Crazy Stable

 St. Thomas Aquinas by Fra AngelicoThe Crazy Stable Lenten Prayer-a-Day Edition continues! Just in time for Mass tomorrow, my favorite prayer before receiving the Eucharist. It's by St. Thomas Aquinas, whose mighty theological writings utterly baffled me the few times I tried to read excerpts of them. (That's what I get for not going to a Catholic college.) But the scholar called a "dumb ox" (because he was quiet, portly and obstinate) also created some moving and beautiful prayers.

I know only the last verse by heart. I have been known to read this entire prayer to a roomful of insolent, squirming CCD students who were clearly not sufficiently impressed by their impending First Holy Communion. (Their pitiful textbooks, which would illustrate the chapter on the Eucharist--"a meal celebration"--with photos of birthday parties replete with balloons and cake, didn't help matters.) I would read it with wildly dramatic cadence (that's what I get for taking acting at NYU instead of theology at a Catholic college), until the little rugrats would simmer down and look appropriately awestruck. It does the job at any age.

Prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas Before Communion

Almighty and ever-living God, I approach the sacrament of Thy only-begotten Son,  Our Lord Jesus Christ.

I come sick to the doctor of life, unclean to the fountain of mercy,

Blind to the radiance of eternal light, and poor and needy

To the Lord of heaven and earth.

 

Lord, in Thy great generosity, heal my sickness,

Wash away my defilement, enlighten my blindness,

Enrich my poverty, and clothe my nakedness.

May I receive the bread of angels, the King of kings and Lord of lords,

With humble reverence, with the purity and faith,

The repentance and love, and the determined purpose

That will help bring me to salvation.

 

May I receive the sacrament of the Lord’s body and blood,

In its reality and power. Gracious God, may I receive

The body of Thy only-begotten Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ,

Born from the womb of the Virgin Mary, and so be received

Into His mystical body, and numbered among His members.

 

Loving Father, as on my earthly pilgrimage

I now receive Thy beloved Son under the veil of a sacrament,

May I one day see Him face to face in glory,

Who lives and reigns with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

One God, forever and ever.   Amen.

Just, wow. I was going to post my absolutely favorite, butt-kickingest anti-depression prayer right up front in Lent...and I discover it is actually a Lenten prayer! Not for Roman Catholics, but for our Eastern Orthodox brethren. Folks, I give you:

The Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian

O Lord and Master of my life, keep from me the spirit of indifference and discouragement, lust of power and idle chatter. [kneel, bow, or prostration]

Instead, grant to me, Your servant, the spirit of wholeness of being, humble-mindedness, patience and love. [kneel, bow, etc.]

O Lord and King, grant me the grace to be aware of my sins and not to judge my brother; for You are blessed now and ever and forever. Amen. [kneel, bow, etc.]

St. Ephrem the Syrian is a Doctor of the Church who lived in present-day Turkey from about 306 to 370 AD. He wrote in the Syriac language and was a prolific author of hymns, many composed to combat the rampant heresies of his day; they would be sung by all-female choirs playing lyres, which sounds a lot more interesting than CCD class.

The prayer above, however, was composed by his later admirers, who admired him so much that they would make stuff up and sign it "Ephrem the Syrian," apparently. (Even then, imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.) What makes this prayer kick butt, of course, are the moves prescribed within. Apparently some Eastern believers bow from the waist and others actually do the whole flat-on-the-floor thing. I would tell you what I do, but then I'd have to kill you. (Hint: I have osteoarthritis of the knee, so it's nothing worthy of The DaVinci Code.) However, any kind of moves you can do accomplish a twofold purpose:

1. You wake up and focus.

2. You feel like an idiot.

3. Oh, yes, three is: Because of (2), you "pray in your room in secret" just like Jesus ordered. Which is kind of cool.

Copyright by Allie Brosh, "Hyperbole and a Half"For those of us who suffer from depression, the prayer contains a powerful appeal to avoid "acedia," the dreaded monastic spiritual affliction of just not giving a crap about anything (certainly not about religious practice). This concept is a rich and tricky one, since acedia mutated into the better-known deadly sin of sloth, and it's hard enough dealing with the biochemical burden of depression without mixing it up with a deadly sin. The spiritual author Kathleen Norris explores this conundrum at rambling but sometimes illuminating length in her book Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life.

