41/365 Meeting Joey

"Hi, I'm Joey," she says as we're introduced in the school hallway. "Bill says we're going to be working on the garden together."

"Yeah, I'm the school liaison or something like that." I unlock my classroom door and the two of us step in. "Bill" slips away, his work done here. Joey goes over to the windows and looks down at the asphalt lot with the dead tree in the middle where there will someday be a garden.

"Well, I've been meeting a lot with the anonymous donor, you know, being on finance commission and all I know who's who." I don't know for sure if this is supposed to get me going, and if so, I don't know how, frankly. I'm not even sure whether I'm supposed to say anything. So I give a minimal response--mmm--and put my things down on my desk.

My desk. I've scrounged it from the defunct library along with a set of bookshelves. My chalkboards can hardly be called that, being nailed up plywood painted with green chalkboard paint. They will eat chalk over the course of the year and I will snatch up the room across the hall for next year faster than you can say gesundheit. But for now, I'm trying to decide how much I need to decorate for middle schoolers and wondering what this Joey wants from me.

I know her from church, meaning, I've seen her around. I don't know her. I've seen her name in the bulletin--all over the bulletin, in fact. And I know she's from California, which does not endear me to her any more than the fact that she doesn't work but also has no kids. And she's maybe 5 years my senior.

"Yeah," she keeps going, "I had my landscaper in on the first meetings. The next one is tomorrow afternoon. I'll be there, but I'll be late. I sit on a board for a women's shelter here in town and they're having a lunch meeting. But Piper will be there, and maybe even our anonymous donor. She's a real treat. She's going to hate that the school has a part in this. I was over at her house the other day. Anyway. I probably shouldn't say anything."

She turns back from the window and I'm struck by two things. First, she is very tall. Second, she is sizing me up. She is looking me up and down and at the things in the room--which aren't my things, after all, but the grungy discarded furniture and books from around the school. But this moment, I know now, defined the first entire year of our relationship. She was a tall blond Californian with insider information and leisure time, and I was a short working class brunette with second-hand ideas and a chip on my shoulder.

Oh, it was going to be GREAT.

42/365 Garden Misunderstandings (History Continues)

"I was just afraid the railroad ties would fall apart," I try to explain my negative attitude. Joey and her landscaper Piper sit on one side of the table, and I sit on the other with Martha. I know she's the anonymous donor but I understand well enough that I'm not supposed to know.

"What about concrete pavers?" Piper asks. She opens a binder and shows us options. They rather generic, without much character, but they would be sturdier. I say so.

"Ok, I'll talk to my source on those," she says, closing the binder. Martha has a worried look on her face. "Now, the fence."

We talk about the iron fence. About a gate. Yes or no to the gate. What kind of gate. Then I ask what later seems like the stupidest question:

"So are we going to have a set up like the community gardens? Are we going to lease plots to parishioners first and then open them up to the neighborhood?"

All three of them stare at me like I've just yelled, "I have rabies!"

"No, nothing like that," Martha shakes her head after she recovers from my apparently shocking question.

And then they continue as if I'm no longer there. Shunned, I listen to the discussion. Serviceberry tree or redbud? White redbud? Holly? Male and female pair? Then Piper opens her binder again and shows me the diagram for the first time. The school part is along one side. Oh. That makes sense, I guess. I process the new information and sit silently, feeling the creeping sensation of "I'm redundant at this meeting", which is a feeling I will have so many times in the years to come at the parish. But here more than ever before or after, frankly. We adjourn soon after and I head upstairs to my classroom to look out the window at the lot.

It'll be good to have the asphalt gone, I tell myself. A nice green space in the city. Not every green space has to have a use. It takes me several self-reincarnations to realize that usefulness is not the only scale upon which something should be measured. It will be good just to have it not be asphalt.

I don't know, standing there at the windowsill, that years later I'll witness Easter fires in that garden. Or that even the next year, it will become an obsession of mine and my friend Mary's, along with the library and so many other little nooks and crannies at the school. I can't know, standing there, that I'll get hot under the collar about this little lot. I don't know how it will all end. All I see right at that moment is a wasted space that's about to become a green wasted space.

But it will grow on me.

43/365 History: A Nemesis Develops

"I can't stand it," Martha whispers through her mournful hands covering her face.

"What's wrong with it?" Piper asks her. Fr. Bill and Joey sit uncomfortably in the little atrium with us. Joey's face is stern and Fr. Bill has on his priest power suit. He leans forward, gathering himself up to say something. But nothing. We wait for Martha.

"It. Looks. Like a grave."

I think about the school portion of the garden. It is somewhat grave-like, but it's October. We haven't planted there yet, for goodness sake.

"What can we do to make it better?" Fr. Bill poses. But I've had enough meetings with Martha. Nothing will make it better now. She has cried at too many meetings. I regret ever saying yes to Bill's suggestion that I join this committee.

I can tell Piper regrets more than that.

"Bridgett's right. The railroad ties would have fallen apart. Now, I'm sorry if the end result isn't exactly what you were looking for, but," she stops. There's nothing more to say. We have talked it to death. All of it. Mushroom compost and drainage and permits and every little detail has made me sick of gardens. We shouldn't still be talking about it.

"Well," Joey shrugs. "I'll buy some mums. I'll have the kids plant them and there you go."

"What exactly about mums is--" I begin but Bill catches my eye. We are done talking about this. Who cares if mums have nothing to do with education. It doesn't matter any more. Quit it.

At the next faculty meeting, Joey is there. She's there to explain the garden.

She's also there to announce that another anonymous donor has offered to buy computers for the school. And she has volunteered to help set everything up. Everything. She will do it all for us. Sr. Fern is so excited. She can't wait to announce it at the PTA.

I look across the table at Ina and Terri, two of my team teachers. I roll my eyes. I am so done with having meetings with Joey. Terri grins back at me. She has misunderstood my irritation. I ask questions. Joey can't answer them. Questions about the internet. About guidelines for use. About from where in the school day computer time will be carved. Sr. Fern's smile is fading but Joey knows how to handle me. "We're going to have a committee. You're welcome to join."

I think about what Fr. Bill said to me at the first Renew 2000 meeting. "I want to hold you and Mike safely," he said, and I didn't understand. "I don't want you two to get cynical about church, about the parish. If it's too much to be on this committee, you tell me."

At the time, it had seemed unnecessary. But not anymore. I tell Joey I'll be there. Just call me and tell me when.

44/365 Oh, Lent

"I just realized Wednesday is the beginning of Lent," I say to Mike quietly.

"And you have 16 dozen banners to sew before then?" he replies, only half-kidding.

"Exactly." I think back to the last worship commission meeting. It seemed so easy at that point. I guess I have work to do.

But I need those rods affixed to the choir loft or it is all for naught. Perhaps I'll be making some phone calls on Monday. Which is a holiday. Ah, screw it. I'll get done as much as I can.

45/365 Valentine's Day In Review

Today I ran Children's Liturgy and therefore missed what Mike called the "best homily I've heard in ages," brought to you by Fr. Lawrence while Miguel is in Haiti.

Wait. Yes--Miguel is in Haiti at a hospital working as a chaplain. His latest tweet (that would be "thing he posted on twitter") reads: I'm sleeping on a cot outside w a mosquito net. Brushed my teeth on the side of the "road". I am not a camper. I could have guessed that last line but frankly, I'm speechless when it comes to international mission trips of all sorts. It would be enough for me to say "I am not a missionary" in any statement I would make and that would be enough said. So I'm living vicariously through tweeted moments he sends into the ether and hoping he makes it back ok. I spent two years hoping that about Sophia's godparents when they were in Nicaragua.

But yes, Fr. Lawrence filled in. He's wordy, but I've been consistently pleased with what he's had to say. Today, Mike said, was no different.

"Best homily I've heard in ages" is not anything like what happened in Children's Liturgy. I prepared for the wrong year. How could I be so stupid? I realized sitting in the pew before mass began what I'd done and I quickly scanned the readings. So I went downstairs and faked it. I hate that. I hate not being prepared. But I read the readings and the gospel and did a tiny introduction to Lent. Then we reread Jesus' statements and put them into context as best we could. We went upstairs and the homily wasn't finished. Timed it bad on top of everything else. Jessica and I stood in back with the kids and showed them the statues and tried to explain why these were in our church. Then we released them. It was already almost a quarter to 11 and he was still talking.

I spent the rest of mass wrangling Maeve. She was impossible. My theory that sitting closer to the front would help is proving to be a failure. But I fear that if I give up and sit in the back, none of my children will have an inkling about what's going on. I could take her back to the new cry-room of sorts, in the Utah Vestibule, but it's become a baby ghetto. It's chock full of toddlers running amok and parents chatting. Not what I had hoped. It has separated the children, putting the gates up. I won't go back there anymore, alas, because it wouldn't be at all like being in church. Too bad--it was perfect with the rocking chairs and quiet lighting. The gates seemed like a good plan to me but now, well, I'll just say that it's not for me anymore.

So I wrangle her in the pew and whisper sweet nothings into her ear. Like: If you can't sit still we will not go downstairs for a donut. Or, everyone can hear you when you speak out loud, you must whisper, you are 5 years old. I want to add stronger threats but she's got my number. She's just the kind of kid to yell things like "don't hit me again Mommy!" and that would be just perfect.

At the end of mass, we're standing in that lag time between the prayer after communion and dismissal, when announcements happen. Fr. Lawrence announces that he has 4 announcements and a blessing for Valentine's Day. And then a trumpet starts playing. Somewhere. It isn't the trumpet player standing next to Bev at the piano. I'm too far up front; I never see who did it. So Lawrence blesses us first, which is always awkward for me in a way that other blessings are not. I detest holidays that are simply self-congratulatory events, like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day and 4th of July. Yay, I have a good life--but not in a thanksgiving kind of way, you know? More like "yay I have a good life and you should praise me for it." But he blessed us and I never found out who the trumpeter was.

