Write for God

Every Friday, my small Florida town has a Green Market with homemade products and lots of produce. Coming home with Middle Eastern spinach pie and pita bread, Irish cheese, semolina bread, wedges of Gouda and greens has become a ritual to end the workweek.

The aroma of cooked onions on hot dogs, kettle corn, fresh lemonade and veggie burgers fills the air while I haul my purchases in eco-friendly cloth bags. The Green Market is a feast for the eyes and palate. As I ambled by each booth this morning, the scent of kettle corn pulled me toward the couple cooking popcorn in a giant pot. I couldn’t resist buying a bag of the sweet and salty treat to munch on the way home, but the owner of the porcorn booth happened to say that she and her husband are immune to the sweet scent of cooking popcorn. “It’s only when we get a break for a couple of weeks that we enjoy it again,” she said.

Even the delicious aroma of kettle corn can get old if there’s no respite to enjoy it. I wonder how people who do nothing but work can actually enjoy what they do. Once you’re so close to a task, no matter how much you may be tied to it, you lose the ability to appreciate what others can from a distance away, as I did today with my bag of kettle corn.

The old saw about stopping to smell the roses is true. Unless we force ourselves to take a breather or unless we can step away from a task to appreciate its merits, we could be cooking up the most delicious treat without enjoying it.

I really like supporting small businesses and artisans. I’d much rather purchase an item handmade by someone than the most perfect machine-milled item. When I can see someone making kettle corn, it tastes all the better. When I can patronize the soap store a few blocks from my house and talk to the soapmaker about her products, I’m more likely to pay more for a scented cake she made by herself than I would for supermarket soap.

The Green Market gives me a chance to buy products directly from the craftspeople who care about what they make. They will even stop to talk or to offer samples. Today one of the produce booths was selling pineapples for half of the price of my supermarket–completely cored and bagged by the owner of the booth. An older woman I was chatting with bought a pineapple just because the young man did the hard work for her.

Each Friday, I look forward to my homespun shopping experience. Thanks to my flexible work schedule these days, it looks like I’ll be able to enjoy them until the Green Market closes for the season in a couple of months. There’s nothing like stopping to smell the kettle corn while you’re supporting your neighbors’ enterprises.

I had lunch today with two good friends. Over big helpings of pasta and great conversation, talk turned to our latest efforts. It turns out that all three of us, plus the missing member of our circle who is now living out of state, are now blogging. What are the odds that all four of us would be in cyberspace talking about our interests?

Pretty high, in fact. Smart, tech-savvy people with points of view like my friends are blogging at unprecedented rates. Technorati, the blog tracking site, reports it is following 112.8 million blogs on its site. More than one cyberstranger has left a comment here letting me know he or she found me on Technorati.

One of my friends has a blog and site about woodworking, a hobby he’s very good at and can write about very well. Another one has a blog about her jewelry business, which she runs at home while keeping track of sons and pets in addition to making and designing jewelry. The third writes about restaurants and food in a zippy style. My blog is where I publish my essays and religious writings. All four of us are creative people who found blogs to be a good outlet for our passions. We have or have had day jobs, but our free time is when we indulge in our secret lives.

I usually write at night, when I can finally sit down at the end of the day with all of my faculties still intact. I’ve never been a morning person; my mother even says that’s why I was born at night. Writing at night is easier for me and that’s when I actually have the time to do it when I’m working. My days are longer now that I’m employed five miles from home, which is a great commute. I can arrive home unfrazzled by traffic, at a reasonable hour and in a good mood. My front teeth used to hurt from clenching them when I was commuting home at the good I had previous to this one. By the time I sit in my office chair at my home office, I’m still relaxed and happy.

For some bloggers, I’m sure that their Web activities are a blessing after a day doing something they don’t really like to do for a living. For others, it’s a way to express themselves the way that other generations used to keep diaries or journals. For me, it’s my virtual printing press. If I weren’t blogging, I’d be writing in journals, too.

During lunch we discussed our next posts and where we can take our virtual clips. We all traded URLs and promised to keep track of everyone’s efforts. Blogs have become the equivalent of the holiday cards exchanged to let faraway friends know how we’re doing, except that they arrive instantly and are shared with the rest of the world, too.

