 Epiphany came and went this year and I hardly noticed. My family and I were attending a family gathering miles from home, celebrating my brother-in-law’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. In the past, when I’ve been home, I try to spend time reflecting on the magi’s journey to see the newborn child, their experience of really “seeing” who the infant would become. I move the wisemen closer to the manger in my terracotta nativity scene, and I take long last looks at my decorated Christmas tree, which I usually put away the next day. And in recent years, I remember an Epiphany homily by a dear friend that inspired me to go home and start writing about Sacred Strangers and how they often seem to know more than the believers in the Bible. But this year, I was helping with my grandchildren as they navigated airports and strange houses, unfamiliar beds and bathrooms, extraordinary parks and a spectacular cocktail-dinner-dancing party on January 6, or Epiphany. At that party, held in the same Croatian hall where my husband and I had celebrated our wedding 40 years ago, my dear sister-in-law fell on the dance floor and couldn’t move. An ambulance collected her, she was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with a cracked pelvis and sacrum. Suddenly the next day’s Mass blessing and luncheon were canceled. She is in a rehab home now, working on resting and healing. So, I guess it isn’t surprising that I didn’t give the three wise men a second thought. But now, almost two weeks later, my nativity figures and decorated tree are still standing. Last week a long winter storm brought days of snow, cold, ice and freezing rain. School was canceled for four days, so I helped with babysitting whenever someone could get out of the house and, honestly, when everyone had to stay home, I reveled a bit in the quiet of my house. One of those mornings I was reading James Martin’s book, Learning to Pray, where he describes leading pilgrimages to the Holy Land and the importance of remembering those heightened experiences. Last year, at Epiphany, I stood shoulder to shoulder with twelve traveling companions in a tiny stone sanctuary. It was early morning – about 5 a.m. – and we’d gathered inside the Chapel of the Tomb. Most of us created a small circle in the outer room and three of our fellow travelers crowded into the next room, the place, tradition says, the body of Jesus was laid to rest more than two centuries ago. This tiny two-room shrine stands within the cavernous Church of the Holy Sepulchre, inside the ancient walled city of Jerusalem. Now, staring out my window at sheets of water skimming over layers of ice, the memories of those early morning hours a year ago flooded back to me. I remember that a friend had asked me to read a biblical passage during the service, something I’ve done many times before. But without thinking, I politely declined. A few minutes later, as the words of the Mass began, tears came to my eyes, not the quiet kind that sometimes strike me at church. These brought deep, shaking sobs that I struggled to keep to myself. Without much success, I guess. A friend passed me a tissue halfway through the service. My head filled with all my own traditional thoughts about Epiphany, laced through with reflections on standing at the spot where Jesus was buried on the same day that the magi had sought him out at his birth. I thought about their gift to all of us – that for some reason we can’t know, they recognized the significance of Jesus because they had literally seen him with their own eyes. I thought about my husband, who loved the story of Epiphany and insisted that we keep our tree up through the feast. And I remembered priests who had preached so many homilies on the feast through the years and somehow found something new to reflect on each time. A year later, I'm still not sure why I cried through Mass. My thoughts were the same ones that I have every year. I suspect it was the place, the ancient chapel carved from stone, so cold that I could feel the warmth from the friends standing near me, so quiet compared to the noise of the walled city that had not yet awakened for the day. Maybe it was the irony of standing where so many pilgrims had come before to reflect on Jesus death and finding myself thinking about his birth and the magi who had visited him. After the service, we were free to wander through the rambling church. It was still early morning and there were some visitors, but not the hoards we’d seen a few days earlier. As I walked the cavernous halls, I was still stunned by my emotional response during Mass. I was raised Presbyterian and the whole notion that “this is the place where . . . “ often fills me with skepticism. So on this day, I walked past the “traditional stone of anointing,” which a nun wipes with olive and rose oil every morning so that observers inhale and believe in that supposedly sacred place. I stood in a short line before the hole in the floor over “the place where" Jesus was crucified. I knelt, reached my hand into the dark hole and felt rock, as hard and unforgiving as any I’d ever felt before. I wandered down curving stone steps to a chapel dedicated to St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, who is said to have found a piece of Jesus’ cross. On the way, I passed massive stone walls, carved with rough Crusaders’ crosses, ancient graffiti left by centuries of visitors. In the next few weeks, as we visited many sacred places in Israel, my skepticism returned. Even now I can’t really account for my emotional response in the tomb. But that memory now nudged me, in a time filled with family worries and global disasters, to think about the wise men – even two weeks after Epiphany. I stare at a small icon of the nativity that I bought in Jerusalem. The holy family huddles above the curve of a sparkling star as three men bearing gifts make their way from the far-right corner to meet the new king. And I think about how those strangers have become for me a point of inspiration the whole year through. They traveled far, trusting in a star but also asking directions. They, too, were skeptical and chose not to follow the instructions of the court. When they found Jesus, they saw him for who he would be and honored him with gifts that seemed to recognize his fate and proclaim his promise. And then they wisely found their own way home without reporting to King Herod. Theirs is a story of trust, inquiries, skepticism, seeing, recognizing, honoring and sometimes going home a different way.
