154/365 Language

I'm having a difficult time with upcoming changes in the English version of the mass. There, I said it.

I love ritual and living in ritual and coming to deeper understandings of it. Words and gestures. Bad ritual and bad liturgy always make me roll my eyes, like the times I've spent in really bad women's prayer services. A post for another day.

At mass Sunday, Miguel's homily concerned words and meaning. That when things change (like, when we visit churches that say mass in another language), we have to pay closer attention. The mass hasn't changed, just the language it is set in has changed. We can still participate even if we aren't speaking the language of the people.

This was juxtaposed against the upcoming changes. And I have a variety of opinions that fall into the following categories:

1. I fear change. This is a personal problem of mine and I should let it go.

2. It feels kind of...fundamentalist. I mean it this way: as a Catholic, I do not believe in the literal translation, word for word, of the bible. It was written by mortals, inspired by God. The prophets and historians and poets and evangelists were not taking dictation. There was no handheld recorder or speechwriter at Jesus' sermons. And, in addition, I consider the bible to be a more inspired body of work than I do the order of the mass. And so the idea of "going back to the basics of love", so to speak, makes me hesitate. Human language is not static. Civilization is not static. The fact that my denomination is so freaking static makes me crazy.

3. But without ritual stasis, it of course runs the risk of being bad.

4. Lastly, and most specifically, "and my soul shall be healed" grates on my nerves because of the implied duality of mankind:

The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the "form" of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

Our current "And I shall be healed" seems more in line with that statement. But I know I'm no expert. It will become yet another mystery for me to ponder, like the question I often ask about the line in the creed: God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God. Why do we mention God in two different phrases there. Why do we have to say True God after we've just said God? I have yet to get a satisfactory answer, and I think "and my soul shall be healed" will be the same way.

And it shouldn't be that way. Just sayin.

156/365 Ubi Caritas Et Amor, Deus Ibi Est

(An older post of mine from SCM)

All the title says is that when there is love, when you are gathered in his name, he is there among you. For he is. If we truly believe in the incarnation, that Jesus was God and Man, and that by extension there is a spark of the divine in each of us, then what follows? Is Christ only in the deserving poor? Is Christ only in those who sin like we do? Of course not. CS Lewis said that besides the Eucharist (he was a fellow Catholic), our neighbors were the most holy encounters we have here on earth. We are not talking with mere mortals, he said. We are experiencing a piece of the divine.

The first word of the Rule of Benedict is "Listen". When did we decide we'd done enough of that? That we were finished listening? That is the root of obedience, actually--to listen attentively. And to be listened to. For you never know when God might be speaking to you. Or through you.

There is a Benedictine practice of answering the door expecting that it will be Christ. Never rush, don't be put off because the doorbell interrupted the bread making, the homeschooling, the vacuuming (I'm never put off by that interruption!). Any guest may be the Lord, but "sometimes we need to pay close attention and look beyond appearances to see the contours of the Lord in the other person"* We need to listen. When we answer the phone, when we go to a meeting, when we listen to a homily, when we talk with a neighbor. Even if that neighbor makes us crazy or we don't think they'd be good influences on our children. We need to listen, we need to show at least the most basic of hospitality, for he or she may indeed be the Christ.

He is, and she is. And what does it say about us when we fail to listen, fail to welcome? Especially when we purposefully fail.



*Will Derkse The Rule of Benedict for Beginners: Spirituality for Daily Life

155/365 Oblate Director

Sometimes I feel like I'm on a path to my death and other times I tell myself to perk up and make the most of whatever time I have. That's all any of us can do, no? Anyway, I'm sending my love and care and my prayers for you and yours. You are never far from my heart's prayers. Lovingly, Sr Jean

My oblate director has been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and has some other very mysterious symptoms. And she's older--probably nearing 70. The possibility that by the time I make it up to the monastery again, she may not be the oblate director, for one reason or another, is pretty, well, possible. And thinking that made me suddenly realize how glad I am to be an oblate at Clyde compared to my first attempt at a men's monastery in Illinois.

It was all fine and good. There was nothing really wrong with it--online, it certainly seemed worth a try (compared to the local Benedictine presence, which did not seem worth a try, frankly). I talked back and forth via email with Fr. Paul and made a trip up there one Sunday in November, which was, frankly, one of the worst car trips I've ever taken.  But that wasn't the monastery's fault.

What struck me most, though, was the groupie atmosphere. There are several authors at that monastery, men who have published books on various topics.  The other oblates were so excited when they found out there would be speaking engagements with these authors in the coming year.  And that's great, but you know what, I didn't come to be part of a fan club.

So I went home unsure. And later found my way to Clyde, which was more what I was looking for. I didn't need celebrities. I needed a grounding place. The oblates I met the first weekend, and then on subsequent retreats, had been through a couple of directors over time. They loved Jean, and they loved the women who preceded her. But they weren't starstruck. They could probably have a different director every year and it wouldn't have changed how they felt about the place and the charism there. It was like the difference between following a preacher to the new Church of What's Happening Now compared to sinking into a parish and seeing several pastors come and go.

I pray for Jean, for her health and comfort. But I know I won't be left twisting in the wind when she leaves or dies.

157/365 Nightmares, Dream, Milieu

Six years ago this week, my sister's friend, Jesse, was found dead between two houses just a few blocks from where she (my sister Bevin) was living. His throat was cut so deep it nicked his spine. Bevin and her roommate identified the body from a photograph. There are moments in a life that can be pointed to and said, definitively, this was the moment when nothing was ever the same. I have a few of those moments, although most change is gradual. But for Bevin and her friends, for a long long time, this was their moment.

"Yeah, the whole neighborhood's covered in luminal. It's like we're living in a Law and Order episode. And that's all we can manage to watch on TV. We have to show an ID to go down our street after class, to get home. Cops drive by all night long."

Bevin tells me they're all having nightmares. Jen: "It's like, I couldn't breathe, like someone was sitting on my chest." Jesse shows up in some of them. They've all grown completely terrified of the basement--it's an old house that's been added onto several times, and one basement room has a pile of dirt 4 feet tall. Bevin won't even show me when I come up a year later for the trial.

"He was standing in that doorway. And he told me it was going to be ok. He walked away. That was the last one I had."

I think back to that time and I think about dreams and nightmares. I think about our brains and why they work the way they do. Why do people dream about people who have died? Are we working out emotions and things left undone? Is it reassurance, like Bevin's last dream? Wish fulfillment? What do dreams want from us, anyway? Sometimes the world seems so clear, so obvious, and then something like this happens and your head gets mixed up in circumstances and primal emotions.

The Magi experienced a dream, the moment when they were grafted onto the People of God. It was a warning not to return to Herod. So they went home to their own country by another route. And I've had dreams that seem so clear, so very real. Some even on the edge of terrifyingly true to life. So when Jesse is in Bevin's head telling her it's going to be all right, is that just Bevin hoping it's true, or is there some sort of knowledge she's tapping into? Because even though it will never be all right, for two families and for dozens of friends and their families and ripples through the pond all the way up to me writing this blog entry, many things they worried about after his death were resolved: his killer was found and convicted, and even though he had to be retried, he was convicted a second time. Things were resolved, even if they were not made whole again.

I think about recurring dreams I have had about a church called St. Rose of Lima on a street in south St. Louis that does not exist but I swear I could drive you there if only this or that road didn't end or twisted differently. I can describe the interior and I know how it feels to stand inside and run my hand down the back of the pews. There were several months back before I had kids that St. Rose's showed up on a regular basis. Most of the time I had to find something inside or meet someone there. Sometimes I just walked along the dead-end street looking at the cars parked along the side. I have some ideas what this meant, but it freaks me out, more than a little, that it was always the same church, the same setting, and it's a place that doesn't exist. I worry that it does and one day I'll walk in and know it.

