good for the soul

an unlikely tribute on this Feast of Corpus Christi

our well worn table and a rendering of the Last Supper

Today is, officially, the last day of my vacation. It was more of a stay-cation, and short of a couple of adventures that I had earlier this week, and yesterday’s grand finale at the Eucharistic Congress, I’ve been at home puttering around the house and doing a little cleaning here, a little painting there.

This afternoon I finally put away everything in the kitchen and decided to give the dining room table a good scrub. I started on one end with the plan to work my way across the wide expanse quickly.

I got a little distracted along the way. We’ve had this table since the late eighties when we settled back in the United States after John’s tour overseas in the Army. He and I have taken our meals there since before our oldest was born, and now with our youngest in college, find ourselves alone again, taking our meals in the same spots.

I wasn’t expecting to get nostalgic about a table, but there you have it. Every mark, every ding, every permanent stain has a story.

One of the corners has a series of pock marks where Vicky, having just learned to walk, ambled up with a hard plastic toy and entertained herself by beating the corner. She grew up to lead bands.

Christy’s spot is full of permanent marker stains…little marks and stray lines that have faded over the years. I’ve never seen a more coloring-liking kid than that, and she’s not too picky about her canvas. Once, she picked up a rock and drew on the side of her father’s truck. It was such a pretty blue canvas and it needed something beautiful to fill it.

There are dings, grooves and crazy glue globs where Jonathan sits. Many science projects and building projects and experiments have been laid out in that area. It’s a good thing, too, since he’s the one who’s largely responsible for finishing some of these home repairs this week.

In short, the table is a mess. But it’s a beautiful mess. A lot like our family. A little messy, a little scattered, but beautiful.

There have been many fights at that table, and awkward, stressful moments. Endless silences. Battles lost and truces made.

There’s also been a lot of laughter and joyful noise, in small intimate dinners and huge extended gatherings of family and friends.

It’s the one place where we always gather, all of us, to talk or eat, or just be together. It’s the heart of our home.

I was putting away the Murphy’s Oil Soap when I realized that today is the Feast of Corpus Christi. Oh, d’oh, I thought. What was I doing at the Eucharistic Congress yesterday? I’m a little slow, but eventually I get there.

If I can recognize the simple importance of the dinner table as an integral part of our family life, how much greater is the sacrifice that was made at another dinner table long ago as an integral part of our faith life and salvation?

Today we celebrate the Institution of the Holy Eucharist, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. Wow. It is the foundation of everything we are, and everything we are called to be.

“Oh Sacrament most holy, oh Sacrament divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine.”

aaaah….a little mini-vacation in town

One of my favorite spots in town is this little garden off Main Street. It’s tiny and cozy and has some water that burbles and splashes, and giant carp, and shade. Lots of shade in the afternoon. Unfortunately, all the lovely flowering plants have lost their blooms, but it’s green now, and still full of life. The perfect spot for a little writing or reflection.

God wears a guayabera (and probably smokes Cuban cigars)

He also answers prayers with a deep and resonant laugh. And waves his hands a lot.

It’s been a theater-of-the-absurd kind of day. That’s pretty SOP for the end of the quarter in my line of work … and then some. Things have a way of developing gravitas suddenly and inexplicably, sending an already high strung group of people on both sides of the desk into convulsions.

Lucky for me to have a daily smile texted at dawn. What’s not to love about a toothless grin from a lovable baby?

Perspective, as they say, is everything.

And if it isn’t, it certainly ought to be.

Sometimes the only way to get through some things in life is through prayer. That precious baby picture is part of a larger support group of people who pray for me. Now, I know people have been praying for me for a while. For a number of reasons. As a parent who frequently (I was gonna say religiously…too much? teehee) prays for her children, I know I can count on my own parents’ prayers. People I don’t even know have been praying for my family since my husband’s ALS diagnosis a few years ago. And social media, especially through Twitter and Facebook, has elevated intercessory prayer to an epic level by expanding the reach exponentially.