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 Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I sat in my comfortable, warm living room on a brilliantly sunny but cold day – 25 degrees – and read his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” I don’t know whether I’ve ever read all of it at one sitting, but I did this morning. I wanted to remember who he was, what he stood for, in his own words, not settle for snippets (despite their haunting beauty) or sound bites. Over the weekend, I heard an interview that described these six pages being written by King on sometimes disgusting scraps of paper, smuggled out of jail and faithfully transcribed by someone who couldn’t bring themselves to save the dirty scraps. I thought about how most of what would be quoted today would be “scraps.” So I read the whole letter, as sunlight streamed in my front window, filtered through my still decorated Christmas tree. Here are a few quotations that might spur others to read this letter.
“I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.” “History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immortal that individuals.” “There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.” And, finally, “I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom, who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”  Eleven months ago, I stood in the middle of Bethlehem’s Manger Square. Earlier that day, our group, which was staying in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, boarded our bus for a day in the West Bank. Bethlehem was our first stop. Israeli soldiers walked through the bus before we were allowed to pass through the looming concrete and barbed wire wall that divides the occupied territory from the rest of Israel.
I remember both sides of the wall, The grim, gray concrete of the Israeli side. The Palestinian side, covered with graffiti, some of it truly beautiful, all of it striking, painted with slogans like “Make hummus, not war," images of doves bearing olive branches and Palestinian men hurling flowers over the wall. I remember sharing lunch with the leader of a Palestinian group that supports people in need of food and education, housing and work. I remember walking into the city of Bethlehem and through a refugee camp that was 75 years old, surrounded by another wall, painted with the United Nations’ bill of rights for children. A 75-year-old refugee camp with ragged tenements instead of tents within the town whose name translates as "City of Bread." I remember standing in the camp and looking up to the nearby hills. They were covered with shining white homes, occupied by Israeli setters, whose windows look down on the Palestinian “camp.” I remember visiting the Church of the Nativity. I stood in line with my traveling companions and tourists from myriad countries, inching our way toward the shrine traditionally associated with Jesus’ birth. As the line moved forward, I saw the heavy crimson velvet drapes that surrounded an opening about the size of my fireplace at home. An elaborate gold relief hung over the opening, the characters of the nativity gathered around the manger. I grew up in a Presbyterian congregation that didn’t put much store in shrines or relics, believing that sacred spaces were intangible. But I have been a Catholic for the past forty years, and I am more open to holiness breaking into real life. I watched the people in front of me approach the shrine, kneel on one or both knees, reach their arms into the black space. Some of them murmured a prayer and then rose to walk away. When it was my turn, I knelt before the opening and reached my arm into the dark space. Out of the blue, I recalled a moment in Rome years ago when I stretched my arm into the mouth of a mythic creature and laughed at the legend that the monster might bite it off. I was a bit nervous now, as my fingers reached into the dark space surrounded by a metal star. I fumbled for the ground and found what felt like stones that might have covered the floor of a stable long ago. Like some of the people before me, I muttered the words of a prayer – something about the light that the world still needs. And then I stood up to let the person behind me come forward. I remember all these things now, in a world where our latest war involves Israel and Hamas. Thousands have died, most of them innocent civilians who cannot escape the bombing that has laid waste to Gaza. I read online that Bethlehem has canceled Christmas this year and that one Lutheran Church there has scattered the characters of the Nativity through a pile of rubble. In my experience of this world, Advent often seems like a time to kneel, reach out, despite our fears, into the darkness, feeling for a fleeting brush of stone, pray for hope, stand up and then walk on. Never more than this year. A line from “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem" runs through my mind, my own refrain for Advent this year: “. . . the hopes and fears of all the years are met in you tonight.”  Somehow, in the midst of all the troubling news last week, I missed this quote, offered by a Republican congressman referring to his party’s disagreement on a short-term funding bill:
“I don’t think the Lord Jesus himself could manage this group,” he said. I groaned inwardly and said out loud, with a dose of attitude: “Oh, I think he could.” Confronted with the present House Republican caucus, I think Jesus would: rely on his habit of speaking truth to power -- no matter the consequences for redemption or re-election; momentarily overlook the way his earthly life, message and ministry have been distorted by those who see themselves as his followers; employ a parable, maybe a variation involving a vineyard where selfish tenants try to cheat the landowner out of his share of the profits; repeat a central teaching of the Hebrew Bible, the divine command that believers must care for foreigners, widows and orphans, for the least of society, and not ignore or turn them away; cast out the demons that may have possessed well-meaning legislators and turned them into selfish, irrational and judgmental representatives unwilling to listen to all the people they serve, not just their perceived “base;” hope that his sincere message would encourage many to convert, again, on the spot, to honor his teachings with action (the Bible says many did when they heard him speak). And after all that, he might be angry, perhaps resorting again (at least metaphorically) to overturning the tables of the money changers outside the temple because they took advantage of the poor. Of course, there may be congressional representatives who would not be moved by Jesus’ teachings, even relayed in person, or the fact that he only quotes the Hebrew Bible, or that he acted to heal deranged souls and did not create or exploit them. There are always a few like the young man who walked away from Jesus rather than give up all he had to follow him. But then, perhaps, those folks really would be fewer and farther apart.  Happy New Year!
