Immortality

Today, my dear friend Nancy will be laid to rest in the Indiana earth, less than 150 miles from where we first met. But where is she now, really? 

My faith tells me that she is sleeping and will rise in glory on the Last Day. My skeptical self says, "Hmmm..." 

One thing I know for sure: Nancy lives on in the hearts of those who love her. It's an immortality in which we all can believe — and to which we all can aspire. 

(The Bernini columns in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, one of many wonders I saw for the first time with Nancy. Photo: Wikipedia)

Family Bibles

They hold newspaper clippings, holy cards, photos of babies in long cotton gowns. Century-old flowers crumble in their pages, and their bindings are frayed and worn.

Yesterday I paged through a stack of old family bibles looking for names, dates, relationships. Some of them had elaborate closures; others were falling apart. Some of them gave up their secrets; others did not.

But all of them held the fears and triumphs of mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins. They were the ceremonial center of recorded family life. I studied them, photographed them, copied words from their pages. Then I brushed their dust off my hands and came upstairs, to the land of the living.

Worthwhile

The rain has stopped, the sun has peeked through the clouds, and I have in mind a piece of music I always hum this time of year: "God So Loved the World," by John Stainer.

Not knowing much about the composer I looked him up this morning. He's not as contemporary as I thought. His dates, 1860-1901, mark him as a Victorian through and through.

Though his choral music output was prodigious, nothing much is performed these days except "The Crucifixion," from which this piece emerged as an Easter and Passiontide favorite. 

Give it a listen, if you have time. Maybe you'll agree with me that to be remembered for one piece of music — if it were a piece like this — would make an entire life worthwhile. 

Religious Recycling

For years I collected palms from Palm Sunday. I grew up learning that they are a sacramental, something sacred that you can't just toss in the trash.  I brought them home from church, tucked them up high on a shelf in the closet and there they stayed, collecting dust. 

In the old days, in the homes of an earlier generation of Catholics, I remember them being displayed behind sacred art, paintings of the Sacred Heart, the sorts of iconography I don't have.

But in the last 10 years or so, my church has put out a call for old palms a few weeks before Lent begins. They burn the palms and use the ashes on Ash Wednesday — a lovely example of religious recycling. 

I was able to shed a large backlog of palms that way. Now, my house is almost palm free. The "almost" is because ... I picked up another palm yesterday.

The Sé

We had been in Funchal for a full week before I darkened the door of its main attraction, the cathedral, or Sé. I attended mass there, which featured one only brief reading in English, the rest in Portuguese. But that didn't matter. I sat (or knelt or stood) and let the experience wash over me: the setting, the music, the piety.

The cathedral was built in the 16th century, and features a carved wooden ceiling made of Madeirian cedar and a gleaming gold altar. The service was beautifully accompanied by a small choir and orchestra in the loft. The worshippers beside me seemed as awed by the place as I was.

At one time, this cathedral oversaw the largest diocese in the world, because it encompassed all of Portugal's territories in Africa, Asia, North America, South America. A mighty Sé, indeed.

Taizé Prayer

I'd heard about it for years but usually have a conflict on the night it happens. Last night I didn't, so I drove to the church in the dark and walked into a shimmering, candlelit chapel that scarcely resembled its everyday self.

There were icons on the altar and candles flickering around the sanctuary, illuminating the rough-hewn brick walls. There were two tables of thin tapers for lighting to elevate your prayer intention. There were many in attendance, but a hush filled the room. 

Taizé is an ecumenical monastic community in France with worship services of repetitive chanted prayer. Its model has become popular around the world. 

We sang in Latin, we sang in English. We were accompanied by piano, organ, violin, oboe and clarinet. The melodies were like plainsong, and in their repetition was the music of the ages.  

Silence punctuated the service: a silent entrance, a silent exit, and a stretch of silence in the middle, time for quiet contemplation — "essential to discovering the heart of prayer," the handout told me.

I left feeling renewed, inspired, quieted. 

(Photo: courtesy Arlington Catholic Herald.)

Creeping Jenny

It's Advent, the season of waiting. But waiting for what? The birth of Christ, the gathering of the clan, the arrival of yet another box from Amazon? Or for a contentment I long for but can't explain.

Advent is also the season of preparation, not just wrapping gifts and baking cookies but preparing ourselves spiritually. For me, the best way to prepare is to stop waiting and bask in the moment.

Today's moment is noticing the jaunty upward growth of the Creeping Jenny plant. I've been neglecting it, putting it on top of the bookshelf in my office so it would trail down from on high in romantic tendrils, like wisps of hair escaping from a Gibson Girl bun. 

But it gets no sun there, so I moved it yesterday to a free corner of my desk. It already looks healthier, greener, more in sync with its surroundings. I want to be like that plant: well placed and pointing toward the sun.

Every Verse

"Second verse, same as the first," goes a line from an old Herman's Hermits song. 

Two verses used to be the limit for the processional and recessional hymns at my church. But there's a new music director in town, an organist no less, and he plays all four verses of every entering and leaving song.

