5/365 AKA

"So I'm Joanna?" she asks me. She reads my blog. I'm breathless, in from the cold into a crowded church for the migration mass. We're heading up to the choir loft because I can see it's hopeless to try to find a spot in the pews.

"Well, I had to come up with something," I defend myself.

"What about Hildegard?" she suggests. It's a name I use occasionally online (my ravelry account, for instance), although I'm more enamored with other identities for myself.

I love Hildegard. Not technically a saint of the Church (I believe the story goes that she was right at the point when the Church started asking for more proof of sainthood than before, like numbers of miracles and so forth, and her supporters never got the stuff together. But everyone refers to her as such). She is part of the journey from "I think I'm going to leave the Church" to where I am now.

Briefly. Maeve was born and the diocese was going to close my parish. I had fallen out of favor with the pastor and I had stopped being involved in parish life beyond the occasional softball game or chatting after mass. I spent about 10 months wringing my hands not knowing what to do or think. I started reading Thomas Kelly and was drawn to the Society of Friends. But Mike really wanted me to give it one more try and so I went on the women's retreat in the fall of '05. There, I was briefly introduced to Hildegard and the amazing life she led. Intrigued, I read some more on my own, which led me to the Rule of Benedict, which led me where I am now. And along the way I jumped back into parish life.

So given that she's one of my only readers and all that, I'll go ahead and make the change. It's only the 5th day after all. Still early in. Hildegard it is.

10/365 Ordinariness

Ordinary Time is so named because it is counted, like ordinal numbers (first, second, third, and so on). You have Sundays of Advent, you have Sundays of Lent and of Easter, but you have Sundays IN Ordinary Time. In fact, there is no First Sunday in Ordinary Time because by the time you get to the first Sunday, it's the second week. So it's the Sunday of the second week, and therefore, the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time.

This is the sort of thing that I love about Catholicism and probably would like about other ancient denominations and religions (Orthodox Christianity, Judaism). It's like a flaky crust--the many many layers of butter and sugar and flour symbolic of the humanity layered on top of itself over thousands of years. At some point, this counting was so important to someone. It probably is still important to someone. For the average churchgoer, maybe not. It took me a long time to notice seasonal changes at church beyond "C&E". But for the most part, I look at words like of vs. in or first vs. second and I just smile. It's kind of cozy.

Today we undecorated. The evergreen trees weren't too evergreen anymore, and while the poinsettias lasted remarkably well, the wreaths were crispy. Christmas was over for another year.

More than the end of Easter, which of course falls at the beginning of the school summer break, this end always brought a bit of sadness for me. The specialness of Christmas is replaced with...January. With ice and salt and the inevitable winter headcold. It indeed does feel ordinary, and not meaning counted. Like bringing your lunch in an ordinary brown paper bag. Wearing plain old ordinary school uniforms. I remember the first year I was in charge of this, sitting in a front pew and staring and the blankness behind the altar and feeling oddly empty.

This year wasn't as bad. Maybe it's because I'm taking megadoses of vitamin D. But maybe more than that, it's because this chunk of ordinary time, mardi gras season really, is full of good things in a way that the brown paper lunchbag is not. Next Sunday is the wedding at Cana. Following that, the many parts of the Body of Christ. The month ends with Paul's treatise on love (Cor 13:4-13), which many consider appropriate for weddings but I desperately want read at my funeral. Early February has fishers of men, "Here I am, Lord" from Isaiah, and the Beatitudes. It's a lot to think on while in my ordinary life, I am busy too with Irish Dance competitions and girl scout cookie sales and meetings, meetings, meetings.

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (Atrium) divides the year first by color and then gives it simpler names: the purple is the preparation for the feast, the white is the feast (or red for the Holy Spirit), and green is the growing time. Later they fill in the real names and count the weeks and all that but I like the idea of green not having the connotation of ordinary but instead of growth. Grow, grow, grow.

11/365 And Now...

And now Miguel. (Which school children with obsessive English teachers, as well as obsessive English teachers, will note as the title of a Newbery award winning children's book).

It is interesting to write a reflection a day--on any topic--and I've been doing so for 3 1/2 years now. Something strikes me and I put it down on paper (or in pixels). A year of people I know and used to know--back when nobody was reading anything I had to say online, at least nobody I know. I got to know lots of people from around the country doing the same project. Then I did a year of songs that turned into an autobiography somehow. This past year I worked on a year of conversations from my daily life. And now this--which is sort of a blending of a lot of different things, but the biggest change is that I'm writing about goings on at a place where the people I'm writing about see me all the time. Know your audience, and yet...write as if everyone you knew were dead. So it's fun thinking about what to say, but then editing myself is a careful job. Because I am known to be caustic. And I go to these meetings...

