Keep the Lights On

Most nights the porch light is on till two or three a.m. while one of my sons goes about photographing interesting sights and lights and shadows.  So, naturally, I do a dose of worry/prayer to keep him safe. Most nights I read for several hours by the light of my I-Pad. I read and think. Think about all sorts of people and situations since my childhood, little bits of this and that, faces, personalities and events. Mini-reviews of my life.

And I pray for them as their faces pop up in the video that runs in my head each night.

I watch the news in the morning; I watch the news at night. There is so much good in the world, yes, there really is. Good people, beautiful days, events filled with love and gratitude, laughter, joy and compassion

Gratitude might be the key here. ‘Gratitude, the Heart of Prayer’, a title of a book and good advice. (That and the ‘Spirituality of Imperfection’ are among my favorite titles in my bookshelf).

Of course, I know there is much that is not good. The doctrine of Original Sin covers some of that: we are good with a propensity for sin. I used to teach Baptism prep classes and at the time the trend was to emphasize community and welcoming and to shy away from the bummer that is the doctrine of Original Sin. One woman, a grandmother I believe, got up and left the class when she asked about when we were getting to that. I explained that we emphasize the welcoming aspect of Baptism. The one-with-community aspect, joining in our imperfect communion of saints.  We were leaving the whole Original Sin thing like an embarrassment in the corner.

I often think of that woman being annoyed with my noveau approach to teaching baptism.  I imagine she was raised in the St Augustine school of thought, as I was, that emphasized our need for grace to strengthen us against the real and present danger of sin and here I was telling the folks to baptize their babies because it is good to join in the community.

It is good to join in the community. It is good to not be alone against the evils offered by the world to ruin our souls. It is good to be washed clean of Original Sin, a doctrine that fell out of favor in the do what you will and its all groovy craze that took hold in the last half of the twentieth century.

But there’s that grandma leaving my come on in the water’s great class to search for someone who could deal with sin.

Good for her.

Because there is darkness and evil and yes, sin. You’d have to be very young or very naïve to think otherwise.  And I'm pretty sure that with every act of sin, the world gets a little dimmer, a little darker: veils layered between the sun and us.

But, wait. That is not what we hope, that is not what we place our faith in.

So, while most of us are feeling virtuous or massaging our own neuroses, there are people in the world who are keeping the lights on for the rest of us.

Pray-ers. That’s their job description. Monks and nuns in monasteries. Parents teaching their children the Our Father; parents staying up nights reciting the rosary or whatever prayers they learned in their youth to get their children home safely. Aunt Jule with her list of people she prayed for each night dating back to the 1890’s. People of all descriptions poking holes in the veil. And, boy do we have our work cut out.

This is how I picture it: with all the prayers against the darkness offered up by pray-ers, those layers separating us from the light are peeled back, worn away. But the darkness is unrelenting, you might say. Yes it is.  But it is our jobs, amateurs and professionals, to keep the lights on.

PS:  I've been away so long from this site because I was finishing up work on my novel, The Narrow Gate. Now, my quest is to find an agent and a publisher, so if you have a minute, could you pray that I find one?  Thanks.

Please visit  http://nojobforsissies.blogspot.com/2012/07/wordcraft-to-bear-witness.html  Melissa Embry's blog. I am a guest blogger on her post as of last week.

Another Scene

I haven't posted here in such a long time. I have been working on revisions for the book I mistakenly thought was completed. My timeline was out of order, so I have corrected that. I have filled out many scenes, and added many more. For whatever reason that urges such things, I thought I'd share one such scene with you. I love to hear from you, so please leave comments or questions. Rose takes the arm that Dennis offers as they exit the church. It snowed overnight and this morning Rose feels she is standing inside a pewter cup; the image of Don Quixote with the barber’s bowl on his head makes her smile in a quizzical way. The thoughts we have, at the oddest times, she thinks.

She takes her seat in the limousine next to Kieran and Marie. Dennis drives their car. The heavy clouds have snuck into her brain somehow, causing her to feel muffled. Every thought she has is dull and impotent, a soft mess of tragedy and comedy.