The world is holding a big blog party and everyone’s invited.

There’s a certain xenophobic cable news commentator who insists on making immigration a dirty word. People who come to our nation with their families to work are “illegals,” as if they were bootleg hooch in Al Capone’s day. When governments translate documents or offer services in Spanish, they’re just encouraging “illegals” not to learn English. (Although this blowhard vents about Latinos without exception, I found it cute when, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day last year, he did a piece on Irish nationals who overstay their visas. I can’t wait for his Bastille Day report on all those French folks who made it past our “broken borders,” as he says ad nauseam.)

Why don’t they all just learn English? As someone whose first language wasn’t English, I would like to tell Mr. Shrinking Middle Class why that isn’t as easy as he thinks: this is an extremely difficult language to master. My sister and I were nine and six when we started learning our new language and, about a year later, we were fluent enough not to get laughed at in class. My parents, who were in their 30s, still have heavy accents and think in Spanish before they speak English.

The most difficult aspect of learning English isn’t the syntax, although that’s certainly backward if your first language was Spanish, as mine was. Say “old book” and the adjective precedes the noun; say “libro viejo” and it’s the other way around. Only someone writing airy poetry in Spanish would reverse them for effect.

The conglomeration of words from Old English and other languages isn’t what makes this language difficult to learn, either. Learn the words and it eventually doesn’t matter where they came from. English can be very economical. Even if you’re not bilingual, check out the instructions on the next piece of furniture you put together. The instructions in English are always shorter and more direct than in French, Spanish, German or any other European language.

What makes English a devil to learn, Mr. Cable News Know-it-all, is the pronounciation. Nothing makes sense in English. A person can be well read and sound like an idiot if he tries to read aloud in English. (Notice how the same word in this sentence, “read,” looks exactly the same, but sounds different each time. Pity the poor immigrant!)

In Spanish or Italian, two languages I speak or can muddle my way through, words are phonetic. Anyone with a basic reading knowledge can combine consonants and vowels in the same way. An a always sounds like what we would pronounce as “ah.” There’s never a long a or a short a; it is what it is.

Today, my daughter who is first in her class and reads constantly, had a heck of a time helping me cook tortellini. She was scanning the list of Italian seasonings and couldn’t tell if “herb” had a silent h or not. I had to tell her that a silent h is a fragrant seasoning and a h that’s not is the name of the Mr. Alpert, the great trumpet player from the Tijuana Brass. Another herb, “basil,” sounds different if it’s a male name or if its added to pasta. That’s English for you, and that’s why it’s so darn hard to learn.

Why does “read” mean the present and the past of the verb “to read,” but they’re pronounced differently? It’s the same with “lead” when one way of saying it means what’s not in gasoline anymore and what you do instead of follow. To those who’ve learned to read phonetically, it’s baffling.

I’m always amazed at spelling bees and the children who manage to win contests that test them on the endlessly wacky ways that letters can be combined in English. In Spanish, every kid would win every spelling bee; with extremely rare exceptions, everything is spelled the way it’s written. (A notable exception is the word “reloj,” which means clock or watch. The j is silent and only God knows why it’s there. Everything else is a breeze.)

It’s for sure that the average “illegal” would have a much more difficult time learning English than Monsieur Cable Hot Air would have learning Spanish. It doesn’t deter our least favorite commentator that some of the Mexican and Central American workers without visas have had to learn Spanish in their own countries. For some, native languages that were in our continent long before Columbus happened to land here were their first means of expression. (I never say Columbus “discovered” us because the only thing he found was a way to lead the charge of those who began the exploitation of native people on our shores. Come to think of it, the Genoan sailor and his Spanish crew arrived here needing translation assistance.)

When I was in high school, I used to tutor students in Italian, a language I learned in school and which I still love. I also assisted Spanish-speaking students who were in the process of learning English. I know how difficult it is to learn the intricacies of a language that’s not your first. A young girl whose first language had been a native Central American dialect couldn’t pronounce the word “fish,” a common enough term for us. The “sh” phoneme was impossible for her, and she was an eager student who was motivated to learn. My Italian student had learned certain words from his immigrant grandmother and the word for beans, “fagioli,” was beyond his understanding. His Nonna made “pasta fazool,” he said. She never pronounced it “fagioli.”

