It's a nifty triangular raised bed from White Flower Farm catalog, the premier supplier of garden porn to torment us as we emerge from the Yuletide (the only good excuse for winter's existence) into the hard Arctic glare of January. Each year, I stew in an agony of desire when this catalog arrives. I want everything. Some years I spend scarce dollars on some particularly irresistible goodie, and usually, it dies--usually because I neglect to dig a hole, plant it and water it. But this raised bed (which my dad would have knocked together out of old lumber in an afternoon for free, yes I know)...it represents infinite promise.

And this 25-degree day, when the garden looks like a glacial moraine, is not the time for reality. Not the time to contemplate the likelihood of my sledgehammering up more cement to create a happy substrate for this raised bed...or the fact that I'd still have to fill it with 24 cubic feet of topsoil after "pounding the clever hinge-pins." Now is the time to imagine myself, all radiant and earth motherish, plucking my ripe heirloom veggies and dewy herbs and tucking them into a trug for that night's casually tossed summer salad.

I found this little guy between the leaves of a Greenmarket bok choy a few weeks ago and scanned him. That's the spirit I'm looking for. "Unless the seed falls to the ground and dies..." Imagine if that Scriptural metaphor turns out to be real, and literal, and we really are destined to exist in a state as radically (no pun intended) different from our mortal selves as the sprout is from the seed. I hope that thought, rather than "Oh, crap, I still never decluttered the attic," is my final one on this earth.

Should I buy the cold frame, so I'd finally have one and quit pretending I'll make one out of scrap?

Thanks to the lunacy of signing up for shares of a happy heritage pig from The Piggery, we came into possession of a substantial-looking "Boston butt"...and smoked it over hickory chips for our little New Year's gathering. We're non-smokers in every sense, but I followed a recipe from Epicurious.com including a spice rub, soaked hickory chips, and sent Spouse out into the snow.

About an hour later, while preparing Hoppin' John upstairs, I stuck my head out the back window and nearly wept with joy. The garden smelled like Blue Smoke. I half expected to see people wafting up the driveway, airborne, like in Loony Tunes. Still, I was worried; the barbecue obsessives (who call it "cue" and are all over the Internet) would have you believe it takes 12-15 hours to achieve falling-off-the-bone, pullable tenderness.

No need to worry. The butt shrank significantly (the only one around here that did, harhar), but it was...exquisite...and pullable...after about 2 hours on the grill and another hour in a slow oven, and even sported the mystical pink interior ring of 'cue perfection. As I tugged the mouthwatering strands apart, Daughter stood nearby like a velociraptor for the scraps. It got doused lightly in vinegary North Carolina-style sauce, and consumed on buns to rapturous acclaim.

Whichever of you guys gave your life for our festive fare, we thank you. With this newly personal connection to our meat, we fantasize about giving the pigs an ennobling tribute before eating them, like Chingachgook gave to the deer he brought down at the beginning of Last of the Mohicans. (We tried something like "Brother Pig, we salute you for your good nature and marbling," but it didn't have quite the same effect.) Sharing it with our oldest and dearest friends made for an excellent end to the decade. 

The New York Times, which we're stuck with, has been running incomprehensible rambles on the agony of the decade and its recent rescue, but the only part of the story I recognize is the shared nightmare (now so surreally distant) of 9/11. Supposedly we weathered several booms and recessions, but our finances feel just as perilous in good times and bad. Instead, I was struck by what an overall time of blessing these 10 years had been. Begun in fresh mourning for my mother, who departed this life a month before the "millenium" celebration she would have dismissed contemptuously, the decade shifted our focus from frantic elder care to the joyful business of raising a wonderful child. These first 10 years neatly frame Daughter's elementary school career and Spouse's ongoing gig at the museum he loves. 

The problem with being superstitious is that you're afraid to be grateful: afraid someone will come along and take your little goodies away. Bravely, I will declare that so far, it has been a very good century despite its lurking demons. And as a New Year present to all, here is the best poem ever about the journey. It is called "The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz:

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

On this Christmastide morning, when the sun and December's green have melted out from behind the snow, I fondly remember my Uncle Scrooge: that is, my Uncle Don V. Becker, the man who personified Christmas in my life.

Yes, that is actually him; he worked in the photography department for an ad agency called Horn & Griner, and every so often would be called upon as a "character" model. He posed as a reformed and joyous Scrooge for several accounts, including a memorable Newsweek billboard ("Raise a little Dickens, Read Newsweek") and this Hennessy Scotch ad.

But the characterization was uncannily apt; you would be hard pressed to find a man who would more perfectly "honor Christmas in his heart and try to keep it all the year." He and my bohemian Aunt Louie would show up with, literally, a Santa sack each Christmas, the coolest presents in the world: stuff from their travels in India and Mexico, wind chimes, incense burners, and once, a can of turtle soup. Everything would be tucked into Ektachrome tins and boxes and wrapped in photo background paper, even Louie's Rice Krispie treats. For their little niece growing up sheltered in suburban Queens, their visits were no less amazing than that of the three Christmas spirits.