Is it my imagination, or is there a certain restlessness as we plunge into verse four of the entrance hymn, a narrowly avoided temptation to glance at the watch? 

As for the recessional, people are voting with their feet. This morning, about half the congregation left before the last notes of "The Church's One Foundation" sounded and the postlude began, organ chords thundering down from on high. 

This is how we're supposed to leave the sanctuary, I thought, as I made my way to the holy water font and out the door — caught up in a marvelous swell of sound. 

(This organ is from San Bartolome Church, Seville, Spain, not my church. I wish!)

A Pilgrimage

Yesterday, a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Catholic church in the country, which was (amazingly enough) only completed this decade. Organized by my church, it was a day of prayer and discovery, a capstone of the bible study we'd been doing during Lent, with its theme of pilgrimage.

But for me, the pilgrimage took on an additional layer of meaning because it was also a return to Catholic University, which is next door to the basilica. Once upon a time, I worked at Catholic U., writing articles for their alumni magazine and website. This was in the days of in-person work, so five days a week I trundled down to northeast D.C. 

Yesterday's return didn't disappoint. There were the old buildings I remembered and a few recent additions. There was the grandly grim McMahon Hall, home of the College of Arts and Sciences and where the communications team had a small warren of offices on the third floor . 

I never tired of walking two floors up the broad and inviting stairway, never stopped being amazed that I was working in an office again after 17 years of freelance work. I turned my desk around so I looked out the window over the campus and beyond, into Maryland. There were treetops and steeples. I felt like a bird perched on a ledge. In fact, birds did perch on my ledge, and the stones of the thick walls were medieval in their size and roughness.

Then and now the neighborhood feels like a world apart. Yesterday's visit reminded me that one of the things I loved about working at Catholic was its sense of place. I felt at home there. I still do.

Last Meal

On Sunday the Octave of Easter ended, though the season of Easter will last until Pentecost. But for me the celebration truly came to an end when I ate the last turkey sandwich made from Easter dinner leftovers. 

Sometimes I forgo the turkey on Easter, serving only ham along with the deviled eggs, asparagus, ambrosia salad and potatoes au gratin. But this year's crowd required reinforcements. I was happy to oblige with a 23-pound bird. That's a lot of turkey sandwiches — and I have relished every one.

You have to understand that if I were offered a last meal, I wouldn't hesitate. It would be a turkey sandwich made from all white meat, thinly sliced, on white bread (which I usually avoid) and mayonnaise (ditto). If I'm feeling virtuous I garnish with lettuce ... but I usually don't feel virtuous. 

I would illustrate this post with a picture of a turkey sandwich, but alas, the turkey sandwiches are gone. A glass of iced tea will have to do. It, of course, would be the last beverage. 

Semana Santa

It's Holy Week and I'm imagining I'm back in Sevilla, where Semana Santa is a very big deal. This is what I love best about traveling. That even though I must leave the place, the place never leaves me. It stays in the angle of the light, the heat of the day rising up off the paving stones, the expressions of the faithful waiting patiently for the procession.

The taste of Semana Santa that we experienced in last June's Corpus Christi celebration is what I'm remembering, and I'm multiplying it by, oh, a hundred at least. The religious floats are much larger, the crowds much denser, the people more serious and pious than they were last summer (and they were seriously pious then). 

It's the holiest week of the year for Catholics, and in Sevilla, that's abundantly clear.

A Replacement?

In class this week we talked about good and evil, the decline of religion and the ascendancy of the "spiritual." A question the professor threw out to us then that I'm only answering now is, what is religion's greatest potential alternative? What's replacing it?

There's some irony in answering this question in a social science class because in many ways, the answer to these questions is ... social science. 

Psychology and social psychology have not answered all the questions, but they have provided close-enough answers that the influence of religion has paled. They have answered the problem of evil with the medicalization of evil, a belief that much wrongdoing is due to illness rather than sin. Hard to compete with that. 

The Color Rose

It's a day of rejoicing and the beating of wings. The swallows return to the mission of San Juan Capistrano, and the church celebrates Laetare Sunday, the midpoint of Lent, with its foretaste of joy.

At a morning retreat yesterday, I spoke with a woman who I often see on Sunday but have never met. She walks with some difficulty but always seems cheerful. Emboldened by the conviviality of the day, I reached out and commented on the lovely heathery rose color of her wool suit.

"I'm celebrating Laetare Sunday a day early," she said, laughing. Something about her deliberate choice of this color, about her caring that much, is what I'll remember most about the event.

I went to the retreat expecting wisdom from on high, from the prepared remarks of speakers. Instead, it was an ordinary interaction that made the day.

Michael Gerson: 1964 — 2022

The world lost a great columnist and thinker yesterday when Michael Gerson died of cancer. Though I'm not an evangelical Christian Republican, I found much to admire in Gerson's columns, especially the ones about faith.  I wasn't the only one. The tributes are flowing in. 