I love languages and the sound of Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese is incredibly beautiful spoken and sung. Who can resist Andrea Boccelli, Edith Piaf, Alejandro Fernandez or Caetano Veloso singing a ballad? These languages sound like silk and cream to the ear. English can be just as de-lovely, or am I the only person delighted by Cole Porter’s lyrics and Gerard Manley Hopkins’ lyrical language? English is a diverse, musical language, but it’s difficult to learn and difficult to pronounce without sounding confused.

For every “illegal” that doesn’t want to learn English, according to cable’s favorite immigration nazi, there’s the child of an “illegal” that is picking it up within a year and making it his or her own. Research continues to show that, by the second generation, English has replaced the native language the immigrant brought to our nation. Those who keep their first language make a conscious effort to do so. For the young, English is the language of choice among themselves and, eventually, with the rest of the world. My children have studied Spanish in school and can understand some words and expressions, but they think and speak English only.

English is the world’s language, but it’s difficult to master for those who are new to it. Language stylists such as Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Conrad who had other first languages, are all the more skilled as authors. For every adult immigrant that needs language assistance, there’s a child who is picking English up as his or her means of expression. I love being bilingual and I can find beauty in either Spanish or English. One is the language of the past and the other is the language of the future.

This weekend, I visited Vatican Splendors, an art/history exhibit at the Florida International Museum in St. Petersburg. I won’t get into the particulars of the show here, but I did find a certain aspect of the Vatican-approved installation troubling. Perhaps it was just me, or perhaps other Catholics would find the same issue difficult.

Amid priceless art such as the Mandylion of Edessa and a breathtakingly beautiful Giotto mosaic, there were many earthly treasures from the Vatican. A papal tiara topped by one of the largest emeralds in the world shares exhibit space with diamond-encrusted rings, gold chalices dotted with gems and elaborate vestments. There was a chasuble embroidered with gold bees for the present Pope, with the symbolism of the sweetness of the word of God and a golden cross where the corpus of the Son of Man seemed out of place in his simple loincloth.

When I write reviews, I always tune in to what those around me are saying as I formulate my own thoughts. Many of the mostly older folks around me the day I visited were wowed by the bijoux, so there was a certain crowd-pleasing element to the “treasure room” at the exhibit. I may have been alone in contrasting the finery to the items in the earlier part of the exhibit that covered the early church, when Christians were daring in their desire to follow a new religion that came with pain and persecution.

A model of the simple memorial at the site where St. Peter was buried after his inverted crucifixion was on display opposite a plaster piece with the graffito Petros eni, or “Peter is here.” The first Christians buried Peter in Vatican Hill, up a ways from Nero’s Circus, where our spiritual ancestors were mauled, tortured and ridiculed. In secret, the early followers would risk their lives to visit his burial site. The exhibit has some oil lamps left by the faithful and a gold votive left at his memorial by a more prosperous Christian.

Constantine’s state approval of Christianity gave the church riches and legitimacy. The first basilica at St. Peter’s was in bad shape when the present structure was begun during the Renaissance but, for its time, it must have been an impressive site. The present basilica, with its Berninis and its Michelangelo frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, is even more elaborate. 

There is no exhibition of artistic genius richer than the Sistine Chapel, which I hope one day to see in person. (I will most likely burst into tears in the presence of its beauty.) I have no problem with creating art for God, which is holy; my issue lies in creating riches for God, which is not.

I can’t deny that the excess of gold and gems in connection with the church of Peter bothered me at the exhibit. For every expression of simplicity in the worship of the early Christians and for every expression of creativity in the art on exhibit, there was a regret that so many visitors will come away with my same feelings of overindulgence.