We walked out with Maeve throwing a silent tantrum because she didn't get to go down for a donut...just the start to a day of Maeve tantrums and fits and rages.

Maybe like that character in Flannery O'Connor, I need someone to bless me every damned day of my life.

46/365 History: Chatty Joey

It took me longer than it should have to realize that Terri and Joey were tight. You know, when you assume you're in on the joke and then realize you don't know what's going on? It took me until November to see it. By then the mums were planted in the garden and I was busy doing other things. I liked my classes and my job in general was invigorating. In retrospect, it was my favorite year of teaching ever.

Terri had a favorite student, and 8th grade girl in trouble, and that situation as well was closed to me. But she would leave campus to handle things about this girl, and Joey would take her class for the afternoon. That's fine, I mean, substitute teachers exist, but Joey would spend the whole time chatting with the girls and inviting other older girls back to that classroom. From my math class. At one point in early December I finally announced to my seventh and eighth graders that while Joey was a very nice fun gal, they were not going to be leaving my classroom to play. My seventh graders seemed to understand. I had the most allies in there. "I think she's kinda weird," Caitlin admitted.

My eighth graders, well, there were only 5 girls in there besides Terri's favorite. Three of them nodded at me like they knew what I meant. The other two sat quietly.

The next time Joey subbed for Terri, Terri pulled me aside before she left for court. "Kate and Polly asked if they could help Joey organize the new computer room. I figured it would be ok. I talked to Sr. Fern--here's their hall passes."

She didn't smile smugly or act like this was a victory. She just handled me. The note from Sr. Fern said that as long as the girls didn't have a test, they had her permission to help out.

It's not like I could punish Polly and Kate, either. They were both super-sharp in math, and the last three years before I arrived had been second/verse/same/as/the/first with bad math teachers teaching basic skills all year long. I had pushed them, and the seventh grade, into pre-algebra, and these two, along with another girl and two of the boys, hadn't even blinked. A's across the board. My test schedule was published at the beginning of the year: every other Friday was test day, regardless of where we were in a chapter. I couldn't fake a sudden test.

Joey didn't knock on my door and have a conference or anything--the girls were there from lunch time until dismissal. They didn't bother to shut the door. My students could see straight in.

I complained to Sr. Fern the next day. She sighed and shook her head. "They're in 8th grade," she started, I'm not sure why. Then she started again. "Joey told me they'd be setting up the computers. Was that not what they were doing?"

"They were sitting in there chatting. Joey was setting things up and the other two were entertaining her."

"Ok, then that won't happen again," she shook her head, taking a note of it. And it didn't happen again, as long as she was in town. And until Joey became a full-time volunteer computer teacher.

47/365 Teaching is Hard

After Christmas, it was announced that Joey would be teaching computers once a week to the middle school students during the wasted "library" hour. It was in fact wasted--the library had been packed up and sealed in boxes due to water damage two years before and nobody had reopened it. I tried for a while with my friend Mary to make it happen the following year but it was overwhelming. We got shelves set up and fiction sorted but got bogged down in the dewey decimal system. And chatting. But that's what happens when you have volunteers do your job.

Bingo. That's what I said. When volunteers do your jobs, you have no true way of making them do their jobs.

The younger kids' teachers contracted with Joey for computer time here and there. Sr. Bernie never brought her class. Laura down in 1st grade didn't think it was worth the trouble. So for the most part, Joey had middle school students (4th-8th).

Library hour was suddenly an extra free time if you were one of the teachers in charge of library. I had a library class for the 6th grade; Ina had it for 5th and 7th; Terri had it for 4th, and Margie had it for 8th. Free hours in a week are golden for a teacher with many preps and lots of responsibilities and not much pay. They are free, and you don't let other people infringe on them. Library was a semi-free hour. You weren't in charge of a lesson, but you did have a group of kids sitting in your room pretending to read or do homework. Most of the time for my library class I let them talk quietly if they could prove to me they were done with the homework I'd assigned. I got along with my 6th grade well enough that it was a sort of free hour. I graded papers and planned.

But now, with Joey, I had an extra free hour a week. Truly free. Ina had two. The only one who missed out was BeBe, the 7th grade homeroom teacher. We never asked her about it, though, feeling guilty that it worked out this way. She could have used another free hour, too--she was in charge of confirmation that year with the worst auxiliary bishop on earth.

I asked Joey about the arrangement, about volunteering 5 hours a week plus prep time. I didn't even do it in a saucy way. I just was curious why on earth she'd want to do this.

"These kids don't have a lot of resources at home," she replied. "They should have access to computers at school. I mean, look at this school."

I had looked. It was on the lower end of resources when it came to teaching positions I'd held. But the classes were small and we did a good job for the most part.

"And they like me," she shrugged. "It won't be hard--it's not like teaching is hard. I used to work in HR at a Silicon Valley corporation, after all."

"Yeah, well," I started, but I didn't finish. I don't like to be proven wrong. If teaching was going to be a breeze for her, that's great. If not, then I could stand there and smile later.

In January, I got my library time to myself. Joey was across the hall with the 6th grade, which included several thuggy boys. It didn't go well, frankly. These boys respected me enough (or feared me enough) that things were fine in my room, but not always on the outside. Joey also had a hard time with the seventh grade.

She stopped coming in early February. She would be there for the 4th grade, for Terri's extra break, but the rest of us were on our own. Ina got really angry--she had gotten used to two extra free hours a week. She went to Sr. Fern. I don't know how it went, but Joey would come after that, sometimes. Sr. Fern would sit in the room with her. Or Terri would. Or Joey would feign illness and not be there for a full week. She took a vacation in April and didn't show at all. I no longer counted on this unearned free time.

In April, I went down to Sr. Fern. She had mentioned at the last faculty meeting that she needed a volunteer to help with next year's middle school schedule. I was coming to volunteer. She was happy and handed over all the information.

I went home and spent a week with strips of paper on my living room floor, arranging and rearranging the schedule. And at the end of it, everyone had the same number of free hours, including computer time (library was now a thing of the past). But none of my breaks coincided with computer time. Later in the coming year, I would be very glad I did that.

48/365 Farewell to the flesh

Mardi Gras: Fat Tuesday. Today is Wednesday. Carnivale: Carni, meaning meat or flesh, and vale, meaning goodbye or farewell. Today is Ash Wednesday. That's all over.

Today is the beginning of Lent 2010. Not quite the same kind of fanfare as opening ceremonies for the Olympics, no inauguration speeches, not much except a bare church, no more alleluia, and every song we play seems grim and unappealing.

I used to hate Lent. As a child in Catholic school, it came right about the time you were so sick of radiator heat and that fuzzy feeling of winter lasting too long. Cold, the snow days sputtering out the teaching time. It's like the movie Groundhog's Day. Every day the same and miserable. February is the shortest month but in the classroom it is the absolute longest. (Until you're a teacher and then you find yourself slipping under your plans for some reason in February--and catch up all of March). By the time Lent starts, I was tired of scarves and hats and static electricity and canned soup.

And then it was Lent--soup changed to macaroni and cheese with fish sticks, which was no improvement whatsoever. And school switched over to this punishing schedule of spooky rituals involving crucifixion--stations of the cross, adoration, lots of kneeling, dirt on your forehead. Low on the explanation of liturgy or season. It's LENT. DO IT. Or, more often, DON'T DO IT. Lent and the word "lint" were the same in my mind until at least 3rd grade. That junk in the bottom of your pocket? That was the season before Easter.

But now it's different. I don't know if it's adulthood, an internal drive to know more about God and religion, or simply my time involved with the Atrium, but it's different now. Now, it's not stale and punishing. Now it is preparation for the feast. When I think of Lent these days I think of the song "Idle (Rabbit Song)" by Hem:

Restless stars through the trees
Enough to fall to our knees
Gonna waste some time with you and let this world go
Keep my heart idle
Gonna waste my time with you and let this love go
A restless heart, idle

Lent is my liturgical excuse to get off the post-Christmas merry-go-round of restlessness and simply be. As opposed to Advent, which coincides with the great and terrible Holiday Season, Lent doesn't have much I have to do. Sure, there's St. Patrick's Day, and some yard work, but really, it's a time for me to keep my heart idle, and open.

49/365 Lent Preparations at church

"How about I just come on down?" I offer to Sr. Hildegard after we keep trying and failing to make ourselves understood on the phone. We're trying to set things up for Lent. So I get Leo dressed and walk out into the February gray.

In church, no one is there. I walk up to the sacristies and start the work anyway, thinking Hildegard and Jack must not be far behind. Something about setting up is making Leo completely inconsolable--the church is big and he is small; I've put him behind the altar on a small step up that he doesn't know how to get down from. He's stuck and sad.

I finally call Hildegard on my cell and she comes right over. I'm hunting through purple fabric, hoping with very little reason that the purple banners are not the stiff ones I hate. But they are. I dump them on the floor of the sanctuary and drag out the purple fabric. I see what I'm going to be doing this week.

Jack comes in and we talk a minute about where to put the curtain rods up in the choir loft. We've hung banners from there before, but they've always been secured with random objects: a pair of scissors, a music book, a screwdriver. They slip and I have to hike up there and readjust them. I really like the look of the banners hanging down, sort of enveloping the congregation in the color of the season, but we need a better system.