And I think about the typewriter dream, back before I got married. I was looking to get a copy of my grandparents' wedding album because I was getting married at the same church. But my (now ex-) aunt was a major roadblock. She claimed she didn't know where it was. "Maybe it's in the garage?" she suggested. I was so angry and frustrated. And then I had the dream: I walked into my grandmother's bedroom, and there was a typewriter on the bed. And it typed out a message all by itself: check under the stairs in the basement. And I went to the house (my aunt and uncle were living there after my grandparents died) and asked if maybe I could just check the basement? My uncle let me in, and there it was, in a black trash bag under the stairs.

Maybe it was just putting the pieces together, thinking about where things might be, where things could be stashed. Maybe it was freaky luck. Or maybe something rearranged in my head and the stress and frustration did, what exactly?

And I have a choice about how to think about these experiences: I can be terrified, I can be overly rational, or I can just live. For the most part, I've chosen the last one.

158/365 Sacred Heart

The depiction of the Sacred Heart of Jesus has never been one of my favorites, I will admit. It has always seemed a little over the top for me. But it brings to mind a quick story from my own life that has nothing to do with the parish but has to do with someone who means a great deal to me.

When my parents settled back in St. Louis for an extended engagement (that would be 3 1/2 years), we attended church at St. Bernadette's down at Jefferson Barracks. I went to school there for three years (I want to say "to no avail" for some reason) and my parents had a very nice, very drunk, group of friends. The parish priest was Fr. Jerry Keaty. He was a family friend, through my aunt Gracemarie, mostly.

A few years before our marriage, his heart gave out. Three days before I was supposed to do some pre-teaching at St. Margaret of Scotland's, where he was pastor, he was admitted to the hospital. This resulted in a heart transplant soon after and a long convalescence. He became a priest-in-residence out in west county and took it kind of easy. But he was never exactly ok after the transplant, and, for instance, after our wedding, he went home instead of going to the reception, where he would have been most welcome and would have known half the room anyway. He was just too tired.

He died 3 years later. Gracemarie told me that doctors had put him on the list for a another heart but he had declined to be on the list again and take a heart from someone else.

I wrote on the day of his funeral:

Fr. Keaty died on Monday. He married me and Mike, gave my first communion, and baptized my sister Colleen. He was loosely intertwined in my family's life since I was 7 years old. He was pastor, advisor, reference, and friend. I spent a couple of Thanksgivings with him, especially the one after his heart transplant in 1994. He was a good man, a good priest, a holy person.

Forty priests were at the funeral, some I knew. My grandmother was there, my Aunt Sarah, my aunt Gracemarie and her family. In a few minutes, I'm heading to lunch with my grandmother, and she'll probably tell me long boring stories about St. Louis in the old days and "this neighborhood really fell to shit in the seventies" and "can't believe you put up with traffic nowadays. When I was a girl..."

But something about this funeral, or funerals in general, makes me want to listen today. I want to sit and listen and sift through the stories for the forgotten lore of how to care for begonias or trim roses or know if your dirt is good dirt. Listen and glean information about family and acquaintances that my father would remember because he once went to History class or Navy League with them. I know my father won't remember them, and I won't care to hear their stories of divorces, birth traumas, diseases, and death, but I need to listen today.

It's hot in St. Louis. It's going to rain. Fr. Keaty has died, but I know that if there is any justice in this cosmos, he is well, wherever he is. I may have misheard, but I think the bishop said today was the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Sacred, sacred heart. Nice synchronicity there.

159/365 Vigils

When we lived in Columbia, Missouri, we attended Our Lady of Lourdes parish, attached to the consolidated school and staffed by Benedictines. I was in late grade school when we lived there, and we almost always went to the Saturday evening mass. It was the family-friendly mass, not too long, homilies not too bookish, easy to sing music and relaxed atmosphere. The early Sunday mass was the typical old lady mass, and then the three later masses were: "Couples and Families with Things To Do"; "Cecil B. DeMille Presents"; and "I woke up too late with a hangover." People moved from mass to mass and we sometimes went to "Things To Do". But each mass definitely had its theme.

At our parish, there are three masses. I would characterize them (I'm deeply biased) as "Deadly", "Old and Tired", and "Pull Out All The Stops." We go to the last one, have since the very beginning. I've gone to the early Sunday mass perhaps three times, always because we were on our way to my in-laws for the day and had to get on the road. And Saturday night vigil? Once.

They are not interchangeable at my parish. I wish they were--Fr. Bill made it very clear that if you wanted to be a real part of our community, you'd better come to the 10 a.m. mass. Fr. Miguel hasn't come out and said that, but it still is de facto in many ways. It is two, maybe even three separate parishes. And that is frustrating. I wish I could pack up my kids and go to the Saturday vigil sometime, especially during the winter when it's nearly dark by the time it starts anyway. Can't be outside playing...but you could sleep in if we go to church. I know, I sound like an expedient Catholic, and I'm not, really. I just wish the three Sunday gatherings were less rigid in their attendance and implied meaning.

Saturday evening would probably make a great family mass, from my experiences elsewhere. But to change folks' interpretation of what the vigil means at our parish would be nearly insurmountable. That's the way we've always done it is still the name of the game here in many ways. So I'll stay at the 10 with everyone I know who helped me stay Catholic when golly the Church wasn't helping.

160/365 Utah Vesti-friggin-bule

The law of unintended consequences is at play here.

One thing, a minor thing, but still a thing that I always liked at our parish is that we didn't have a cry room. We didn't have a glass-walled piped-in-sound enclosure for mothers and infants to sit and sort of be a part of things. And because we didn't have that, babies were a part of our community just like everyone else. Yes, an unruly toddler would be taken to the back, and a crying baby would be handled out in the vestibules. But there was no assumption that children would be neither seen nor heard.

As time went by, though, and more children did appear in our church, the Utah Vestibule was set aside as a place for a mother to sit with a tired crying baby. A place for toddlers to look around for a moment as a distraction. Still a part of the community, still seen and heard, but a nice place, cleaner than before, without dangerous mechanical objects or giant statues or dead plants in the way.

Then a member of parish council made the suggestion that the room be made into an even more child-friendly space, with gates at the two doorways and a rug covering the tile floor. I saw this and thought, that is really smart. That way, a wriggling toddler could be placed on the floor a minute to walk around but not be able to run up the aisles and disturb everyone else. I thought it was so nice that we had this spot, not a cry room but still a place to go. It seemed brilliant.

But like all technical and scientific advances, there were unintended consequences. Through the winter and spring, it became a place for the choir to dump their children--with spouses or babysitters, but there were too many older kids. Kids brought toys and threw them around or fought over them. Cabinets got opened and the contents dumped. Food came and got ground into the rug. Children hung on the gates and squealed.

I began to notice more and more mothers of small babies, the ones who used to go back to that room and nurse or rock, were standing in back instead. I wouldn't go in with Leo unless it were empty. Fathers took their young toddlers out onto the front porch, or downstairs to the basement.

I walked in today, and there were four kids already there, before mass began. One was the wife of the parish council member. The other was the choir babysitter with two children of one of the choir members and one from another (the "babysitter" is actually the wife of one of the singers--not like a teenaged girl or something). Two of the kids, though, were 5, and had taken the furniture apart to build a fort.

I'm a teacher and am not afraid to call out errant children, even in front of their caretakers. This does not make me popular, but it keeps me sane. I told them they weren't doing the right thing, and I rearranged things so that this wasn't her playroom. They had brought lots of toys, and the babysitter explained to me that she had brought even more to leave here in the room for future children. So the floor resembled a sloppy daycare room and Leo proceeded to fight over a puzzle piece with one of the other toddlers. But that didn't bother me as much as the 9 year old who just walked in and started playing alongside the other school aged children, or the two boys who just showed up, with no parents, and started climbing on the gate.