This is, I believe, the beginning of the New Year. School has started. New shoes and backpacks walk by my house, worn by excited-but-timid kindergartners and swaggering “older kids” on their way to school. The weather is cooler. We’ve had a touch of rain – I’d forgotten how lovely it sounds in the early morning. Autumn light and leaves are coloring the days. I’m celebrating the New Year with a new book, Femina: A New History of the MIddle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It, by Janina Ramirez. Already, I am learning new things. For example, although we think of men bringing Christianity to newly conquered territories, often it was women -- those warriors' and rulers' wives, sisters and daughters -- who actively shared their Christian faith in these new surroundings. Some of these women were revered in their lifetimes. Ramirez writes about the grave of one of those women, who was laid to rest on her real-life bed. Turns out an actual bed frame was most often handed down from generation to generation in those days, and burying a bed with someone on it was a sacrifice for the surviving family and a mark of honor for the deceased. I thought of that this morning as I made my own. It’s also been fun to learn more about women I’d already heard of – Joan of Arc, a national heroine who led French troops into battle before she herself was put to death; Julian of Norwich, who spent part of her life enclosed, or anchored, in a small cell within a church and who said many interesting things besides the oft-quoted “all shall be well”; and Margery Kemp, who described her religious pilgrimages in great detail at a time when men did most of the writing. But the person I’ve been thinking about most this week is Hildegard of Bingen, whose feast day was Sept. 17. Born in Germany in about 1098, Hildegard had vivid visions throughout her life, which she interpreted as illustrations of faith and divine love. (People have since speculated that she suffered from migraine headaches.) Her descriptions of her visions overflow with feminine imagery. Her parents gave her to a monastery when she was a child, and by the time she was 51, she had established her own religious community. She was a prolific writer, composed music, studied natural medicine and wrote two volumes on the subject. She corresponded with religious and political leaders of her time, preached and collected her own homilies from 1160 to 1170, and wrote two volumes on medicine. She lived for more than 80 years, at a time when the average life expectancy of a woman was about 43. Many of Hildegard’s visions were recorded as she and a priest/scribe sat in separate rooms, with only a small window between them. With the help of a younger nun, Hildegard described her visions to the scribe. Among them, Ramirez writes, were two visions of scripture -- Synagoga, who held the Jewish prophets in her arms, and Ecclesia, who held the Christian faithful in hers. I love the idea that those who hold the God's messengers and believers are women. I’m preparing to teach a month-long course on women in the Bible who work together in favor of life and my mind turns often to Hildegard’s imagery and a phrase that Ramirez uses in her book, “you cannot be what you cannot see.” Recovering the stories of women who have gone before us in time is a lot like women’s work, in general: It’s never done. And all of us, not just women, can profit from this work. Three more thoughts about Hildegard to ponder in this New Year: One reason she was so prolific was the length of her life and her stamina. If she had died at 50, a nice life for a woman of her time, she would never have founded her monastery and would have left behind only a few songs and one book. “But her life was one of extraordinary creativity and a staggering output of work,” Ramirez writes. So, I need to keep working. During her writing career, she took care to “differentiate her style and approach from the theologians of her time. The difference in tone could be compared today to that between an academic article and a trade book.” Always my aim. Who knew it was Hildegard’s goal, too. Lastly, Hildegard was canonized a saint in 2012 and proclaimed a “doctor of the church” in that same year. Her relics, preserved whenever possible for a saint, were “only her heart and her tongue,” Ramirez writes. They “have survived the tumultuous centuries of history . . . . all heart and all tongue, Hildegard was a woman whose voice still cries out as loudly today as it did 900 years ago.” Amen.  I had a teacher in seminary who used to remind us that often when Christians read or hear the Bible read aloud, they imagined that they are standing alongside Jesus, or maybe just behind him. Either way, nodding their heads because – unlike the “others” Jesus is addressing, we Christians already understand and embody whatever he is trying to teach the crowd. But, as my professor said, “We don’t.”