The hearse drives slowly through the stately iron gates that separate this bit of earth from the homes across the street on one side and the cars zipping by on Metropolitan Avenue on the other. Angels and saints and large stone crosses rise up alongside ancient trees that stand sentinel over the occupants covered in dirt and memory. This is a place of reverence; there is no rushing here, no need to rush ever again.

There is no direct route to the patch of ground this dark procession is heading toward. This is some kind of metaphor, Rose thinks, designed to symbolize the winding roads of life that bring us ultimately, here. The earth is blessed, words echoing baptism are proclaimed by the deacon whose job it is to minister to the dead, to sprinkle holy water and make the sign of the cross that bought our eternal life, so she has been taught since infancy.

The ground is still soft at the Banfry family plot, still rounded from when their father was buried just weeks ago. The big square hole next to Phil Banfry’s mound is deep.  The casket is suspended on straps so it can be lowered gracefully into the damp dark earth, to rest above the bones of their sister. Rose wonders what is left of Cilla, thirty years here. Surely the flesh is gone. In movies they open caskets to expose naked bone, hollows where eyes and nose once lived. Lips and face evaporated, teeth large and bold in a mockery of the once living person .

Ashes to ashes.

Her dress is probably still there, Rose thinks, covered in the dust that was once Cilla, that white dress she wore so proudly on her First Communion, holding a small bouquet, twirling the skirt out, tapping her white patent leather shoes on the tiles in church. The white is probably gray, maybe yellow.Empty dress. You’ve done your job. What was she spared, Rose thinks, for the first time, what was she spared being taken so young?

She turns back to her brother. In that box, such a lovely box, with brass handles, polished to a high degree.He slept on the floor in a room he never cleaned, now his broken body lies on satin, wearing his father’s suit. Our father. His dead face was not fit for viewing, smashed and torn on the rough asphalt. She had to identify him hours after he died. Yes, that’s my brother, that’s Jimmy. Though she only nodded and turned into her husband’s chest.

We had that one night, that last dinner of pot roast and beer. Do this in remembrance of me. He stood in the backyard, arms open to the rain, to the lightening. A second baptism; his last rites.Rose asked for the chaplain who served the morgue, asked for the anointing of the dead, though Jimmy may have scoffed at that, she asked for him because she needed to see her brother prayed over, signed with blessed oil.The ancient rites that join us generation to generation.Words of consolation and hope.Words of promise that this life was not in vain.This life mattered.

 And, sudden as a gust of wind, a terrible possibility indicts her.

Did I do this? I wanted to save my brother, didn’t I? I wanted to have him in my life, I wanted him to be whole. I wanted him to be someone other than who he was. Someone clean and happy and successful.

But more, I wanted him to know my wounds! See, you were not the only one hurt by them. I wanted to let him know that all the years I was alone had taken their toll on me. I wanted him to take some responsibility for this. He was my big brother!! Why didn’t he protect me? Protect me from that soul disfigured priest. Protect me from our mother who lashed out because I was the only one there. Protect me from the pain of the absence of our father.

Did I do this? Did I kill my brother? The questions echo in Rose’s head. Did I ask too much of him?

This wildness in her!  Standing here while the deacon reads from the gospels and they make the sign of the cross, even now, she makes the sign of the cross in unison with everyone while beneath these gestures, the real Rose is accused, tried and condemned because of her selfishness.

Pay attention! Here these men, strangers, in their dull black suits and black ties. Their uniform. Professional pall bearers. Professional mourners. We have to hire people  to show us how to do this, this act that is just as much a part of life as birth. They go home to their lives and tomorrow there will be another family to escort to the grave.

They are so careful with his remains.Would they have noticed him just last week? Would they have crossed the street if they saw him coming toward them? Disheveled, dirty. His anger contagious. His illness a disease to guard against. I would have crossed the street. Hell, I wouldn’t have even been in the same street with him to begin with.

What did he need from me? Need from me? I only thought of what I needed, wanted. I wanted him to go back in time and save me from that priest, save me from my aloneness. I wanted him to be the son my parents wanted so there would be peace in the family.Was that too much to ask? Why did you have to make trouble, Jimmy? Why did you have to move in with Kathy? Why couldn’t you just be good, like they wanted?

This is just a nightmare, right? A nightmare and now I’ve learned the lesson. Now I can awaken from this terrible dream and know not to have expectations of Jimmy that he cannot handle.