Which is what Jack does. For a long time before I met him I knew him only as "Magic Jack" because that's how Hildegard referred to him. Something broke? Let's see if Jack will fix it. Something needs changing? Jack could probably do it. He's a friend of Fr. Miguel's who started coming to church here when Miguel arrived. I know there are many others like that, just like I'm sure we lost people when Bill left, but we were the winners on that balance sheet. I like Jack. The same things about the parish that annoy me, annoy him. And that goes a long way to establishing oneself in the positive column.

So we stand there in the sanctuary pointing up at the choir loft and saying things like "the third circle with a cross has the rectangle to the side, not the little rectangle but the big one that envelopes it, and I was thinking we could hang banners...." Which was almost as bad as trying to do it over the phone but we managed to make ourselves understood.

I had a flash, after he left to go buy curtain rods, of using several different colors of purple and doing something, well, interesting. But then another word came to mind: Lent. Maybe for Advent I could do something fun with purple. But Lent needs to be more formal. Set. Not eye-catching and inspiring as much as a reminder that it is Lent.

So I came back after school, after Mike was home, and I rolled out the big never-ending bolt of woven purple fabric on the floor of the sanctuary and cut yards and yards of it with floral scissors not up to the task. I folded it up to take home and hem. Then I wrapped the grapevine wreaths with purple floral ribbon for the outside doors. Found the brown pots and put the curly willow I'd saved from November into them. I love curly willow, and with nothing else in the pots it is stark and thirsty looking. Good for Lent.

I realized suddenly it was 5 minutes until 6, when I had to pick up the girls at their after school art program. I grabbed up the purple cloth and the two pots for the back of church by the holy water fonts. I turned off the lights and headed out in the darkness. The church doesn't scare me anymore like it did last fall, even in the darkness with the votive candles giving off strange shadows on statues. I placed the pots where they belonged and fumbled with my keys in the darkness, finally finding the correct key to let myself out of church and into the dusk of February, the cars blowing past, the strangers walking on the street. It felt like Lent.

50/365 Worship Commission February Edition

We were there until 10:30. We went to Ash Wednesday mass at 7:00, and then got into the rectory dining room by about 8:30 when it was all said and done. Sometimes worship commission is over by 8:30. I knew it was going to be a long one--we had to talk Triduum and Easter.

Hildegard, Sr. Vanda, Lynn, Bev, and I sat around the table and first, before anything else, vented about Ash Wednesday mass. The person we had all received ashes from just then had put the crosses on our foreheads and said, "Man, remember you are dust and to dust you shall return."

Now, I'm not the biggest feminist when it comes to church. I'm not. I can't be--I'm a Catholic, and if I stayed that angry it would affect my relationship with God. I know what I think and what I believe and I try my best to witness to that but I'm not going to make this my issue. I have things that might be "my issue" but just like my life's work, I haven't really found what that is. It might be inclusion in other ways, it might be reform of the priesthood or a return to a simpler Christianity...but I have a feeling that changing the words to, say, the Nicene Creed, is not my issue.

But really? I've been receiving ashes on my forehead for a long time--probably starting around age 4 or 5 and continuing up to the present. Perhaps 30 times? And I have never had someone say that to me before. Sometimes the dust blessing (blessing?) and sometimes the "turn away from sin..." version. But never have I been addressed as "man." Mike is stunned when I say this. The church in Cairo says that all the time. And really, that sums it up for me.

I didn't catch it when he said it. I was corralling Maeve, who found the earthy symbol of ashes to be the Best Thing that has ever happened at church in her memory. She had pushed her bangs back so everyone could see. So I didn't catch it. I heard dustyouwillreturn or whatever and I went back to the pews with Maeve waving at everyone and almost running into the cello player.

But at the end of mass, there was a rebellion of annoyed women. And men--the cello player's husband was in the chatty crowd of folks shaking their heads at this person's words. Many of them had spoken to him, including Sr. Vanda, who has always struck me as calm, rational, and soft-spoken firm. I was glad to hear she had, and Bev, and so many others, and not just Lynn, who is one of those angry feminists who changes the words to the Nicene Creed when she says it and thinks her way is the one and only way to be truly Catholic.

The thing about it that bothered me wasn't the stupid use of the word man and the officious excuse that this word was the translation required. It was the age of the person saying it. He's relatively young--becoming a priest and here for the time being. He's not some ancient deacon with outdated ideas. He's some young deacon with outdated unpastoral ideas. Seriously. There was no reason whatsoever to use that phrasing except to cause division and anger.

Lynn did say something in the meeting (we kept coming back to it, try as we might to stay on topic) that there are so many people she knows who have left the church, and not for theological differences but because of bad liturgy and bad presiders. She's right. I know a few former Catholics who became other things for whatever reason--met a Lutheran and found a better way there (and married him); became dismayed with the hierarchical structure of the church and found he was a good fit for the Friends; the call to priesthood got too strong to ignore and she left for the Methodists. But more than that, I know so many people who just left. Didn't go anywhere in particular. Couldn't really say why. Just left. Some of them were disappointed with specific priests or with their experiences in Catholic school. Some were simply bored with church the way it was presented to them. Liturgy wasn't alive, or too many priests said too many snide things to her. Not a true break for something, but a break due to a lack of pastoral care.

This is the kind of thing that dismays people, and it's for no good reason. And if it is the correct translation (and come on, saying that "man" means plural, we should use "people" instead--the English language has changed over time and it's a stale translation--something some old guy in a dress is still clinging to as he deals with his buyers remorse over Vatican II), if it is what we're supposed to say from now on, what does the hierarchy really want? A leaner, meaner church? What about the exclusion of 50% (or, really, let's be honest about church attendance, more) of the people in the pews makes any damned sense?

I have no true method of revolt here. I can voice my opinion to the person who did this; I can point it out to Fr. Miguel; I can write "MONEY IS FUNGIBLE" on every request for donations beyond the parish level. But we aren't a congregational church and I've chosen to belong to an organization where I stand at the bottom of a tall totem pole. Getting angrier.

51/365 MSN vs. school server

"I'm not sure MSN is our best choice," I put my fencing foil into the fray. Sr. Fern looks puzzled. What she knows about the internet can fit in a teacup. I'm not IT professional, but I am married to one. Joey is sitting across the table from me, seething. The other teachers know they're being taken along for a ride where they are only unwilling passengers. Like a carpool.

"Why not?" Sr. Fern asks.

"What sort of controls are available? I don't want to send my class into the computer room and be able to send emails to anyone about anything. Not on school time."

"Look," Joey interrupts, "It's not like these kids don't have computer access at the library, at home, all the time. They are going to do what they want to do!"

"But maybe not here," Sr. Fern says sternly. "I don't want a parent coming to me with evidence of harassment or something like that. What do you suggest?" she turns back to me. I'm ready.

"I've researched a number of email programs for schools that would be appropriate. They're free, they're completely monitored, and we can restrict them in all sorts of ways."

"But the anonymous donor really wanted to go with msn," Joey protests.

"Does msn have the capabilites I think we need?" Fern counters directly. "No? Then I think the donor will understand."

Joey stares at me, not happy. Seething, in fact. But Sr. Fern is happy and I've chalked up a stroke in the win column. "Why don't you and Joey meet after school tomorrow and set that up?"

In the computer room after school, suddenly we're best friends. Joey gets me on a computer and I find my way to the webpage.

"You know, I only picked msn because that's what we use at home," she explains.

"Sure," I say with a nod, clicking on the sign up key.

"I just, I wish you could be more appreciative of my work here."

That makes me look up.

"I've laid out a lot of money to make this work," she continues. "And I hate that you stomp all over that."

"You're the donor," I say, not a question.

"Of course I am."

This doesn't make me like her more.

"And I'm here almost every day trying to get all this to work and did you know I have rheumatoid arthritis? I'm trying to get pregnant and nothing is working and the medication I'm on I'll have to go off and this is just one more thing," she shakes her head.

I mentally erase the mark in the win column, but I don't back down on the internet usage in the school. There is common sense here, not just meanness. But I try to back down on the other stuff. For now.

52/365 St. Louis, again, is too small

"Is that Leo's high chair?" Yvette asks me at the fish fry as she cleans tables.

"No," Becky answers, "Marguerite had it for Joel, but I don't know where they've headed off to."

"They're upstairs. I think my kids are up there, too." Yvette nods and moves on to the next tables. I sit down next to Becky and hold Leo on my lap while I wait for Sophia and Maeve to reappear.

"Bridgett, this is Randy," Becky introduces us. "He knows Bevin"

"How?" I ask, surprised. He seems vaguely familiar but I think it's from church.

"I poke holes in her."

"Ah."

"I'm a piercer." But I knew already. Bevin has quite a few piercings in quite a few places. "How are you related, again?" he asks.

"I'm her older sister."

"How come we've never met?"

I sigh. There are so many reasons.

"Have I met Bevin?" Becky looks at me with her head tilted. I describe Bevin:

"You know, superman black hair, long, gorgeous, very pale skin, blue eyes, as tall as me."

"Is she the one who likes vintage clothes?"

"They both do. They'll be here at Christmas, but usually not some other time."

"Leo's baptism?"

"Sure--she was the one drinking bourbon slush."

"Bridgett," Becky laughs. "Everyone was drinking bourbon slush. You were, Fr. Miguel was, everyone."

"True," I think back on that day.

Randy kisses Becky goodbye soon after and makes his way out. I ask her how she knows him.

"He played bass in my brother's band," she explains. "And I took him to a lot of things in high school. We dated briefly--he has the uncommon ability to remain really good friends with girls he dated."

"That is rare," I think about my exes.

