Did you wonder about Mass these days? Just a little bit? Marcia? Dan V.? Jay? Mindy? Dake? Deb? _All my ex-Catholic friends.?
My friend Robert Logan was in the obituaries yesterday, and I went to Mass today for him, instead of to his funeral. The priest said we could all leave different people than who came in--we could all dedicate ourselves now to a Holy Spirit-filled life starting now. So everyone did. There are like, 3 people in each pew--but still, some 200 people are there, 30 of them kids. I think it's neat. Father reminds us at the end of the ceremony that we are going out into the world new people now, loving, peaceful, gentle, generous, people with self-control and faithfulness and joy radiating from our beings. The old us, the worrier, the codger, are dead...
I am not afraid. God is so good to us. I'll miss our church--Bob Macar has a plaintive, hardy, soulful voice and sings everything. i don't know how other churches do it but he sings the Glory Be, "When we eat this bread, and drink this blood, we proclaim your death, o jesus, until you come in glory" (It's like, "Dying, you restored our life"...). He sings these parts of the mass in a similar sing-song style as if we have a musical here. it's a moving experience. he wails plaibtively about how he's crawling , parched, and His Lord rescuing him; it is not boring and cold and rich-folks-homes tinkly-glass like a church choir with sopranos in it. It's more personal, and touching to hear such emotion wrought from a man. he teaches us all the responses , sings out with his organ, we sing. There are so many pretty tunes in a Mass. I like them all. "You alone are Holy, Lord, you alone are God,..." "Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us." Back in 2nd grade we said itt, chanting, or "agnes dei, qui tollis pecata mundi, miserere nobis.".repeat-- then, "agnus dei, qui tollis pecata mundi, dona nobis pachem."
I didn't go for the changes much because I memorized the old ones and when a missal isn't in my hands I say the old version. "Lord, I am not worthy for you to come under my roof. Speak but the word and my soul shall be healed."Now it is "Lord,I am not worthy to recieve you. But say the word and my soul will be healed." --- Not as poetic.
They pick good songs out of the songbook, too. I enjoy singing. Most churches I've been to sing verse one and verse ;ast and skip all the rest but Most Holy Redeemer always sings them all at a Bob macar mass. You don't leave when the priest says the mass is ended -go in peace " and you-all say praise be to God. because the song is fun to try--it wails to your soulfulness, or gets your mental fingers a'snapping .
The hardest part always for me is that slow part that seems between priest and God, the offertory . This priest looked picturesque holding the ornate gold symbolic-laden chalice above him with both long thin arms outstretched draping splendid red robes ( Pentecost). I wish I wouldn't be so shy but i never go up and say I'm me. I sing perfect pitch though, I know I am an asset, and I shake 4 strangers hands at least with loving eye contact at the offer each other the sign of peace.
I can't imagine touching the host. After all these years of watching people do it , even studying them so I could dare attempt, I am still uncomfortable with the ide and have never done it. There is no graceful way to do it. It's not trusting of the church as represented by the priest, like baby-birds in a nest that taking it in your open mouth is.And I find it weird they chew it--I always let it melt, feeling Jesus slowly undissolve, reveal substantiation, in me like I guess a hippie of the 60's would have felt a hit of acid.
There might be a plan the man has unfolding for us now, of course there is, a loving one with love for us dominating.
There are people born with no ability to feel pain. They usually die as a result of it before 20 which amazed me until I thought it hrough: if you are doing something to excess, like lifting too much weight in the wrong place in your back, or throwing a ball wrong so it throws your arm out, and don't have any idea, you could keep doing it over and over until the tissue is permanently damaged.Infected beyond restoration. Gangrenous and stuff. You would bear too much of the hot cigarette you sit on and suffer deep tissue burns with a higher rate of infection. You wouldn't feel headaches from gas leaks in your home in time to get out. You'd feel nothing in time to yell for it to stop, to close the eye, move the hand. Pain exists to protect us from worse consequences.
We are going to find a place in the world that will take us, be "home" for us , be our neighborhood and friend in this walk on the planet with so little resources (us, not the resource-rich planet).
Love will abound , there will be a preponderance of it. The family focus is always love, charity...the dad likes to expound on political issues but the girls are sensitive, artistic sorts who have to say their mix of laden emotions and vivid neuron connections in poem or play or manga or story form.
Life wll be necessarily simplified as Mom prays for it to be as she goes on chemo a year to 18 months and then prepares to be listed on the heart transplant list, which requires healthy teeth and gums, which medicad doesn't pay for and doesn't allow another source to pay for without stopping her Medicaid and rent money for a) 6 months to a year for 3 root canals and crowns or 3 teeth pulled by Medicaid under anesthesia offered seperately by their only oral surgeon in 100 miles in central Florida for $290 a visit ; which Medicaid and Social Security would call $300 income a month for 3 months or $1000 a month for the root canals, and shut her out that long, leaving her to pay for her $1,400 a mnoth interferon-rebetrol, $ 400 a month for another medication, $200 a month for another, $65 a month for a nother-- at the same time her disability check would be docked by $300 a month for 3 to 6 months.
