Journal

Flowers of the rarest

2012-05-17T15:57:15Z

Just past the halfway mark in May, and I finally remembered to do a May Altar! This picture is loaded with Crazy Stable significance.

The Flowers. From left to right: a golden rose whose name I'm unsure of; Climbing Don Juan (red); a lavender miniature rose; a columbine; and sage blossoms, plus some of the wildly invasive ferns.

The Stuff. The statue, charmingly amputated by a long-ago bout of over-vigorous dusting, came from the guest room of my Aunt Rosemary, my mother's amazingly Catholic sister and my godmother. The painting came from my Uncle Don, my father's brother. Their side of the family were either morbidly fascinated and appalled by Catholicism, or drawn into the faith as converts. (Don, the exception, viewed it with the same childlike delight he expressed for all faiths.)

The Issues. As a child in St. Anastasia School in Douglaston, I yearned feverishly every year to be chosen to decorate the classroom "May Altar." This was often a flimsy box or frame, which would be lavishly appointed with crepe paper and artificial blossoms; Mary would then be "crowned" with flowers during her month, in a procession with a floral coronet. The boys could've cared less, but the girls--aspiring Martha Stewarts, some of us--keenly craved decorating duty. Every year, it seemed, the clueless sister or lay teacher would assign this juicy task to...one or two of the most jock-like, loutish girls in the class. Girls who frankly could've cared less. They would do, of course, what I perceived as a wretched and perfunctory job, while I fumed in silent frustrated artistry.

NOT ANY MORE!!! This baby's all mine! Mine, I tell you! (Yes, another Catholic tradition that imbued me with lifelong charity and humility...)

The song par excellence for May Crownings is "Flowers of the Rarest." To this day, it brings up in me a swelling tide of vicious jealousy and the desire to ram crepe paper down the throat of a stocky ginger-haired softball champion. Here is a wonderfully insipid version by Canadian tenor John McDermott, followed by the lyrics.

Bring Flowers of the Rarest

Bring flow'rs of the fairest, Bring flow'rs of the rarest,

From garden and woodland And hillside and vale;

Our full hearts are swelling, Our glad voices telling

The praise of the loveliest Rose of the vale.

Chorus:

O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,

Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May,

O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,

Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.

Our voices ascending, In harmony blending,

Oh! Thus may our hearts turn Dear Mother, to thee;

Oh! Thus shall we prove thee How truly we love thee,

How dark without Mary Life's journey would be. [Chorus]

O Virgin most tender, Our homage we render,

Thy love and protection, Sweet Mother, to win;

In danger defend us, In sorrow befriend us,

And shield our hearts From contagion and sin. [Chorus]

Of Mothers the dearest, Oh, wilt thou be nearest,

When life with temptation Is darkly replete?

Forsake us, O never! Our hearts be they ever

As pure as the lilies We lay at thy feet.

On receiving a gift of art

2012-05-09T05:30:25Z

Erastus Granger, AncestorMeet the great-great-great-grandparents. This is Erastus Granger, and his gloomy visage, in its battered frame, has reigned over the front hallway of the Crazy Stable for ages. I first propped him up there as a Lemony-Snickety Hallowe'en goof. I also confess to a shameful whiff of preppie pride at having such an obviously ancient glowering ancestor, and one who was Protestant and English to boot. (He's from my Dad's side, long before popery spread like wildfire through the clan via my Irish-American mother.)

"Brilliant Bouquet," acrylic, Karen FriedlandOver the weekend, however, an artist friend in a rush of generosity gave me this beautiful painting. Karen Friedland, its creator, is an accomplished painter whose work hangs in collectors' homes, galleries and, now, here. (Well, it will be hung.) On a whim, I swapped out this flamboyant acrylic bouquet for old Erastus, and lo, the hallway was transfigured. The painting serendipitously echoed the faux Easter posies I'd tossed in the dough-bowl thingie. It bounced light around instead of sucking it into a gothic abyss. The brushstrokes even manage to party happily with the rather ghastly colors we painted the hall and its trim (respectively, peach and a hue I've dubbed "Shrimp Bisque Bordello." This photo doesn't show the walls' true color, for which you should be grateful.)

A gift of art from a friend is magical on many levels. Creativity is an absolute mystery, and it's a share of that mystery. Karen's work ranges from riotously color-drenched landscapes to vibrant abstractions, but all of them spring straight from her vision; thus, in a sense, they are all gifts. To see more of them (along with nifty homes), come this weekend to the Flatbush Artists Spring Studio Tour, which Karen founded to showcase, not just her own work, but that of many other talented artists in our neck of the woods. It's this weekend, May 19 and 20, from noon to 6 p.m., and it's free. Like a gift.