And sitting there, watching Sophia and Maeve come down from the church where Marguerite was nursing baby Joel, listening to the Irish music warming up in front of me, I thought about the coincidence of Randy. I thought about the complete lack of anonymity I have now. It was kind of a cozy feeling, but also a bit smothering. They're always both there when I think about these things, about how small St. Louis is, how long I've been here, how I'm probably not leaving. Cozy and smothering like a fluffy fake fur blanket on a rainy February evening.

53/365 History: Sabotage

"The rectory got broken into last night," Sr. Fern mentions in the faculty room, sort of off-hand, to me and a couple other teachers standing their at our mailboxes. "Somebody with a key."

"Then it's not really a break in," Ina points out.

"True, but they sabotaged a computer."

We all look at each other. I am suddenly really thankful I don't have a rectory key. I don't need that kind of heat.

"Which one?" Ina asks.

"Joey's." Sr. Fern leaves and I look at Ina.

"Joey has a computer in the rectory?"

"She has an office," Ina points out.

"Really."

"Yeah, she's a full-time volunteer over there, you know."

I sort of knew. Whatever. I put it out of my mind because it doesn't directly concern me and there is plenty going on at the moment that does. But a few weeks later I'm in the library trying to sift through non-fiction books to label when I hear a key in the door across the hall. Since it's evening and I'm there with Mary, essentially alone and defenseless, I stick my head out to see what's up. It's Joey and her husband. They're fighting about something. I duck back into the library and tell Mary I'll be right back.

"Hey Joey," I announce before I'm completely in earshot. Colin backs off. She looks at me and waves me over. Colin doesn't say anything to me but heads back down the stairs.

"I'll wait til you call," he tells her.

We go into the computer room. She dumps her armful of supplies on a table and sighs.

"Heard about the rectory," I tell her.

"Yeah. A lot of people don't like me very much." She goes over to turn on a bank of computers. "I can't figure it out. I--me and Colin--we're the top donors to this parish. I know because I'm on Finance. But then people who don't give more than $5 a week think they have a right to complain."

I almost felt bad until she said that. Always pulling rank. Not that I gave $5 a week--Mike and I did quite a bit more than that--but she shouldn't get to know, and then tell people.

"Do you know who did it?"

"I've narrowed it to Dolores or Roxanne. Maybe one of Roxanne's kids. They both have keys--had keys, that is. Bill took everybody's keys away unless they were employees."

"So you don't have a key anymore?"

"Oh, I still have a key. I'm not paid, but I'm an employee. You know, when Colin and I moved here we didn't live in the parish, but at St. John's. And I went to the priest there and asked if there was anything I could do. He shooed me off. Wait until I was here longer, that sort of thing. So we started looking around, and then we moved into the parish and when I asked Bill if there was anything I could do, well, he had plenty. I'd just had back surgery and quit my job," she trails off.

I don't say anything. I lean in the doorway watching her do something on the computer.

"We have money because we worked for it. It wasn't given to us." She must be rewinding the conversation in her head.

"Sure," I nod.

"And Roxanne. Damn it. That crazy bitch."

I sort of agree with that statement. Actually, I agree 100% but I'm not going to show my hand. Dolores is a stickier problem. I teach both their kids, and each is a piece of work in her own right, but Roxanne kind of scares me in a way that Dolores never did (and never will).

"Why do you think it was her?"

"Well, she doesn't have a key, but Dolores does. And I think they did it together. They erased all sorts of my files. Some are gone for good. And they both hate me, you know."

She leans back in her chair and beckons me over with her hand.

"I need to tell you something."

We weren't friends yet, but this was where the ice started to break.

54/365 Temptation is Tempting

We walked out of church Sunday with the neighbors, heading to get coffee and bagels down the way since there was no coffee and donuts downstairs. We feared it was some Lenten reason for nothing in the basement...but we'll see as the season goes on.

I put Leo in the car. He was fussy. I got into the driver's seat and Mike glanced back at him.

"Maybe he's upset by inch-deep Christology and a rehash of the gospel. 'Temptation is more tempting when you're tempted,' after all," he laughed, pretending this was a quote from the homily.

It might as well have been.

I know as a former teacher that the first year of teaching I should've paid those families to let me teach their kids instead of the other way around. You are a novice for a reason. You aren't always born to do what you do--sometimes you have to grow into it. And as opposed to, say, a novice anesthesiology student and her mentor arguing about why I had "too many bones" in my back while I was in labor waiting for an epidural, a novice homilist isn't frightening or potentially harmful. And homilies aren't every priest's cup of tea.

It's just...so unsatisfying. But next week is back to Miguel.

55/365 History: the story comes out

I go over and sit next to Joey in the computer lab. She's got her feet up on the table and is leaning back in her chair. I sit down like someone come to listen to a bedtime story, anxious for what I assume will be good gossip. I am not disappointed.

"So this is why I think it was Roxanne. Before it happened, before anyone went in and erased my files, she comes up to me after daily mass and asks if she can take me out for coffee. Immediately I think this is a bad idea but I go along with her anyway. We just go down the way, she drives. And at first she's talking all about her kids and her crazy husband."

I know this family and they worry me. I teach one of the daughters and the things she says to me, I wonder if she's trying to entrap me. Sixth graders should not be suspects in espionage, but that's how I view Nellie and her family. Like they're waiting for me, or anyone, to screw up.

"And I know," she continues, "that she's not my friend. I mean, like, there's no way I can trust her or anything. I remember Terri telling me about when the teacher's union was pushing for a raise--"

"We don't have a union," I interrupt. It's one of the big scabs I pick at--the pope can write an encyclical on the dignity of work and be all about the Solidarity movement in Poland but those Catholic schoolteachers had better not form a union.

"Well, whatever it is, anyway, when that hit the news, Nellie came to school the next day and announced to Terri that her job was a vocation and she should be happy she gets paid at all. As if there's enough nuns to do this job anymore?"

I can just see Nellie pulling that kind of stunt. "So that family sat around the dinner table and listened to Karl make pronouncements about Catholic schoolteachers being greedy. Nice."

"Plus they don't tithe," she leans forward with a dirty smile. "I mean, a little bit, but--"

I must have changed the look on my face, or something, because she stops before she gives me those details.

"So anyway, we were talking at the table and suddenly she has her coffee cup in her hand midair and says, I kid you not, 'How long you been sleeping with Bill?'"

I chuckle at this. A parish can be a terrible rumor mill and this is one I'd heard before.

"Well," Joey continues, indignant, "I can assure you it isn't true."

"I believe you." I do, in fact.

"But stupid me, when she says this, I answer, 'What Bill?'"

Now I laugh out loud. "Oh, that's great."

"Yeah, sure it is. Made me look like a hooker. And her face changed, I think she wanted me to be mad, but instead I was confused."

"Took the wind out of her sails."

"Right. And she says, she says, 'Bill Spencer, who did you think I meant?' And then I'm surprised. I tell her no, no way, we're friends, sure, he eats dinner at my house a lot, but no way. I have a husband." She puts her feet down on the floor and slaps down on the table with both hands. "And that's why I think she did it."

"You know, Joey, I have to tell you, this isn't the first time I've heard this rumor."

She looks at me through narrowed eyes.

"Really," I insist.

"Ok." She takes a deep breath. "But that one--"

"No, I agree. Dolores had the keys and Roxanne is nuts. And I'm sure they're both jealous of the time you spend here."

"Colin's asked me, too," she says quietly. "But, I guess I just didn't see it."

"Bill's an easy target."

I hear the rumor again. And again. Through the year and into the next. I pretty much knew who was generating the energy behind it. Maybe it was true. Maybe it wasn't. I don't have surveillance cameras or a private investigator's services at my disposal. But each time I heard it, I reminded myself of the source and reminded the person telling me of the source. And in doing so, I took a big step towards becoming an adult.

56/365 Lent is for giving up

Sophia is big into telling Maeve what she should give up for Lent. This is right up Sophia's alley: religious, creative, and bossy. Maeve, however, is reacting just as she should. She ignores her. It's a good system they have.

Sophia has given up watching TV after school. She can watch if we're all watching, which is rare, actually, except that the Olympics have been on and she really wanted to see them. As vices go, this is small, and she decided being with her family was more important (and seeing ice skating was just an added bonus).

Maeve has decided, essentially, to ignore Lent. I don't push this sort of thing, frankly, because, (a) she is 5, and (b) punishing rules about religion without the capacity to understand them well leads to early burnout. I'd like my kids to stay religious and faithful throughout their lives, wherever they land, and so I'm not going to rap knuckles and Hail Mary them to death. Maeve is greatly interested in why we give up meat, however. Especially why shrimp is not meat but chicken is, even though they are both breaded and dipped in ketchup in her mind and therefore are essentially the same thing.

I have given up yelling at my kids for Lent. Not yelling, because I still do a lot of that: "SOPHIA! COME DOWNSTAIRS!" happens in a house with 3 floors. But I no longer get angry and yell. It's made me realize how much I yell at my kids, and this was not a pleasant realization. But it's been going ok. I do a lot of calm repetition of phrases, though, which will get just as old as time goes by: go back to your room now and find your tights before you come down and brush your teeth go get your tights go get your tights go--thank you. But we leave the house in the morning just a bit more calmly, I think.

I considered coffee but I didn't want to fail the first week. It's been a rocky start to my Lent--not Lent's fault, but just circumstances around me. Leo's been hard to handle (teeth? personality disorder?), Mike's been teaching (meaning late nights and doesn't feel like talking when he gets home), the house is a mess because of both of those, and dang it, it got cold again. Add that to the trivia night I'm running this weekend and girl scouts and I'm swamped.