I thought of her this morning as I read today’s Lenten readings. In John 5:39-44, Jesus is speaking to a crowd. Imagine, as you read, that you are not among his disciples, but that you are in the crowd, curious about what Jesus has to say to you. “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. I do not accept glory from human beings, but I know that you do not have the Lord God in you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?” As another friend from seminary used to say, “Yikes!” Something to think about: When Jesus speaks and we feel scolded or challenged – not affirmed or praised, and especially not smug – then I think we are being schooled in how to live not only at Lent but for the rest of our days. Amen.  This particular well was not the one where Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman, but tradition says it lies in the house where Elizabeth visited Mary and they shared the news that they were both expecting. The gospel reading Sunday was John 4:1-42, the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. Turns out, this is a story that I needed to hear again. Earlier in the week women had spent International Women’s Day torn between how far we’d come and how far we have left to go. I think, perhaps, that I needed a reminder that, despite outward and outlandish assumptions about a woman, she may be smart and confident enough to hold her own in a conversation with a man, and she can emerge from that encounter with experience and energy to spark meaningful change. I am sure that many homilies and sermons Sunday focused on Jesus in this story, his willingness to speak to an “enemy” of the Jewish people, a woman, no less, and one characterized as immoral, shameless, and stuck within her own culture. But I was thinking about the Samaritan woman herself and what it is that makes her striking within this story. First, this is Jesus’ longest theological conversation recorded in the gospels, and he does not have it with a disciple, a religious authority of his day or even his mother, Mary. Instead, he speaks at length to someone whose name is not mentioned in scripture. She is portrayed, instead, as a woman and a Samaritan, a member of a group that Jews went out of their way to avoid or ignore. Remember Jesus’ story of the good Samaritan? Readers through the ages have assumed that this Samaritan woman was immoral, dishonest, and rightfully scorned by her neighbors. The “evidence” cited by many readers from the story itself is far from conclusive. Scripture says that she had been married multiple times and was living with a man who was not her husband. The text implies that she was so ashamed that she dared not visit the village well during its busiest times – early morning and late afternoon hours – to avoid her more righteous neighbors. That last detail makes me smile. As a modern biblical scholar has observed, “I should hate to have my morals impugned because I occasionally go to the grocery store late in the evening.” So, Jesus encounters her at the deserted well in the middle of the day and asks her for a drink. As they talk back and forth, her attitude toward Jesus shifts. This change is apparent in the ways she addresses him. At first, she calls him a “Jew.” Then she addresses him more respectfully, calling him “Sir.” As their conversation unfolds, she calls him “a prophet” and shares her own belief that the “messiah” is coming and will answer her religious questions once and for all. And then, Jesus, who has deftly managed most of the time to avoid answering the “who are you” question, reveals himself to her. “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” Jesus makes this revelation not to “the emperor or the chief priest or even one of his disciples,” another interpreter writes. “He chose a simple, marginal woman, who is not ever named in her own story.” But I am getting ahead of myself. As the story unfolds, Jesus asks the woman to fetch her husband, and she remarks that she does not have one. He responds, “You have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.” Often her self-revelation is interpreted as evidence of her immorality, supported by claims that Jews only allowed three marriages per person or challenged by scholars who suggest that women may have married more than once just to eat and keep a roof over their heads. My point, though, is that she responds to Jesus honestly, without explanations or excuses, and that Jesus doesn’t judge or condemn her. Unlike too many who read this story, he moves on, to get to the point or heart of their conversation – how should one worship. By now, the woman has established that she is knowledgeable about worship – whether it’s Jews or Samaritans taking part. At one time, the two groups were joined by their faith but over time they have drifted apart and disagree on where one should worship. She lays out their differences to Jesus. “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is Jerusalem.” Since the fourth century, some readers have recognized her intelligence and knowledge of religion. Some, more recently, have remarked that the Samaritans seem to have educated women on spiritual matters. For his part, Jesus is not surprised or threatened by her intelligence. He goes on to make his central point – that soon it won’t matter where one worships as much as who and how one worships. He encloses his central point in an inclusio, a rhetorical device where a central thought is emphasized by enclosing it within verbal bookends: “True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth . . . God is spirit . . . Those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman is so convincing to her that, when the disciples come on the scene and interrupt them, she heads home to share her experience with her neighbors. They don’t seem at all skeptical of what she has to say, as they might have been if she was as immoral and suspect as some readers portray her. They don’t reject her experience of Jesus outright. Instead, her testimony spurs others to go and see him for themselves. “Now, so what?” I can hear my editor saying in my ear. Here’s what: Women, seeking inspiring examples (and there are many in history and modern times) might find one in this ancient story that made its way into what is often seen as a patriarchal book. A suspect stranger, who might seem immoral (but isn’t convicted by any of the facts of her story) speaks with Jesus in what may be his longest theological discussion. One she is prepared for because of her education, and one where she is attentive enough to his responses to revise the way she addresses and sees him. She is confident, tells the truth and witnesses Jesus’ self-revelation. Finally, she rushes home to share her experience with others. It seems to me that in a world where men often overlook and underestimate women, and where women too often accept such treatment, God has calls us for centuries to prepare for more meaningful conversations, to hold our own in them, and to share our experience with those who would listen. *This entry is adapted from my book, Sacred Strangers: What the Bible's Outsiders Can Teach Christians. Quoted here are Bonnie Thurston and Joyce Hollyday, respectively.  If we’ve learned nothing at all in recent years – and there is an argument to be made that we have not learned anything – it’s that more than one thing can be true at the same time. That’s the challenge facing any thinking person during an election, watching the news or observing their own lives. For me, right now, it’s a challenge during Advent, the Christian tradition of anticipating Christmas.