I shooed them away, but they came back after I'd had enough. The family whose baby was baptized today showed up in back with their older child, and a few other children from their entourage. Adults sat around and chatted. There was no connection at all to being at mass. A traditional cry room with piped in sound would have been better. The kids reached critical mass, and I walked out with Leo to pace in back instead.

Gone was the distraction and in its place was a noisy mess. My father commented to me on his way out after mass that he probably could find a cheap swingset to stick in there if we wanted to. He had been sitting about 6 pews from the front and could hear it all the way up there.

When you create an attractive nuisance, children are drawn to it. Children weren't drawn to the Utah Vestibule before--it was a place to sit quietly for a moment before moving on to some other distraction. Now Maeve asks me why she can't "go back and play in the playroom" since she has age-peers sitting back there doing that very thing.

Maybe the families of some of those toddlers wouldn't feel welcome if we didn't have a cry room. That's what Astrid suggested to me. But maybe if the whole community realized that children are part of the Kingdom of God, we wouldn't feel like we had to be necessarily separate from the childless adults in the congregation. And maybe there's a way to make a room like that work--maybe limit it to toddlers and babies and their parents only. Maybe take away the gates, or the rug, or both. Make it less like a family room in your basement and more like church.

I walked up to Fr. Miguel after mass and expressed my annoyance. He put it back on me (fairly): how do we make the change, how do we educate or dictate or whatever needs to be done to make the place welcoming to parents of somewhat unruly children without creating a loud and obnoxious nuisance that draws in older children and parentless children to come play?

I'm thinking about it. I think taking the gates away would be a good start--as nice as they were when Leo was by himself or with one other child back there, they make the room an easy place to dump your kid and stand around and chat. Simply taking the gates away would make it far less attractive, and maybe make parents realize they need to do more with their kids at church than just bring a bunch of toys and let them jump on the furniture.

It's like free parking. Everybody likes free parking. Can't get enough of that free parking, and so there's never enough. But if you charge people to park, then some people will walk or ride a bike. If we build a room designed like a nursery that takes away all adult responsibility, tired parents are going to drop that responsibility like a hot potato. But the room pre-gates was never treated like that. You could nurse a baby back then without being disturbed. A parent and toddler might wander back for a minute to sit and look at a book, but parents had to be engaged because they were, essentially, paying for parking--it wasn't a free ride. Parents of seriously unruly children would have to take them outside or hold them in back like I had to with Leo today. Parents won't see those gates and think "I'll just let my kids wander back there and play."

Because this was, yikes, totally over the top. And I know the child-free amongst the congregation heard all that noise and were not impressed. Critical mass, like I said. We need a better way.

161/365 Gate Keeper

I do want to say, just to say, that when it was first put together, I was all for the little toddler spot back in the Utah Vestibule. It's only in recent practice that it has really gone downhill.

But in other news, I got this mysterious email today. It was a reply to all, from one of the children's liturgy folks, to all the children's liturgy folks. It said she wouldn't be attending the meeting tomorrow.

Which puzzled me. Do I have a meeting to attend tomorrow? Hmm.

162/365 June Worship Commission

Alas, I will be missing it.

Shakespeare in the Park is a long standing tradition in the family, the extended family now. So I won't be sitting around Fr. Miguel's dining room table listening to things, oh, maybe like this one:

"Well, it's not like they asked us for our opinion. I'll just keep saying whatever I please. I changed the words a long time ago." (Lynn, regarding the language changes coming up in the next year in the mass)

Oh, the crazy. It hurts my head.

163/365 Worhip Meeting Cancelled

Sr. Hildegard, Bridgett, and Bev are unable to attend, and their presence is important to us.

From Fr. Miguel's email canceling the worship meeting. I was glad it was canceled. It's become kind of a train wreck for me. Lynn irritates me but I know she irritates many. And so it's kind of ok.

Or maybe it's only ok because it's been 2 months since I've been to one...

164/365 Eucharistic Adoration

[Benedict] would have been terribly uncomfortable with many of today's so-called Eucharistic devotions, with almost no relation to the specific and only purpose that the Lord gave to this sacrament. --Br. Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette, osb

I knew I wasn't alone.

Hazel, at a worship meeting sometime in the past year, lamented the fact that there are so few people who attend Eucharistic adoration and benediction after the Friday daily mass. When she talks about these things (as opposed to the monthly prayer reflection, her other big topic), she gets this smug tone in her voice. She even brings up that Gianna brings her girls--such well behaved children, she adds--almost every Friday.

I'm not bringing my kids. Not only are they in school, but it's just not my thing. And I'm an oblate with a group of sisters called Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. They used to have round-the-clock adoration in the chapel. When one of the new oblates, a convert with that crazy look in her eye, asked them why they didn't do adoration all the time like they used to, one of the older nuns kind of waved her hand. "Oh, we just don't think it's that essential any longer." This from a woman whose main job is to pray.

It's an odd thing. I wasn't even exposed to such a practice until I joined the first parish we belonged to when we got married. There, the pastor lamented how no one came to adoration.

Maybe we should stop lamenting and realize it's a queer devotion. Christ said take this and share it. Do this in memory of me. He didn't say "take this and put it high on a table and look at it from the pews." I don't mean to be flippant. I just wonder about how things have gotten to where they are.

165/365 New

Mike's grandmother died in February, 2004. Sometime later, once it was summer, we went over to her old house down in Cairo to look over things, see if there was anything Mike wanted. This is a hard place to find oneself as an in-law. I barely knew this woman and here I am being asked if I want this or that. I want nothing that will cause a rift between my nuclear family and any of yours. But since Mike refused to have an opinion from afar, we went over there one visit to Cairo and looked around.

How much everything had already changed. Most everything was gone, the house was closed in and hot. Mike sat down and went through dusty books. My mother-in-law offered us a quilt made of double-knit, total kitsch from my point of view 40 years after it was made. Trip Around the World. Of course I took it.

They were trying to get the house ready to sell. Eventually it would, only to have tragedy strike the family who bought it. It wound up on the auction block and sold again for a shockingly low sum. Another Cairo house to fall to pieces. Nobody in the family had enough money to keep it up simply as an ode to idyllic childhood. Already in 4 or 5 months it needed a great deal of upkeep, compounded by several decades of benevolent neglect.

Sophia was just turning 3. I was pregnant with Maeve, having a hard time breathing in the stuffy house, no windows open, no air conditioning on. I was ready to head back out and sit in the van, wait for them to come out with their books and odds and ends. Sophia holds my hand and asks,

"Why did Grandma Stout die?"

"Oh," I sigh, "because she got very sick. She was old, Sophia. And old people die."

Her little brain worked on that a minute and then she answers, "But we're still new, aren't we?"

"Yes, Sophia, we're still new."

166/365 No Man's Woman

I don't wanna be no man's woman
I've other work I want to get done
I haven't traveled this far to become
No man's woman

She told me, sort of off-hand:

It was my senior year of high school and Rosie and I went down to her family's place to look after it, make sure it was ready for summer. We were almost about to graduate. The house was fine, musty, but just how we remembered. We stopped by the chapel, the one we used to have in central Illinois, and after mass that Sunday, I told her, "I think, this is where I have to be."

"Good," she told me, "because I'm coming here in July. You can go with me."

I wrote to the sisters, here at Clyde, and I asked them to please write to me via Rosie's family. You see, my sister had left for the Dominicans already, and they'd sent her home that Christmas. She was too nervous, they said. And my father had just had a stroke a few months before that. Fell in a ditch on the way home from work and people walked right past him. By the time they got him to the hospital, it looked hopeless. So I was supposed to stay home after I graduated and take care of him. My life's work. My sister was going to get a second try somewhere else. But she was recuperating, my mother was barely holding all together, my father was an invalid, and I was sneaking around trying to figure out how to become a Benedictine.