But I'm working hard to not let it get away from me. I make myself listen to the silence when it's there. Like right now.

57/365 But it's not all wine and roses (history)

While I eventually came to an understanding with Joey, it wasn't that we were bestest best friends. The second autumn of the garden came along and we as a school harvested a bumper crop of tomatoes. We grew an heirloom variety of indeterminate vines and I didn't stake or cage them. Not that I hadn't intended, but my personal life kind of fell apart over the summer when I miscarried and it took a while to bounce back. In that bounce back, I had cake and coffee at Joey's house so she could tell me how sorry she was to hear I'd miscarried. She'd been trying for a while and had resorted to IVF, which had failed several times.

"I can't imagine what it would be like to get pregnant and then lose the baby," she said, and I think she meant it. I ate cake and tried not to think too much about it. I would be pregnant in October but here it was August and it was all still so bad.

But the summer drew to a close and school started up. We donated tomatoes to the food pantry. We let kids take them home. I had brief visions of the future, using produce from the garden in school lunches--nowadays this is the hip education thing to do. Back then though it seemed revolutionary.

So I walked out of school one afternoon and went around to the garden to tend things.

The school raised bed had been replaced with something from an alternate universe. The tomatoes were gone. In their place were impatiens, mums, and pansies. It must have taken someone all day to do this and yet nobody came to tell me? I stood there staring at the damned little flowers and got really angry.

I went inside to Sr. Fern. "What happened to the tomatoes? We were still harvesting--it's only late September."

"Oh," she faked surprise. "Joey told me you said it was done. There's a donor coming to look at the school this evening and she wanted it to look nice. It's only tomatoes," she said as an apology.

"Right," I snapped back. I picked up my canvas bag with the last of the tomatoes alongside my grade book and lesson plans and walked out. Coming out onto the parking lot, there was Fr. Bill walking up to go into the school.

"Why did Joey get to tear out the school garden and plant flowers?" I spit out at him. "Flowers?"

"She said the growing season was over," he repeats the same excuse. "I think some people complained that it looked messy."

"It's fall," I waved my arms the air. "Part of gardening with kids is letting things get a little messy. Plants die. But they weren't even dead!"

"Well," but he stops, for the first time in my experience, with nothing to say or to calm me down with.

"Just because she's good with ONE THING," I yell at him, pounding my fist in the air as if I were hitting a table. "It doesn't make her an expert on everything!"

He doesn't reply. I walk away from him there, not caring who saw me--dismissal time, of course, is filled with people. I get in my car just as I see her pulling up in her SUV. I don't wave back.

She comes up to my room the next day. "Hey," she interrupts class.

"Hi, Joey, I can talk to you in a minute."

"No, I just wanted to drop this off for you." I walk over to the door and she hands me a huge basket of tomatoes. A huge basket. Like, feed a family of 4 for a week kind of huge basket of tomatoes. I take it with both hands.

"I should have talked to you first," she apologizes. I nod, but I'm over being angry. "In other news," she continues more brightly, "we got a grant."

"That's great," I smile thinly. "Thanks for the tomatoes."

I take them home. There isn't a single conflict between us from then on.

58/365 Banners

I make banners for church.

My first was an Advent ambo frontal, purple, of course, with ribbons down the left side as you face it. The ribbons intertwined and looked a bit like a bookmark. It was simple but new after an era of bad fabric art in our church.

For Christmas there was the same pattern, but in white and gold. We used it for Easter as well.

For Pentecost, I took the same idea but played around with it. It was my favorite. But now with our new ambo, we'll probably never use it again. That's ok, though--these are done in a specific time and place. They aren't like quilts for my daughters' beds or something I make as a gift. I don't know--I'm just a little more separated.

I made a Christmas banner that we used this year as well as three years prior (or maybe this was the 3rd year total, I can't recall). But it's starting to feel a little tired. Then one for ordinary time that was interesting, but a little odd. This past Easter I made what is probably my favorite of all the ones I'm made, but it just seems wrong for the church. I have it, though, in the guest room/sewing room of my house. If the church doesn't want it anymore, it will have a home.

It is John 20:2. The Christmas banner is Numbers 24:17. I call the ordinary time one "Tree of Life" from the song that goes The tree of life my soul has seen laden with fruit and always green.

I see these as a beginning of a life's meditation on scripture, frankly. Another kind of lectio. I don't care what Lynn thinks about my use of green. I don't care if they're just not right for our space (I think that about the Easter banner myself). I'm working on the design for a new Advent banner and it's come to the point that the creation has become its own prayer.

But I do try to make them right--I don't want to impose bad art on the parish. We're meeting Tuesday to discuss the art & environment for Easter and Pentecost. I have ideas. We'll see if they seem right. And I'm hoping other people have something to bring, to add. Hildegard will be there, but so will Lynn. Hildegard's roommate, though, counterbalances Lynn, and she's supposed to come as well.

It used to be I'd stand there and nod, ask questions for clarification, and go home to make their banner. Now I like collaboration and ideas, but sometimes, it's like I try that and it doesn't happen--the idea won't be forced into cloth. But something else is begging to be brought to the light.

I hope it's good.

59/365 History of a lunchtime

I may have been 25 but I was so young. Naive, really. I didn't think about the chances of miscarrying and so when it happened to me, I didn't have a back up plan. My doctor reassured me that this was the kind of miscarriage that you wanted to have. I got caught up on that sentence even though she explained what she meant. What it meant was that I could get pregnant. But what it meant to me was something different.

I ran through all my friends pretty fast. It's hard to continue to grieve with someone for very long. Everyone else was ready to move on and think about the future. I was caught in a loop. Some hard things were said to me, things I carried around a long time until I finally decided that it wasn't worth the hurt.

I called the rectory. Fr. Bill answered--he answered twice in the entire history of my calling the rectory. The first time was when I was looking to join the parish. This was the other time. I told him what had happened. It was summertime and so I wasn't at school and I frankly wasn't at church much. He asked me to go out to lunch.

I sat on the stoop waiting for him to pick me up. We went to a place a few blocks away. I had chicken salad. We talked about pain, but more than that, we sat in silence. He had a book for me to read. He was so sorry.

He dropped me off at my house, but as I was getting out of the car, he took my hand. "Don't isolate yourself. Call me if you need anything. You are very dear to me," he said emotionally, not at all strange.

"And you, to me," I replied awkwardly. I let go his hand and got out of the car.

I thought about that lunchtime a lot. How he didn't offer excuses, platitudes, or solutions. He listened and didn't gloss over my experience. Years later I look back at this as the best moment I ever had with him as pastor.

Because things would soon enough not be good moments. But that doesn't negate this one.

60/365 Fish Fry Frenzy

"We'll park on the street," I tell Sophia, Maeve, and their friend Margot. We pull up in front of the church, all of us eying the parking lot, chock full including all the handicapped spaces. Still, the hall holds a lot of folks.

I get Leo out of his seat and the girls, without coats, dash across the front of the church to turn the corner, heading towards the side door to the basement hall.

And they stagger to a halt. I catch up with Leo in my arms and stop myself. The line comes out of the door and weaves up and between the church and school building. Margot, always sensible, turns to me and shakes her head.

"You're right. Let's go have pizza."

Sophia nods enthusiastically--Sophia, who only 2 hours before when I suggested pizza instead of fish fry, got all weepy-eyed because she wanted to go help bus dishes and dance the jig to the live Irish music. But in the cold reality of a long line, a breezy Friday evening, and a hall full past the point of finding a high chair and a spot for each girl--she came around.

61/365 RCIA Fig Tree

I lead RCIA this weekend.

I'll go ahead and admit it: I'm terrified of this ministry.

I'm fine with kids, with Children's Liturgy and Atrium, and I could have phoned in the Old Testament class I taught 6th graders at the school, I was so relaxed with that. I don't mind teaching young folks about faith, about the Church, about what I believe and how that might apply to their lives. The Atrium is made easier by being almost completely scripted. Children's Liturgy is also rather rigid. Theology class in middle school, the way I taught it, was about learning facts and history (considering I was teaching a class that was only half Catholic, and most of the other half wasn't even Christian, this was the only decision I could make). We wrote reflection papers but it wasn't the same thing as this.

RCIA makes me really stand at the top of the stairs to my soul and think, "how Catholic am I down there, anyway?" I'm great with the searching part, with inquiry. Is this the place for you? This is why it's the place for me. But something about the catechesis part of RCIA I just have a hard time wrapping my head around. There's the Gospel and the breaking open the Word, and that works ok, but then there's catechesis afterward and the topics never seem clear unless they are all too clear...and letting things flow from the Gospel seems either stilted or too, well, reflection-paper-ish. I'm great at the lectio stage, the "what word caught you/what about the homily/what about the actions/what about your week/what about your life" part of catechesis. But the more formal, well, uh.

Hildegard wrote to me last night and gently reminded me I was in charge this week. "Take a look at the readings and see what topics might flow..." She filled me in a bit about our candidate's progress and made some suggestions. Right that minute I looked up the readings. The parable of the fig tree.

I have some tending if I'm going to bear any fruit here.

62/365 Altar Guild

We sit in the church looking around trying to figure out what Easter will look like. Fiona is there, for the first time, although she should be the one most in charge of flowers since she works for a florist. Hildegard, Lynn, and Sr. Kinnera were there, too, of course, and we sat quietly, envisioning and remembering.

After discussion on wreaths (what type, how many, how big), ribbons (what type, how long, how much), and banners (which is for another post), conversation drifted to a topic that I often puzzle over: why don't we have organizations at our church to do things that need to be done?