When the Archdiocese of Los Angeles finished its new cathedral, the local Catholic Workers protested its opulence. I agreed with them then and I still do now. How much does God want gold in place of holocausts instead of mercy and humility? Why do we need diamonds to celebrate the Mass? Why are earthly riches so often required to celebrate treasures in Heaven? How did the church of the poor and persecuted in Peter’s time so quickly become the church of Constantine with its state-blessed opulence?

The bio documentary Witness to Hope celebrates the life of Pope John Paul II iin detail. From his childhood to his Papacy, it’s obvious that he born to be a servant of God. In one scene, the future Pope is celebrating Mass outdoors for young people with an overturned kayak as an altar and the oars placed as a cross. I found the photo of the scene in the documentary remarkable and I flashed back to it while I was at Vatican Splendors. A Mass at a riverside with a kayak for an altar would not have left with me with the same soul-searching I experienced while I was examining the goldsmithing on the pieces at the exhibit.

Dorothy Day wrote in her autobiography, “I loved the church for Christ made visible. Not for itself, because it was so often a scandal for me.” The future saint of the poor and the future saint who once celebrated Mass on a kayak had something in common: they loved the church too much to let glitter blind them to the works that God demands of us. My artistic eye appreciated the craftsmanship on the Vatican treasures, but my Catholic soul didn’t.

I thought of Peter’s followers as they must have prayed in the dark at his simple memorial, not realizing that over them would rise magnificence and opulence in the same millenium. Peter is still here.

I’ve heard the Vatican described as the oldest organization in the world and as the one with the best communications network. At a public relations conference a few years ago, the presenter marveled at how words from the Vatican can reach the smallest parish anywhere in the world faster than any other network of the same size can communicate with its members. Organization is a hallmark of the Vatican.

Great art is another of the Vatican’s gifts to the world. In the centuries when art geniuses created sacred works, the Roman Catholic Church was the repository of their masterpieces. Bernini, Michelangelo, Giotto, El Greco and Rembrandt created beauty that returned to God the gifts He had given them in the form of artistic expression. I know that if I were ever fortunate enough to visit the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, I would be blown away by Michelangelo’s prodigious creation. Looking at plates in art books leaves me speechless and they’re only flat representations of a vaulted canvas depicting the glory of God.

This week, I’ll be viewing some of the Vatican’s art treasures near my home. Vatican Splendors runs at the Florida International Museum in St. Petersburg, FL until May 11. Florida is one of only three locations in the world where the Vatican will be sharing some of its vast holdings. The thought of being near great art that’s also religious art fills me with expectation. The collection has the Mandylion of Edessa, one of the oldest representations of the face of Jesus, relics of St. Peter and objects that belonged to Pope John Paul II, who became the Holy Father to the world, not just to us Catholics.

The Florida International Museum has hosted excellent installations in past seasons; I’ve seen wonderfully curated exhibits about the Titanic, treasures of the Russian Czars and art associated with Alexander the Great. I have higher hopes for Vatican Splendors because of the melding of art and religion, which is a potent combination. Like a child before Christmas, I’m counting the days until Friday.

Being a self-admitted geek, I can admit that Oliver Sacks, M.D. is one of my favorite non-fiction authors. I’ve read Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and his latest, Musicophilia. (The first was also a very good film with Robin Williams playing Dr. Sacks and Robert De Niro as the patient who goes to sleep as a child and awakes a middle-aged man.) Dr. Sacks is a neurologist who is also a gifted writer about the mysteries of the human brain.

Music threads through all of Dr. Sacks’ books, since he comes from a multi-talented family and is a musician himself. Musicophilia deals with the power of music on the hidden chambers of our brains. Music occupies more areas of our brain than language does–humans are a musical species is Dr. Sacks’ contention. His case studies of brain-damaged adults who suddenly have an uncontrollable urge to learn music and of people who don’t “get” music because their brains perceive the sweetest notes as jarring dissonance are fascinating.

If music claims more of our brains’ real estate than language, as Dr. Sacks explains, then it follows that it speaks to us more persuasively. Reading Musicophilia, I felt sorry for those who can’t enjoy music. Not knowing the joy of scatting with Ella Fitzgerald, rocking to Aerosmith with the windows down in the car, crooning with Frank Sinatra while housecleaning or belting Dusty Springfield in the shower makes one poor indeed.