Of course the sisters sent a letter home to my house, with their return address plain as day. I walked into the kitchen that evening and my mother was frying hamburgers on the stove. She waved that envelope at me and demanded to know what the hell I thought I was doing to my family.

I told her: "Did you ever have to do something, even if it was crazy, but out of love?"

She turned to me with the frying pan in her hand and gave me a look like I have never seen. I'm surprised she didn't hit me with it. I took my letter, which gave all the directions and information I needed. She and I didn't talk the rest of the month, and in July, Rosie's dad pulled his car up in our driveway and I walked out of the house with my suitcase. My mother was weeding in the front yard and didn't look up when we drove away.

"I'll go around the block," Rosie's dad said. "She'll be standing on the driveway when we come back around." But she wasn't. She'd gone inside.

I didn't go home for 5 years. They never answered letters. Then, finally, I went home to visit. My father had gotten out of his sickbed. He was back at work, halftime. When I left, friends came out of the woodwork to get him back on his feet. He lived another 20 years. But my mother died without ever forgiving me.

My sister, by the way, married a man who dropped out of the seminary and they have 7 kids. I spend a week with her every summer and come back here glad to be back.

Would I have done it this way again, knowing what I know? I don't know. It helps that Rosie's still here--she's Sr. Lioba now, of course--but it was a costly decision for me.

167/365 I know, it's all rehashed, but sometimes worth repeating because I write a lot of blogs and nobody reads all of them

I don't even remember why I was crying. It was high school. It wasn't a boy, I know that for sure. Maybe my parents. In sophomore hall, the math and science wing, hoping he'd be in his office. He was, the campus minister, one of the two teachers who always let me do what I wanted. One had ulterior motives, but Patrick never did. I think I must have walked out of Trig and found him there two doors down. I remember his rough thumbs on my cheeks, brushing tears away. No, Bridge, it's ok. He let me into his office. Collect yourself. Take as long as you need. I remember that. I remember the beige couches, the window out onto the courtyard. I sunk into that beige couch and closed my eyes.

He found me there after the next class. Sat down next to me, put his arm around me. Didn't say a word. It was the first time I realized that my very existence was a good thing for someone else. Someone who didn't want me for something, who didn't have a plan or a goal or a project. Didn't want to score with me on my parents' living room couch, didn't want me to pass the ball to score a goal, didn't want me to score a 1500 on the SAT. There was something intrinsic here that had nothing to do with my IQ or tits or my leg of the two mile relay. It was me and Patrick staring up at his portrayal of the resurrection on the wall. I don't remember why I was there, but I know what I left that office with.

168/365 Hallelujah

Baby I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
love is not a victory march
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Why did he live alone before he knew you?

Well, it's just really something in the song. I guess he's just saying he knows what it's like to be alone.

But alleluia is a song of praise. Why come it's a broken alleluia?

It's hard to explain, honey. It's just, really, I guess it's just hard to sing praise sometimes.

But why? Why would it be cold?

Sophia, it's really just a grown up song. It's hard to explain.

Then why is it on a kids movie?

Now, that is a question I have too. I don't really know, though.

I just don't think an alleluia can ever be broken.

You're right.

169/365 Stewardship

"Remember, I have a meeting tonight," Mike says into the phone.

"What meeting?" I ask, clueless.

"Stewardship."

"I thought that was on Thursdays," I protest.

"This month it's today."

"Dang it."

170/365 Stewardship Report Leads Me To Thinking

"So we're up to over 500 families," Mike mentions after the meeting.

"That's great."

"And this weekend, we realized, is Pride Fest. And then there was this debate about bottled water," he sighs. "And I suggested big coolers of ice water with dixie cups, but this was mostly ignored."

I reflect on past Pride Fest weekends. The parade starts right there, practically on the steps of church. It tends to be a circus. A hot crowded circus. But this is what I love about our neighborhood: it is a hot crowded circus.

And I think about our church's (big C, actually, not our parish) attitude about homosexuality. And it makes me glad that we live here, that the parade starts right there, and that we were having a debate about ice water. Instead of posting threatening messages on our marquee like the Lutherans down the way ("Jesus died for the sin of pride") or being absolutely crazy and bringing in, say, a loud speaker and a big wooden cross to drag around and antagonize people with.

There are things to get all riled up about, and there are things not to.

171/365 Getting What You Want

Oh, won't you stay
We'll put on the day
And we'll talk in present tenses

We wanted a house, or some sort of home, where our friends and family could feel welcome any time. We wanted hospitality, a place of refuge when needed, of happiness, shared sorrow, nothing flashy, nothing that would make anyone envious of us. We didn't talk specifics at that point fourteen years ago, just this vague notion that we wanted to be a stop on other people's journeys.

It was all in future tense--we were living in a crappy apartment on south Grand, I didn't have a job yet, we were both looking down a very narrow telescope that wasn't yet focused. There was a lot of real life stuff we had to get done before we could seriously consider this.

I would like to think I am talking in present tenses now.

172/365 Hospitality Quote

Merely being nice to people does not fulfill the deep requirements of Benedictine hospitality. We must let the person stir us; we must connect. Benedictine hospitality will extract a cost from us, and it will tumble us into the magical realm of personal transformation. -- Daniel Homan osb

I was at my aunt's house and she said, "I don't eat organic food because it is more contaminated than conventional food."

And I took that amazing contradiction into my head and rolled it around a bit. How could that be? How could she hold that so confidently? And for a moment I tried to make it make sense. In the end, talking to my sister about it, we just laughed. But she said the same thing I was thinking, although on the offense instead of the defense: when people say things like that I think, "really?"

There are few sweeping statements that do not make me ponder, even if just for a moment. Weigh it in my head or my heart, depending on the issue at hand. Many of them I wind up discarding, like this bizarre quote of my aunt's. When Gianna looked at me, all submissive and peculiar, until we stood in the vestibule and she whispered, "I don't speak in the nave of church." It made me think for a moment: should I be practicing that? Why would she do that? And it troubled me a moment or two. I rejected it as strangely superstitious, but I didn't reject it at first hearing.

I think that is the heart of the change in me as I try to become more hospitable. No, I don't change with the prevailing winds. I don't leave my door unlocked and let strangers walk through my house. But when someone does come in, when the wind does blow, I consider it. If a statement is more conservative than my current view, have I gone too far in the other direction? If it is more radical, have I not stretched enough in my view or belief? In the end I don't change that much, I think, but I weigh things now.

I don't simply say "that's the way I believe and if you don't like it, you can stuff it." It's easier to do that. But I try my best to really let things into my heart, at least for a moment of consideration.

Hospitality has a lot to do with sharing space and welcoming the stranger and being mindful of the other, but I think this is the part that hit me hardest. So many strident beliefs I held in early adulthood have fallen away. My edges are rounding.

It's a good thing.

173/365 It will be one of those parish legends

Astrid sits with me at coffee. "The funeral on Wednesday was sad," she says.

"He was, what, 94?" I point out. Sometimes I wonder if I have asperger's syndrome or something like that--not really, but my attitudes about death are obviously out of step on occasion.

"Yeah, but it was sad. They really loved him. His whole family. It was good, but sad. Oh, and Fr. Miguel told a story about visiting him at the nursing home--he wasn't even there very long, I mean, he died pretty quick once he got there."

"I noticed that they were publishing his address in the bulletin and then suddenly he was dead."

"This story, though," she continues. "Miguel was sitting there with him and Joe claps his hands together and says, 'Where are we going now?' Well, Miguel told him he was headed back to the rectory, he had things to do, and then Joe said, 'I'm going to heaven!' And he did."

It catches me off guard, especially after hearing about my Aunt Sarah's last days, the anxiety and fear from a woman who shouldn't have had any worries about her standing with God.

Later when I repeat it to Mike, he says, "Oh, Miguel told that to us at the Stewardship meeting."

