Category Archives: Musings

The other night, I woke up at 2:21 AM to an unfamiliar sound.  Surfacing from the depths of sleep, I tried vainly to identify it. Was it one of the boys climbing out of bed?  Was it — God forbid — an intruder creeping down the hall?   A few moments later, the mystery was solved: it was a branch banging against the bedroom window every time the wind blew.

And when I say blew, I actually mean “howled.”  I can’t remember the last time we had wind like that, a Brontë-esque wuthering that made me suddenly apprehensive about the stability of the tall trees just behind the house.  It was like the wind was a living, breathing thing bent on keeping me awake.  Between the noise and my worry, it took me nearly an hour to fall back asleep.

When the New Testament talks about the Holy Spirit as a mighty wind, part of me finds that an off-putting image.  The San Francisco Bay Area is known for its microclimates, and I happen to live in an area that gets a lot of wind.  Honestly, I’m not a big fan of our bay breezes.  The wind stirs up pollen.  It wreaks havoc with your hair.  It drives you inside when you want to be out playing soccer with the boys.  It can down branches and scatter papers and, even on a summer’s evening, chill you to the bone.

And yet, on the other hand,  the connection between wind and the third person of the Trinity makes a certain amount of sense.  Much like the wind, we can’t control the Holy Spirit.  She (I use the feminine pronoun for the H.S., because it’s most helpful to me) goes where she wants to, at her own pace.   We can invoke her, but we can’t control her.

I’ve actually spent most of my Catholic life with a pretty vague understanding of the Holy Spirit.  It’s only in the last ten years or so that she has felt real to me.  In that time, I’ve experienced her as the force that inspires and energizes, leading me to action.  The Holy Spirit brings gifts (according to St. Paul, these gifts include patience, peace, gentleness, kindness: in other words, very useful ones.)  The Called and Gifted workshop that I took eleven years ago showed me  how the Holy Spirit also brings charisms, uniquely personal gifts from God that we use for the good of others.   It’s the nudging of the Holy Spirit that got me writing about spirituality a decade ago.  It’s the promptings of the Spirit that caused my husband to leave his career in the tech industry and take a full-time job in ministry.  We’re not the first people to discover that the Holy Spirit should really come with a warning label. Caution:  If you listen to the Spirit, your life will change.   Those changes can be unsettling, yes,  but they are also invigorating … much like the wind itself.

As I drove home from work the day after the windstorm, I looked out at the familiar landscape around me.  After a week of nearly-constant overcast, the wind had driven the clouds away.  The sky was blue, pure, crystalline;  every last  bit of smog was gone, and I saw details that are normally hidden from view.  The wooded hills that I drive past every day were suddenly rich in detail and texture.  It was as if I could see individual trees and gradations of color where before everything had looked flat and matte.

As I gazed at the stunning brilliance of those hills, I thought about how the wind makes us see things more clearly.  So, too, does the Holy Spirit.  It is  astonishing how different our lives can look once the wind has done its work.

Boreas by John William Waterhouse

In case you missed it, we have a new pope.   Even though I’m hardly a Vatican geek, I have to admit that it’s been a pretty exciting few days.  I like that he’s from Latin America, and that he’s a Jesuit (I have a thing for the Jesuits).   I also like the fact that this is a man who reportedly eschews the fancy mansion to live in a simple apartment, and who elects to travels by bus.  I have a feeling  Jesus would do the same.

Even the boys got swept up in the Popeapalooza.  When I picked up Matthew from school on Wednesday, he told me that he had seen the white smoke from his school playground.  (I suspect it was car exhaust, but I hated to burst his bubble.)   He was also full of questions about why it took so long to elect a pope.   I explained the process as best I could, but it didn’t impress him.  He had a better idea.

“They should have a competition to decide who gets to be Pope,” he said as we sat at a stoplight.

“What kind of competition?”

“A race.  Whoever gets to the finish line first gets to be Pope.”

“What do you think, Luke?” I asked, craning to look at him in the backseat.  “Should we choose our Pope based on a vote, or a race?”

“A race,” he said promptly.

So that’s two votes for change.

You have to admit, it’s an intriguing notion.   I imagine a few lanes full of cardinals,  in robes and running shoes,  waiting for a starting gun.    It makes me think of Isaiah 40: they will run and not grow weary.  Or maybe we could add a little New Testament twist of “the first shall be last,” and let the loser of the race become  Pope?  I think we’re onto something here.

But even though Pope Francis was chosen the old-fashioned, non-athletic way, it’s still momentous.  He will be in my prayers.   His election is a good reminder that all of us — pope or not — have a unique part to play in this busy world,  and that every day is a new chance to put the Gospel values into action.

When we were in upstate New York for Christmas, something really beautiful happened:

This.

There was already a layer of snow on the ground when we arrived, and over the next few days, fresh storms gave the area the look of a Currier and Ives print: sparkling, pristine, pure, glorious.

As a California resident and native, I can count my experiences with snow on my fingers.  It’s so novel to me that I still dance around like a preschooler anytime the flakes start to fall.  And whenever I spend any amount of time in the snow, I find myself reflecting on a few Snow Truths that we, as Californians, simply don’t get to learn until we travel.