I think often of a principle(pal) we studied in seminary, the idea that some religions consider time to be linear – with a beginning, a middle and an end. The notion that human experience is moving toward an end time and the consequences it will bring. Time marches on. In other traditions, time is considered to be cyclical, that life returns over and over again to a starting point. Time moves in cycles. In my own life, facing abbreviated but still daunting to do lists for Christmas and a coming trip to Israel, I find myself searching for moments when time stands still. Quiet early morning or late evening moments sitting in the dark with my lighted Christmas tree. Catching glimpses of stars in the clear dark sky through the bathroom window. Staring at snow falling on a quiet Sunday morning. I am embracing those moments, knowing they will be rare in the coming days, but trying to file them away in hopes that their memories serve to slow me down, if not stop me in my tracks. Time is complicated. It marches on, it cycles through, it stands still. All three can be true at once.  Early this morning, I stepped outside my front door to get the newspaper lying at the foot of the drive. The air was cold, dry and still. No traffic. No walkers, with dogs or otherwise. My neighbors’ blinds were down, the windows of their cars covered in frost. I walked carefully down the driveway, remembering to bend my knees and keep my back straight as I bent to retrieve the paper. As I stood, turned and started back up the drive, I heard the smallest tap. Not sure what it was. Maybe a cat? Maybe a crow, like the one that had sideswiped me when I was out walking a few days ago. Out of the corner of my eye, I'd seen a fig leaf fall from my neighbor’s tree: the size of a salad plate, yellow with scalloped edges. I’d watched it land on the driveway. I smiled to think I’d heard a leaf fall – in real time, as they say nowadays. And then I heard other taps, one at a time, and noticed the red and gold leaves falling from my cherry and dogwood trees. One by one they settled with tiny taps on grass already covered with an autumn patchwork quilt. While I stood silent and alone in my front yard, I realized how many leaves had already fallen without my hearing their tap, tap, tap. And I think of myself as a good listener.  I just finished a novel that was heavy on heart-break and, thankfully, fleetingly hopeful. Why do I read books like this? Books that describe a world so removed and so much harsher than my own? Part of it is I am sporadically compulsive. Only rarely do I begin and then abandon a book. Years ago, when my book group chose The Trial of Socrates, I read part way through it and gave up. Three decades later, I still feel guilty.