It's going to be one of those stories that pass down. I hope, at least. Continuity is important for that sort of thing. But maybe.

174/365 My Sunday

I take Leo to the back during the second reading. It's over for him already. I get one of the hearing-assistance devices and sit in the Utah Vestibule, wrestling with the 18 month old. I listen to the readings, hiding the little receiver from Leo because he wants to play with it, too. I listen to the Gospel--always a strange one, with the phrase, "let the dead bury the dead." I've been jarred by this before. I've tried to make sense out of, on one hand, giving everything up to follow Christ, but on the other, the idea of obligations, of the corporal works of mercy, of being a Christian.

Then Miguel starts his homily. It's about the Danish resistance during World War II, led by King Christian X. The Jews of Denmark were not rounded up and taken away to concentration camps. Neighbors helped neighbors get them out to safety in (was it Sweden? I can't remember now). There were other simple examples of resistance--they kept the Danish flag raised through the whole occupation, there were no yellow stars on the sleeves of Jews, there was no ghetto. The way Miguel told it, it wasn't an armed resistance, just a peaceful "no" and the follow through that mattered.

Jews were not well-liked folks even in the best of nations back then. Jews were scapegoats and outsiders. In Denmark most likely they were well assimilated and part of society, but they were still the 'other.' Nowadays, we look back at the German Final Solution and I, at least, find the whole notion ridiculous. Horrendous and terrifying, but ridiculous from the standpoint of today. Israeli politics aside, I don't think Jews are a big topic anymore. I don't blame the Jews for anything, really. And even at their most fearful and racist, I've never heard my dad's relatives have anything to say about the Jews. They're kind of a non-issue, really, at least in western society (I'm not talking about Iran, I'm talking about countries where Jews actually live). And I know that isn't entirely true, I took the class on The History of Antisemitism in college. But they don't seem to be the Big Hated Minority any more than any other minority anywhere.

And I considered this as I stepped outside with Leo, after the homily and he was completely wild. The gay pride parade was gearing up--floats were assembling, tan men in leather skirts were standing on the sidewalk in front of our church drinking gatorade and talking to tattooed women with tiny dogs dressed as astronauts. You know: weird with a capital W.

And I thought again about the story of Denmark and the Jews.

175/365 Astrid's House

I spent the morning at Astrid's house. She lives a few blocks north of me and her house is open. It is pristinely clean and she always has coffee brewing.

This is what I want as time goes by. I have it in some realms, but as things evolve with neighbors and in-laws and friends, I want this more and more. I want a comfortable place to waste time with folks and talk about important and unimportant things. I have it there, and I can see in my mind eventually having it in my own house, too. It isn't my time right now, as Astrid always says about this or that, with a new toddler and sloppy school aged children, but it's coming.

It's interesting to me how notions in one's head become reality. Sometimes not the way we plan, but if something gets mulled over long enough, it starts to emerge.

It makes me careful what I spend time thinking about.

176/365 Another reason why I stay

We sat there on the steps of the sanctuary after cleaning or polishing or something we were doing inside the church.

Sr. Hildegard turned to me with a sigh. She was trying to convince me to become more active in RCIA, which is something I have a block about although recently I've been trying to work through that. Back then I was very hesitant. At some point in the conversation, though, she said something that struck me, and has stayed in my head since, which I paraphrase here because I can't remember the exact quote:

Joining a religion is not about a new list of rules to follow. It's about falling in love with God.

And this cacophony of other voices in the back of my head, whether the Jesuits or lousy public school religion class teachers or that woman who led our Engaged Encounter and totally overshared about her miserable marriage....were silent.

177/365 Upcoming in RCIA

RCIA is the process by which adults become Catholic. If they are baptized and coming from another trinitarian Christian tradition (as opposed to UU, who are not TRinitarian, or the Quakers, who do not baptize, or from places more suspect like the Mormon church or the Jehovah's Witnesses...), then they go through however much catechism they seem to need and are confirmed. This amount varies from a few months to a few years. A fully catechised Lutheran who reads up on his own and has been attending mass with his wife for 6 years is probably, but not necessarily, in a different category from someone who kind of remembers going to church with his mom but he's not sure what church that was. And folks who are not baptized are introduced to the Church in a similar way, although tailored to match their needs and starting points, which sometimes can lead to a longer journey.

Note all the qualifiers in the above paragraph. Our parish does a sort of continuum of RCIA. We don't do a school year style crash catechism course (anymore). Things don't start up in October and wham! end at Easter Vigil. Oftentimes things do end at Easter Vigil, especially baptisms, but they might start the summer before, or the winter before. It's more of a living, organic process than a structured curriculum.

There is a curriculum, based on the weekly Gospel readings and drawing from the Catechism. Topics are wide and varied even on a given week. For instance, I am responsible this coming fall for October 10. I believe, based on a quick internet search (I will double check this obviously before I prepare), that the Gospel is the healing of the 10 lepers, with only one returning praising God to thank Jesus, and of course this one is a Samaritan to boot. So I can touch on a variety of topics: conversion, journey of faith, blessing of the sick, etc.

Sometimes the discussion is dry, and other times lively. I have a great suspicion that I'm not very good at the catechism part, but pretty good at the connecting part. The story telling and, as Sr. Hildegard put it, the falling in love with God part. The problem I have is that I have a hard time summoning the energy to talk about what the Church teaches about this or that topic. So I looked over the topics for this summer and autumn and avoided things like Eucharist and Social Justice (I have thoughts, beliefs, and opinions about these but I don't want to misrepresent, you know?). But I can do conversion, and I can probably even do the blessing of the sick (which is a sacrament).

I think what I find hardest about RCIA is it challenges my own Catholicism. Converts tend to be earnest and many of them see the world as very black and white (in my experience). And they are searching on a very basic level for a spiritual home, one that I'm only partially comfortable about living in, and really only because I've found a back porch where I can smoke and drink and be myself (so to speak). They are standing in the vestibule looking in. I need to show them the kitchen and the dining room and maybe the library or den. They don't need to see the mud room, do they? The basement? And I'm always hesitant about that back porch. Not everyone would be cozy here.

This year might be interesting. It could be just one person (that's all we have signed up at the moment), or maybe as many as 4...and things are always changing. Because we have the reputation of an immigrant parish, there are folks on the list who do not speak English as a first language. People I can't assume I have any shared background with, anything on a most basic level in common with. That's scary, too. And then I'm supposed to sit with them with the Gospel and a cozy meeting room and talk about God.

That's no easy task.

Ruminating.

178/365 This is How You Can Help

The other day someone asked me, and I won't go into too many details, but she asked me, "What can I do to help?"

People ask this all the danged time. Someone dies: what can I do? Someone is sick, someone has had a baby, someone is struggling financially or with depression or anxiety. And sometimes the person at the heart of the matter (the new mother, the grieving widow, etc) is asked the question.

They never know how to answer. They are knee deep in the mire.

Other times, someone nearby is asked the question. The sister of the new widow, the cousin who pitches in to help with the woman with breast cancer. And so forth. This was more the position I was in. And oftentimes these people, because they are doing it all, or because they have gotten used to not having help, or because they don't even realize that things are truly getting out of control, say "Oh I don't know...." and let the conversation drift to other topics.

But this time I turned to the person and said exactly what I wanted her to do. I gave a specific suggestion that was well within her ability and frankly, one of her strengths. And I know she will do it.

It's a kind of reverse hospitality, frankly (I've been thinking about this concept a lot lately). Letting someone help you, or someone close to you, is a kind of gift. Not like the mom I was carpooling with several years ago who always failed to hold up her end of the bargain and then would ask me, "what can I do to make up for it? Can I get you a gift certificate to somewhere? Or maybe I can pick up on alternate Thursdays during a full moon?" which actually made my life harder than if I just picked up her kid every Monday morning and forgot about tit-for-tat.