In the kind of Christian community in which I live and worship, work and play, it’s not unusual to tell someone, “I’ll pray for you,” and then really do it. In fact, I’d venture to say you’ve never really been prayed over until you’ve had a good ole Southern-style laying on of hands, but that’s a post for another day.

Prayer, then, takes many forms — from that spontaneous, extemporaneous artform of our evangelical brothers and sisters to the formal prayer of the Mass and all the beautiful prayers in between, from the sweet appeal to our Guardian Angel to the miraculous power of the Rosary.

I can do that. Mostly. I can follow along in a book or stumble through a poorly memorized and rusty prayer. I can get the job done, so to speak.

The challenge for me is not the deer-in-the-headlights call to lead a prayer for someone else — it’s the humbling appeal to a friend for a special, perhaps desperate, prayer.

There was a time when I wouldn’t have done it.

To acknowledge that kind of neediness is…well…needy. It’s weak. It’s shameful.

It’s ridiculous not to.

It took me a while to get to that realization. And then it became truly humbling, not in the common understanding of humbling to be lowly, but in the truly liberating humility that submits to God. This humility brings me closer to God’s light, an image that draws me more than any other. It is in that light that I bask in God’s love.

To ask my friends for prayer, then, is to let them love me. To give them the opportunity to express to me a love I willingly share with them. It is the grace to be loved.

When I made that adjustment, I realized how often my prayers are answered. Not with a yes or a no, a solution, or a miraculous change in the way things are going, but in the manner in which I receive God’s will. Because with it comes the peace and security of being truly loved.

 

more than just some shiny beads

I jerked open my car door and sat heavily into the front seat, slamming the door shut in spite of the oppressive waves swirling around the overheated interior. It felt good for a moment but eventually it competed with the heat rising in my head, an unfortunate by-product of a bad combo of high blood pressure and an angry exchange moments before leaving the office.

What can I say? It happens when you deal with people all day. And to think that yesterday I was bemoaning the fact I had locked myself in my office and not spoken a word until lunchtime.

Days like today try my patience, for sure, but they also become opportunities for grace. Let me say that five years ago, heck, last year, my response might have been quite different. I may have a long fuse that sputters out before it gets to the end and explodes, but every once in a while if it gets lit real well…um…it runs its course.

I got out of the office when I saw the warning signs and stewed a bit in my car before putting the key in the ignition. I don’t really know how long I sat there with the A/C blasting, but it was long enough for me, and the car, to cool off. Lucky for me I caught a glimpse of the rosary in the console, and I absentmindedly picked it up. The transformation in my attitude came gradually.

Now I’m a nice Catholic lady—that means I have rosaries stashed all over the place. This particular rosary, a gift from a dear friend who went on a pilgrimage to Rome several years ago, has medals of the basilicas in the place of the Our Father beads, which is a shame, really, because the Hail Mary beads are quite beautiful. They are sky blue that give off a swirling illusion if the light hits them just right. When I hold this rosary I can feel it in my palm.

It clinks and clacks and makes all those sounds I associate with the old ladies in Mass during the sixties. I always thought that serious prayer, the kind that made God sit up in appreciation, required a furious working of those beads. I must have been praying hard in the car because I was pretty furious. I didn’t have any words, but frankly, what are words to God when he knows my heart anyway?  So there I was, just holding the rosary in my hand, moving the beads into a tight little ball and then letting it spill out of my hand so I could gather it back into another tight ball. It was like a slinky: Catholic edition. And it calmed me.

Eventually the hypnosis wore off and I could start to put thoughts together in my mind. Now that I was thinking clearly I could contemplate the crucifix, and look at the details of Christ on the cross. I turned it over to look at the backside, where the nails go through. I don’t remember where I learned that the back of a crucifix has those marks to remind us of the horror of crucifixion (as if the corpus isn’t enough), so I kissed the cross before going back to my game of squeezing and letting out the rosary beads.