A friend of mine always reads page 50 of any book she’s thinking of reading, and if it doesn’t hold her attention, she casts it aside. Such discipline. Me, I finish books – and too many middling movies – just in case there’s something I might miss. So, I just finished Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. I’d heard it reviewed on NPR, but I was probably half asleep, so I wasn’t sure exactly what I was in for when I put it on reserve at the library. Now I know: A Protestant named for the patron saint of Glasgow (odd, that), Mungo lives on the brink of manhood. Questions about his identity, intellect and sexuality are as twitchy as his fuzz-covered cheeks. The plot leaps forward and backward in time – a challenge for linear me – from a hellish fishing trip with two “adult” strangers, whom his alcoholic mom entrusts with her most loving son, to brutish hand-to-hand combat between Protestant and Catholic youths who aren’t sure why they hate each other but can’t overcome their addiction to violence. Poverty, ignorance and pervasive ill will set the stage. Here is the opening paragraph: “As they neared the corner, Mungo halted and shrugged the man’s hand from his shoulder. It was such an assertive gesture that it took everyone by surprise. Turning back, Mungo squinted up at the tenement flat, and his eyes began to twitch with one of their nervous spasms. As his mother watched him through the ear-of-wheat pattern of the net curtains, she tried to convince herself that his twitch was a happy wink, a lovely Morse code that telegraphed everything would be okay. F. I. N .E. Her younger son was like that. He smiled when he didn’t want to. He would do anything just to make other people feel better.” As unsettling as Young Mungo was to read, the book surprised me with sweet, though quick to disappear and often tarnished moments of grace, along with startlingly detailed descriptions of deliberate harm to loved ones and virtual strangers. It made me think in ways that pages of beautiful prose often don’t – about the roots of violence, hatred, fear and suspicion that thrive in overwhelming want, and how the phrase “working class” really does define all of us who struggle to understand who we are and why we are where we are. In some ways, my life has little to do with Mungo’s, his shattered family, the threat of where he lives, and the love of his life, James. But in other, even irrational ways, I find myself wanting to pray for this imaginary character. Stuart breathed life into this young man, faced his torment, discovered his surprising resilience and somehow, shook me into finding a little of my own. Mungo was so worth the struggle, and so was the book about him.  Like lots of people my age, I just attended my 50th high school reunion. My first one. Always before something else was going on – I had to work, was moving that weekend, or already traveling. This year I had no excuse. And this year, I had a friend willing to go with me. So, we went.
Memories – good and bad – came to me in the days before, during and after the reunion. In no particular order, I remembered the friend whose eyes teared up as she told me that she’d miss me when she got to heaven (a Presbyterian at the time, I had no chance in her eyes), another who often told the story of me bumping into a wall and immediately apologizing to that wall, my debate partner who had a weekend job minding the town dump so we sweated over our speeches beside the wood stove in his tiny sentinel shack. Of those three friends I remember so fondly, two have passed away. I missed my chance to laugh at myself through their eyes. At the reunion events themselves, I talked to a handful of people. Some I’d known since grade school, others since our days as Camp Fire girls, some I’d known from my church youth group, and one whom I’d never spoken to before. She told me that night that she’d joined our class as a senior because her parents had moved. In three events over three days, I actually talked to about a dozen people – probably breaking my actual high school conversation record. I was a sorry teen-ager from a monumentally dysfunctional family. I suffered from that odd intersection of no confidence in myself most of the time and the occasional you-can-do-it blunder into embarrassment. As people passed by me, reading my name tag and giving me a glimpse of their own, I recognized a lot of names, if not faces. If memory serves, the beautiful people from my class are still beautiful, brimming with confidence and reveling in the friendships they forged a long time ago. I had a few surprises over the weekend. I did a little hiking with a friend I’d known since grade school but know a lot better now. She has endured a lot with grace, humility and faith-shaped common sense. She inspired me. And there was a guy I remember as funny and kind and too handsome for me who came out of the blue to take my arm and make sure I boarded the lake cruise ship without falling. I am really not a doddering old woman trying to cross the street. But maybe the three gin and tonics I’d had before we met the night before convinced him I had a tendency to teeter. My friend since fourth grade and I took the time to drive past the houses we’d lived in (all of which seemed a little worn and much smaller than we’d remembered), the elementary school we’d attended where we swept fallen pine needles into lines, marking out houses and stables and pathways in our pretend villages. We stopped by the beach where we swam every summer day. These days an iron fence runs from the private yards of fancy houses down into the water. It seems that after years of beaches being public property, as they continue to be in more enlightened communities, this stretch of lake shore now may be owned, fenced off and buried in driftwood, trash and junk because their private owners don’t use or clean it. Apparently land-use laws are like good high school friends. The good ones die too soon.  So lately, I’ve realized that I like to read books with my cell phone. No, I never have caught on to reading books online. I love the smell of paper, ink and a hint of dust or must. No, as an old-school reader, I love books. But I also love the luxury of Googling about whatever I might encounter in a book. A while back I read The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson and Googled the blue people of Kentucky.