We were specifically speaking of an altar guild or society in this case, but I've asked myself and Astrid this on many occasion about various things--a functioning women's club, a funeral hospitality committee (which we do have now), and so forth. Altar guild, however, is needed. The sacristies are untidy (correction: Fr. Miguel's sacristy is fine. My sacristy is untidy, quelle surprise). The candles, candlestands, and who knows how many other tasks are done solely by Hildegard because the quirky church mice who pretend to get things done are so clueless about what looks nice and what is the right thing to do that she has to do it all over after they leave. Linens are washed by two older ladies in the church--Ethel is fine, but Bernie is much older and more than a tad out of it. She has to take things home on the bus, on top of that, so we really should have someone else in place.

We know this. We know that I cannot alone take care of the church any more than Hildegard can (actually she can better since she's there every day to begin with, but she has a job...but even the two of us would quickly and permanently burn out on this stuff). I feel like counting on Fiona for plants during ordinary time is plenty; Lynn is usually not useful. Jack of course picks up a lot of the slack, and there's always Sal to screw things up here and there.

We need an altar guild. We need a group of people who know what their one task is and can complete it. Linens, candles, brass. Flowers, plants, banners, albs. Holy water fonts, vestibules, sacristies. Luckily we have a priest who isn't so clueless that we need to lay everything out for him. Actually, thank God for that or else we would have drowned a long time ago. But we sat there thinking of who could we ask, how could we have a meeting, when, what would we say, who would be in charge. We kept coming back to the fact that none of this is hard, splitting it up and getting it done....and why has it gotten to this point, again?

Because, I pointed out, until 3 years ago there was only one person doing all of it, doing it pretty badly, and nobody cared that it got done or didn't get done.

It comes back to my theory of abusive relationships. I've talked about this before in regards to politics (local and national) but I think it's true here too. We have learned helplessness. Why should we try to do anything because it'll only get undone? Why should we try to clean that because we've been told time and again that it isn't our place? Why bother having an opinion because it will be shot down?

It takes time to rebuild that. And it will take personal invitation.

After Easter.

63/365 In Retrospect: Thursday

Conversion, Hildegard wrote back. There you go.

We'd been talking via email about what the topic for RCIA should be. I was missing the mark--I'm consistently missing the mark with RCIA. I don't understand what that's all about. Why can I come up with gentle and lovely presentations for Children's Liturgy but can't wrap my head around RCIA? Hildegard asked about topics drawn from the gospel and I finally got so frustrated I asked her why we didn't have set topics.

What I want is a textbook and a workbook and a manual and it all laid out on the table for me.

Right?

Not really. I never taught school that way. I resisted scripted lessons. But then, the Atrium is practically a scripted curriculum. You script it for yourself, but it has to fit into certain very specific guidelines. It makes it very easy and also keeps things in check--nobody can decide to, for instance, teach a whole Atrium lesson on St. Faustina instead of epiclesis. And trust me, there are Atrium folk who would if they could. But they have boundaries because they see the results. And because they're never alone. But I digress.

Conversion. I started thinking about this but failed to see what I should talk about because I had a baby with an ever-increasing fever and a house to clean. I would sit at the computer with the catechism next to me, the lectionary for this Sunday, with photocopies from Hildegard, and just be blank.

Which is so incredibly stupid because I'm a Benedictine. But maybe that just fits. Oblates do not take vows but do promise to live out the Benedictine vows in their regular lives as much as they can. And those vows are stability (easy once I said yes), obedience (harder but I can wrap my head around it and I take correction better than I used to), and a vow called conversatio morum. They don't even translate it because the quick translation is "conversion of heart" but it is more than that.

I sat there Thursday night and debated: is it too Benedictine? Could I bring it to the table and present it? Would I get it shot down or the subject changed before I even opened my mouth? And what would I say to someone not even yet Catholic about a topic that even most Catholics would not be familiar with?

And then I had to go make dinner and I put this, pun and all, on the back burner.

64/365 Retrospect: Friday

Conversatio Morum. I remember reading something by some Benedictine that this was the spiritual equivalent of "we fall and get up, we fall again and get up again." It is the conversion of the heart. But it isn't conversio morum. Conversio means a moment of conversion and life is never the same again. St Paul's conversion. You know, that earth-shattering moment that changes your whole life.

But since my life is a novel and not a short story by Flannery O'Connor, conversio isn't part of my experience. Sure, there have been moments of grace, but never a moment of conversion. But I do try to live out conversatio morum.

Conversatio is more of an ongoing conversion. A slow turning towards. Gradually other things fall away, edges round down, we get more and more still. At least that's the hope. I see conversio as fire:, quick, hot, dangerous, energetic. Conversatio is water: slow, seeping, seeking its own level. They are both life giving, but definitely different experiences. And as can be seen in the Burned-over District of New York, fire certainly is harder to handle and easier to get out of control.

We can't spend our lives waiting for fire. But we can spend our lives slowly seeping into the low spaces of life, slowly bringing ourselves closer to an inner truth of God present to us, in us, around us.

And that was my own conversatio morum this week as I tried in vain to get myself ready for RCIA. In vain because by Friday night, Leo had a temperature of 104.1 and things looked pretty dicey. And I started realizing I wasn't working out. Not that this wasn't working out. But I wasn't.

65/365 Ladder of Humility

I knew I couldn't just talk about my thoughts on conversatio morum. That would take 15 minutes and that wasn't going to be enough. On the other hand, we got back from Leo's doctor's appointment with a diagnosis of RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) due to the recurrent ear infection and bronchiolitis. Suddenly my Sunday looked doomed--Sophia was scheduled for an Irish Dance show at a nursing home where my great-aunt lives. I would have very much liked to have gone to the show and seen her while I was there, but I was sending Mike because I had RCIA. He was going to take the kids with him and get Sophia ready alone, for the first time.

Now with a baby with RSV, well, you don't take him to a nursing home. You just don't. So now we had a choice--Sophia could bail, I could bail, or we could cut RCIA short.

I'd already failed to go to RCIA pretty much the whole year. And the whole year before that. I'd led so few catechism meetings that the candidates hardly knew who I was. I felt bad about this--but last year I had a newborn and this year I had a family schedule and a toddler. Girl scout camping, Irish dance, trips to the inlaws, sick baby, and bam. I liked Joel, the candidate from this year, although my time with him was so far only two meetings. I find converts fascinating and I knew Hildegard really liked him, too, and wanted to do the right thing.

So I wrote an email explaining my situation and frustration. I felt bad that I'd become that person. The volunteer who never does her job. I've had them in all realms of life--the parent who never brings back the stuff she volunteered to cut out for the first grade classroom. The girl scout mom who is always late picking her daughter up, doesn't get the cookie form in on time, and always hugs me to tell me what a great job I'm doing. The garden volunteer who never researches that grant. The woman on worship commission who never gets the minutes out (oh, that's me too). The computer teacher volunteer who only comes for the classes she gets along with. We all know this person. And I resent them enough that I hate it when I see myself becoming them. In my defense, I have been Peter Principled: being a mom of two was a breeze, but I have now been promoted to my level of incompetence with three kids. But I still saw the writing on the wall and I sent an email resigning from RCIA effective after Sunday (or whenever I was on the schedule already).

Fr. Miguel wrote back and asked me to reconsider once life slowed down a bit (it is St. Patrick's season after all). And maybe I can make it work. Because Saturday night, I stayed up late and really thought about Benedict's ladder of humility and conversatio morum. I was ready by Sunday morning to give it my best shot, get out of church by 11:50, and get Sophia to Nazareth House by 12:30. I was ready.

66/365 Isn't God Interesting

"Bridgett?" the voice on the phone said when I answered at 9:15. I was busy printing out my notes for RCIA and making a handout for everyone else to follow along (but not read my goofy notes).

"This is," I replied.

"Hi, uh, this is Joel? And I just wanted to call, I didn't know if I even had your number, but I wanted to call because I'm not feeling well and so I'm not going to be there today and I'm hoping that this doesn't mess you up too much."

I told him I hoped he'd feel better, that lots of stuff seemed to be going around these days. And I explained that this actually made life a lot easier, that I was so glad he called because I had a baby who was sick and juggling everything this morning was going to be difficult.

"So you haven't left for church yet?"

Which I didn't laugh in response to, but we are one of those families who breeze in the door at 9:58 after picking Sophia up from Atrium. "No," I answered. "I'm still at home. I'll plan on seeing you next week, then?"

"Ok."

I canceled the print job but looked at the paper in my hand. The idea behind conversatio is that we discover that we have failed God in some way, and we acknowledge that we have, but we do not stop there and become discouraged or make excuses for ourselves that would lead to hardness of heart.

[expletive deleted]

So I took Sophia to church with girl scout cookies. I walked in, and there was Fr. Miguel. We were reasonably early, in fact. I said good morning. I told him Joel was sick. We both shook our heads, smiling at the irony of the past 24 hours of sturm und drang, as Mike would put it.

"Isn't God interesting?" he exclaimed.

So I sat in the second pew and listened to Miguel's homily smack me across the face (hopefully not intentionally but it, well, spoke to me) and took Sophia home to gather up dress and dance paraphernalia. Spent the afternoon with my 93 year old great-aunt and her son and daughter-in-law as we watched my daughter's dance school wow everyone.

67/365 Fall and get up, fall and get up

1. Humility lies in knowing who I am and what my life means. Bidden or not bidden, God is always present.

2. If God is my center and my end, I must accept the will of God. How do I recognize the will of God? How do I know if it is different from my own? How do I know when to resist and when to embrace?

3. I should submit my will to those who have claim on me: my husband, my children, my family, my friends. Those around me are the voice of Christ.

