Here is a picture of my new holy water font. Isn’t it nice?
Actually, “new” is not quite accurate. Scott gave me this last Christmas, but we only got it up on the wall a few weeks back. Since having kids, eight and a half months is how long it takes me to attend to any household task that is not absolutely necessary to sustain life.
To be honest, when I first saw the gift, part of me was slightly hesitant. A holy water font? In my house? I had never considered myself a domestic holy water kind of gal. Holy water font people are people who go to Mass daily and can recall saints’ feast days from memory. They are not people who occasionally drop four-letter words or who watch “The Bachelor,” both of which I have done do.
But a gift is meant to be used, isn’t it ? So I am using it. And, more than that, I’m really getting into it.
At this point, you no doubt have a few questions for me.
Where do you get the holy water?
It comes from my husband’s office. This is one of the perks of having a spouse who works at a church. (Having four priests concelebrate your wedding is another.)
Where do you keep the extra holy water?
In our kitchen, in an Arrowhead bottle.
As you can see above, I have marked the bottle with large, hard-to-miss penmanship. Without the label, it would only be a matter of hours before I accidentally took a swig.
What was it like the first time you blessed yourself in your own home?
Kind of weird, honestly. I was on my way out for a jog, and dipped in my fingers and made the sign of the cross, and it felt utterly bizarre and out of context — but also quite nice. Then I forgot to do it for a few days. The next time I took a dip, all the water had evaporated.
So now that you’ve had it a few weeks, what do you think of it?
Honesty, I’m totally into it, and here’s why. It’s so hard to maintain a strong spiritual routine when you have kids. I have little time in which to sit and pray (and when I do try to sit and pray, I invariably fall asleep). So I’m finding that I pray quickly, on the go — I think of God at random moments and say Hi and then go on with my day. It’s like I am working spirituality into the fabric of my daily routine, in little subtle ways.
And the holy water font helps with that. Evey time I head out the door, I can pause for a second, dip my fingers, and get a little blessing. It takes almost no time at all but it is so concrete, so about the senses, that it is pretty powerful; it gets through to me in a way that a verbal prayer can’t. And it makes the least holy of moments — dashing out the door in the morning, wishing I’d left five minutes earlier — into a very tangible chance to remember God. It’s a chance to remember my baptism, and to recall that I belong to a big and messy but ultimately wonderful faith. It is a reminder to try to reflect the best aspects of that faith to the people I encounter in the course of my day. It makes the mundane holy … and that’s pretty amazing.
So who knew? I’m a holy water font kind of gal after all.
Years ago, my mom told me a story. It was the late 1950s, and she and her church teen group were taking a trip cross-country to attend a youth conference. When they got to a certain state (I can’t recall which one), and stopped at the hotel, all the kids couldn’t wait to jump into the pool.
My mom recalls that the only black guy in her youth group was sitting off to the side, watching everyone else splash and play in the pool. ”Don’t you want to swim, too?” she asked him.
“I’m not allowed to,” he said quietly.
For my mom, this was her first experience with segregation. She was a Southern California girl, and while racism was found there too, she had never before seen institutionalized segregation of this kind. It made a big impression on her, and when I first heard that story, it left a mark on me as well.
I think it’s easy for me to underestimate the legacy of Dr. King. I was a child of the 1970s, so any experience of Whites Only drinking fountains and Jim Crow is what I read from books or see on TV. But I hear a story like that, and I realize that I should never take for granted what Dr. King did.
And it makes me reflect on the fact that, as a white woman, I will probably never really “get” the pain of racism. If I go to a store and people give me terrible service or ignore me, I never — never — stop and wonder if it’s because of my race. That is a luxury — that’s not quite the right word, but close enough — that I only get because I happen to be white. To truly understand racism, it means listening to the stories of people who experience it. It means listening with humility and not interrupting or glossing it over.
When my boys are old enough to really learn about Dr. King’s legacy, and to learn about Jim Crow and segregation and Rosa Parks, I hope they will be shocked. I hope they will think it’s totally crazy and absurd that black people ever had to sit in the back of a bus. But I also want to teach them that we haven’t entirely achieved Dr. King’s dream yet. And I want to teach them — hopefully by example, as well as by word — that one way to reach that dream is by having humility in the face of other people’s experiences, even — or especially if — they are different from our own.
One of the best parts of being a teacher on summer vacation is that you get to totally bypass the Sunday Evening Blues. For an entire two months, you don’t have to deal with that flat, slightly depressed feeling that inevitably comes at the end of the weekend.
Alas, I’m now back singing the blues.
In moments like these, I always find it helpful to think of things that make me happy. Call me Pollyanna, but a little shot of positive thinking can do a lot to salvage a Sunday evening. So here, in no particular order, are Things that Bring Me Joy.
1. My roses. I never get tired of them. Never.
2. Morning coffee the way Scott makes it: very earthy and full-bodied and yum.
3. When my boys start doing things — chasing each other, pretending to fall, etc. — that make them both scream with laughter. There is no better sound than that.
4. Warm summer weather — which we now have, at long last.
5. The smell of a new book: the cedar-y paper, the dark delicious ink. They should make that into a perfume, don’t you think? (And I just created a rhyme. Yay for accidental poetry!)