And when I read Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, she argued that first contact in North and South America resulted in the death of 56 million lives, by violence and disease. That accounted for 90 percent of all the lands’ original inhabitants, actually changing “the amount of carbon in the atmosphere,” an outcome no one could have imagined then. That was hard to believe until I Googled her source, Alexander Koch et al., “Earth System Impacts of the European Arrival and Great Dying in the America after 1492." (I admit it was just an astract, but the actual report would probably have been over my head.) When I read The Brutal Telling, another of Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache mysteries, I wondered whether Emily Carr was a real artist. I Googled her and found that she was. I also discovered that her paintings of British Columbia and its indigenous villages were mesmerizing. So I bought a novel based on her life and a jigsaw puzzle of one of her paintings – so this winter I’ll have more projects. And this week, as I renewed my practice of reading, my cell phone has also played a role. Reading The Other Bennett Sister, Janice Hadlow’s account of Mary, the reticent and plainest of Elizabeth’s sisters in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, I found myself in the midst of a conversation about poetry. I Googled William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” which I hadn’t read since college (remember the Norton anthologies of poetry?). And that prompted me to pull a couple of books of poetry off my shelves, reread some favorites and a few new ones. I may be the last reader of physical books who refers regularly to my cell phone as I turn the paper pages before me. But now, with a couple of clicks, I can illustrate and footnote every book I pick up. That’s another way to reinvigorate my reading habit!  Forgive me, but I feel like boasting. I got up early this morning, savored half a grapefruit with my almond butter and toast. (That’s a rare treat because I’m not supposed to eat grapefruit because of a medication that I take. Occasionally, I cheat.) Once the neighborhood was awake, I washed my ancient car. I do it once a year and, while I know it’s more ecological to take it to a carwash (and I’ve done that), this year, I did it in my driveway. I tried to be conscientious about the water. I used it sparingly and I rushed to finish. I set a record for my 67-year-old self: I washed the car, using a toothbrush to scrub off some of the mold and mildew, in 45 minutes. I pulled the car into the garage and decided to vacuum it out as well and managed that in 15 minutes. For some reason that I don’t want to dwell on, I take a perverse kind of pleasure from accomplishing tasks that sometimes surprise my adult children.
But that’s not all. As I put away the rags, brushes and bucket I’d used on the car, I noticed that my backyard was shady and peaceful. By late morning, it’s usually sunny and often hot and the sounds of kids playing, lawn mowers and leaf blowers disturb the early morning peace. But while I was still in bed this morning, I had read a good piece by Alissa Wilkinson in VOX, “How to fall back in love with reading,” with the subhed, “Even when your brain feels like mush.” Apparently, in 2021, almost a quarter of Americans said they hadn’t read a book in the past year. Yikes! I have kept track of all the books I have read since a friend gave me a journal for just that purpose back in 2001. Over the years, I know that I’ve read fewer books than I once did and that sometimes depresses me. But I’ve never not read a book – for a few days or a month or a year. The article includes several reasons for readers to pick up books. This was my favorite one: Research revealed “a short-term decrease in the need for ‘cognitive closure’ in the minds of readers of fiction.” In other words, “those with a high need for cognitive closure ‘need to reach a quick conclusion in decision-making and an aversion to ambiguity and confusion,’ and thus, when confronted with confusing circumstances, tend to seize on fast explanations and hang on to them.” The point being that such readers are “more susceptible to things like conspiracy theories and poor information, and they become less rational in their thinking.” And here’s the bottom line, “Reading fiction . . . tends to retrain the brain to stay open, comfortable with ambiguity, and able to sort through information more carefully.” So, this morning, after washing my car, I dragged my Adirondack chair to the back corner of my backyard, filled a glass with ice water, set my cell phone timer for 30 minutes and, in the middle of the day, in the midst of a sizeable “to do” list, read a novel. With only the birds and one low flying airplane to keep my company, I enjoyed a few chapters of The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow. Prompted by the plot, I did take a few minutes to Google and read William Wordsworth’s poem, “Tintern Abbey.” But more about that next time. If you are a reader whose dedication to reading has been lagging during the pandemic and in the course of the world going to hell in a handbasket, I urge you to read Wilkinson’s piece and take a few minutes to resume your reading practice. *A phrase from "Tintern Abbey"  I am a knitter. I have a project going most of the time and work on it almost daily. It saves me, keeps me company, creates gifts and, these days, is helping me reduce my stash – the skeins, balls and bits of yarn that I have collected over my 67 years.