But it was Don's childlike delight in life, more than any present, that made him the soul of our Christmas. That delight expressed itself in his photography; in a family that otherwise contented itself with Instamatic snapshots lit by flash-cubes, his Pentax opened up a world of wonder. In off hours at Horn & Griner, he would create hand-tinted "Victorian" portraits of us, or elegant black and white vignettes that made us all look slightly glamorous and exotic. He'd always bring a sheaf of his latest exquisite nature shots taken out at their country house, macro studies of glistening moss, icicles, ferns or snow. And he would just hand me that Pentax to experiment with, complete with monster telephoto, when my hands were barely big enough to hold it. Then he'd develop and mat my best shot like it was a pro's, and present it back to me—a gift of trust and celebration in a child's vision and creativity.

Don lived to be almost 94, as did his equally vivacious and great-hearted twin sister Valeska, and he never stopped loving Christmas. We got him sprung from a nursing "home" just in time to spend his last Christmas in his real home—his beloved Manhattan apartment—where he left this life three years ago this day. His last word to me, spoken with deep concentration as if to himself, was "Peace."

"I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world!"  —Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

That is why the Immense God became a babe in order that we might encircle Him in our arms."

--Fulton J. Sheen, The Divine Romance

Image: Edward Burne-Jones, “Nativity” (1875), William Morris stained glass window, St. Martin’s in the Bull Ring, Birmingham.

Or something.

Frankly, I've never gotten the whole "s'mores" novelty thing, or even real s'mores. A marshmallow, a piece of Hershey bar and a cracker are a pitiful snack, one that never becomes more than the sum of its parts, and whose entire appeal must surely emanate from the charm of its rustic improvisation. The s'more as a decorative item also seems to be "from hunger." But as a Nativity set?

The disturbing item above, seen in a Bay Ridge gift store over the weekend, is a bizarre genre extension of Cute Non-Human Nativities, which started, I suspect, after the barely humanoid Precious Moments characters opened the floodgates to other species. Most popular is the Bear Nativity, which comes in several varieties, from cuddly teddies to rather gruesome black bears. As Best Friend tartly paraphrased St. Paul, "He was known to be of ursine estate, and it was thus that he humbled himself."

And, well...let's not even go here. Although I cannot resist observing the folly of a Pug Wise Man, unless stars were made of ham.

This sign inspired the family to extend the brand beyond marshmallows: How about a Dental Nativity? Jesus of course would be a baby tooth, Mary and Joseph the front teeth, and shepherds the incisors; angels could be molars with little halos. And don't make us tell you which teeth would play the Wise Men. (Hint: They, too, come in last.)

This one, actually, below the altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral, where yesterday I visited the tomb of Fulton J. Sheen on the 30th anniversary of his death. (No, I didn't take this shot; I forgot my camera, and was relieved of the temptation to be tacky enough to whip it out in such a holy site.)

Yesterday's mass, for the cause of Sheen's canonization now under study in Rome, was a gorgeous affair; the entry procession featured 3 cardinals, at least a dozen bishops, and amid the mitres, some sparkly crowns and other exotic regalia from bishops belonging to, perhaps, the Vulcan or Romulan Catholic rites. You would think after my prior two posts (scroll down for tears and gall) that this showboating magnificence aswirl in incense would have, er, incensed me, but no; I delighted in it, especially the beaming presence of our new New York archbishop Timothy Dolan. The guy is a rock-star, he's like the Ghost of Christmas Present, beaming light around; it's as if the dour and arrogant Egan had created a dark-matter vaccuum just for his successor to fill.

"Fulton Sheen wanted to get to heaven, and he wanted us all to go with him," preached Dolan, to a huge congregation that included Sheen's niece. (More of Dolan's backstory with Sheen here.) The ultimate rock star, Sheen inspired countless souls to convert to Catholicism, among them my own father. My dad was drawn into the magnetic young radio preacher's circle by two fan girls, my mother and my aunt, who attended Sheen's "Catholic Hour" broadcasts live in the 1940s and often got the charismatic monsignor to sign one of his books for them (see his quip, above).  