6. Starting off the day with Father Judge’s prayer. I don’t do it every morning (I often forget), but when I do, I find that the day is palpably more mindful and spiritual.
7. The feel of crisp new sheets on a bed. It’s especially fabulous on a warm night like this one.
Just last night, my little family returned home from a week’s vacation in New Hampshire. We were staying at a family camp at Squam Lake, otherwise known as the lake where “On Golden Pond” was filmed. In my humble opinion, it’s also one of the most beautiful and peaceful places on earth.
If you don’t believe me, take a look at this, the view from right outside our cabin:
And this:
Man, this place is gorgeous. If there are any NH residents reading this, let me just tell you that you live an an absolutely beautiful state. I might even be tempted to move there were I not sure that the winters would totally destroy this wimpy CA girl. As it is, I hope I can go back for a visit sometime. Next week might be good.
And the loons! What fascinating birds! We saw quite a few over the course of the week and I adore their eerie and distinctive call. I am seriously going to find a loon ringtone for my phone (that should turn a few heads at the mall, don’t you think?).
Speaking of loons, I was bemused, then amused, by this sign in our cabin:
I guess this means that if you think a loon has a nice figure, you need to keep that opinion to yourself.
Best of all, we were there with very special people, for a very special reason. Scott’s parents will celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary in November, and it was their dream to get all three of their kids and families together for a week. We toasted them with champagne one memorable evening, sitting out on the deck of the cabin while bats flew by in the semi-darkness and loons called to each other on the water. It is not often that all the assorted Moyers, hailing from California and Colorado and New Hampshire and New York, are together in one place. The fact that it was such a beautiful place was just icing on the cake.
Happy early anniversary, Bob and Joan. Thank you for a memorable, magical week.
About six days ago, a fly flew into the house when we had the door open. It has not left. It buzzes around, looking for a way out, slamming into windows and hovering around light fixtures. Matthew was initially afraid of it — it’s a huge son of a gun — and wanted to have his door closed at night so the fly wouldn’t come into his room.
I did come very close to liberating the poor thing on Thursday, when it flew into the remains of my Trader Joe’s BBQ Chicken Salad container. I hastily slapped on the lid and headed, triumphantly, to the front door. About two feet away, the lid slipped off. The fly escaped from the container and a very choice expletive escaped from my mouth.
But at this point, the fly hardly bothers us anymore. Matthew keeps his door open at night and at naptime and has been known to say, “Look! The fly!” in nearly delighted tones. I have to stop myself from setting out a placemat for it at dinner. It’s like one of the family now. One day, we might actually miss it.
Father Mychal Judge has been on my heart a lot lately. He was the chaplain for the New York City fire department, the first registered death of 9/11. He had gone into the World Trade Center towers to offer last rites to the dying firefighters, and he himself was struck and killed. You have probably seen this photograph of his body being carried away from the towers. It is one of those photos that is hard to forget. I’ve seen it referred to as a modern Pieta.
Though it’s been nearly nine years since his death, it’s only in the last year that I’ve started really reading up on his life. And everything I read just makes me convinced that he was the kind of man I’d be privileged to know. Those who knew him spoke of a generosity of spirit, and kindness, and a personality that was larger than life. He seemed particularly able to connect with people on the fringes of society. He would spontaneously give his clothes to homeless people on the streets of New York. In the 1980s, he went into the hospital rooms of AIDS patients and listened to them, prayed with them, touched them at a time when most people were terrified to get near them. He was a recovered alcoholic, one who felt that AA saved his life. The fact that he himself had known hopelessness meant that he was, by all accounts, remarkably compassionate to others in pain. And it’s this quality that makes him most compelling to me.
In Michael Ford’s book Father Mychal Judge: An Authentic American Hero, he quotes a priest who knew Mychal well. Father William Hart McNichols talks about Mychal Judge’s unique ability to minister to those around him. I was particularly struck by this passage:
[Mychal] was always warm and friendly. He never came across as someone completely together, but he projected a wounded warmth without being wounding. A lot of ministers, who are not self-aware or self-conscious in the good sense of that word, can really hurt people because their wounds are not absorbed or faced. They can really damage others. When Mychal Judge came toward you, you knew he was wounded. But you also knew you were safe with him. (Father Mychal Judge: An Authentic American Hero, 118)
I get the feeling I’m not done writing about Father Mychal. There is a lot more I want to learn about him.
And before I go I want to share this, his personal prayer, which I often pray myself in the morning. It is a reminder that the day will present us with lots of little moments where we have to make a choice: Are we going to bring God’s love into the world, or not? Mychal chose the better part, both in life and at the moment of his death. I have much to learn from him.
Lord, take me where you want me to go;
Let me meet who you want me to meet;
Tell me what you want me to say;
and keep me out of Your way.
Okay, I have a problem. I have too many books and not enough house.