So more than ever before people are talking to me in person about what I have to say. Now, it's like 4 people, not like 40, but still. And yesterday at church undecorating my pastor made a suggestion for his pseudonym.

The whole idea of changing the names is funny since the only people reading know all the players--well, not completely true. But if anyone really wanted to try, they could figure it out. Maybe not everyone. I might be able to disguise some folks. But not all.

On the other hand, I like pseudonyms. I have several handles online, all very clever, trust me. In college I played a long-running roleplaying game character named Ursula who basically became an alter-ego. I know the importance of names. I dropped my first name when I got married but have unofficially (not through the Social Security office) taken it back. Getting married also saddled me with a big mispronounced German last name and hid my nice alliterative Irish one in the middle. Becoming an oblate gave me a set of initials at the end of my name that I can't see ever using in any capacity but I like rolling them around in my mind: OblSB.

So when he says, "Miguel," I know there's a story. My history with Miguels could be summed up in the phrase "Lost in Translation" and this would not have been a name I would have considered. So there must be a reason.

"For Miguel Pro. He's a Blessed. Jesuit priest in Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century." He tells me a bit more and I know I'll be looking him up later.

Well, I did. And once again I'm sitting here thinking that our parish got lucky or blessed or something to bring this pastor to us--the role models we choose for ourselves always tell on us, and this, I think, is no exception. So Fr. Miguel and Sr. Hildegard. You haven't heard near the last from them.

Now I want a name. But I have plenty already.

199/365 Happy St. Bridget's Day

I'm Bridgett. Two t's. Blame my father. He wanted Brigid, the story goes, and my mother rejected that idea. So Bridgett was the second choice somehow. Who knows? I grew up knowing no Bridgetts at all until 10th grade when Bridgett Bailey was a year ahead of me in high school. I've also known a Bridget Birkby and a Bridget Blaes as well--my last name was Blake growing up. Don't know what that alliteration thing is about either. Anyway, I didn't meet any Bridgettes, Brigids, or Bridgittes growing up, although people misspelled my name that way a lot. The most common misspelling was the one T, however.

When I was pregnant with Leo, I started fooling around with genealogy, I realized that the one T spelling was definitely the most common, but that ship manifests sometimes added a T. My great-great-great-grandmother is from the Irish diaspora, and her name is spelled both ways, Bridget and Bridgett. Being illiterate, it probably didn't matter much to her. And it started shifting my brain a little bit about that extra T. I no longer got my feathers ruffled when people misspelled my name. At least they weren't calling me Barbara or Gretchen (the two most common incorrect guesses at my name by people I've already been introduced to, don't ask me why).

I'm Irish, well, Irish-German-English. My family surnames range from Donnelly and Dawes to Grothhoff and Frick. But one thing I'm not is Swedish. There are two famous St. Bridgets. One is St. Brigid of Ireland, pronounced "Breed", whose saint day is February 1. And then there is St. Bridget of Sweden, who is remembered today. I've always noted the first on the calendar, not the second. But Fr. Miguel sent me a "happy St. Bridget's Day" twitter message today, and you know what? It's like the second T. Whatever. It's all good.

289/365 Worship Commission October Ramblings

As Miguel put it afterward, it was going so well...

It was a catch-up meeting. Lots of dates. Lots of things coming up, with Advent and Christmas and all that. November alone is a meeting's worth. We went through things bit by bit and made decisions and set up meetings for specific needs. Decided on a Christmas novena this year instead of weekly prayer services, which I totally went for, and the only moment I flinched was when Hildegard turned to Lynn and asked if she was ok with that. I thought to myself, please don't stir the anthill. But even that was fine.

We were almost home free and clear. Sr. Vanda had details about November and the mass of remembrance (and other details from last year we, ironically, couldn't remember). I love decorating for November more than any other month of the liturgical year, with December right behind (but December takes more work). But then, we were almost done and had a light laugh about the tradition of the monthly prayer focus--something that was started a few years ago for one reason, but now is just something that goes in the bulletin. But now we do it and it's a tradition! And the last thing on the list was the changes to the languages at mass.

Now, me personally? I think that changes here or there are a symptom, not a problem. The problem is that the hierarchy has decided that a specific English translation of a Latin version of a ritual is better than another--for God's sake, what is wrong with us that we're so caught up in this? But, on the other hand, it's happening and this is not where I'm staking my excommunication claim. If I'm forced out of the Church, it's not going to be over "and with your spirit" instead of "and also with you." I can rattle off a dozen things that would come before this. Well, maybe not a dozen, I mean, I do still belong to the Catholic Church. But there are things I disagree with. There are things I wish we did better. There are things my local church does so well and other places just don't and I wish that weren't true. But the changes in the mass? That's not why I'm Catholic.