I can listen to music from my past and immediately be taken back to a moment or a feeling. Discovering new music is a pleasure unlike any other. My brother sent me Raising Sand, a gorgeous collaboration between soprano fiddler Alison Krauss and Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant some weeks ago and I still haven’t tired of it. While their pairing may seem odd, they are superb singers whose voices mesh like strands of silk and pearls. Their CD is an exquisite surprise.

Driving home today, I popped in an ancient CD by El Trio Matamoros, an influential trio of guitars and maracas that epitomized Cuban music when my grandparents were young marrieds in the 1920s and 1930s. As a little girl in Havana, I remember sunny afternoons when their LPs played on a suitcase record player in my grandparents’ house. Many decades after, I found a collection of the group’s best known songs on Amazon.com and the first listen took me back to memories recessed deep in my brain and unlocked by music. Lyrics, guitar rhythms and entire choruses came back to me despite not having heard the songs since I was about eight years old. As Oscar Wilde said, “Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.”

There’s very little music I can’t enjoy on some level. Flamenco guitars, Indian ragas, salsa, blues, Western swing, cowboy ballads, heavy metal. Broadway show tunes can all take me somewhere special. I don’t mind listening to Michael Buble, AC/DC, Beny More,  Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, The Doors, Joe Strummer and Doris Day in the same mp3 mix; in fact, I enjoy those eclectic mixes more than listening to the same CD.

My friend Amy left me a voice mail this month saying that, if I didn’t call her back, she would start singing Barry Manilow tunes to me. She knows there are actually a few sounds I can’t stand listening to. There aren’t many, however, and I can avoid them most of the time. Having a friend who’s a Fanilow just means that my friends don’t necessarily have to share my musical tastes (but it helps).

Music soothes, elevates, saddens, enervates and gladdens the heart and mind. Thomas Carlyle expressed its power perfectly: it is the speech of angels and the beating of our hearts. It’s the cheapest pleasure on earth.

Our week-old grandson Christian’s first full weekend was spent away from home. I picked him up in Tampa to give his young parents a break and to have him meet his grandfather. The ride from Tampa was the longest trip of his seven days of life.

Our 12-year-old twins were ecstatic to have their youngest nephew with us and his Grandpa Kevin was amazed at how lovely the little boy was in his arms. After all, it had been a little more than 12 years since our own kids had come home at that age and about 13 months since our first grandson, JJ, had been a newborn.

Christian seems to have a rich interior life, even though his exterior life involves the predictable eat-sleep-soil-his-diapers cycle. He smiles in his sleep and seems to look at faces intently with his baby blues. He still has the newborn smell of angel kisses on his little head. There’s no other way to describe the sweet powdery scent of a new baby whose soft cheeks nestle against your breast as he sleeps. “Freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby’s head,” as Bono put it in U2’s Miracle Drug. The scent is intoxicating to me and will always remind me of the happiness I felt when my four children were young. Now that two are adults who live on their own, our newborn grandson’s soft, fragrant scalp floods us with sweet memories of a time when they were just as tiny.

Even with two adults and two energetic 12-year-olds to tend to his needs, Christian wore us out. Today, I was feeding him at 3:15 a.m. and Kev took the feeding after that about four hours later. Our daughter placed Christian on her chest and both fell asleep until the digital camera’s flash woke them up with a start. I can’t even imagine how managing Christian and his big brother will tire out their parents, who are also full-time college students. One is finishing a degree in elementary education and the other in history, but there will be times when diapers will compete with finals for their full attention. Thank God that our extended family in the Tampa Bay area is nearby to pitch in.

This morning, Christian went to Mass with us. We took over the cry room as a courtesy to the rest of the congregation. During the hour we were at Mass, he needed part of a bottle, a diaper change and some lulling to sleep. He was blessed by our pastor and by the religious sister who is leaving our parish for a mission in the Philippines very soon. As both made the sign of the cross on Christian’s forehead, I offered my own prayers for the baby’s health. He’s so fragile in my arms as he takes his bottle or cries for a fresh diaper.

