene Arthur:
Yeah. Cause, uh, those who are not Christian have the same desires and wishes and hopes.

[00:19:46] Jenée Arthur:
I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine.

She got really mad at me one time and said, cause we were talking about you and kind of your effect on me. And she said, well, your dad does what he does because he feels like he has to as a county. There's rules and regulations. And I remember getting just rearing up in defense of that comment because my, my response was my dad does that because he's a good human being.

Cause it didn't, it wasn't to me, my dad and my mom's examples, your examples to me and to us kids were never about just because you were Catholic, it was because you were good. And again that, yes, I think our Catholicism created that foundation of goodness, but it goes back to the thing about you being an amazing dad, despite the fact that you didn't really have a father to show you what a good dad was.

You made a choice, you made a choice to be a man who doesn't just live for himself, but lives for others. Um, that's made all the difference, dad, to me and to all of us kids and your grandkids. 

[00:20:53] Gene Arthur:
Well, as a father, you always want the best for yours for the fact that that lady told you that I only do what I do because I'm a Catholic and that's the reason why I do what I do.

She's not completely wrong, but I look at that because I am a Catholic to love one another and don't do harm, but look for the best of all possibilities, I think she was half, right? Because I believe my faith was, uh, the manual for how I live my life. 

[00:21:34] Jenée Arthur: [VOICEOVER]
Indeed. Dad lives his life by the manual of the Catholic faith.

It's both a bonding part of our relationship, as well as some of the biggest points of contention between. But no matter how I agree or disagree with him, I wouldn't wish for him to be any different. His faith is confounding as it can be to me at times, makes him the man. He is the father he is. And on this subject of offering things up, I want to clarify that I don't believe that God, the universe source intends for us to actively seek out suffering.

As for the concept of offering up the discomfort of situations. We're not actually thrilled about being in well, it's as much a part of my DNA as my Irish heritage. The concepts we've discussed here today, get me through moments I can't fathom making it through. Like the time I sanga heart-wrenching song at the request of my beautiful aunt and uncle during the funeral of my cousin, their son, who chose to end his life on earth and head into the arms of the angel.

The only way I could hold it together during the singing of that song while I, to mourn the loss of my precious cousin was to offer it up for the rest of my family who was suffering unimaginable pain. I was fortunate, blessed, really to have a mom and a dad that modeled this for me and for Julie, Jared, and Jason.

And though I complained about not having permission to complain when I was a teenager. It's still fortified something in me. Something that I think makes me stronger to this day, when I hear the faint whisper of my childhood, reminding me "Offer it up, Née Née, I smile and I do my best to turn my discomfort into a moment of gratitude or sacrifice for someone I care about, or I love.

Next week, we have a special treat for you. There will be a few guests with us who will substantiate, or possibly challenge, some of me and Dad's assertions about the past. I actually think you're going to like it.

So again, thank you for being here and please do us a favor and subscribe rate, and review us on apple podcasts or wherever you subscribe, rate, and review your podcasts.

And next time you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation. Maybe you'll have something now to fall back on— if you choose, that is.

 Lots and lots of love and gratitude to all of you on this journey with us. 

See you next time.

Division is Optional