What I mean is really letting go of a small thing (or large thing) that you know the other person can help you with. I think it takes a deep understanding of the other person and of your own needs--I'm not patting myself on the back here, trust me, it was one of those moments where I stood outside myself and tapped myself on the shoulder and said, umm, you need to take her up on this. But saying "yes, there is something," increases the connection between people and within families or communities. We shouldn't try to do it all.

179/365 In this house of God

Any table of virgin fir, any maple chair, any oak floor is a bundle of stories. At a lull in the conversation, move your napkin aside. There are centuries under one hand's span, and the timbre of a long, spirited life for the rap of a knuckle. --Kim R. Stafford

Living in one house for a long time brings this passage to life for me as I read it this morning. And then upon further reflection, I thought about our parish church, which, as a building, is nearing a century. And I thought about the feet that have walked on the floor of our church. How many babies' steps are being retraced by Leo's fast little feet as I try to keep him tamed down in the back during mass? How many brides, how many people looking for something--physical or spiritual--that they hoped to find inside our doors? How many whispered conversations in the vestibules about unimportant and serious topics?

I think about one I had in the front vestibule back when I was teaching at the school. Music practice for mass the next day. Something about music practice is so punishing. Making kids sing twice what they don't want to sing once. It just isn't the way to instill a love of Catholicism, in my mind. Especially when half the school isn't Catholic. I never understood why school masses had to be Cecil B. DeMille productions anyway. Why couldn't they be like my high school daily chapel mass? Short, painless, a small thoughtful homily tailored to the audience, and back to school. If I ran the zoo, right?

JD was over the chicken pox, I remember, it was March and Lent and minor chords and all that. And he was sitting there in the 6th grade section, under my annoyed but watchful eye, and pretending he wasn't crying. Sixth grade boys crying is different from first grade boys crying--part of the reason why I liked middle school was I wasn't going to hurt anyone's feelings anymore. Will scooted over to me and pointed this out--his family had kind of taken JD under their wing--and I escorted JD out to that vestibule.

He tells me that he's scared to go home because, now that the chicken pox is over, mom's taking them back home to her husband. He tells me that he's scared, that he doesn't want to go. We've heard this before about his home life; we've started a file. The bureaucracy of child abuse intervention is literally adding insult to injury.

"Do you want to talk with Vera on Monday?" I ask him, thinking of the much better equipped school counselor. But it's Friday, she's left for the day, and he's going home for a long weekend. He tells me that last summer, Barry decided he'd had enough back-talk from him and he took him out to a construction site and beat him until he couldn't get up. "And he had this pipe," he starts, but stops. It takes me a moment to realize he isn't talking about some sort of professorial accessory, but about cold copper plumbing.

"And when I told mom," he says through angry tears, "she told me we were lucky Barry stuck around, that we needed a man."

I stand there, the two of us backed up against the Sacred Heart statue, and I recklessly make promises to him--I often speak before I make my plan, and this was one of the most potentially tragic promises I have ever made--"Nobody needs a man like that," I say, the frustration and anger just about to spill over into my own words. "We'll take care of it, me and Vera."

We did--that's another story for another day. But sometimes when I stand in the Utah Vestibule, where the Sacred Heart statue used to be stored before it was returned to a place where folks, well, could see it, I think about JD. I wonder where he is now. I wonder, self-centeredly, if he ever thinks about me. I wonder what I'd say to him if I ran into him now. It's a nice thought that stability means I'm right here, hidden in plain sight. If he wants to find me, he will.

For now I pace the floor in the back of church and look up at the angel faces looking down upon us. And think of what they've seen.

180/365 Oh, that's why

When we rearranged classrooms in the school, putting the 3rd and 4th grades upstairs together and the whole middle school on the middle floor--not the greatest solution, but the best for the space we had at the time--I snatched up the old 3rd grade room for my own as quickly as I could. I was tired of the morning sun. More than that, I was tired of coming home coated in chalk dust. The new room had new boards, while mine had plywood painted with chalkboard spray paint.

I moved in during the summer, stealing good desks from classrooms where teachers had quit. I wanted all flat-top desks and good chalkboards and that was all, really. I needed no technology, no newfangled teacher's desk or chair. I always kept my desk out of the way and sat there only during quiet work time after a lesson anyway. I thought teachers who put their desks in front of the chalkboard were psychologically controlling access to information. My desk was static in a corner and children's desks moved around depending on the subject and my whimsy.

The teacher before me had put her desk in front of the north-side chalkboard. But I liked to be able to see out a window when I could. Later in the year this became valuable, to see who was walking where and what cars had pulled up in the parking lot. But that summer, I just put my desk in the southeast corner, facing west, and went home.

I always started my days early in August and September. By late April I would breeze in with the kids and fly by the seat of my pants, but I was a planner in the beginnings of years. And so I was there one morning, ready for the day at about 7. I sat at my desk and looked around the room, happy with my arrangement and my position at the school. I looked out the window and noticed something.

My view looked right into the rectory. Yeah, it was slightly frosted glass, but it was slightly frosted glass in front of a shower. And there was Fr. Bill. Getting ready for his day.

Perhaps that's why the former occupant of that room had put her desk on the north wall. I debated moving things around, but changed my mind. The shades pulled down just fine.

181/365 Drug Dealer Season

The summer when I moved into the old 3rd grade classroom, I busied myself with the library as well. I'd toyed around with it a bit during my free time the first year, usually with JD in tow that second semester. We sorted through books and cleaned stuff up and I got way too involved with that kid. He was usually skipping English, or was getting kicked out of PE. He cemented my preference for bad boys and good girls when it comes to what students I connect to best. I don't handle fast-moving girls very well, girls who know too much by the time they are 13 and often become Mean Girls in the process. And good boys, ugh, were usually such suck ups that I had flashbacks to my honor classes in high school. No. Thank. You.

But anyway, that summer, JD was gone for good and my friend Jenna and I sorted through the library and even found a book on the Dewey Decimal system, which of course was right up my alley. Sorting is one of my favorite hobbies, after all. We sat in the room, evenings when it was still light, box fan going, and became friends, really, finally. That's the summer she broke up with Graham and the summer when I learned how to be friends with other girls who aren't good at being friends with other girls.

We'd stay in the evenings until it started feeling too dicey to stay. This time of year was drug dealer season and we could set our stopwatches by the routine: honking at the end of the block, slow driving down the block, more honking outside the house, a car door, footsteps, a car door, speed away. Right outside our window. We weren't likely targets of violence (that would interfere with business, after all) but we could become collateral damage and preferred not to.

That was ten summers ago. The school is closed, the pastor is different, the street is evolving but not completely healed. The Drug House, 3535, is closed down, boarded up and empty. But I know it's not the only location. Water finds its level and drug dealers find their customers. But we're still standing there, we still process on Corpus Christi and Palm Sunday and Easter Vigil, right past the rough patch. We'll outlast them.

182/365 The Stars Declare God's Glory

I just stare on past his face at Venus rising,
Like a shining speck of hope hanging over the horizon

For the first time since moving to the city in 1992, I see Venus. Venus is bright in the sky these evenings, and maybe I'm just not as exhausted at 9 p.m. as I've probably been for the past 5 years or so. I obviously have seen Venus in the past. But for the first time, I know I'm seeing Venus.

I have taken Mike's phone, with the application for tracking the night sky, and have found Mercury, Mars, and Saturn as well, although Mercury is hard to see here in the city. The other two, with Venus, I can pick out without any trouble these days.

I stand on my porch, coming in from a meeting or an errand, and glance into the western sky. Venus follows the sun. There it is, blue-green even through our light-polluted sky, setting slowing, following the sun. There it has been and there it will be long after I've stopped noticing it. In the moment as I look up and say to myself, "Venus," I have this inner silence, almost something nearing joy. I want to wave at Venus. I want to friend it on Facebook. I want Venus to know I'm seeing it and that I like seeing it and I want to see it again tomorrow night. I take breaths deeper than I'm able and I think about the vastness of space and how very cozy and small life is.