Right now, I am knitting a scarf, using a couple of skeins of fine, dark blue silk that I bought years ago. I wound one skein into a ball and gave up. This yarn knots when I look at it. But recently I found a simple pattern. The yarn is perfect, the stitch – once I practiced it a while – is absorbing – almost hypnotic. There’s only one catch – aside from winding the second skein into a ball. This pattern, with regular yarnovers and pairs of stitches knit together is impossible – for me – to tink or frog (technical knitting terms that result in undoing a piece of knitting in order to recover a dropped stitch or correct another error). I’ve tried over and over and the results are unsightly gaps, but I’ve decided to keep knitting. I don’t think the mistakes will be obvious when this soft scarf is wrapped around my neck. And I do believe that errors in human creations are reminders that none of us is perfect. But just now, knitting my way through my morning coffee break, I was looking at my work so far and thinking about the image of Mary, the undoer of knots, and realized that this imperfect scarf is a metaphor for my life right now. I am at the point in my life when I am trying to use up the mountainous stash of yarn I have accumulated. So I search to find projects suited to the limited amount of a particular yarn that I have (I’ve knitted linen table-runners that use up one or two balls of yarn, for example). In this project, there is no going back to correct mistakes – just efforts to restore the pattern and move on. I’m not paying attention to measurements or sizes or whether the resulting garment will fit. I am just determined to knit until there is no more yarn left. One of these days, I will need to take a break – I have a Christmas stocking to knit for a new niece and a few holiday gifts to finish. But for now, I am knitting a metaphor, surprised that it so suits my life.  Glimpsed last night as I carried compost from my kitchen, across my driveway, to the recycling bin. Woke up this morning to a radio report, another in a long line of stories about the courage of Ukrainian women as Russia invades their country in an act of war. Retelling the story of the old woman who scolded Russian soldiers and then offered them sunflower seeds to put in their pockets so that when they die and are buried in Ukraine, something good will come from their abhorrent presence. Reminded me of a story I read years ago about Russian mothers traveling to Chechnya to reclaim their soldier sons, rather than sacrificing them in another stupid war. Scrolling through Twitter, I came across an excerpt of Samantha Bee on her television show, Full Frontal, where she manages to infuse the facts with a mother's sarcasm as she lambasts the Russian leader. Sitting with Diana Butler Bass’ daily online reflection, part of A Grounded Lent, I see more clearly the connection she is making, the Bible is making, that Jesus made. “Jesus gives water, and he is water,” she quotes her book Grounded: Finding God in the World -- A Spiritual Revolution. Today Bass revisits the story of the woman at the well in John 4:10. Jesus says to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’” Sifting through my own writing, I found a piece I’ve written about Miriam, the sister of Moses. Many who know her name think of her saving her infant brother by putting him in a basket and setting it adrift on the River Nile. Some also know that she sang and danced after the Israelites passed through the Red Sea. A few know that later, when she and her other brother, Aaron, questioned why Moses thought God only spoke through him, she was struck with leprosy and forced from her community for seven days. A handful of feminist Bible scholars know the powerful end of her story: When Miriam died and was buried at a place called Kadesh, “there was no water for the congregation” (Numbers 20). Water had flowed in and out and over Miriam and her people for years and years, sometimes summoned from the ground as Moses struck it with his staff. But without Miriam, there was no water. It was if the earth itself felt the need to mark her passing. Still thinking about and women, war and water.  The magi finally made it. The thousand pieces of my holiday jigsaw puzzle took some time to assemble this year – two have gone AWOL in the past decade and one reminds me that our golden retriever Klickitat used to like to chew on bite-sized bits of cardboard. Anyway, I finished the puzzle and, after I write this, I’ll tuck it away for another year. Yes, I know pieces are missing, but I’ve had this one a long time. Its pieces are smaller and larger than in other puzzles and cleverly cut so it isn’t easy to fit them together. It’s a challenging task. Completing it – as best as I can -- is satisfying. I won’t part with this one. Today I read a piece in America, the Jesuit magazine, that has given me new ideas for my devotional reading. “The Black Writers All Catholics Should Read” caught my eye because some of the authors mentioned are familiar to me and others I’ve not run across before. James Cone was one of my professors in seminary. The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation and his more recent book The Cross and the Lynching Tree have confronted, convicted and challenged me. If The Lynching Tree had what we in newspapers called a “nut graf” (a concise answer to the "so what" question) this might be it: “Theologically speaking, Jesus was the ‘first lynchee,’ who foreshadowed all the lynched black bodies on the American soil. He was crucified by the same principalities and powers that lynched black people in America. Because God was present with Jesus on the cross and thereby refused to let Satan and death have the last word about his meaning, God was also present at every lynching in the United States. God saw what whites did to innocent and helpless blacks and claimed their suffering as God’s own. God transformed lynched black bodies into the re-crucified body of Christ. Every time a white mob lynched a black person, they lynched Jesus. The lynching tree is the cross in America.” I know of Bryan Massingale because his work was quoted in Alison Benders’ Open Wide Our Hearts, a study guide on the U.S. Catholic bishops 2018 letter on racism – yes, they did issue one that year. This essay reminded me that I want to read one of Massingale’s books. I think I’ll start with Racial Justice and the Catholic Church. Through the years, I have prayed and read scripture for as my devotional time. But now I find myself – quite literally – by focusing on books that break me open, scatter my pieces and slowly help me put them together again. The magi were strangers, even outsiders, who contributed wisdom to the story of Jesus’ birth. Better late than never.
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