Or she could do B)not tell Medicaid she got the dental work and lose her Medicaid and income for 36 months for lying or hiding "income" or 'sevices countable as income" from them.
Mom got a surprise visit from a social workr to see HER on some heavy allegations in an anonymous phone call. One of the things that bothered her about this intrusion was when she mentioned to him that her socail worker said to sell her house at the beginnnig of the month.
"Why?" he said, arrogantly, hatefully.
" I guess to get the most days , "Mama said.
"So you have 30 days you can lie to Social Security to qualify and don't really sell it and never move?"
Mom stared at him, confused, repulsed."How do you cheat Social Security by lying about selling your house?" she said aloud, although it was not her first question.
"I don't know, you tell me," he said. Then she recalled who he flashed her on--the man in "Freeway" -- Bob, Keifer Sutherland's character , that preyed on Reese Witherspoon's character, Vanessa.
That bothered her for days. He wasn't so retarded as to think a person would actually volunteer to Big Brother that she was cheating Big Brother. He must have said it as a dig, as a leer, a jeer. Insinuating that he felt she had no moral charcter in any direction.
It made her cry. patricia had told Kathy phillips a whopper too, some lie so good Kathy wouldn't even alk to the mother again. And now she had worked her same charm on a man bent on ridding the world of moms that picked up sideshow barkers at bars and passed out on valium they gave them while their innocent little girls slept beside the creeps, who sneaked them away and killed them. And he was pigeon-holeing with these ladies our terminally ill heart-patient mom, who had to get a divorce to get a transplant., and still only ever saw the ex-spouse, and dated no one, and did everything tshe and the kids did with the dad, from doctor visits to church to Bible groups to school functions to library trips to camping to museums. He just said so. By what he said. it was the only possible expanation for such a crude, impusive, flippant treatment of a serious, terminal mom trying to explain her issues to people investigating her half-packed, -things to- go-through everywhere, boxes -and- packing -paper on- the- floor - home , why she packed to move before she found a nother home.
He needed to help real kids in bad spots, if there were any more, not waste his time on anonymous vendetta calls timed when the caller knew Deanne had all her stuff poured out on the floor that had been in boxes in the shed, as she'd just sold the shed and had to empty it.
Only 5 people had been in her home or talked with her about her life in the 3 years she'd lived here--her sister, her sister's beau who was living in a drug rehab center and not allowed a phone--, her maid, a woman named Patricia who called the ex-husband and said she wa going to make a lot of anonymous calls about Mom, and her boyfriend. , an unemployable beerhead who'd been laid off by the ex.
The calls described the non-working oven, the pets, the lack of water sevice Patricia erroneously believed they had and the accompanying filth one would conclude that would lead to, and said the caller had witnessed the mom abuse illegal drugs in the home in front of the children.
Well that pretty well narrowed the list of suspects, if the call were to be taken as truth, to patricia and her fellow. If she doesn't want to admit to the call , she is saying the allegations are a malicious falsehood, because the caller was never in Mom's house. Not unless it was Patricia. So either she made it or its an ipso facto lie....
I know I am suposed to show patience and generosity, but can't I sue her and have her arrested criminally also for ths lie-packed anonymous harassment through taxpayer money? Maybe God has her good, where she'll turn around , waiting in a nice Florida prison for her.The thing is, she's the last person ever in this house to talk about pot, saying she could get it anytime, any quality, giddily, like it might increase her popularity. I was glas my kids didn't hear it. Then she calls child abuse agents and says I expose my kids to pot. She herself doesn't event hink pot is bad. She herself often scores it through her daughter, who was the age of my oldest when I met her, 15, and her boyfriend lived in her bedroom with her free of rent and she'd quit school . Patricia's boyfriend, an arrogant nudist, was once nude when the 15-year-old was home alone with him and realizing she'd seen everything, didn't bother to dress the rest of the afternoon she was d tuck there with him. Several soap opera-fiends--Suzanne Cisek, carmen Zywicki--debated calling child welfare on it. Now the daughter is safely 21--married to a guy with piercings, tatoos, and a child by a topless dancer -- still living rent-free off mom, this time with hubby. And this is who is calling child abuse authorities saying that my honor-roll, award-winning poet, never dated, modest and moral teenager is being destroyed by life with me. If only they could check out the backgrounds of the anonymous callers and call them on the standards they hold others but not themselves to.
They can't, but God can, and does, and if I were these careless people I'd be afraid.
Afraid for treating a moral upstanding woman with missing teeth like a morally -bankrupt whore. Afraid for making calls to dplit a dying mom from her children not of care for the kids but to stab the mom in the heart and her kids with her. A very sick woman, this anonymous lady.
May she throw away her old self and put on the new spiritual one.
