To Save a Life Rather than Destroy It

Last night I was thinking that I wish we had been able to do something more in the parish where I work for this Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children, but I've been sick and missed a couple of days of work week before last, and then we had a day off, and then somebody died and we had to plan the funeral, and the children are having their first confessions this evening so we needed programs and certificates, and some of them needed Baptismal certificates. With one thing another, we just haven't had time. So, I was sitting, distracted, in Mass this morning hoping that the petitions would at least be appropriate (they were) and then came the Gospel, not something special for the day, just the Gospel for the Second Wednesday in Ordinary Time, Mark 3:1-6.

Jesus entered the synagogue. There was a man there who had a withered hand. They watched Jesus closely to see if he would cure him on the sabbath so that they might accuse him. He said to the man with the withered hand, “Come up here before us.” Then he said to the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” But they remained silent. Looking around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart, Jesus said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately took counsel with the Herodians against him to put him to death.

 Distracted though I was, this managed to get my attention. It seemed oddly appropriate for the day--Jesus in conflict with the law over the value of a life, and putting his own life in danger for the sake of another. I love it when this happens, and I've known it to happen so many times. You plan a retreat, or a Mass in honor of some event or another, and the reading of the day turns out to be just what you need. It doesn't seem like this should work, but somehow it does.

Later in the day, a man came to the door looking for something to eat. He was walking with one of those aluminum canes with 3 feet, and one of his arms was obviously very weak. I was wondering how he was ever going to carry the food back home on foot, but he told me to double-bag the food and it would be okay. While I was in the back getting some things together, he started talking to another man who was there about how he had had a stroke a short time ago and how he had been so afraid to die, but that while he was in the hospital he had learned that there really was a God. He was telling us how great the nurses were to him because when they found him on the floor in the bathroom they had helped him up and then put an alarm on the bed so they'd know if he got up again. (This is an incredibly humbling job.) Then I got to thinking that there Jesus was again, taking care of that man with the withered arm.

Before I leave work in the evenings, I try to get to the church to say the Angelus, and today when I walked into the little atrium that leads to both the church and the parish hall, there were 6 pairs of shoes of various sizes lined up in a row next to the wall like they were about to parade into the church. When I got inside, there was a family kneeling in a row and holding hands at the foot of the steps that lead up to the sanctuary. Besides the six shoe-less people, there were two babies. The mother didn't seem much older than the two teenage girls and the man with them could have been one of the children or the father. I just couldn't tell. The mother was praying that in spite of the big mess that they were, they were come there to pray to Jesus today. Then they talked for a while, and the kids were dancing around (I'm pretty sure they aren't Catholic.) And then the mother said they had never had a group hug, but they were going to have one, so they got in a huddle and said the Our Father, and left. About a minute later, one of the little girls who was about 8 or 9, and with whom I had had a certain amount of eye contact and exchanged a few smiles, came back into the church and said, "God bless you." 

All-in-all a pretty good day.

All around us everyday there are people whose lives are hovering between salvation and destruction. We talk about the Culture of Life, and the Culture of Death, and we think of them in terms of abortion or capital punishment, or euthanasia. Of course, these are all immensely important, but choosing life is so much more all-encompassing than that. Sometimes it's just a matter of listening or looking someone in the face and smiling.

AMDG

Full

Last night, lying awake in a room filled with the light of the full moon, I was remembering past moon-filled conversations and missing them, and then my Love said, "But I made the moon."

Yes. Yes, You did.

And this morning at Mass, He gave me the little moon of His Self so that I could swallow it and be filled with light.

AMDG

What I Did on My Christmas Vacation

Well, I didn't really have much of a vacation--just two days for Christmas and New Year's Day, but this is about what I did on New Year's Day.

Almost 38 years ago, my sister had a baby girl whom she put up for adoption. For all these years, I have missed my niece, and prayed for her, and felt like there was a big hole in our family, and I often hoped that I would meet her one day. And, that is what I did on New Year's Day.

So, here we have my mother, my sister, Lisa, with her arms around her granddaughter, Olivia, and my niece, Nikki.

It was a great visit. Everybody got along. Nikki and her daughter fit right in. All in all it was the best possible Christmas present.

And I really am going to write a blog post soon. I'm working on one now.

AMDG

Coup de Grace

When I was about eight years old, or nine at the most, they built (O joy of joys!) a library at the end of my street. It was less than half a mile away, so I could walk there whenever I liked. Since it was a small library with a limited number of books, we were only allowed to check out four books at a time, so I made the trip frequently. Being the kind of child who preferred curling up with a book to playing outside, reading four books didn't take me long at all. 

Neither did it take me long to get to know the children's department very well indeed. In fact, I can still remember exactly where to find the Andrew Lang Fairy Books, and the All of Kind Family series, and the Edward Eager books about four children having magical adventures. I pretty much read my way through the children's department and almost surely there was a time when my very favorite series was the one about P. L. Travers's Mary Poppins. 

I really need a new camera, but I can't get one because I have new dishes and a new Kindle.

I loved Mary Poppins and the books were great fun to read, so when I heard there was going to be a movie about Mary, even though I was 13 and thought I'd outgrown the books by that time, I looked forward to seeing it. This was because I was young and had not yet learned what usually happens to your favorite books when then make movies out of them. When I saw the movie, I was very disappointed because that, my friends, was definitely not Mary Poppins.