By now the heft and feel of the rosary changed a little bit as I became accustomed to its feel in my hand.  I found comfort in its weight.  The beads have substance, the metal workings that keep it together are sturdy and strong and I became more and more entranced by the workmanship.

It occurred to me that the rosary got heavier as my tension and anxiety got lighter.

As I shifted away from the self-absorption of my anger I was able to better focus on the rosary – away from the craftsmanship and onto the immensity of what it represents.

Pope Pius XII called the Rosary “the compendium of the entire Gospel.” The mysteries contain the story of our salvation, and in that moment of grace when I understood, albeit fleetingly, time stood still.

I am nothing. My petty grievances, forgotten now, pale against the enormity of that truth.

had to share cuz I have this thing about light

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light within.

~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

the honeysuckles are here!

Nothing brings back my childhood in Atlanta like honeysuckles. I used to get up early, while the dew was still on the grass, and ride my bike to the park for swim practice. There’s something about that early morning newness that has imprinted into my soul, and it includes honeysuckles. They were everywhere — folks might say like a weed, but I’m kind of partial to dandelions,too, so maybe I just like weeds.

The scent of honeysuckles hit me full force this morning when I walked the dog. I’m sure it had everything to do with the rain that washed away the yucky pollen and left everything refreshed and new. It is the Easter season after all.

I’ve seen them along the fence and creeping towards the mailbox, but I haven’t really walked that way in some time, so they weren’t quite real to me.  I had to go up to them and gather a bunch to my face to inhale deeply of their sweet scent. And yes, I pulled apart a couple of them to taste the nectar. Nothing has changed in forty-years, still sweet, still fun to pull apart.

The experience left me refreshed, and a little pensive. I could feel the pull of my rosary which I had tucked into my waistband, thinking the walk might be a little longer. The crucifix poked me in the hip, a little attention-getter, if you will. That Jesus, master of subtlety with me.

As it happens, I didn’t pray the rosary. I’ll get to it in the car in a little while. I did, however, think about the crucifix, and the crucifixion of Our Lord. It takes something physical for me, like the scent of flowers or the poke of a cross, to get me to feel, physically, what often seems apparent to others.

I admit it’s something that has been a liability for me, at least academically. You can talk to me until you’re blue in the face, but if I can’t touch it or physically do it, um…I didn’t learn it. No doubt it’s what made me a good athlete — the ball or the racket became an extension of my body and I could feel what I had to do long before I thought about doing it.

That’s probably why I like to pray the rosary. I can touch it, and play with the texture of the beads, and hear the clink of metal. And yes, feel the sharp edges of the cross and the raised corpus upon it. The raised corpus. Wow. I just wrote that without even thinking about the implication. Maybe I should add typing on a keyboard to the senses.

Anyway, the point that I was making is that I need something physical to go along with my faith and I had an interesting thought. I have this yearning for the “epic faith experience” whatever that is (I’ll get back to you with that when I finally figure it out. Don’t hold your breath for it). Here I am thinking that I’m like St. Peter, ready to deny Jesus when things get tough, and really, I’m like St. Thomas.

Poor maligned, doubting Thomas. That’s me. Yep. He had to poke his fingers into Christ’s body to believe. I felt a little sorry for myself when I realized that. I mean, I wanted to be like the saint that got knocked off a horse, or you know, shot full of arrows. What’s a little beheading or burning at the stake for my convictions?

I wanted to be convicted.

Instead, I get a bunch of doubts and the echo of blessed are those who don’t see and believe, and I’ll be honest, I felt like crap about it.  And as I’m pulling apart those honeysuckles I’m thinking that maybe, for me, I got this a little wrong. Jesus was gentle with Thomas, and gave him permission to touch his wounds. In fact, told him to put his fingers in the wounds, to feel for himself. So maybe Thomas was just a little slow getting to where he needed to be, but he got there. And Jesus told him he was blessed for it.

Like me.