We are truly blessed to have two beautiful grandsons while we’re still healthy and relatively young. If we take care of ourselves, we could enjoy them for many years to come and watch them as they reach milestones in their lives. Our oldest son, Dylan, graduates from college in a few months, an achievement that my parents are still around to enjoy. I’m looking forward to the time when JJ and Christian will be holding diplomas on a school stage in my lifetime.

I couldn’t imagine having given over the years raising my four children to pursuits as venal as a career or making money. I worked, but also gave up a big part of myself for their well being. Considering the career setback I’ve just come through after losing my job and having to seek employment, the value of living for career advancement only now seems more worthless than ever. I have never felt as successful at a job as I’ve felt raising children who are well adjusted, polite and well mannered.

Our 12-year-old daughter is a caring child who has writing talent. Even though we’re in the same household, she likes to send me emails or leave notes on my writing desk. Earlier this month after she learned I’d been hired at a new job, she emailed me these words:

God really taught us all lesson that, no matter how hard you pray, bad things can happen, so you just have to stay in God and trust he’ll make something happen for us. This long journey has brought us all closer together. These last few months have proved that no matter the circumstances, we’ll still be an awesome family that loves God and each other.

How many preteens in today’s Bratz-sullied, Brittney-flavored, emo goth nihilistic society could write perceptive thoughts like those using perfect spelling and an impressive command of the English language? My happiness and sense of achievement the day I received that note couldn’t have been equalled on the best day ever at a job paying a million dollars a year with my own corner office.

My children and grandchildren have taught me a new measure of success: the secret is to pay it forward and to see the fruits of your own sacrifices in their best moments. Smelling Christian’s newborn head and receiving a loving note from Tally make me feel truly rich and undeniably blessed.

Some weeks ago, my husband bought a bottle of pinot grigio whose label reminded him of me. It read Santa Margherita, or St. Margaret, who is my patron saint. My parents named me after the saint of the Sacred Heart of Jesus because I was born on her feast day. We saved the bottle for the day when I started working again.

Tonight, we shared a glass after my first day at a new job.

I am working for a much smaller company than I was before when I was in county government. A friend whom I used to work did her best to get me hired as part of an arrangement that will find me working at a not-for-profit research institute four days a week and freelancing for another for-profit branch on the fifth. I’ll be writing from my home office for my friend and doing communications, volunteer coordination, fundraising and other duties at an office less than 15 minutes from home.

I couldn’t have hoped for a better alternative to the pressure-cooker commutes I once had and the constant stress of spending a year at an office where I was looking for a way out before I’d been there for six weeks.  For months, I was trying to get out and then, after I lost my job, I spent other months trying to get hired elsewhere. Along the way, I became a different person with a more God-centered life and a deep gratitude for all I’ve learned during my months in Gethsemani.

A friend whom I had lunch with this week shook his head in acknowledgement when I told him I had emerged a better person after my trials. “That’s what happens with steel tools,” he said. “You put them through fire to make them stronger and better.”

I’m better-tempered steel now and I’m grateful for all of the friends, relatives and strangers who prayed for me during these difficult months. A caring woman sent me a novena through The Bride and the Dragon, the superb Catholic site that my husband and I read daily. I asked Sr. Briege McKenna to pray for me and her staff sent me a message that she would.

The other daily communicants who know my mother at her home parish were praying for me. A teacher had her kindergarten class in parochial school remember me in their daily prayers. A wonderful friend who has a busy life checked on me periodically and sent me prayer energy. A lovely couple whom we’ve never met sent us a check as a gift and an organization Kevin works with forwarded us funds from their own meager resources to help us out. Somehow, my family and I were nestled in God’s loving hands throughout our ordeal. God put angels in our path.

Months later, we have a new grandson as part of our family. We’re all here, our health is good and the family is all the more grateful for all of the blessings God sent us disguised as sorrows. I have passed through the stages of grief that Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross outlines in On Death and Dying, a groundbreaking work I read while I was in college many years ago.

