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.

22/365 St. Joseph vs. Infant of Prague

It's an older story...from a worship commission meeting.

We were sitting at the table and the fact that our school building hasn't sold came up again. Someone--I don't remember who it was--mentioned St. Joseph and maybe burying a statue of him in the garden to help sell it.

See, it's a superstition, or devotion if you will, to pray to St. Joseph to sell your house. The usual method is to bury a statue of St. Joseph in your yard and then when it sells, dig him up and put him in a prominent place in your home. Don't leave him behind! Now, the details change with the storyteller. Some say to bury him right side up. Some say upside-down. Facing towards the house. Facing away. My parents always buried him upside-down facing away--and they sold 6 houses between 1985 and 2000. They still have the cheapy little St. Joseph statue on the mantel in their living room.

Hazel was sitting there at the table and wrinkled up her nose. "That's just superstition. We shouldn't do that." She sort of pooh-poohed it with her hand and shifted in her chair. Of course it is, right? But any little bit has to help, right? I don't know. I don't think it probably matters since I'm not the owner looking to sell (although I must admit I considered burying one in my neighbor's front yard when his house went up for sale).

Later in the meeting Fr. Miguel mentioned the Infant of Prague. Now, we have one of these statues in the back of church. Many churches do. They dress up the statue in fancy little dresses (Miguel mentioned that someone at a former parish said with a sigh, "Isn't she beautiful?" when, of course, the Infant of Prague is the Infant Jesus...). A question came up about perhaps why we would have such a devotion in our parish, why that statue, why not Gertrude or Bridget or various Our Lady's? A couple of folks mentioned that the Infant of Prague had many superstitions surrounding him--most involving money.

My own grandmother told me once that if Mike and I were having money trouble, we should place an Infant of Prague statue in our front hall, facing out the door, with a dollar bill under it. "You'll never have money trouble then." I mentioned this, and Hazel perked up.

"Oh yes," she said. And she went on to describe the devotion, as she called it, in great detail. And I remember sitting there thinking about the earlier conversation about Joseph. I didn't think she was wrong or a hypocrite or anything like that. I just wondered about how things like this get started and why they continue in some houses but not others. Why do some people bless their front doors for Epiphany? Why do others say St. Theresa the Little Flower novenas? Some people I know are obsessed with the rosary. Others with the Divine Mercy whatever that is. What's with all those icons of Our Lady of Perpetual Help? St. Christopher statues? The Sacred Heart of Jesus? Praying to St. Jude and having to give something back? For that matter, I'm always singing the little St. Anthony rhyme: Tony Tony look around, something's lost that must be found! I love St. Anthony. He's good to me.

Along with the layers and layers of intricate details involving the church year, the mass, the little rules that have more to do with us than God, I love these things. I love that we develop these devotions, or superstitions. I love that my mother used to burn palms on stormy nights when my father was working. That we said a Hail Mary before we left the driveway, every time we got in the car.

I don't have an Infant of Prague. And I don't plan on moving so I don't have a St. Joseph. But when my sister started looking for a house? I lit a St. Joseph votive in my front hall. Just to keep me thinking about it.

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!

141/365 Venerable Bede

Random thoughts:

Today is the feast day of Venerable Bede, one of those saints of the Church who don't go by Saint. He's technically St. Bede, as far as I know (I mean, I first looked at a monastery in Illinois for an oblate program, and it was St. Bede's) but goes by Venerable. Pope Leo XIII named him so in 1899. He lived in the 8th century and is the only Englishman (by birth) known as a doctor of the church.

St. Bede's Monastery is on a flat featureless plain known as Central Illinois.

But the Venerable Bede was not flat and featureless. He wrote extensively--one of those hypergraphic monks who gave us all the information we have on a specific time and place, in this case, the Church of medieval Britain through 729. He was an oblate in the old meaning of the term--a child dropped off at the monastery to be raised by the monks, perhaps eventually taking vows. He did, and was ordained at age 30. He survived the plague when it ran through his monastery--he and the abbot were the only two to make it.

We don't know much about him. In two passages he mentions being married, and this puzzles scholars--could he be speaking metaphorically, or did he really mean he had a wife? It's not like he mentions her by name and gives her family history, and frankly, he was big on the history. But how much metaphor is appropriate? Don't you know you're writing for the future, for generations who aren't going to understand poetic license unless it can be txtd 2 frnds?

He was a Benedictine, of course, in the early centuries after the writing of the Rule, back when there were monasteries in England that weren't sacked and burned down and forced to fall into the swamp. He followed the same rule the sisters at Clyde do today. The same one I do my best to live and breathe within.

His name is rare for his time period. It probably comes from an old English word, bed, with a long e, meaning prayer.

My name means fiery arrow. Prayer is good, too, though.