1)  It’s gorgeous and evocative.   It’s a cliché to say that my in-laws’ yard looked like a Christmas card, but it did.  And it wasn’t just a visual association; I would look into the forests behind their home, bare trees with snow on the boughs, and Tchaikovsy’s Waltz of the Snowflakes started playing in the symphony hall of my imagination.   It’s a beauty that is hard to pin down or explain, somehow.  I am normally a big fan of color, but there is something about a vast expanse of white that is positively breathtaking.

2) It makes literature real to me.  Throughout my life, I’ve read books that take place in colder climes, and any description of snow has always felt alien to me.  I could never relate to Laura and Mary in the Little House books, say, when they put on their mittens and went out to play.   It always sounded great, but there was a huge chasm in my own experience (the closest I could get was going out and playing in a rainstorm: fun, but not the same).   But every experience I’ve had of the snow as an adult has demystified those literary descriptions, making them more vivid and real.

And unless you’ve seen snow falling you can’t quite understand the beauty of the last lines of James Joyce’s short story “The Dead”:

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

3) It gives me a whole new level of respect for my fellow mothers who live in colder climes.   Outfitting small children to go out into the snow is a complicated, time-consuming endeavor.  It means putting on an extra layer of  socks and scrambling to find mittens and wrestling noncompliant younglings into puffy pants.   It adds a few more steps to the process of getting one’s offspring out the door on time in the morning – and as every mom knows, even in balmy climates that is an experience requiring epic reserves of planning and fortitude.  Hats off to you, Snow Moms.

4) It provides all kinds of fun for the kids.  Matthew in particular had a blast with throwing snowballs, traipsing through the freshly-fallen snow to make a “maze,” and trying to climb the “wall” of snow banked at the edge of the lawn.   The delight was palpable … and contagious.

5) It is a lot of work.  Scott, native New Yorker, was the one who had to de-ice and de-snow the car anytime we went anywhere.  He also had to shovel the driveway when the plow guy didn’t show up.  He also had to drive the car up the hilly slushy road, a process which required four tries to get enough traction/momentum to get around the corner. Needless to say, Scott is not as rhapsodic about the snow as I am.  “This is why I moved all those years ago,” he says.

6)  Challenges aside, there is something spiritually renewing about a snowfall.  A landscape looks completely different when it’s under a cover of white.  It’s so dramatic and complete a change; it is almost hard to believe that one is looking at the same place.  It can’t help but make me think of other transformations, of the possibility of new perspectives and new ways of engaging with our same old life, our same old fears, our same old problems.   “Behold, I make all things new,” says the Bible (Rev. 21:5), and that verse kept echoing through  my mind as I looked at the snow banked in my in-laws’ front yard, at the flakes falling soundlessly against a backdrop of gray trees, at the gravestones in the nearby graveyard, each one wearing a neat cap of white.  There was something healing about it all, at a time when that was very welcome to me.

I’m back home now, where there is no snow.  But, to invoke Wordsworth, ever since coming back, there have been moments when those white untouched landscapes flash upon my inward eye.  And I am glad they do.

It’s hard to write anything lately.   What happened Friday in Connecticut is beyond devastating.  It has been there in my mind ever since it happened and the grief and loss are too much to comprehend.  Some tragedies are literally primal — they shake you at your very core.   This is one of them.

I don’t get political on this blog as a general rule (there’s enough of that out there on other blogs).  But I will say that there is something deeply wrong with this society when guns do this kind of damage, over and over, news cycle after news cycle, and no policy ever changes.   Doing nothing is not an option.  Not this time. ( I’ll refer you to Father James Martin’s excellent article on how gun control is a pro-life issue.)

At Mass Sunday, in the Communion line, I looked up at Christ on the cross and thought, not for the first time, that I am glad I have a faith that acknowledges excruciating pain.  The grief that those parents and families are going through must feel like crucifixion.  There is probably no other way to describe it.  I feel marginally less helpless and lost, in some small way, in knowing that my faith offers a language for that kind of pain.

I am praying for comfort for the victims’ families, and it feels so off-key and futile; how can there be any comfort for them, especially right now?  I guess I can just hope that others will sit with them during this crucifixion and be present in the grief, silent witnesses to love and to the desire to help and to the fundamental goodness of human beings.   That is a powerful and necessary witness at a time like this.

My faith says that there is a resurrection, and a heaven.  I believe in both.  But like many of us,  I just can’t get there yet.  I’m stuck at the crucifixion.  And it is okay to feel that way.

El Greco, Christ on the Cross

This is a post about  my friend Mary,  who died of bile duct cancer one year ago today.  She was 47.

I’m struggling to believe that an entire year has passed since her death.  In some ways, I still think it’s not real.  I guess that’s what they call wishful thinking, or the mind’s reluctance to accept the hard cold finality of loss.  Some little fantasy-world part of me expects to come home and hear a long chatty message from her on the answering machine.  And then, there are other days where the bitter awareness of our loss comes out of nowhere, and it is like I’m being bodyslammed by grief.

I miss her terribly.