There are five stages in bereavement, according to Dr. Kubler-Ross:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Sometimes, I would go through four of the five on the same day, but prayer helped me ascend to acceptance. As worry began to be replaced by greater faith, my belief that God was looking out for us never wavered, even on my lowest days. 

I was fortunate to have a husband as loving as Kevin, who was my rock and my salvation each day. My children–both the grown ones who live away from home and the 12-year-olds–were my reasons to go on during the hours of despair when I wondered how I would keep them fed. My family offered support, love and care without measure. Certain friends proved themselves to be genuine and others didn’t. This experience separated the sheep from the goats for me.

I thank God that I was surrounded by wonderful, talented people in my professional networking groups during the months I attended as many meetings as I could just to get out of the house on days when I might not have changed out of my pajamas. There are many I will keep in touch with just because I grew to care for them very deeply. I wouldn’t have had the privilege of meeting them if I’d been working at the job I had lost.

Job coaches helped me beyond measure. Two gentlemen ran a terrific group that offered practical solutions, financial advice and networking one day a week at no charge. The county’s employment services agency led me to some caring people who gave me tips, encouragement and hope.

During these past months, I was abandoned by harsh people whose meanness and insecurities I now pity. At the same time, I was also lifted up by an entire team of supporters, some of whom I never would have met if I hadn’t lost my job. My life is so much richer now that I have become spiritually advanced enough to thank God for purifying me through pain, as in Revelation 7:13-14:

“Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?” I said to him, “My Lord, you are the one who knows.” He said to me, “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

When God sends misfortune and injustice, we can seek revenge or we can wash our robes in the blood of the Lamb. As we pass through the stages of bereavement, “The world breaks everyone, and afterwards some are stronger in the broken places,” as Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms.

We bend, we break, we heal, we are stronger. We trust in God and he comes to us when we need Him most.

I have a friend who is looking for a job as a fundraising executive. She has years of experience and a proven track record in the not-for-profit field. While reading our diocesan newspaper, I spotted a job listing I thought she’d be interested in.

A parish in our diocese is looking for a Director of Institutional Advancement, which seems to mean someone who will be in charge of finding ways to bring more money in. That particular parish seems to be better off than most neighborhood churches and it’s in a more tony area of Tampa–hence the need for someone like my friend.

I don’t begrudge parishes the right to grow or to serve more of the faithful, but I can’t say that the ad didn’t remind me why my husband and I left our former parish to transfer to another farther away. Kevin and I are always searching for a poorer parish to worship in and we haven’t found it yet.

Our former parish had a food program that gave us the opportunity to volunteer with our two oldest children one day a month. We used to sort, bag and distribute groceries to people who sometimes couldn’t cover the modest cost of the monthly distribution; some used to get their allotment free through donations from the parish’s Society of St. Vincent de Paul. One Saturday a month, we worked hard and saw older folks on fixed incomes and young mothers working minimum wage jobs smile when they received their groceries.

Our old parish balked at continuing to cover the cost of a truck rental to bring the food back from a warehouse in Tampa and the food distribution program ended. Yet, that Christmas, a $6,000 Fontanini Nativity set was on display near the consecrated altar and a full-court press to fund the construction of an entertainment building for banquets and dances was under way.

I thought of a young redheaded woman in our parish who worked at a local supermarket and was raising a toddler on her own. I used to see her at the checkout line while grocery shopping and, once a month, I’d see her again with her little girl on one hip and the food allotment from our church on the other as she walked out with food for the week. I don’t think the Fontanini set would do anything to put food in her baby’s stomach. The Catholic Worker in me hates church excess when her people are hungry.

In protest, Kevin and I left the parish that was down the street from our house and transferred to a smaller one farther away. Since we left our former parish, there’s been construction, beautification, anniversary galas and even a scandal involving a staff member accused of sexual malfeasance. Now and then, we attend a teen Mass there or visit their oratory, but I never really feel comfortable.

Today, Kevin visited our old parish as part of his bike ride for exercise. He came home with a velveteen pouch filled with gold-foil chocolate coins imprinted with the parish’s name. They were on sale at the church’s gift shop for $3 each, he said. I don’t think we’ll eat them;  they’ll leave a bitter taste in our mouths.