I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while, and a recent post on Faith and Family Live inspired me to jump in. See, it’s getting bad around here. Not only do we have my huge collection of novels, plays, spiritual tomes, books on writing, and French stories that I used to be able to read easily but now keep around mostly because they look cool, along with my husband’s assortment of books on theology, Church history, programming, and home repair, we also now have my boys’ books. Together they have amassed a very impressive collection, considering that they cannot even read.
We are so desperate for shelf space that I have even started doing the reader’s equivalent of double-parking:
Oh, and factor in all the books from my own childhood that I am emotionally unable to part with, and we’re really in a bind. Shortly before Matthew was born, I had a brilliant idea: Wait a minute! I can put the books from my own childhood in the baby’s room! At that time we did not know the gender of our little one. I figured that if it turned out to be female, she’d have a library that would be the envy of every one of her girly, ballet-loving friends. But destiny had other plans, and I suspect it is only a few years before Matthew summarily kicks A Little Princess out of his room. Sara Crewe is living on borrowed time.
On the other hand, it could be worse. If you have to have a huge collection of something, books show a bit better than, say, beer cans. They are easier to store than mounted animal heads (I am assuming). And every book means something to me. It’s a little artifact of my childhood, preserved forever; it’s that novel I read in my twenties that helped me figure out what kind of woman I wanted to be; it’s the spiritual memoir that got me through an existential crisis caused by a romance gone wrong; it’s the writing guide full of prompts that just might get me running down a road towards a fabulous book idea. How do I part with them?
I am LOVING summer vacation. It is so nice to have time to do all the things I don’t do the rest of the year (like, you know, clean house). And not having to do any grading for two whole months is — well, it’s impossible to describe. It’s like drinking a bottle of really expensive wine, or being in love. It’s heady. It’s intoxicating. It’ s heaven.
In other news:
* Had a great San Francisco “mini-conference” today with fellow writers Lisa Hendey, Christine Watkins, and Julie Paavola. It was marvelous to meet and talk shop and pray together. Writing is such a solitary endeavor that it’s always a treat to connect.
*Last week, I found out that I won a Catholic Press Association Award for my columns for Catholic San Francisco! — an Honorable Mention in the category of Family Life. Woo hoo! That was a remarkably nice bit of news in the middle of the drudgery of finals week. (If you want to read a few of my columns, you can click here, and here, and here.)
* Every now and then, even this totally unartistic person gets a flash of inspiration. As beautiful as these homegrown roses are, I think they’re even nicer paired with a few sprigs from my lavender plant … wouldn’t you agree?
(No, I don’t normally put my vases on the carpet. I was just looking for the best light for the photo.)
This post will be a bit of a hymn to BustedHalo.com — one of my favorite web resources for thought-provoking spirituality. (Big old disclaimer: I’m a regular contributor there, answering readers’ questions about Mary. This is not a paid endorsement, though — just one that comes out of my profound gratitude for what they do.)
If you aren’t familiar with BH, it’s a website sponsored by the Paulist fathers (otherwise known as my favorite order of priests). And it recognizes that lots of people in their twenties and thirties are full of questions about faith, suspicious of large religious institutions, and not entirely sure how to reconcile spirituality with a secular culture. I know that kind of person, because I used to be one. (Actually, in many ways, I still am.) It is not a website where people will judge you for the questions you raise. It is a place where you can find out about Catholicism, where you can read people’s honest reflections on their own spiritual journeys, where you can learn how the sacred and the secular do not have to be at loggerheads with one another.
It also just won a big award: in the Associated Church Press awards in May, it won Best in Class for Independent Website and E-Zine.
But hey, enough talking. Check it out yourself. If you aren’t sure where to start, read this article about a cemetery for the anonymous homeless of NYC. More than anything else I’ve read in recent memory, it’s a searing reminder of Christ’s command to care for the “least among us.”
You can also try this gorgeous article about a young woman’s experiences volunteering in Lourdes, and the way that she got to know Mary. It’s beautiful and heart-breaking. (It will also explain the picture at the beginning of this post.)
In the fridge, a bottle of champagne lies on its side. In about ten minutes, Scott will open it, and he and I will drink. We will drink and drink. We just might drink until the whole bottle is gone.
Why the celebration?
Because I am on summer vacation.
Summer VACATION.
SUMMER VACATION!!!!!!!!!!!
No amount of caps or exclamation points can capture the pure unmitigated euphoria that I feel at this thought. I have graded my last essay, wiped the last bit of writing off of the whiteboard, dealt with my last bit of surly teenage attitude, and I am ready to pop the cork and just gloat with the fabulousness of it all.
It’s been a hard year. If you’ve been reading this blog for the last nine months or so, you know that I’ve had moments when I was ready to throw in the towel and get a job doing — well, pretty much anything else. But now I have two months to tend to those other, non-teacher parts of myself. The mom part. The wife part. The lover part (yes, those last two go together). The writer and pray-er and gardener parts. It’s not that teaching doesn’t give me satisfaction — it does, most of the time. But I’m ready to re-direct the massive amount of energy that teaching requires, to redirect it into all those other wonderful channels, to light them up and get them glowing and humming again.
I'm a formerly lapsed Catholic who likes to write about faith, real life, and how the two intersect. Oh, and I love Mary -- check out my book Mary and Me below!