4. Perseverance through difficult conditions allows my heart to endure and embrace the suffering. Life is hard. After the mountain, there is another mountain.

5. Sharing my weaknesses and struggles with someone who has the insight and care to give good advice and help is necessary for spiritual growth. Trying to hide weakness is a set-up for failure. If I admit and own my struggles and work to overcome them, I am moving towards perfection, towards becoming fully human.

6. I should be content with the least of things and positions. I should be thankful for what I have right now and not work to accumulate more than I need.

7. I should admit that I am small and embrace this.

8. I should follow the rules and examples set down for me. Experience can bring holiness.

9. I should control my opinions and my judgment.

10. I should keep laughter in check and know that humor is different from derision and sarcasm.

11. I should speak fewer words, speaking them gently and briefly.

12. I should manifest humility in my bearing and in my heart. I should tread lightly on the earth and act deliberately. Metaphorically, hood up and head down.

68/365 Worship Moments

"Thank you to Lynn for keeping minutes last month," Fr. Miguel says even though Lynn isn't at the meeting. "And thank you to Hildegard for making them readable."

We decided that perhaps we should cut out a few of the Easter Vigil readings, from 7 Old Testament readings to perhaps 5. And then everyone started flipping through and nobody wanted to cut any of them. "We shouldn't leave this decision to liturgists," Bev said with a shake of the head.

We talked about how to accent the Exodus reading, since it's the one that cannot be changed. We have in the past gone straight into this song called the Canticle of the Free, which I like but it has been done many many times in a row. Bev mentioned that in the past, we've broken up the creation story with the psalm interspersed. We let that settle into our minds for a moment and then I remembered my first Vigil, when I was confirmed: "One year we had a slide show accompaniment to that reading." Revulsion all around the table as I described with giggles how awful it had been.

At the end of the meeting, I was putting my glass in the sink in the kitchen and Fr. Miguel said he'd been reading and that, no, the homily was not focused directly on me. But, he pointed out and I agreed, if it seemed that way, then maybe...

69/365 Checklist Stream of Consciousness

Rose is the color of this Sunday. I have to put up something rose to accent the purple. But after the reconciliation service, which I need to attend. Sophia? I don't know if I can swing that. But I'll be there. And I figure something out with the pink stuff.

Then almost immediately I have to do red banners for Palm Sunday. so much red in back, that should be no problem at all. I'd love to add something to that. I have this compulsion to create these days, something that was gone for a long time is back. The house is almost all the way clean, everything but my room. My room is always last. That says something.

Easter flowers. Have to call Fiona....done. "Does Lynn ever get on your nerves?" she asked.

Banner. I know what I want to do. I don't have enough interesting whites to do it. I have the blue and red and some other things. Now is the time. Do it. No. First, finish up the red for Palm Sunday. Eee.

Purple down, red up, red down, white. Easter is exhausting. I hope Leo is feeling better by then or this will do me in. That whole week of hurry up and wait. And the stones. There are no stones for the font. I don't want to use concrete. But I can't spend my life driving through North St. Louis stealing cut stone. Lynn. She isn't going to come through on this and then is going to complain about the result we'll have come up with because she couldn't come through on it. At least that morning Jack, Miguel, Hildegard, and I can put it together and have enough emotional distance from it to laugh.

Easter season is so dang long to keep flowers alive.

Banners will have to be semi-reversible because they hang. Thinking. I love thinking about this. I hate thinking about finding cut stone to build a temporary font.

Glow in the dark strips for the side steps. I wonder if stars will do. I have those in abundance. They really glow. I'll have to try it out. Hmm.

70/365 Lenten Obligations

I gave up yelling at my kids for Lent. I broke it once thus far, in a major way, I remember, but I don't even recall what it was about.

But it's been good. I am remembering that Maeve is not a short 8 year old and the rules are different. Sophia and I have space in our relationship to build up new things. Maeve doesn't walk around like she's being punished for existing.

The difference is so shockingly palpable.

Habits are hard to break, and this was something that grew out of complete lack of resources--last summer I could barely get out of bed due to my thyroid condition. Everything crumbled around me and my kids caught the rough side of that. This fall, things were better, and as winter approached, even more so, but I was in this habit of handling things in a shrill yell up the stairs, in a shoving kids out the door at the last moment to get to school.

And in order to change that, I had to wake up a half hour earlier each day so things could be done in time to leave. I had to climb stairs, which was hard to do without holding onto the wall 9 months ago, but now is no big thing. I had to keep up my end of many bargains and stop setting up my children for abject failure.

It's been 3 weeks of it working. And actually, it wasn't hard.

How many other things, how many other habits, are here that just need a nudge to overthrow them? Imagine how much better life would be if.

71/365 Confessions

Sometime early in Fr. Miguel's stay at our parish, I went to confession. I hadn't been in a while--I grew tired of our former pastor waxing poetic or telling me how young I was. And after the first time sitting in that weird little carpeted room (the walls were carpeted, I mean), I started to realize what reconciliation was for.

I may have it all wrong, but it's not about a litany of tiny nuisance behaviors. And I don't know about everyone else, but my examination of conscience doesn't include a lot of lying, cheating, and stealing. I don't have the inclination to rob banks or have an affair or bear false witness in court. All my sins play out in my relationships. Every single one, in fact, these days. I think it's about learning about yourself and admitting that, yeah, that didn't go so well. And going to confession and talking it out is a way to admit that I am frail and petty and often a bitch. And it helps me to hold back next time. I remember what I say, I listen to what Miguel says in return, and I work to change.

It's more akin to free psychotherapy, frankly, for me these days. Not that it is only that, but it helps put a mirror up to my life and really work to change or to stay on a path of change. Back even 10 years ago, or 15, that's not what this was. I left a confessional about the same as when I went in, except I could check off some box saying that yes, I went to confession this year. But oftentimes I held back more than I said because I didn't want to get into it. Not that I didn't want to admit something, but more that I didn't feel like there was enough time in the evening to explain how it happened. How did I come to be there and why the hell did I stay/do that/say that/be that? Impatient Jesuits or a pastor who didn't handle what was said in complete confidence or a pastor whose relationship with me was all about power. I just didn't need to get into this or that or why. So I wouldn't.

Last year I started bringing things to the table, small things in the grand scheme of things (I have not murdered anyone, for instance, or even anything close to that sort of thing), but still things that nagged me. Why were they still important? Why bring them up now? Because enough time had passed to relieve my own shame? Because finally I felt like here was a priest who knew me well enough to know what I meant? Because I was in my mid-thirties and it was time to let it go? I don't know. Probably a mix of all that, with the majority of it having to do with the person sitting across from me.

I never appreciated reconciliation until then. I had always been staunchly Protestant in my beliefs on the subject: it's between me and God. But Benedict's ladder of humility makes it very clear: do not conceal from the abbot or prioress any sinful thoughts entering your heart, or any wrongs committed in secret, but rather confess them humbly. The struggles I have that I ignore will not go away. Only by recognizing them, admitting them, listening to my heart and seeking out good objective advice will they begin to diminish in power.

So I went to reconciliation last night. And I came home from it with a new will to do right.

72/365 St. Patrick's (Sort Of)

Today is the parade downtown. We have a float in the parade with our Irish dance school, and afterward the girls dance at a bar and grill downtown that is a work program for a Catholic homeless shelter--teaching folks how to work in a restaurant to give them skills to go out and find good work doing just that.

A lot about our school is like any other. We go to shows and we go to feiseanna (that would be competitions). We spend a lot of time doing hair in side rooms at nursing homes before the girls head out to dance on the cafeteria floors. There is competition between some girls, there are teams that get along, there are parents whose animus is only thinly veiled. And there is a lot of what I thought was lip service paid to Catholic tradition. Lots of references to Our Lady and asking what parish we go to and all that. Here in St. Louis it's expected that if you're not Catholic, you at least understand Catholic culture. And most of this I cynically accepted as a load of blarney.

But then sitting there eating my Irish stew and drinking my Irish coffee and watching my girls dance, I realized that McMurphy's Grill isn't usually open on Saturdays. They're a lunch place for downtown workers. But they're open for the St. Patrick's Day parade (the Saturday before St. Pat's). So that we can come and dance. Huh. And then in the bathroom a woman with a name tag said to me that "when they hired me they said I'd make more money today than any other day of the year and they're right, it's crazy kind of busy."

And suddenly I was glad. Glad that we dance there on St. Patrick's Day instead of some smoky bar, or even just back at the studio for parents (most of the patrons were connected to the school). It seemed like we meant it.

73/365 Parish Pay

We finally signed up for Parish Pay, the internet-based automated take-out-of-your-account tithing thingie. I think that's the official title, right?

I was on parish council when this first became an option, and our response then was wait and see. See if other parishes do it and then give it a try (or not). Well, two years later the verdict from parishes nearby, ones in similar financial situations, was give it a try. So we picked this one (there were a couple of internet-based automated take-out-of-your-account tithing thingies) because other parishes had used it with success. And we opened it up to the parish.

Several families started using it. And it was our intention to start using it as well. It was our intention in November. And then December. In January I sat down to do it but didn't have my checkbook in hand for the routing number. I put it off. In February it was out of sight, out of mind. But as we started doing our taxes and had our statement from the parish, it reminded me and I got it done in March, to start in April.

I looked at what we officially gave last year, compared to what I assumed we gave in my head. Maybe some weekends we forgot. Or what? I guess there it is in black and white.

With Parish Pay, we give whether we're there or not, in a once-a-month deposit. Based on that, we are actually going to give a little less per week than the check I usually write. But overall we will increase our giving by a nice percentage.