Sisters under siege

2012-04-28T23:12:59Z

It was an Ash Wednesday at my all-girls' Catholic high school. The Sisters of St. Joseph, who ran the school, had devised a Lenten service in the cafeteria. Or maybe it was a "retreat." Anyway, we all inflated balloons and wrote our sins on them. Then we prayerfully popped the balloons. One of our feistier friends refused, and went around all day carrying a balloon with "LUST" written on it.

That was sometime between 1972 and 1975. We did more conventional Catholic things as well--the actual sacrament of Penance, for instance, or Mass. Being teenage girls, we were not prone toward taking much of anything seriously, but we took the Religion Department less seriously than most. Even then, the sisters tended toward do-it-yourself liturgies and social-justice crusades that did little to capture our imaginations. We dutifully created collages of multiracial faces for class projects and boycotted grapes and lettuce for the farmworkers. But in a time of convulsive societal change, the convent held no mystery or fascination for us. Not surprisingly, the numbers of women entering religious life began to plummet in those very years. Several sisters in our school left the order before we graduated.

All this has weighed on my mind throughout the furiously partisan reporting of the latest dust-up between the Vatican and America's "progressive" religious orders of sisters (incorrectly called nuns, by the way--nuns are cloistered). My own experience was much richer and more complex than the current media caricatures on either side. The sisters' greatest gifts to us, I will admit, had little direct connection to Catholic doctrine and practice. Rather, they were powerful witnesses to "sisters doing it for themselves," in the best sense of the term. Here were administrators, scholars, teachers and counselors who lived in a world that seemed utterly removed from male domination. Some of them were quirky and a few were downright dotty, but most were tough-minded and able, and some were unforgettable in their brilliance, caring, humor or strength.

Sisters Of St. Joseph. Photo: James Estrin, NY TimesMany of the sisters who taught me are still alive, and some are still teaching. Much of their ministry now centers on taking care of their own aging membership, which they do with compassion and heroism. To think of their being hurt, after a lifetime of selfless service, by the recent firestorm is painful to contemplate. But so is the reality that the leadership of many of these orders has wandered into some strange theological and ideological places, some of them barely recognizable as Catholic or even Christian. And now the male leadership of the Church, having set its own sterling example in the clergy abuse crisis, has called the sisters' leaders to account, setting the stage for yet more division and discord.

The whole mess gives me a headache, because after kidding fondly for years about administrative and liturgical "nun follies" (yes, I know, not technically nuns), I now find myself feeling very defensive about the sisters and distressed about the way they're being handled. More thoughts to come.

Parish-hopping, or life-saving?

2012-04-13T20:15:28Z

Photo: The New York TimesThis past weekend, our beloved faith community, the Oratory Church of St. Boniface, was featured in a surprisingly admiring profile in the New York Times. I guess we're "progressive" enough to have bypassed the Times' Catholicism gag reflex, but we are also orthodox, liturgically traditional (and magnificent), and growing. Notably, we are a "parish of intention," drawing most of us from other, geographically defined parishes in the city and beyond. (The immediate environs are mostly office space, although new condos and hotels are springing up and sending us new members, too.)

All this raises, amid the good feelings, some questions about the idea of parish "hopping" or "shopping." The notion of a local parish is deeply entrenched, especially in New York City, where many Catholics still identify themselves by parish rather than neighborhood. [Example: I was born in Richmond Hill, Queens. A fellow Queens Catholic will inevitably ask me if I was born into St. Benedict or Holy Child Jesus. The answer is: the former.] So: Should one not "bloom where one is planted"?

My fifth-grade class, St. Anastasia School, 1967 (I am to the right of the girl in magenta)And all I can answer is: We tried. God, how we tried, starting back in childhood. My dad, an adult convert, tried gamely to embrace post-Vatican II reforms, but he fell in love with the Church of Latin and incense. I can't imagine what it cost him to sit supportively while my "folk group" at St. Anastasia strummed their way through "Teach Your Children." Occasionally, to keep his sanity (and sanctity), we would venture afield for liturgical respite at a more traditional mass, or a parish rumored to have a beautiful pipe organ that was still put to good use. We once tried a semi-outlawed Tridentine mass out on Long Island somewhere; my dad was so orthodox that he insisted upon hearing a licit mass first because the Latin mass wouldn't "count."

Flash forward over the years. I have lived in many parishes. All had the most important thing: the true presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist. Many also had dedicated and able clergy and reasonably welcoming communities. All had uniformly ghastly music, but we got used to it. (My dad's trick was to bury his head in his hands prayerfully after Communion, unobtrusively giving him the chance to place a finger over each ear and drown out the caterwauling.) We tried to "offer up" the mechanical homilies, the occasional lunatic outbursts of liturgical dance, the nun-led schemes to festoon the churches with hideous felt-and-burlap banners. In most parishes, I served as a catechist in some well-intentioned but futile Sunday-school program. But when we moved from one neighborhood to another, with every parish leave-taking, we felt as if we were taking our hands from a bucket of water.