Mary Poppins comes when she is needed and she does what needs to be done. She can be counted on to take you to strange and fascinating destinations and get you involved in endless adventures, and give you lovely things to eat, but she doesn't, dance or sing or even smile at you. She's not nice to you. You might even think much of the time that she actively dislikes you, but she never bores you. When she corrects you, she doesn't have a nice little twinkle in her eye that lets you know everything is really all right, in fact, she has small, rather peering eyes.

So, when I heard an interview on NPR with someone involved in the making of Savings Mr. Banks, the new Disney movie about P. L. Travers and the making of Mary Poppins, and when I heard that Mrs. Travers hated the movie and about the conflict between her and Walt Disney and the movie's writers, I was interested. I knew that there was going to be a definite slant in favor of Disney, of course, and I knew that they would make things turn out nicely, but I thought there might be some truth in the movie, so we went.

I found the movie to be entertaining, although pretty sappy in parts. Emma Thompson was very good as P. L. Travers, and I could occasionally catch glimpses of the Walt Disney that I grew up with in his portrayal by Tom Hanks, although I also caught that Tom Hanks Nora Ephron movie character peeking through. From what I've read, the background material on Mrs. Travers was fairly accurate, and the relationship with the writers and Disney has some basis in fact.

A couple of days later, though I started thinking more about the movie, about how Disney changed the character of Mary Poppins. In fact, it was more like they created the character they wanted, and dressed her up as Mary Poppins. They had no respect for the character herself. And then it occurred to me that not only had Disney done this with Mrs. Travers's character, they had done the same with Travers. They created the character they wanted, and dressed her up as P. L. Travers. Game, point, and match for Disney Studios.

AMDG

What More Could You Ask?

I don't know about y'all, but when I choose a dentist, there are certain things I look for--you know, like gift cards--or maybe a free iPad. Well, if you're as choosy as I am, this might be the dentist for you!

Not only that, but his/her giveaways are seasonal. In October, you could get free Halloween costumes. In November, where else would you go for your Thanksgiving turkey? (I have to admit that the Turkey offer somehow reminded me of WKRP in Cincinnati.) It almost makes you want to get a new cavity every month so that you can take full advantage this dental cornucopia. I'm thinking this dentist could teach the president a few tricks.

I can't wait to see what he/she has in store for the long dreary days of January. 

AMDG

Kerplunk

In which I learn that it's a mistake to take oneself too seriously.

I had this all planned. I was going to go to Mass on Christmas Eve and make an act of renunciation, and then on Christmas morning, I was going to throw a stone in the river as a symbolic act to seal this renunciation.  So, I did go to Mass, but I don't really remember much about it except that I kept getting sicker and sicker by the minute. I don't even remember if I even prayed about this thing I'm renouncing.

Then, when Christmas morning came, I would not have been able to propel a stone into a body of water to save my life, even if it meant dropping a piece of pea gravel into the toilet. So, I sat in the corner while Christmas went on around me and waited. 

This afternoon I was feeling a bit better and it was warm enough to go outside, so I figured the time was right. I went outside and found a stone I liked, and even brought it inside to take a picture. Here it is.

And off I went to throw it in the river.

As I was driving down the highway that crosses over the Coldwater River to the place where I planned to throw the stone in, I noticed something troubling. The river wasn't there. The bed of the river was there revealed in all its glory, and there was one deep channel where people were fishing, but it was narrow, and just wasn't what I was looking for, and besides, I was afraid I'd hit one of the fishermen. So, I drove on to the site I had chosen, but no luck--barely any water. I was stymied for the moment.

Finally, I decided to go down the highway to place where we liked to walk before the highway was actually open. I have some pictures of it someplace on the blog, but the search engine doesn't seem to be working. This is the way it looked a few months ago.

Strangely enough with the river so low, the water here is deeper now, and all the flowers are gone, so I decided this would have to do. I stood near the top of the bank in a place you can't see in the picture and threw the stone as hard as I could. I heard a soft thud. I don't know where the stone went, but it didn't even reach the water. I climbed back up a bit, selected another stone. Walked down. Threw it. Thwack! It hit that plastic barrier you see there. Another try. Still no luck. By this time I had remembered a few things about myself: 1) I've never had any strength in my arms, 2) I'm missing one of the bones in my right elbow, and 3) I throw like a girl. I was also conscious of the people driving by wondering what the heck that crazy woman was doing. I was really afraid somebody would stop.

For the fourth try, I moved closer to the barrier. It's pretty soft down there, so I was worried about going too far down. I managed to get the stone in the water, but just barely. So, up I went again to get another stone. By this time I didn't care if the stone was round or square, beautiful or ugly, I was just trying to figure out whether a big or small stone would work best. Then I bent over and saw a white, heart-shaped stone. It wasn't a "use your imagination and close one eye and hold it in just the right way and you can see it's shaped like a heart" heart-shaped stone. Anybody would have recognized it as heart-shaped. So, I picked it up and walked all the way down to the barrier and flung it in. I have to admit that it didn't go a great distance, but it did go far enough, and it was the best I could do.

On the way to river, I had had this sort of tragic, romantic image of myself standing by the river and gracefully slinging this stone way out into the water--a saint, really--sort of like Joan of Arc walking up to the stake to be consumed in flames for the love of God. By the time I finally managed to do the deed, I was laughing at myself so hard that I couldn't even dredge up a little bit of self pity. The more I think about this entire experience, the more I see that it's an even better metaphor for what has been going on in my life than I thought. But that's a story for another day--and you won't see it here.

AMDG