But Lynn got her panties in a big wad over it and said it was a great loss for the Church. That people were going to be angry. That she was angry. Miguel told her she could choose to be angry, or not be angry, and then she said that anger was an emotion, not a choice.

Upon reflection, I think they're both right. I think visceral emotion is something that happens, it's like the fight or flight response or maternal instinct. We get angry. We get sad or shocked or joyful--if I witness a decapitation accident on Grand on my way home from church, there is a reaction I don't control. But on the other hand, if I'm still seething 18 years later about something that happened that really didn't matter in the end, then that's a choice. Or maybe she was confusing "emotions are a choice" with the talk about emotions not being necessarily bad or good, that anger in and of itself isn't a sin, it's what you do about it that matters. Or maybe she's just Lynn. Either way, I flipped through that book quickly looking for what I could possibly be angry about, and I decided right then that this wasn't where I was going to be angry. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at most of it. Not at the big words they used in place of small words, but most of it was just fine. Whatever.

Whatever.

Lynn left in a bit of a huff. I wonder if she'll be back.

Oh, but the best part (besides the after meeting drinking and chatting) was right after Lynn left. I took out my drawings of the Advent banners and showed them to Miguel (I waited until Lynn left because I'm tired of flinching). I'd shown him, sort of, badly, on a napkin after the mass last week during the mission, and he'd been skeptical. But when I showed them to him in color, drawn for real, he said, "oh, these are so much better!" and liked them. Hildegard too.

So now I'm ready to put them together. And the Presbyterian ones. They'll be nice too.

361/365 My Name

They call me Dearbhla
They call me Asumpta
They call me Atracta
They call me Maeve
That's not my name, that's not my name
That's not my my my my my name
(Up and Over It "Chav Ballerina")

It's Maeve's favorite song. It's about being an Irish dancer and being anonymous in your wig and makeup and stiff dress and nobody knows who you are--so they call you a variety of Irish girl first names. Maeve loves it, of course, because it says "they call me Maeve/that's not my name." She thinks it's hilarious.

She was singing it as she got out of the car today to go to church. And then the homily was about names. About the importance of knowing someone's name. About how, once you know a person's name, it is the beginning of a relationship. That before that point, a person is whatever you assume she is--whatever ethnic group or minority culture or religion, but once you learn her name, that starts to fall away.

This is, of course, completely true and I have nothing to add. I think about the mom at my girls' school, Muslim, wearing her hijab, and how at first I didn't know how to be with her. Then I realized she was just like me, only not like me. And then it was fine. She likes the Onion and Red Dwarf and thinks kid music programs at school are ridiculous. Her husband is a Croatian, a convert (I believe) and she converted, too. Her first name is Jenny for goodness sake. So I guess I did have something to add.

My first name is Sarah. I keep it hidden because I was never called Sarah growing up. I even dropped it when I got married, but I picked it back up. Tradition or something. I was named for my great-aunt, who died this past year at 93. The name I go by is Bridgett, which is a variable spelling of a name with many spellings. My parents were going for an Irish-American theme there (I think about the rap group House of Pain all the time when I say these names): Bridgett, Ian, Bevin, and Colleen. Besides Bevin, I'm not sure if any of those names are even used in Ireland anymore (and I doubt Ian ever was). Bridgett, though, however you spell it, was. And in fact, one of my diaspora immigrant ancestors is a Bridget. Or Bridgit. Or Bridgett. She was illiterate: what did she know? And she married an Edward (Mike's first name as well), becoming the first Bridget Blake in my line. I wasn't technically named for her, since my parents didn't even know she existed, but I like to make that happen in my head anyway. She was born about 1838 and was here by 1855. She is a puzzle.

After that, my maiden name is Blake, a name I would have loved to have used for a child's first name but both my sisters have laid claim to it. If and when they ever have children. Blake is Irish, or maybe English, although Edward Blake was from Galway. He committed suicide in East St. Louis after gunning a man down in his bar. I yearn to know more.

I gave up Blake, although it's still part of my name, for Mike's name: Wissinger. There's not a day that goes by that I don't regret this move. I already have to spell my first name. Now I get to spell this one, too. Every time. And, with the way it's pronounced in Mike's family (WESS-singer with singer like the sewing machine), I have a choice: people can spell it or pronounce it. Legally mine, but not mine?

I mentioned this on some blog a few years back, but I have a set of initials that follow my name that are essentially meaningless except in the right context. Like my dad who could technically sign his name with RN at the end, but why would he, since he's been an accountant since the 80s? I am a Benedictine oblate, which means that if I ever decided to, say, write from that perspective for publication, I could sign my name Bridgett, OblSB. I do sign my church banners that way, but otherwise it simply doesn't matter to anyone else. But I like having it there as a reminder.

That's my name.