What’s the use of learning if the price paid for my mistake is his death?!

There is no coming back from death, no chance, no second chance, no third. I’ve learned my lesson, God. I’ve learned. Oh please, let me wake up!! Let me wake up and see my brother, alive, whole, happy. Let Me!!

Who am I yelling at? A God who will not hear. A silent God, a God whose only answer is that Jimmy will remain dead and I will have to live knowing that I killed him. Knowing that I killed Cilla because I was tired of her being sick all the time?

It’s time to go. Dennis steers her with her elbow back to the car.

Friend of Santa

What's the deal with dissing Santa? It's bad enough we can't have Nativity scenes, but now there's a major retailer putting Santa down.

I object.

I know, it's supposed to be humorous. But the defender in me always rises up when I see those ads about how the retailer can best Santa in the game of gift giving.

Just so you know: I'm a dyed in the wool, steeped in the DNA Catholic.

I love the sacramental infusion of the smells, the bells, the holiness of the ordinary, the ritual, the language,  the music, the art, the mysticism of Catholicism. And the gracious, non-deserved, no naughty and nice list of the Gift of Christmas.

And maybe, just maybe, that's why I love Santa Claus.

Long, long time ago, when I was a young mother of a two year old, I was standing in the back of the church, holding the Lectionary waiting to process up the aisle. Next to me was a woman, probably in her fifties, a kind of "church lady" with her sensible gray hair and plain grey skirt. It was Christmas morning and I was the lector at the 10:15 Mass, and she was a Eucharistic Minister.  I mentioned the fun of Christmas with my toddler daughter, the anticipation of Santa and the gifts.  She very plainly said, "oh we never bothered with all that with our kids. We emphasized the spiritual rather than the Santa aspect of Christmas."

She was of so sincere. And humorless. What a drag.

For just a moment I felt chastened. I had been corrected by my elder on the true nature of Christmas and what's important to teach children. But that didn't last long.

What's more Christian, more holy even, than a saint spreading the blessings of God on a world deeply in need of reminders of love?

We are physical, that is, incarnate, beings  not spirits just renting out space in a body--we need the sights sounds touch excitement, magic, yes magic, of Christmas and the  concrete expressions of love and undeserved gifts.

So when folks complain about the secularization of Christmas, I wish they'd leave Santa out of it. He's a holy man. A wise man. A magi.

And, man oh man, he's one of the best teachers of the holy that we've got.

Merry, Merry everyone.

Touchstone

I think most writers have a theme they keep coming back to, no matter the piece they are working on. Unless I have completely misunderstood myself over the years, I recognize that my theme is one of finding the sacred in the ordinary.  Ordinary things, ordinary conversation, ordinary kindnesses.  This is fiction/non-fiction hybrid. The rings on the sideboard have been polished, but not enough to erase them.

Ice filled glasses dripped right through the small linen squares that were inadequate against the condensation. The linens were not coasters, of course, but when your drink was freshly made and the glass still dry, you might hold the small square in your hand as a layer against the ice, not thinking ahead to when the glass would sweat right into the wood.

Pewter coasters with flying geese etched into them were set out, but after a few Manhattans, aiming to set the glass inside the lip was a challenge.  So the finely woven linens, freshly ironed that afternoon, stood in.

She didn’t want the scratches on the sideboard sanded away and varnished with a fresh coat that smothered the memories.  She dusted and polished it occasionally but not enough to disguise the patina. This sideboard held stories. Iron skeleton keys rested in its locks, linens were still folded in its drawers. When she opened a drawer, the skin of the wood released its breath of lavender, orange and cedar sachets that had long ago been discarded.

She only uses those linens on holidays. Then the ancient lace tablecloth comes out, gracing a newer cloth like a veil. That veil held Uncle Charlie’s stories and his laughter and the click of his bridgework and the saturated sweet red cherry sitting on ice that hadn’t had enough time to melt. The glass would be re-filled, cued with just a sad nod at its emptiness. Not a beat missed. Re-filled while we all laughed and Aunt Loretta sighed, Oh, Charlie.

