144/365 On the other hand: grace

It is the daily dew and the light afternoon shower that keeps the garden of our souls growing, rather than a once-a-year downpour of grace. --Father Dominic Garramone

This quote is at the top of a blog I read, called Everyday Unitarian. I'm obviously not a Unitarian, but like I've said before, I have lots of ecumenical leanings and I like reading her reflections on faith and church (and it led me to decide to write this blog, even if just for myself, as a reflection on my own parish and its community life).

Fr. Dominic, OSB, wrote some of the first books I read by modern Benedictines. I read through (too quickly) the Rule, and I read some things about the Rule, but when I started thinking more about becoming an oblate, I found his books, and Daniel Homan, an easy gateway. Later I would read and reread Joan Chittister and Kathleen Norris and Michael Casey and lots of other folks, but Dominic was my first step.

We'd lost electricity. It was the summer of 2006 and that first night, it wasn't so bad in the house. The girls slept in the living room on the floor and Mike split the night between our house and my parents' house, just to keep things safe. I lay in my bed with a flashlight and read Bake and Be Blessed. It was like trying on a pair of jeans with a size you're hoping will fit, and then they zip up right away and don't make your rear end look too big. It was a perfect little joy of a book to read. I read the whole thing in that one setting and fell asleep convinced of what I needed to do.

There are so many good gateways to a more spiritual life. Which amuses me (or makes me shake my head ruefully) because I have a minor in Theology from a Jesuit university--my major is in elementary education, but I've taken a lot of theology. A lot more than just a minor's worth, in fact. And in high school, our junior year theology course was the study of Vatican II documents. We studied 4 of them over the course of the year. Four: Lumen Gentium, Dignitatis Humanae, Dei Verbum, and I believe the other one was Gaudium et Spes (but I had to look it up to try to guess...). For a high school theology course, that was pretty heavy. I have a lot of theology under my belt. And yet, by the time Maeve was born, I was no longer in conversation with God.

It was books like Bake and Be Blessed that put me back on that path. The Quotidian Mysteries. Benedict's Way. Simple little books that opened that door again.