In 2019 he spoke at Washington National Cathedral about his battle with depression, which had hospitalized him only weeks before. Though he credited medication for helping him turn the corner, he also spoke of "other forms of comfort," including "the wild hope of a living God." 

Those who believe, he said, know that life is not a farce but a pilgrimage, that hope can "grow within us, like a seed," and "transcendence sparks and crackles around us ... if we open ourselves to seeing it."

Gerson didn't just write about heavy stuff, though. Last summer he described his new Havanese, Jack, as a "living, yipping, randomly peeing antidepressant" and declared "I'll never live without a dog again." He never did — but now Jack, his family, friends and readers will have to live without Gerson.

I've written very few fan letters in my life, but last May I wrote one to Michael Gerson. He'd written a column that acknowledged a return of the cancer he knew would end his life, and I wanted to let him know that one reader, this reader, had taken much comfort from his words. He was kind enough to write me back. But it's in his published words that I will remember him best, like this one from 2017:

If the resurrection is real, death’s hold is broken. ...  It is possible to live lightly, even in the face of death — not by becoming hard and strong, but through a confident perseverance. Because cynicism is the failure of patience. Because Good Friday does not have the final word.

Saints and Souls

The poet John Keats described autumn as the "season of mist and mellow fruitfulness." But this is one of the first foggy mornings we've had all fall. 

It's a lovely one, though, softening the vivid yellows of the tulip poplar leaves, making it difficult to see the houses across the backyard, let alone across the street.

Fog is atmospheric and perfect for this morning, post ghosts and goblins, the feast of all saints and the eve of all souls. 

Orthodox Easter

They entered the ornate cathedrals, slogging through rubble to get there. One photograph shows a country church and a lone woman entering with a basket. Another shows a hastily assembled altar, soldiers in fatigues. 

It was Easter yesterday in Ukraine, but the shelling and the funerals continue. The message of a suffering savior and a glorious resurrection, the promise of eternal life, was delivered amidst the smoke and the terror. 

For us,  the war in Ukraine is a story we read in a newspaper, a report we watch on television. Switch off the screen, put down the paper ... and it goes away.

For the brave souls in Ukraine, there is no pause, no end to the horror. For them, for now, war is life.  

The Bells of Healy Hall

If I'm lucky, I arrive on the Georgetown campus in time to hear the bells of Healy Hall toll the Angelus. It makes an already timeless experience feel even more so.

The bells were tolling last night as I walked to class past the old stone buildings through a cool and soggy evening. 

I thought about a passage from Thomas Cahill's Mysteries of the Middle Ages, which details a 1219 visit between Saint Francis of Assisi and Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. 

Some scholars think that it was then that Francis came up with the idea of tolling the Angelus bells at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. — the Christian version of the Muslim call to prayer. A likely story, and maybe just that, a story. But it was easy to believe it when the bells were ringing. 

Annunciation

In class this week, the professor said a scene from the novel we're reading was an annunciation. I pictured a medieval painting, the rich oil pigments darkened from the smoke of candles burning. I pictured the painting hanging on the wall of a great cathedral,  cold stone and buttresses, echoes of chant and plainsong.

Today is the feast of the annunciation, the day when the Virgin Mary learned she was bearing the son of God via a message from the angel Gabriel. 

I see a painting again, Gabriel in rich reds, his white wings shining. I see Mary's head inclined toward the light, gold halo above her head. 

Annunciation: an announcement, a message, a few words that can change your life. 

(The Annunciation depicted in a 15th century tapestry. Photo courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago.)

Church Bells

My church backs into a many-pathed woods poised on a rise above a creek called The Glade. Some weekends I drive over there early, park in the near-empty lot, and take a walk before mass begins. 

The last two weeks, I've attended the latest service. The sun has set while I'm strolling, the air grown still. I know I'm preparing to pray, not actually praying, but it's hard to convince myself of that. The sauntering feels just as holy, the forest just as much a cathedral. 

As if to emphasize the point, church bells toll as I finish the walk. These are real bells, not recorded ones. I feel like a medieval serf being called from the fields, drawn from drudgery to the promise of eternal life. 

Already Advent

We come now to one of my favorite times in the liturgical year. It's a short season, one ever more likely to be buried in tinsel and outdoor lighting. It's the season of Advent, of preparation, of prayers and devotionals.

It is almost lost in this world, buried by frantic list-making and shopping.By nonstop carol radio and the Hallmark Christmas movie channel. Every year I hope the prayer and devotional part wins out. Every year it does not. But Advent is early this year, so maybe it has a chance.

Advent reminds me of medieval stone abbeys, of kneeling on hard surfaces, of chanting the divine office in the wee hours. No doubt informed by once reading The Cloister Walk, a fine book by Kathleen Norris, during early December, but also, I think, by the hymns and carols of my youth. 

Now these are mostly memory, but still captured in a few plaintive melodies — O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, for one. I played it on the piano last night, trying to capture the hope and longing of this fleeting season.