We moved to another parish that is less pretentious, which suits us fine, but we’re still searching for a poorer church. There are farmworker missions in the next county and there are older churches in Tampa and St. Petersburg where we would feel more at home, but it’s always tempting on a Sunday morning to conserve gas and worship near our house. We are not giving up our search for a poorer parish, though.

We’re looking for a parish where the poor are welcomed and fed, where the undocumented can seek refuge, where the U.S. Bishops’ message that we should end the death penalty is preached, where Dorothy Day Center is located on the grounds of the church instead of a banquet hall, where my husband’s 1988 station wagon isn’t woefully out of place in the parking lot amid the new SUVs, where minorities are not stared at.

We’re looking for a parish where the people in the pews would be disgusted if gold-foil chocolates and $6,000 Nativity sets were associated with the place where their bread and wine are transformed by God into his Body and Blood. We’re looking for the Church founded by Jesus Christ to bring glad tidings to the poor, as He preached in Luke 4:18 while reading from Isaiah 61:1-2.

Our parish is out there somewhere and it won’t have a professional fundraiser on staff or its name on chocolate coins. It will have Christ and that will be enough.

Baby’s World (Rabindranath Tagore)

I wish I could take a quiet corner in the heart of my baby’s very own world.
I know it has stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops
down to his face to amuse him with its silly clouds and rainbows.
Those who make believe to be dumb, and look as if they never
could move, come creeping to his window with their stories and with
trays crowded with bright toys.
I wish I could travel by the road that crosses baby’s mind,
and out beyond all bounds;
Where messengers run errands for no cause between the kingdoms
of kings of no history;
Where Reason makes kites of her laws and flies them, the Truth
sets Fact free from its fetters.

The great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, understood the magical world of babies. How else could he know that their little faces are closer to the hand of God than we could imagine and that He caresses them at the same time that we do when they are in our arms?

Tagore’s poem about each baby’s inner world came to mind today as I sat with my shiny new grandson, who was born on February 9. After he was released from the hospital today, we sat together while his parents ran errands. I fed him a bottle and stared at him as he napped.

The expressions on his little face were wondrous: the brows arched and his tiny lips puckered,  eyelids flickered as if he were dreaming and his tapered fingers–so unlike a typical baby’s clenched fists–were like a flock of birds rising and falling. When he’s awake, my grandson’s eyes open wide as if he were considering the state of the world. He trusts that we who nestle him in our arms will feed him and change him when he cries. He doesn’t need much yet.

Some people like to say that babies don’t smile. The happy expressions on their faces are caused by gas, or so the cliche goes. I told my daughter’s nurse that I have never thought gas made anyone smile, infant or not. The nurse agreed with me. As Tagore imagined, babies must have an inner life that is so free of sin and unsullied by the world’s machinations that they must smile at how beautiful life still is for them.

My grandson’s name is Christian, which is a noun and an adjective of our hope in God as well as a name that my daughter liked. Baby Christian has an older brother, “JJ,” who is all of 13 months old and parents who are on the cusp of turning 21. As I like to say, I have items in my sock drawer that are older than each parent and a kid put together. JJ is making sounds that resemble words and he’s walking like a little man, but he’s learning the first inklings of right and wrong. When he hears a firm “no” as he reaches for a forbidden item, he stops and thinks over his actions the next time he goes near it. His parents are teaching him the concept of “nice and easy” when it comes to being near his baby brother. JJ’s mind is open to being molded in any direction his parents choose.

As I sat alone with Christian this afternoon, I scanned his face for familiar features. He reminds me of some of my four children, especially his mother, who was our beautiful second child. They both have delicate chins and smaller features crowned with dark hair. I may be just another proud grandmother, but I’ve pronounced Christian perfectly made, just as JJ was.

The stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops down to his face to amuse him in Tagore’s poem are in Christian’s sleeping face as he smiles and waves his long fingers in the air. He’s a new creation in God’s image just arrived in our world, whose ills so many despair of. But how can this world be sullied when God sees fit to create babies like Christian who are so full of innocence and mysterious dreams of talking stars?