Those tales are family scripture.  Tradition and history passed down around the table. It was holy like mass, only we didn’t think like that at the time. Later when the voices were faint echoes that lingered in the wood, on the lace tablecloth, worn into the silver pattern and the wedding china, then we knew, or should have known. All of it was sacred.

But when the darkness came, could the walls and floor, table and crystal contain the sacredness when it seemed most threatened? Could those threads and splinters and ancient clinking glasses hold us together when it seemed all would be broken in the violence of words and anger and misunderstanding, of words said and not said?

Communion of saints. Don’t be silent now. Speak up. Contain the overflow. Herd it back to where it, where we, belong.

Choirs of Angels?

Several years ago, when our oldest child was in high school and our youngest in elementary, Gene and I came home from our Small Community of Faith gathering to find Katie directing John as he posed as a shepherd for the Christmas card she was drawing. She had him wrapped in a pastel green tablecloth and was instructing him to "look afraid" at the sight of the Angelic Host. He complained, in that youngest child way, why every year his siblings tried to make a fool of him.  They protested that accusation with a defense that they try to make of fool of him every day.

Mike was waving a shillelagh/shepherd’s staff and Daniel was sitting on the couch reading through a skateboard magazine awaiting the director’s instruction.  When it was Daniel’s turn to sit on the stairs that were doubling as a Bethlehem hillside he brought over the magazine and announced that he was studying the “Noble Word”, a new title for sacred scripture, we supposed.  He had an old blanket on his head and a belt from a Ninja turtle costume as the headband.  A large blue sheet was his garment.  Mike was sitting on a dining room chair, still waving that shillelagh and making up a dialect that was a cross between Mel Brooks and Darby O’Gill reacting to the imagined choir of angels, while he was draped in tablecloths.  Katie’s attempt at directing her three brothers to look serious, contemplative and afraid of the celestial announcers of the birth of the savior was not very successful.  No way were they sitting still and going to look anything but goofy arrayed in our best dining table attire.

Ah, Christmas!

It was rather refreshing to be greeted at the door by the sounds of our children laughing and joking with each other. You can believe it was a wonderful change from the almost usual litany of complaints and the call to separate boys mid-fight over some squabble that would erupt as soon as we stepped out for a little adult conversation. This was a benefit of their ever-growing maturity, along with the large sneakers that littered the house.

I knew this was a 'snapshot' moment.   I almost took a picture of them in their silly outfits, but I didn’t, for two reasons.  One was that there are some moments you cannot pose for.  Another, very practical reason, is that we never develop our pictures (this was before we had digital cameras).  We had rolls of undeveloped moments of our family history in drawers and cabinets and shelves all over the house. Why we bothered to say “Cheese!” is one of our family mysteries.  This was something we would trust to memory and imagination:  the four of them laughing and joking and trying to pose as historical figures from the greatest drama of all time in our suburban living room/ hillside of Judea.

I had been nostalgic for Christmas past when we had a house full of young children anxiously awaiting the arrival of Santa on Christmas Eve.  There is no question that those early years of childhood are precious beyond measure with innocence and hope in the generosity of a jolly old saint adding a special wonder to their eyes. It was one of the few nights that we could actually get the kids to go to bed without too many complaints or stalling maneuvers.  They all camped in the front bedroom with the blinds up so they could spy Santa and his reindeer-led sleigh passing overhead.

When morning came too quickly for parents who were up all night helping a red-suited elf display the fruits of the Magi’s legacy, it was impossible to resist the excitement of little round-bellied tots in footy pajamas as they ripped open the mysteries left overnight while visions of sugarplums, or whatever the current new toy was, danced through their heads. Yes, I do miss that.  But, over the years, we have deposited quite a bit in the “remember when” reservoir that adds depth to our definition of what Christmas means to us.

After all that posing and pretend complaining, when Katie produced her initial sketches for what that year’s card would look like, her three shepherds on the hillside all have their backs to us.  There is a flash of angel in the distant sky awakening the sleepy trio to announce the good news, but their faces are hidden.  But I know what they look like.

We managed to get Katie's drawing turned into Christmas cards. If  I had it handy I would post it along with these words.  I'm sure it is somewhere safe in a folder  in the back of my closet. Someday I'll find it and show it to the grand-kids. There's always room for new family traditions.