In hunting down that inscription to share with you, I found another tiny miracle, one of hope and healing after this week's awful news reports. The book, The Divine Romance, was published in 1930 but Sheen's words could have been penned yesterday to ease the pain of our post-abuse scandal, atheist-ascendant Zeitgeist:

“…The world should profit by experience and give up expecting the Church to die…The notice of her execution has been posted, but the execution has never taken place. Science killed her, and still she was there; History interred her, but still she was alive. Modernism slew her, but still she lived… in fact, she is constantly finding her way out of the grave because she has a captain who found His way out of the grave. The world may expect her to become tired, to be weak when she becomes powerful, to become poor when she is rich, but the world need never expect her to die…She is reborn to each new age, and hence is the only new thing in the world…She will go on dying and living again, and in each recurring cycle of a Good Friday and an Easter Sunday her one aim in life will be to preach Christ and Him Crucified.”

And in the very next paragraph, only halfway through his life, Sheen writes his own epitaph:

"...if any single word of mine has lifted up but one soul to a nobler understanding of Christ, or fanned a single spark of love for His cause into a flame, or induced the tendrils of a single heart to entwine about the Heart of Hearts, then I shall believe that my words and my life shall not have been spoken or lived in vain."

And now, Advent is calling: time to leave the crypt and hang the lights.

In 1980, with the modest earnings from my first job, I took my parents to Ireland. We drove from Dublin through Waterford, where my grandfather was born, and as we awaited our flight home in Shannon Airport on a Sunday morning, a little old fellow toddled up to travellers. "Father will be starting Mass in the chapel in a few minutes," he informed us. It was one last great memory from my mother's spiritual homeland: A stranger invites you to Mass at the airport. Only in Ireland.

That country is gone, I'm told—the remote backward dreamscape that we Irish-Americans loved to romanticize—and now, so is that Church. Worse yet, it apparently never existed. The triumphalist Church whose confidence spread all the way to the airport chapel was apparently riddled with rot, and the betrayal, from the abusing clergy right to the top of the hierarchy, has dealt a near-mortal wound to the already faltering faith in Ireland.

This has been tormenting me, and I think I have figured out why it seems like such a personal hurt. Like my mother before me, I've been deeply invested in the idea of Ireland and her Catholic soul, and I needed them to stay the same, a touchstone of mystery and reverence (not a corny St. Paddy's Day greeting card version, mind you). Even if I never made it back to Shannon Airport, I loved to think that there was still a place where everybody went to Mass—a place that had held fast against the tidal wave of secular sewage that has washed over our own culture in the nearly 30 years since our visit. It is particularly devastating to learn that their cesspool was rising up from deep within.

Compared to Ireland and indeed most of poor old Europe, the Church in America seems robust, although you'd never know it from its scandal-plagued and shrinking presence in places like New York and Boston—come to think of it, the paleo-Irish places. Here in the Northeast, the urban Church feels like a Catholic Rust Belt, with our half-empty churches and dwindling schools. But to read the amazing Whispers in the Loggia is to realize that the Church is thriving elsewhere. There are celebrations in the Midwest that draw tens of thousands of Vietnamese immigrants, and Our Lady of Guadalupe rivals Christmas in places like L.A. Even white suburban Catholicism is alive and well as close as Nassau and Westchester, where the mass (small-m) appeal of the evangelicals and the mega-churches is pulling in the young folks with Christian rock and holy rolling.

Trouble is, the Church I grew up in and loved, culturally speaking, is the Irish model that now totters in disgrace on its home soil and struggles here: the one that treasured silence and obedience, mysticism and scholarship.  I rejoice that there's a healthy Catholic Church springing up, whether in the Sunbelt or right here in Brooklyn, and if liturgical dance or rock or mariachi is bringing in the faithful, well, bless them. But if the Lord spares me for another few decades, I will increasingly feel like E.T. in many of my own faith communities, and if the Irish church is on the ropes, I won't be able to phone home. I'll get over it, but permit me a bit of Celtic moping first.

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, one of those bonus days off on the Catholic school calendar. This year, the celebration of the church's contention that Mary was "conceived without stain of sin" seems like a poignant echo from another age. The tortured theological quest for a model of absolute purity was something I never fully understood. Not that there's anything wrong with being immaculate, mind you, but wouldn't it have been enough that she was simply humble and virtuous and brave? Those will take you a long way in a world full of stains.

We bless thee, as full of every grace,
thou who didst bear the God-Man:
we bow low before thee;
we invoke thee and implore thine aid.
Rescue us, O holy and inviolate Virgin,
from every necessity that presses upon us
and from all the temptations of the devil…

Ephrem the Syrian (306-373)

Let's learn communication skills today from the masters of pastoral care. We will give three examples, starting with two of our recent local shepherds. Pay attention, now. One of these three religious leaders is speaking intemperately and without benefit of counsel, which can produce less-than-optimal strategic messaging in a liability situation.

1. Cardinal Edward Egan

(From today's New York Times, excerpts from a just-unsealed deposition on his tenure in the Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn.:)

“Bishop Egan, the fact that 19 individuals have come forward and made claims,” Ms. Robinson asked about Father Pcolka’s case. “You don’t consider that to be a significant number of individuals?”