Now, maybe my goal is to get to church more often....since my money is already attending.

74/365 Banner over me is love

Do you remember that song? Was it from Hi God? Peter built the church on the rock of our faith, his banner over me is love.

I have some work to do. Palm Sunday is take down the purple, put up the red. That's only a few moments away from now. Then for Holy Week, the red comes down and nothing goes up until Easter Vigil, when the color is white.

We're not using my banner from last year, which is fine with me. I've hung it in my guest room/sewing room over a vinyl cling on the wall that says "No rest for the talented." Ha. But we're using a banner, or rather a series of banners, for Easter.

Ones I have to make. And not just solid fabric hemmed on the side and dropped down from the choir loft. I'm quilting again. I'm excited--I have the plan drawn up and I am confident that I have the skill and patience and dexterity to pull it off--and the materials since I've been to the fabric store.

Now I have to find the time. Come on Leo. Give me the time.

75/365 St. Eusebia

Today is St. Eusebia's Day. Not quite the same as tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day or Friday's St. Joseph's Day. But I like her story, as confusing and medieval as it is. And bizarre.

She lived in the 7th century, at the border of Belgium and France. She's the daughter of Adalbald and Rictrudis, both saints themselves. Her father Adalbald, the son of a St. Gertrude, married Rictrudis and later paid for it with his life--his inlaws murdered him. Rictrudis, fearful that her family would come after her and her daughter, sent Eusebia away to live with her grandmother Gertrude, who by that time was an abbess at Hamage. There she lived and grew to the age of 12, when Gertrude died and named Eusebia as her successor.

Well, a 12 year old in charge of a women's monastery didn't sit too well with several people, including her mother, who herself was an abbess at Marchiennes. Rictrudis ordered that Hamage and Marchiennes merge together under a single abbess (herself) and brought the nuns to live at Marchiennes, mostly against their will.

Eusebia and many of the nuns from Hamage wished to return to their home and rule themselves, but remained at Marchiennes under Rictrudis until enough time had passed that Rictrudis felt it would be prudent for Hamage to reopen under the guidance of Eusebia. The accounts I've read say that upon her return to Hamage with the "dissident nuns" she had grown into the position and ruled well until her death in 680.

The idea that she and those dissident nuns didn't immediately trot back to Hamage and snub Rictrudis is what I focus on here. They waited it out. It is so hard to wait it out, to know when the right time has come to do God's will, when your will and God's might be in alignment after all. It could be that Eusebia would have done a great job even at 12--it could also have been just as true that she would have been weak and petty her whole life and never come to be a good leader. Knowing the moment when one can say to someone in authority "I am ready and I am leaving," is tricky, as a child, a parent, an employee, an apprentice, a student. I know when I have said it--sometimes too early, other times just right. I watch as Sophia and Maeve say it, too. I try not to be too Rictrudis about it all. But I give enough tether to let them try their hand. At least that's my plan.

But the most interesting thing? As I read this account and really looked at the names, I thought to myself, "Adalbald? Gertrude of Ostravant? Wait."

In a bizarre twist, I realized that these names seemed more than just amusingly medieval. These names were familiar. These names were in my family tree, the ridiculously over-researched branches that stem back into France and Germany and Belgium. I'm not a descendant or direct relative of Eusebia, but I am of her grandmother Gertrude (this is not the only medieval saint in my genealogical search, but the first one that I found to be a saint after I already had her name and information in the tree). Just so happened I had nothing to say today and thought, "hey, who is the saint of the day?"

Which makes this kind of creepy.

No, it makes it really creepy.

St. Eusebia, pray for me. I am not about to forget you now!

76/365 The Church in Ireland

So...

The pope writes a letter about the sex abuse crisis in Ireland. Which is a big thing (the crisis, not the letter). And at the end of the letter, after admonishing bishops and saying how sorry he is, he offers some concrete initiatives for Ireland.

The people of Ireland are to fast and pray and participate in Eucharistic Adoration.

THAT will fix it, right?

77/365 Spring

It's getting warmer here. Last spring is a blur for me. I'm not sure I even really remember Easter Vigil. Did I spend it in the Utah Vestibule? Probably. I don't even have a record of it at South City Musings. Didn't say a word. I was exhausted and it was the new growing season and rejoicing and its record is missing along with the 1890 census.

I look at my yard, with the forsythia actually blooming and the crocus done for the year already and I realize that life goes on even if I don't have a hand in it. The yard is a mess, but it is relatively alive. So strange, staring out my back window and seeing the garlic growing with no help from me at all. There it goes.

It will happen with or without me. But I'm learning this Lent that I'd rather be a part of it than not.

78/365 Less and Less Like Me All the Time

"Got it all sent away," my sister-in-law says with a nod. We're standing in her kitchen after my niece's birthday party. She's talking about her annulment papers.

I mention that our former bishop, now in Rome, is planning to crack down on American annulments. "He thinks there are too many. When I read that, I thought about you and hoped you'd gotten things in."

One of Mike's uncles shakes his head. "It would be just like him to stick his nose in there. Did he run out of Polish parishes to abuse?"

I know, many people these days who enter into a marriage don't do it for the long haul. And there was a time when Mike and I hit a rocky patch and things started avalanching downhill. We saved it--and other people give up and walk away. I don't think either of these things are true in the case of my sister-in-law, and I suspect she'll get (earn?) her annulment.

But once again, where was the church in these marriages? If it is so difficult to divorce in the church, why is it so easy to marry? Because an Engaged Encounter weekend or pre-cana with a celibate priest really doesn't give you any inkling what you're headed for. Warm fuzzy stories of wedding days long ago and first babies and family planning do not prepare you for lead poisoning, lost jobs, miscarriages, anger, and financial straits. Sharing life with another person is so hard, it's a wonder really that it works as often as it does.

And there, there my church goes again, getting less and less pastoral with every step. Fitting into the church outside my parish boundaries gets more difficult with every new pronouncement from Rome. As Lyle Lovett puts it, But what's riches to you/ Just ain't riches to me.

And yet I'm clinging to my Catholicism like a lichen to a rock. There's no other place for me to go. I've found the best I can and here I stay until they pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Or until my demographic group matches something Burke has decided to go after and I'm not allowed through the doors anymore.

79/365 History: Sophia's Baptism I

I was very pregnant with Sophia. Fr. Bill and I sat down to talk about the baptism, scheduled for September. I had lovely godparents in mind--my friend Rachel from college, and her husband Marvin. Rachel was a convert and they had just gotten married the September before.

But the snag was that they were about to leave for a mission trip to Nicaragua with the Jesuits. They wouldn't be here for the baptism.

"I know you can have one proxy," he says, his hand on his chin, thinking.

"Yeah," I agree. "You can have two--I mean, I was baptized and my uncle Pat was in the navy and my godmother Ann was too far away to make it either. My grandparents stood in."

He looks at me like now he's suddenly concerned about my Catholicism--like, am I really baptized.

"I don't think you can do that," he tells me with finality.

"Could you at least find out for me?" I plead, exhausted by the minutiae.

He finds out, weeks later. Had to ask a canon lawyer, he tells me. And yes, it's ok. We're on.

80/365 History: Sophia's Baptism II

I have this baby. And I'm sick. So sick. Someone--my mother? my husband?--calls Fr. Bill and he comes to see me. I know I must be in bad shape because after he does the blessing of the sick, he stands at the foot of my bed. Staring. Nobody is asking me how the baby is (all those new mom guides warn you--after the baby is born, nobody notices you anymore, just the baby--but this isn't true for me. Everyone is staring at me).

We aren't friendly anymore at this point--when I left to have this baby, the last week of school, things went badly. That's putting it mildly. I'll blame it on me, even though I probably only hold 75% of the blame. It was a long time coming and I refused to see anything in shades of gray and then...I had too much to say.

We'd gone to lunch so I could tell him how ticked off I was. But it didn't work out that way and he wound up convincing me to consider volunteering at the school the way I'd planned--the plan was a year of volunteering a few hours a week and the next year back in the classroom. But even if I'd done the year of volunteering, the school closed the next year and I can't say I was upset.

But later, I mean, it's been almost 9 years, I softened and let it roll off my back. I survived--Joey is gone, Sr. Fern, Fr. Bill, everyone, really, except a few students and parents who adored me. I should have stayed in my classroom with my head down and did my job. I know better now.

At the moment, though, I realized I was going to have this baby baptized at the parish I no longer felt like I belonged to. I debated calling Mike's uncle and doing this down in Cairo, except my family wasn't in Cairo...I was aggravated, but we scheduled it for September 16 solidly and went with it.

81/365 Jesus' Laundry

Ethel called. Hildegard said she would.

So you'll do the third Sunday, she tells me. They were down to just Ethel at this point and needed to increase numbers or else the laundry would never be done. I thought about Faustina shaking her head at me when I asked if she'd be willing to take care of altar linens: "My husband told me I have too much to take care of with my family's laundry, I can't do Jesus' laundry too."

But even though my ironing board is a permanent fixture right now in my library, and we hide baskets of clothes in the basement laundry room to momentarily get the house clean, I'm going to be doing Jesus' laundry once a month.

Mostly purificators, Ethel says. Rinse them in plain water and discard the water someplace in the ground--she waters her plants with it. Then wash them like anything you want to keep pure white and happens to be covered in wine stains. I'm thinking oxyclean myself. This summer will find the backyard line covered in little white linen cloths.

I plan to iron them and return them to the sacristy in individual plastic bags--produce bags that I've washed and dried for reuse, of course--all with notes pinned on them marked "purificator".

Miguel will love that. The little old lady I'm replacing was exact about things. I have standards to meet.