150/365 Bartholomew

St. Bartholomew was probably a good friend of Philip's, and maybe wrote his own gospel (it is lost, but referred to in other writings). Some early disciple went to Armenia, India, and Asia Minor, leaving writings behind, and tradition holds that it was Bartholomew. Often he is equated with the apostle in John's Gospel called Nathaniel--since he fills a similar role there (friend of Philip, no other reference to Bartholomew) as he fills in the synoptics.

But what we remember best about Bartholomew, or at least I do from my days in Catholic school with Butler's Lives of the Saints, is that Bartholomew was flayed alive. Not dead afterwards, he was then beheaded. Because of this, most depictions of St. Bartholomew involve a tanner's knife, and sometimes more graphic depictions of a man with his skin draped over one arm.

Here, he is a fig branch. Bartholomew, known as Nathaniel in John's Gospel, was brought to Jesus by his friend Philip. He doubted that anything good come from Nazareth, but came with Philip to meet Jesus. Upon meeting him, Jesus told him that he knew who he was--he had seen him under the fig tree. Nathaniel immediately believed in him, but Jesus told him to wait--there would be so much more he would come to see. (I paraphrase from John 1:45-50).

I think I prefer the fig branch.

152/365 Andrew

Martyrs. Peter gets the keys to the kingdom, Matthew gets money bags, and James the Greater a traveling bag and staff, but most of the apostles are remembered for the way they died. Andrew is known for the X-shaped cross, which is supposedly how he was martyred, crucifixion, but a different twist. Of course, Andrew was more than how he died. He's also the patron saint of women who wish to become mothers, which, trust me, is a large group who need a good patron. He also covers sore throats, Greece, Scotland, and fishermen.

And Andrew was one of the disciples in John 1:35-39 who saw Jesus pointed out to him by John the Baptist as the Lamb of God. This is a peculiar passage that was our reflection at the beginning of our RCIA year. When this is pointed out to them, they follow Jesus. He asks him what they are looking for. In what must have been an awkward moment, one of them replies, "Teacher, where are you staying?" Instead of giving them a direct answer (with my cousin; at the inn; by the lake) he says, "Come and see."

We are all seeking, yearning for answers, connections, but we don't even know the questions we should be asking. Where are you staying. Not something profound. Like something Maeve would ask--"what her name?"--as she points to a girl walking up the sidewalk. Or like the first question I asked Sr. Jean Frances--does anyone come from further away than Kansas City?--Instead of asking something like I am searching for a way to grow my faith and have a relationship with God again because it's been a long frustrating time and do you think this might help me? Even that is a befuddled question, like a stammered "Where are you staying?" but Jesus sees it for more than that. It is the beginning of search.

Andrew found the beginning of answer there, too. For he goes to his brother Simon Peter and tells him, bluntly, "We have found the Messiah."

173/365 It will be one of those parish legends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

219/365 Sts. Gracilian and Felicissima

While in jail because of his faith in the early bits of the 4th century, Gracilian cured Felicissima, a young blind girl, restoring her sight. She then converted. But under the rule of Diocletian, ya know, it wasn't such a good time to be a Christian.

They were both beheaded, probably during the great persecutions of the Diocletian era, around about 304.

And that is our Saint of the Day story.

259/365 Mary Morphing Video

My mother-in-law sent this to me. I've seen others like it, other "art through history" morphing videos. Anyway. I wish they'd included more modern versions, but they might have been hard to add.

300/365 All Saints Day

It's not a holy day of obligation, because it falls on a Monday. But it's All Saints Day. Here are the saints in my household:

Brigid: The Irish one, not the St. Bridget of Sweden. Naomh Brigid of Kildare. Patron of dairy maids, newborns, midwives, travelers, children whose parents are not married, blacksmiths, sailors, and poets. This is her cross, too, which is in several places in our house.

Michael: the Archangel. Patron of, well, what isn't he the patron of? Fencing, hatmakers, Toronto, barrelmakers, all of Germany, radiologists, police officers, etc.

Sarah: the wife of Abraham, patron of gypsies. Matriarch to the Jewish faith.

Edward: there are several to choose from and I don't know which. I like Edward Oldcorne, who isn't a saint yet, but simply beatified ("simply"). He was a Jesuit who was martyred after the Gunpowder Plot in England.

Sophia: Allegorical saint, name meaning Wisdom. Martyr Sophia in the orthodox church. Mother of Faith, Hope, and Charity (hence, allegory).

Beatrix da Silva: courtier in the 15th century Portuguese court who retired to a Cisterian monastery and later founded her own order.

Leo: I haven't picked a Leo yet. Leo the Great was a pope...but there's a Franciscan called Brother Leo I like better.

Benedict: Duh. He also has his own cross, on the back of his medieval medal that I wear all the time.

Other saints that we're fond of: Peter the Apostle, Hildegard of Bingen, Patrick, Venerable Bede, Bernadette, Teresa of Avila, Mechtilde of Magdeburg, Anthony, Nicholas, Alphonsus Liguori, Joseph, Kateri Tekakwitha, and a variety of folks that aren't considered beatified or canonized by the church. But maybe I'll save them for tomorrow, the Feast of All Souls.