The rubrics (physical positions) prescribed in the prayer seem designed with depression sufferers in mind. Sometimes, you just need to get moving. (The wise prankster St. Philip Neri once had a melancholic young man approach him for spiritual direction; instead, Philip lit out for the streets of Rome, saying, "Run with me!" to the astonished young man. A personal trainer for the soul!)

If you're not ready for bowing or prostration, crank this up; it's a Little Richard rarity. I don't know if St. Ephrem would have approved, but I suspect St. Philip would've loved it.

Hey, kids, it's Ash Wednesday; let's go to the beach!

That's what I did yesterday, anyway. Like all my best ideas, it wasn't an idea, or mine. I had dreamed of the seashore the previous night, and then missed my stop on the homebound B train after getting ashes in downtown Brooklyn. In 4 more stops, I realized, I could be in Brighton Beach, on a February day when it was nearly 60 degrees.

I was still in a muddle about what spiritual thing to do for Lent. I'm working on weight loss anyway, so I decided not to drag in fasting with its history of failure. (Easter, the Feast of Unvanquished Fat Cells.) Last year I tried to quit Facebook; that lasted about 48 hours. And I already felt a sharp ache of deprivation: the Daughter is on a school trip to a distant shore, providing me with a painful preview of the "empty nest."

I was in another muddle about the future of this blog. Crazy Stable, begun on a whim, now forms a ragged five-year chronicle of our joys and struggles in this old house, along with lots of other stuff I've cared about. But it feels (as the Sunshine Boys would say) as if it's time to Freshen Up the Act. My identity as a cranky but passionate Catholic is no secret here, and to my mounting horror I have felt Crazy Stable asking to morph into an explicitly Catholic blog.

Why the horror? Because the Catholic blogosphere makes the bar scene in "Star Wars" look like a Zen garden. First, it's too crowded. There are too many good writers...brilliant, holy, funny, inspiring writers, more than I can hope to keep up with. And there are way too many exhausting extremists, at both ends of the spectrum: from mommy-bloggers who cannot get through a single post without rhapsodizing about cervical mucus measurement (if you get that reference, you are very Catholic) to ex-nuns who go around ordaining each other and bashing every word from the hierarchy. One quick spin through a Catholic blog ring is enough to make me want to be a Unitarian.

Well, no, not really, but you get the idea.

After seaside pondering, I decided on two Lenten disciplines. One, I would try to be more like my Beloved Cousin, who left this life one year ago. A light penance: to try to complain less, garden more, and share only love and enthusiasm and goodness with those around me.  And two, I would pray more, because I suck at praying. I am so bad at it, and do it so seldom, that God mercifully resorts to just whacking me upside the head as I go through life.

The trouble is, I will instantly forget both these resolutions as surely as the tide will go out at Brighton Beach. So I decided to hijack this blog for Lent and put up one prayer a day—good, old-school, red-blooded prayers, not "Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy." This shouldn't be too mortifying. No punditry or polemics, just a walk along the beach with God. You are welcome to join me, or to flee.

Let's start with my favorite prayer for times of utter confusion, from the writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that my desire to please you

does in fact please you.

And I hope that I have that desire

in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything

apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this

you will lead me by the right road

though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always

though I may seem to be lost

and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Tree-trimming just in time for Christmas—Crazy-Stable-style. The guys from Urban Arborists came over to give the Ent a health check-up and a light pruning. This costs many hundreds of dollars, and we skipped maintenance for a few years. But during the darkest, wildest hours of Hurricane Irene, I bargained with God:

"O Lord, who has the power to topple this gigantic silver maple and squash our house like a bug, I hereby promise that if we are spared, I will get it pruned immediately, and honor Christmas in my heart all the days of my life, and sponsor a Central American orphan, and fast strenuously until I lose 20 pounds." I figure God only expects you to do the first thing on the list, but that you really ought to do that one.