Finally, my husband and I bought a house in Brooklyn. For a decade, we tried to bloom where we landed, to be the "fresh blood" that our fading, once-grand local parish needed, at least in its English-speaking community. (There were vibrant Spanish and Haitian masses, but we are neither Latino nor Creole-speaking.) Meanwhile, family illness and financial stress battered us. Every Sunday, we dutifully endured sermons (mostly scolding) from embittered and exhausted priests, or struggled to glean the garbled message from good-hearted missionary priests who barely spoke English. We had a baby while still caregiving for a host of frail elders. We were spiritually dying of thirst. If you had said the words "pastoral care" to us, we would have had not the faintest inkling what you meant.

And so we "hopped" one morning to St. Boniface, where a friend (a refugee from this same parish) said the music was beautiful. It was more than accomplished; it was infused with caring and awe. The welcome was immediate; there was even a coffee hour ("rather Protestant," my mother observed drily). And the homily was warm, articulate, and compassionate, drawn from the lived experience of the priest and delivered as I would speak to an old friend.That's it, in a word: Caring. Everyone seemed to care.

Easter vigil (Photo: Gerri Hernandez)We came more often, for a spiritual booster shot, before returning to our sad, mostly empty home church. (No, I will not name it.) Our daughter was in a stroller, just old enough to start observing her surroundings when we'd say, "You're in church now!" I looked around at the handful of elderly parishioners, listened to the umpteenth rant that we were failing to give enough money, cringed at the wildly off-key leader of song performing her solo. I had prepared class after class of Mexican and Caribbean kids from struggling families to receive their First Holy Communion in this church. Our daughter had been baptised there, by a gifted pastor who burned himself out trying to save the place after years of neglect had brought it to the brink of insolvency. We were tapped out. Like the woman at the well, I felt like saying, "Give me this water to drink so that I don't have to come here anymore!"

St. Philip Neri, founder of the OratoryOur decision to shop and then hop was a painful one, but one I cannot regret. Often, you can do things for your children that you couldn't do for yourself. And I couldn't bear to have my daughter think "Church" was those bare, ruined choirs. In the years that followed, the community at St. Boniface--not just the clergy, but countless friends--have buoyed us up, inspired us, and modeled Christ for us. I have laughed there (which would make our founder, St. Philip Neri, very pleased) and also wept there, and never have I struggled alone.

And this past Christmas, two of my daughter's friends in Catholic high school asked to join us for midnight mass. They loved it. If you know teenagers, you know that this is a miracle.

I am not certain how our geographic parish is doing these days; well, I hope. It is, at least, still open, although its school closed a few years ago. (Our daughter went to another Catholic parochial school nearby, since St. Boniface doesn't have a school.) We transplanted ourselves where we were able to bloom, in a parish that was itself dying until a visionary community rolled up its sleeves and got to work. And now I feel like Peter asking Jesus, "Lord, where else would we go?"

Why do you seek Him here?

2012-04-09T12:30:07Z

Resurrection, by Fra Angelico

Prayer to the Risen Christ

Lord. help us to be thankful. Let the gratitude which we owe you and your Mother always accompany us from now on; let it become fruitful and perceptible everywhere in our service. Let us be people redeemed who really fill their whole life with your redemption, who accompany you everywhere, who seek to do your will, as you do the will of the Father.

Let us not only enjoy the fruit of' your suffering and redemption, but rather help us - beginning today - in our attempt to know you as our brother, our true redeemer forevermore in our midst. Help us never to forget that you are there, that you have answered our unfaithfulness with faithfulness, our disbelief with ever greater grace.

Let every day, whether hard or easy, become one which includes the explicit, or at least the hidden, joy of knowing that you have redeemed us and, in returning to the Father, you take us along. We ask you for your Easter blessing in which the blessing of the Father and the Spirit are contained. Amen.

--Adrienne Von Speyre

The silence of triumph

2012-04-07T17:44:43Z

“The Shroud is an image of silence. There is a tragic silence of incommunicability, which finds its greatest expression in death, and there is the silence of fruitfulness, which belongs to whoever refrains from being heard outwardly in order to delve to the roots of truth and life. The Shroud expresses not only the silence of death but also the courageous and fruitful silence of triumph over the transitory, through total immersion in God's eternal present.”

--John Paul II, May 24, 1998, pastoral visit to Turin

Image: Shroud of Turin, digitally modified photonegative

Day of days

2012-04-06T14:17:50Z

Prayer Before a Crucifix

BEHOLD, o good and most sweet Jesus, I fall upon my knees before Thee, and with most fervent desire beg and beseech Thee that Thou wouldst impress upon my heart a lively sense of faith, hope and charity, true repentance for my sins, and a firm resolve to make amends.