I think back to Mrs. Chott, my second grade teacher who introduced me to Edna St. Vincent Millay. I think about Afternoon on the Hill, the last stanza:

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

I know now as an adult that Millay is looking at porch lights and kitchen lights and spying the warmth of home and heading there. But in second grade, I thought the lights showing up from town must be the stars. And the nice thing about seeing Venus from my front porch is that it can be mine. I mark it as so and therefore it is.

Every evening this summer has been a kind of happy prayer.

The stars declare God's glory;
the vault of heaven springs,
mute witness of the Master's hand
in all created things,
and through the silences of space
their soundless music sings.

184/365 I'm ruined for life

It was late September and open house night. "Don't plan on seeing too many parents," Terri said cynically. I had seen it all by that point: my first year in North City, three parents came. Out in the county in the ritzy private school, all the parents came. And at the other south side Catholic school I worked at, almost all the parents came and laid too much baggage on my desk for me to handle in one night. So whatever happened, happened. I shrugged off her comment and came prepared for anything.

A few parents came in and met me. Their daughters (good girls) liked me. Super. And then there was a lull in the evening and I wondered how long I really had to stay.

An older Vietnamese man knocked on my door. I recognized Quan and his sister Phuong, both math students of mine. I got up from the student desk I was sitting in to watch the door and walked towards them. Quan hung back, Phuong stood between me and her father. She said something in Vietnamese and then gestured with an open hand towards me, saying my name.

He bowed. To me.

I had wonderful things to say about Quan and Phuong, of course, they were great students. At the end of the conference, completely translated by Phuong, I can only assume correctly, he bowed again.

"Thank you," he said.

I don't think I'll manage to teach in another school after that. The respect for teacher was so completely a part of the culture of our school, being about half Vietnamese, that there was never any question about behavior problems or who was correct. Even American families fell in line (for the most part). If I said something was so, I knew it would be dealt with. I knew I would be believed until proven wrong, instead of assumed to be a low-wage trade worker with an MRS degree.

It just doesn't exist anywhere else that I've found.

185/365 Ten Years Ago

And the moral of this story
Is I guess it's easier said than done
To look at what you've been through
And to see what you've become

Ten years ago this week, give or take a few days, I miscarried my first pregnancy. I was due February 11, a date which lives in infamy in my family: Mike's grandmother and my grandfather both died on February 11, 2004. But that was later.

I never grieved for anything or anyone like I did for that pregnancy. I remember the blood tests and the "we'll see" looks from the doctor, and then the rambling apologetic message when I got home--she'd done the test already and it was bad news.

I called the woman who would eventually be Maeve's godmother, Liz, to cancel tutoring that afternoon. Funny how I took care of small bits of business first. Liz, of course, was devastated to hear my news and she came over later in the summer and sat at my kitchen counter when other people were done talking to me.

I called my aunt Gracemarie, who had miscarried several times herself. And standing far removed from my present in her own future, she took the long view. It didn't help me at the moment but it helped later.

And then I lay on my bed and cried. I have never been more angry with God. I had often bargained and cajoled and pretended, but never been so angry. As I spent the entire month of July miscarrying, I went through several classic stages of grief, but that anger didn't subside. It didn't subside when I didn't get pregnant in September. It didn't subside when it seemed that everyone around me was having babies. It didn't subside. I went on the women's retreat that fall and flaky Missy reclined on a couch telling me how wonderful it was to be pregnant, to really know she was part of God's plan of creation, and I wanted to stab her. I remember later when she wound up with an awful case of post-partum depression, and by that time I was healthy and pregnant with Sophia, I thought, good, it wasn't all you wanted after all. I was so angry and bitter and sad.

In the end, the miscarriage was pretty routine from a medical standpoint--I wound up with anemia and the doctor had to do a procedure and an ultrasound at one point, but I didn't have a D&C because I wanted to get pregnant as soon as I could (D&Cs take longer to recover from). And I had confirmation of a heartbeat two weeks before Christmas. All was well.

Except not all was well. It took me a long time to let go of that anger. It took a long time to let go of grudges I had against people who said this or that to me--I won't repeat some of the stupid things people said. And I never connected to Sophia's pregnancy. It was like I was waiting for it to go wrong. And this disconnection is part of, although a small part of, why her birth was so awful. And her awful birth is a large part of why I'm the parent I am today. I can look back and reflect on how I came to be who I am and where I am, and there is the root. I miscarried in July 2000 and everything else sort of tumbled out of that spilled cup.

I like who I am, I like my kids, I like my life. It's no longer on the front porch of my life--it only struck me that it was 10 years ago when I read something on another mom's blog about miscarriage. But even though it's not in my daily thoughts, it has colored things along the way. I think this loss softened some edges that never would have been ground down by anything else. I try to tread gently with other women, other mothers. I think before I glow about motherhood or bitch about motherhood. And I don't take these things for granted.

186/365 St. Marge

It's the neighbor to the north. The prettier older sister. We were there for the rehearsal and everything about it grated on my nerves. Maybe it was just the underdog in me coming out and creating a chip on my shoulder. But it just isn't all that.

It's both plainer and fussier than our church. The pews, I can't tell if they are original, but they are a blond wood and have a modern feel. It's a boxy room, very wide and short. On the other hand, it has a ton of marble, some of which I coveted and some just seemed over the top.

The stained glass got me. Tiny dots of color with these skimpy depictions of the ministry of Christ. You couldn't tell what they were from a distance. By comparison, ours are striking and obvious, but with hidden depths. I had to put the camera on zoom to photograph these and decipher back at home.

And it was a tad grungy--not dirty, I mean, the place was clean--but it had that old stale Catholic church from TV shows thing going on. The candle stands caked in decades of soot, with mix and match colored glass candle holders, half of them empty, in front of the St. Anthony and St. Ann statues. A back vestibule where a pieta and several other statues were stored (sounds vaguely familiar...), with a pew blocking your entry and another grungy candle stand facing them, like they were in some kind of devotional museum. A faded, yellowed Latin pronouncement in a cheap frame hung on a back pillar. Those sorts of things.

At one point I made myself sit and find things I liked. I liked the multicolored marble statues--the kind with Jesus' cloak in a different kind of marble kind of thing. The stained glass, as abstract art, had powerful reds and blues. The altar, still with its original marble, was definitely enviable. And the staircase to the basement was narrow, but made of lovely wood.

Our neighbor has always seen itself as better--not architecturally, but as a parish. It's in a self-important neighborhood. It "still has a school" which is an infuriating statement because we still have a school, too. Yes, we share it with several other parishes, but we are the majority at the school and it is integral to our parish. Some folks actually argue, "but ours is attached to our parish" which isn't even true because it is several blocks away on its own campus. This school is another that is bleeding middle school families as they bail on the traditional, stale curriculum for better pastures. But nobody is talking about that. No. It's living on a reputation that is no longer deserved.

Not that I'm bitter.

187/365 That reading from Corinthians

You know the one. The one at all the weddings (but not mine--we had a reading from the letter of James). The one with the list of what love is. Love is patient, kind, enduring, and so forth. The greatest of these is love.

I used to hear it and think how sweet it was. How it belonged on a 1970s era poster with children with big eyes and round bellies holding daisies in front of them, surrounded by puffy little kittens.

I didn't get it.

It wasn't until after I was teaching that I read about this passage, and then learned about it in an overview class I took in order to teach religion in the Catholic schools--you'd think a minor plus some in theology would have been enough, but I needed to take two more classes to be legit. One of them was about the grueling topic of presenting human sexuality to middle schoolers. In the end that turned out to be a pretty amusing thing to teach, but learning about it was akin to kneeling on gravel.