The guys found no evidence of "maple decline" (yes, that's a condition), the dreaded Asian long-horned beetle or any other problems. Rootbeard the Ent is doing just fine, it seems. He got lots of minor twiggy growth hacked off, and a soaking with fertilizer on his mighty roots. I paced nervously in a third-floor window as the fellow nimbly let himself down on the tackle.

Here is a litany for the monstre sacré that grows almost out from under our porch:

Devourer of water pipes... (have mercy on us)

Sorcerer who turns topsoil into Brillo...(have...etc.)

Beneficent screen of ugly view across street...

Provider of blessed shade...

Endless fountain of compostable leaves...

Superhighway for squirrels and raccoons...

Condominium for starlings...

Mighty future coffee table...have mercy on us!

Job done, the branches got fed into a noisy shredder. This weekend, we'll trim a tree more conventionally—inside, with lights and ornaments.

Meanwhile, the Christmas cactus, having been knocked out of its pot by a cat and left to languish for weeks, has still received its inexplicable signal to burst forth in bloom, like the pink candle on an Advent wreath. I repotted it in guilt for having managed to survive my neglect. Sort of like the Ent.

By fits and starts, I'm getting there—winnowing, curating, and conserving family treasures, all washed ashore from several households into the shipwreck cove of our third floor. Today, I found myself communing with three generations of Girls in White Dresses.

Above: the christening gown worn by my Aunt Rosemary in 1912, my mother in 1913, and me in 1957. I don't know who made the gown, but that's undoubtedly Irish lace. (Note the embroidered shamrocks.) The delicate fabric has shattered in spots. My mother packed it away with the wee satin booties and lace cap that I (and my own daughter and goddaughter) wore for baptism.

The Wedding Gown! My grandmother sewed it, from ivory Skinner satin; my mother wore it, in 1949, when she finally married my dad after an epic 15-year courtship; and I wore it on the same date (October 15), 34 years later, with virtually every seam let out to the max (I was taller and broader-shouldered than Mommy). This meant my mom had to rip out her mother's stitches, a wrenching task. She also altered the neckline at my request; a French seamstress from Saks' bridal salon consulted on turning demure high-necked buttons to decolletage. Mommy's Juliet headpiece is in perfect shape, whereas my flowered one is yellowed and ratty.

And finally, the First Communion Dress, a dotted-swiss beauty made for me by my mother in 1964. (She refused to buy "a frilly lampshade.")

I was a rather spindly second-grader, and the dress was too small for my own, more robust child; at her First Communion in 2003, she wore my Confirmation dress (a mod white number with bell sleeves), sewn by my mom in 1970.

All the white dresses got shaken out, wrapped in acid-free tissue, and laid into an archival box ordered just for the purpose from these folks. My mother would have been a wonderful designer or textile conservator; she would have enjoyed the garment trade far more than her stressful decades of office work, but she never saw the chance for a different life. Later, her creative outlet was making beautiful things for me. I don't have her patience or talent, but we did work together on my daughter's christening gown; I did the easy parts and she sewed the maddening pin-tucked bodice.

That gown is in another box, with my daughter's name on it. Paring down her baby clothes is a task for another day. The hidden agenda in this third-floor project is to curate only delight for my own daughter, not melancholy. My mom hung onto a few other little outfits that my grandmother, who died six months after my birth, sewed for little me. Under a shell-pink corduroy baby coat was a note in my mother's hand, "Last thing Mommy sewed." I almost discarded it as too damn poignant, but couldn't do it.

I wrapped the box in a cotton sack (yes, that is preferable to airtight plastic) and slid it under the guest-room bed. It was dinnertime; my daughter blew in downstairs, a hungry teenager immersed in the present and fixed on the future. With all the white dresses safely stowed, I turned off the light.