The bishop waited while his lawyer quibbled over the number 19, then answered that considering there were 360,911 registered Catholics in the diocese, “I do not consider that a significant segment or factor.”

“Would you agree with me, Bishop Egan,” the lawyer pressed, “that if one person, one individual, has been affected by the sexual abuse of a clergy member, when that person was a child, that that’s far too much to accept in any diocese?”

“It would not be a significant portion of the diocese,” he replied. “Your question was ‘a significant portion of the diocese.’ ”

2. Bishop Thomas V. Daily of Brooklyn, retired

On August 22, 2002, lawyers for three men who claim they were sexually abused by the Rev. Paul Shanley conducted a deposition of Bishop Daily, a former top-ranking official in the Archdiocese of Boston, in a transcript posted by the Boston Globe here)

Q: Do you understand the question? On the basis of these four allegations that have been made against Paul Shanley from his beliefs in bestiality, incest, pedophilia, the McGeady letter, Gaysweek magazine about children feeling guilty when they have sex with men and men get sent to jail, on the basis of the two letters you received in May and July of 1983 about his attendance at NAMBLA, looking at those letters, do you still believe it was appropriate for you to appoint Paul Shanley as acting pastor of a family parish in Newton in 1983?

Bishop Daily: I would have to agree that it would be extraordinary. The only thing, the only saving feature of it is that we are talking about ideas and opinions in his promotion verbally, that the only saving feature is that, to my knowledge at the time, he wasn't involved in activities. But having even said that, if in fact he was promoting ideas and God knows at St. Jean's parish, that would be terrible. And there was no evidence he was at St. Jean's parish doing that; he was doing it in other parts of the country. But having said that, I would have very great regrets.

Q: You have regrets you made the appointment?

Bishop Daily: I think I would have done much better if I hadn't made the appointment.

3. Jesus Christ

But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Matthew 18:6

Images: Top: Louis Lanzano/Associated Press; Middle: AP; bottom: Fra Angelico

So I have done something rash: signed us up for one-quarter of a pig, pieces of which start arriving this Thursday from a bucolic family farm called the Piggery in upstate New York. It's a meat version of CSA: "community-supported agriculture," where you pay a farmer for a chunk of harvest every week. We have to travel to the darkest depths of foodie hipsterdom--a place called the Meat Hook on the fringes of Williamsburg--to carry home our first shipment of the farm's own charcuterie, chops and bacon.

I remain very conflicted about this venture, and not just because I have spent two weeks' marketing money on this quarter-pig. And not because I am ill at ease with eating cute little piggies like this one when they grow up. Sweet as they are, I can gaze in their eyes and see a God-gifted dinner source, despite the current surge in vegan righteousness in the Zeitgeist. (This is one of the Piggery's heritage breed babies, a cross between a Mulefoot and a Gloucester Old Spot.)

No, my qualms are two-fold.

One:  Stop and think about the whole "humanely raised" conundrum. These pigs live upstate in pig paradise. They roam freely, munching on acorns and pumpkins, and are killed respectfully by a charming and articulate chef. Um...isn't it sort of worse to kill happy pigs and end their idyllic lives? Could one not better justify taking some sad, crate-raised hog and putting it out of its warehoused misery? Sort of like Switzerland...for pigs...with the second effect of bacon.

And two (seriously): This whole sustainable-locavore thing is both hyper-trendy, elitist, and a bit absurd. Sensitive urban gourmets will not save the earth by buying $20 organic free-range chickens and $8/pound microgreens and $300 pig-quarters, although we will set a very good example for people who can't possibly afford to do likewise (while supporting some wonderfully idealistic farmers). We will, however, be making progress when this stuff comes down to Wal-Mart range. It helps when a chain like McDonald's kicks out some horrible product or raises the standards for its ingredient providers (as has sometimes happened). I'm splurging on luxury sausage without a side order of guilt, but I can't kid myself that such efforts are changing more than a tiny corner of the big, bad world, and if you hear me lecturing anyone on my virtuous path, poke me in the eye with a locally sourced chorizo.

No, what it's about for me is...marbling. As I've learned from the pricey Flying Pigs pork at the Greenmarket, pork can still be mouth-wateringly juicy and tender, unlike the factory-farmed "lean" chops that cook up like Dr. Scholl inner-soles (and are raised over a toxic "lake of manure"--not a phrase easily forgotten at dinnertime). We seem to be in a curious cultural moment, meat-wise, with carnivorous foodies signing up for butchering courses on the one hand, and vegans lecturing us from the best-seller list and op-eds on the other.

I just want fatty chops from happy pigs. Look for "Pig-Blogging Mondays" between now and February to find out how it goes.

Komodo dragon: American Museum of Natural History

Other images: The Pigger's Flickr stream