And with deep affection and grief, I reflect upon Thy five wounds, having before my eyes that which Thy prophet David spoke about Thee, o good Jesus: "They have pierced my hands and feet, they have counted all my bones." Amen.

Image: Crucifix, Basilica della Consolata, Turin

Inebriate me, hide me, save me

2012-04-05T14:45:06Z

Soul of Christ, sanctify me

Body of Christ, save me

Blood of Christ, inebriate me

Water from the side of Christ, wash me

Passion of Christ, strengthen me

O good Jesus, hear me

Within Thy wounds hide me

Never let me be separated from Thee

From the malignant enemy defend me

In the hour of my death call me

And bid me come unto Thee

That I may praise Thee with Thy saints

Forever and ever

Amen

Come to Mama

2012-04-04T16:05:27Z

Icon of Our Lady, Basilica Santuario della Consolata I call it the Big Liturgical Kahuna, but the next few days are more rightly called the Easter Triduum. Lent is wrapping up. Fasting, as usual, was a disaster (not a pound lighter), but prayer-blogging has been a blast. I hope you have enjoyed sharing some wildly over-the-top spirituality from our Catholic tradition (and a few others), and that non-Catholic visitors might have glimpsed some of the mad poetry that is our heritage. For Holy Thursday and Good Friday, I have saved the best for last, so check back!

Before all eyes turn to the Cross and Resurrection, I must share my go-to prayer to Mary. I'm not much of a Rosary girl (although I dug mine out on 9/11). But the "Memorare" is the prayer I say in the elevator on the way to the doctor to find out what kind of lump it was.

My relationship with Mary has "evolved," as we say these days instead of admitting we were wrong. Growing up in the 1970s, I found her rather irrelevant: What kind of role model was both Virgin and Mother? One to make all us gals fall short, it seemed. Much later, pregnant and searching to allay my fears, I stumbled on New Agey advice that described how Native American women would connect to a female spirit ancestor. Wait, I've got one of those. The experience of childbirth erased the sappy image of a thousand holy cards and replaced it with a gutsy human whose body did the hard work of bringing a precious Life into this world. And motherhood shocked me with its intimacy and fierce protectiveness; if a broken heart could link Heaven and Earth, hers must have been the one.

The Memorare offers a rare thing: the consolation of a guarantee, "no prayer left unanswered." Intercessory prayer to Mary is one of the things that Protestants historically hold against us Catholics, but we cannot help ourselves; we find the concept of a Heavenly Mother irresistible, as apparently did God Himself. In Turin, when I went to see the Shroud in 2010, I visited the Basilica of the Consolata, Our Lady of Consolation. The icon shown above reigns over this shimmering high-Baroque confection of a church, and she's lovely. But what won my heart was a side-aisle festooned with hundreds of home-made ex-voto pictures attesting to La Consolata's miraculous intervention.

The paintings and drawings evoke a homey panorama of human suffering. The perils of war—exploding shells, prison camps—are well-represented. But so are the torments of watching a child languish on a sickbed.

Grateful amateur artists also depict a catalog of random catastrophes across the decades, and in each La Consolata floats overhead, guiding the victim to safety. Or perhaps, for some, she waved them securely into the Pearly Gates.

Yes, those stern Protestant Reformers were probably right that we need only pray directly to God. But we Irish and Italians know there are times when you just need to talk to your mother.

The 'Memorare'

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided.

Inspired with this confidence, we fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins and Mother; to thee do we come; before thee do we stand, sinful and sorrowful.

O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not our petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer us. Amen.

Ex-voto, Basilica della Consolata, Turin

Remembering a mighty voice for peace

2012-04-03T04:10:58Z

John Paul II at the Western WallOn the seventh anniversary of Blessed John Paul II's death, here is his magnificent prayer for peace, delivered in 1981:

To the Creator of nature and man, of truth and beauty, I pray:

Hear my voice, for it is the voice of the victims of all wars and violence among individuals and nations.

John Paul II at the start of his papacyHear my voice, for it is the voice of all children who suffer and will suffer when people put their faith in weapons and war.

Hear my voice when I beg You to instill into the hearts of all human beings the wisdom of peace, the strength of justice, and the joy of fellowship.

Hear my voice, for I speak for the multitudes in every country and in every period of history who do not want war and are ready to walk the road of peace.

Hear my voice and grant insight and strength so that we may always respond to hatred with love, to injustice with total dedication to justice, to need with the sharing of self, to war with peace.

O God, hear my voice and grant unto the world Your everlasting peace.