The other class went through the virtues and the sins against said virtues. Faith, hope, love, temperance, etc. And he brought up this reading in regards to the virtues. The greatest of these is love, he said, because it is the one that does not fail, does not pass away. The whole point about seeing indistinctly, but there we will see face to face? That has to do with faith. Once we are one with God, faith passes away. We don't need it anymore. It has been fulfilled. And hope, not the mundane idea of hope, like "I hope Maeve has a good time today," but the hope of eternal life, the hope of one day being with God forever, well, it is fulfilled too. It passes away.

Love remains. And therefore, of these three virtues, it is the greatest.

Once it was explained to me that way, once the words had real meaning, it made so much more sense and got to me for the first time. Now, anytime I hear it read at weddings I just find myself taking a deep breath and really letting the words sink in.

And I don't care if it's a wedding reading. That second part? I want that at my funeral.

187/365 The Unfinished Samaritan

Today's gospel was the Good Samaritan. As Fr. Miguel put it, it is pervasive in the linguistic environment. Everyone knows this parable: a man falls among thieves...lies dying by the side of the road. The Levite walks by. The priest walks by. The Samaritan doesn't walk by.

But instead of the usual homily, perhaps all the homilies I've heard on this, actually, discussing Samaria and the unclean nature of blood and the idea of neighbor, Miguel pointed out something I never noticed. The story is left with "tune in next week" and there's never a next week. It's like the last episode of Soap. Is Jessica killed by the firing squad? We don't know. We never learned the ending.

Ok, maybe not quite like the last episode of Soap. But Jesus leaves us hanging. The Samaritan, who has to go about the rest of his life, whatever he was setting out to do, leaves the man with the innkeeper, providing for his care until he returns. He promises reimbursement if expenses get out of hand. And then he leaves.

One thing before I go on--he leaves. The Samaritan doesn't derail his whole life, his family's life, his household's care, in order to be the martyr here. He doesn't take this man's life over and make his daughter marry him and be In Charge. He gets him past the brink of dying, knows he has other things he still has to do, and promises to return. I think this is a good lesson for all of caretaker types. Do what needs to be done but don't put yourself in the position of primary caregiver and neglect your own needs or those people who depend on you already. Especially don't do that if there is someone else to share the burden (even for pay like the innkeeper).

Miguel didn't dwell on that, though. He brought this around to the idea that life is a journey and there are many things and people we encounter. And we don't know the ending. We can't. We don't know if the Samaritan comes back. We don't know if the innkeeper cheats him. We don't know if the man fallen among thieves in the first place is a good guy or not. Is he thankful? Does he repay the Samaritan? Does he sneak away in the middle of the night?

I think Jesus leaves it open like that because it doesn't matter. What happens down the line, while interesting in retrospect, perhaps (how I came to be here kind of questions), doesn't have any bearing on the present. We live now. We have to act now. We can't fully follow Christ if we're worried about unintended consequences.

188/365 BASIC after mass

After mass I turned to Sophia and told her she could go downstairs for a donut. And then found myself pulled into a conversation with Missy on my way to join her. I didn't know what my in-laws had planned and I thought they could figure that out and let me know. Missy has a way of making me engage her, even though every conversation takes effort.

It always has. If she wasn't a current parishioner I would have more things to say, funny insane things that Jessica and her sister have shared with me. But funny things about former parishioners can be amusing and kind of like a car wreck, but current parishioners fall into a different category. I don't want to stir our tidy little anthill. But just to say that Missy takes some overly polite handling.

We discussed books. I am shamefully not well-read in the areas of religion, politics, spirituality, and so forth these days. I have some Benedictine books on my list, and a ton of juvenile fiction of course, but I'm not reading, say, the most current biography of this or that political leader from the last century. I don't know much about the history of liberation theology or people closing down torture rooms in Myanmar. Or whatever (I'm just making this up). So I often find myself caught in a conversation with Missy that begins, "What are you reading?"

She is never very impressed with what I'm reading. She is one of the people in my life who fit into the "disappointed with Bridgett" category. Lots of people make assumptions about who I am based on a couple of encounters. It seems that my Jill of All Trades status confuses them. Perhaps I don't portray myself well. I tend to use camouflage to hide my secret identity. But I think some folks assume that because I share, say, their intense hatred of winter squash, or their love of magical realism, or a casual interest in matrix design, that I am just like them. Or that I would also share 99% of their other interests, hobbies, passions, and loves. Missy is one of these folks. She doesn't get me, and we don't see each other often so she doesn't have much of a chance to get me. We don't see each other often because she drives me crazy. And this becomes a cycle, like an old BASIC program:

10 INPUT "What are you reading these days?", R$
20 PRINT "I see."
30 PRINT "I don't know", R$
40 PRINT "I am reading the newest biography of liberation theologians who shut down torture rooms in Myanmar."
50 PRINT "Goodbye. I wish we could talk more."
60 GOTO 10

She recommended three books. She even spelled the last name of one of the authors. The author had a common noun as a last name. I told her those sounded like a plate full for the summer. She smiled, blinking at me. And then it was over.

189/365 I wonder what else he said

So while I was caught talking to Missy, which wasn't as excruciating as all that, but did mean that I missed out on the first part of the conversation Mike was having with his family, I noticed that my father-in-law had gone to the back and said something to Fr. Miguel. It was brief and looked friendly and then I got caught up in trying to impress Missy (and failing), and then the debate over where we should go to lunch. But I wondered. My father-in-law is a man of few words except when it comes to stories about hunting, fishing, and work. He is not Catholic--he's not anything, really, just himself. But he's been soaked in Catholicism a long time married to my mother-in-law as he is.

Having decided on lunch, Mike asked his dad what he'd talked to Miguel about.

"Oh, I just told him I considered him one of the special priests," he explained. I may have the quote wrong. I'm hearing it from Mike, via his dad. When Mike told me this later, I pressed him for more details.

"That's all he said," Mike insisted. "I figure it just means Miguel is in a category with Fr. Stephen, you know, folks like that."

I knew what he meant.

190/365 So when do the peasants start revolting, anyway?

"I only saw him cry twice," my aunt says over lunch, speaking of the priest who married me and Mike, who had been intertwined in my extended family's life for decades. "Once when he was caring for the priest living with him who was dying of AIDS, and it just got too much to handle, it was still when nobody was talking about it and the man had made him swear not to tell anyone. And he said to me, 'I just have to tell someone,' and I thought, who am I going to tell, anyway?"

"And then the second time was about this priest, who was later assigned to be pastor at that church. He said that he knew a friend was abusing children. He was struggling with what to do about it."

I wait for her to continue. I know, from an outsider's perspective, what had gone on at that neighboring church when the proverbial shit hit the fan.

"He had gone to the diocese," she says with an exhale. "And he felt like he'd betrayed a confidence but he had to. His face just looked gray."

"But that must have been years ago," I think out loud.

She nods. "And then that priest was assigned to the parish in question, where it finally all went down."

It made me wonder. Had he really gone to the diocese, or was my aunt sugar coating the report? She was known to do that sort of thing. Had he just told her that? I couldn't see that being true. He took things pretty seriously over all. Or could it be yet another case of bishop malfeasance. Hmm. Let's think a moment.

191/365 Clark

"Do I have a pseudonym on Utah Vestibule?" he asks his wife Astrid. She tells him she doesn't know. He concludes that perhaps our spheres don't cross often enough to merit one.

Yet.

Meet Clark, named for Clark Kent. Which is what I referred to him by the day he was surprisingly home from a business trip long enough to repack and leave again (think about it--once you've discarded the business suit in the phone booth, you have to get a back up). Sophia and I were there to feed the dogs and he scared the crap out of me.

And I described him in another blog as mild mannered intellectual type, like Clark Kent. Astrid said she was SO GOING TO TELL HIM. And then she changed her mind because she was afraid it would go to his head.

Well, there you have it.