Matthew was one of Mary’s many godchildren (to them, she went by “God Mary”).  He mentions her often, especially lately.  Just a week or two ago, he talked about the last camping trip we went on with Mary, two summers ago.  “Remember when we went camping with GodMary and she made that sandwich thing, you know, with graham crackers and marshmallow?”

“You mean smores?”  I asked.

“Yeah, smores.  Well, remember how I tried mine  and didn’t like it?  GodMary said that was okay and she threw the rest of it in the campfire.”

I didn’t remember this at all, though I’m sure it happened just as Matthew described.  And it made me reflect on the unique nature of memories, those little pieces of another person that we collect during our interactions with them.   Memories — along with the photos, and the things that belonged to the person, and the gifts they gave us — are all that are left, really, when someone dies.  Matthew was five when Mary died, and I have always wanted to be sure that he had enough memories of her to make her feel real to him.  It seems that he does.

That is one of his Mary stories now, that moment where she threw the unwanted smore into the fire and let him know it was okay if he didn’t like it.  That clearly meant something to him.  And I am glad he has it.

In fact, when I think of Mary, I can’t help but think of stories.  Mary had so many stories, usually randomly hilarious ones.  If you knew Mary, you might have heard the tale about the dingo dog; the one about Aidan at the pub, whose eyes were swimming in his head; the anecdote about getting a pair of super-expensive shoes at a massive discount, literally under the nose of another shopper.  If you didn’t know these, you probably knew others.  She told these stories over and over, and hearing them was always so fun, because she relished the telling of them.  It was like hearing a favorite joke: you knew what the punchline would be, but somehow it never got old.

I’d love to hear these stories again, out of Mary’s lips.  I’d love to hug her again. I’d love to invite her over and have her call about a half-hour after she was supposed to be there, saying that she’d be a little late (Mary always tried to fit more into a day than was humanly possible).  I’d love to go camping with her again, the kids on the trip clustered around her as she toasted marshmallows or played cards with them at a picnic table.

I can’t do that, any of it.  I think that one of the hardest things about losing a loved one is realizing that you won’t be making anymore memories with them.  You have created your last ones.

And so those memories become infinitely precious.   I would say that we tuck them away and preserve them, but that’s not really how it works.  We keep bringing them out and turning them over in our minds, handling them easily instead of gingerly, because we know  they’ll only become stronger with use.  They are the stories we tell over and over again,  relishing them every single time, even the times when it hurts.

I miss you and I love you, Mary.  Thank you for the memories.

Here in California, we’re blessed with a long growing season.  The flowers I planted in May sometimes keep blooming into November.  The problem, though, is that usually around late September, remembering to care for the flowers  tends to fall off my radar.  Maybe it has something to do with the onslaught of the first big essays that come in about five weeks after the start of school, the bane of every English teacher’s existence; I find myself having to put  down the Miracle-Gro and snail bait and reluctantly take up a grading pen.   So although my flowers are theoretically still blooming in mid-October, they are usually looking a bit leggy and wilty and neglected.

Not a bad metaphor for my prayer life these days, actually.

Last Tuesday evening, I realized that it had been at least a week and a half since I last spent a quiet evening session at my prayer desk.  And I was feeling it.  I felt at all once edgy and restless and dry and flat.

So about ten o’clock, I sat down at the prayer desk and lit the candle.  And just as I did, I heard a roll of thunder off in the distance.  There’s something thrilling about thunder, especially here in this part of the country where we don’t get it very often.  I prayed a decade of the rosary and then the rain started: not a drizzle but actual rain, the kind of rain we haven’t had here since spring, the kind of rain that the thirsty dry earth was just dying to receive.   Hearing it on the roof was very, very comforting.

And yet somehow, my mind just wouldn’t settle.  I tried to pray but my mind, supercharged with tasks and obligations and deadlines, seemed to resist the peace.

Then an idea flashed into mind: maybe simply listening to the rain would be, in itself, a kind of prayer.  And then I realized that I didn’t just want to listen to the rain.  I wanted to smell the rain.

So I opened the window that looks out onto the backyard.  The air was cool and it was totally dark outside, and there was that smell, that amazing smell of damp dirt and cold pavement and wet trees, a rich smell that made me breathe deeply.  The sound of the rain was so much louder with the window open, a steady background beat punctuated by random drips falling off of the leaves just outside the window, and it was almost as good as being outside.   I ended up blowing out the scented candle on my prayer desk, because nothing can compare to the smell of a garden during the first rain of the season.    I closed my eyes and breathed deeply and didn’t consciously think of much of anything besides what was happening on the other side of the screen.

I’d like to say that it completely settled my unquiet mind.  It didn’t.  I got up from the prayer desk fifteen minutes later and the massive list of things to do was still there, sitting like a boulder in the middle of my consciousness.

But some little thirst was sated by that quiet quarter-hour in the rain.  Some of the dust was washed away, and my prayer life doesn’t feel quite as dry as it did  before.    It’s been refreshed, subtly and unexpectedly, by something I didn’t anticipate, something I couldn’t have controlled if I wanted to.  All I could do was receive it and let it work on me and in me.

I think there’s a lesson there.