Day by Day

 

 

      I’ve been told, that in some rural cultures today, much as in days gone by, different flocks of sheep will graze together in the same pasture.   As with most sheep, one looks much like another.   Perhaps an exceptionally observant and interested shepherd could tell one lamb apart from another based on its’ natural good looks or a certain twinkle in its’ little beady eyes.  I think it is rather a beautiful thing that in such situations, it is the shepherd’s sheep that differentiate themselves from the ‘others’, by their highly developed listening skills.   It does bring added value to the Christ’s words when He said,  (John 10:27)  “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”  I really don’t know much of anything else about the art of shepherding but this little sentence does say a lot. When the shepherd calls out to his sheep, in a voice ringing out over a hillside that is filled with numerous different sheep herds, grazing together, spread lightly as a field of softly seeded dandelions across the landscape, I can almost imagine the Shepherd’s flock lifting their heads from the delicious and tender green grass, turning ever so slowly in the direction of the beloved sound, reluctantly perhaps, but with quiet obedience turning home and moving deliberately away from their neighbors towards the direction of their own, shepherding, Voice. They go to the Voice they know.

 

When I was a child, I remember trying to be close to God, desiring it with fervor and a passion, but with time and experience the desire and sensation began to grow cold. Then God became a rather distant character.  I never gave up my belief in His existence, but experiencing Him became an idea rather than an incarnation.  I like that word, incarnation because it expresses the down and dirty reality of God, God/man, God incarnate, carne   meaning flesh or meat, the meat of man, the meat of God.   I think it is an idea that can make us uncomfortable.  God made man.  Man is dust. God becomes dust, God making dust like unto God.   How odd.  Some would say crazy

   Anyway to return to the subject at hand, which is an Idea vs. an incarnate God. If God is so like us that He can die, surely he can communicate with us?  So He says, anyway!

   This may seem like a mini miracle or perhaps like a large miracle or perhaps the raving of a mad piece of dust.  I guess it just depends on your perspective.   There have been many times when I believe that I have heard the voice of God in my life.  I began praying in my early twenties.   Generally speaking, in order to recognize the voice of a friend or acquaintance you have to hang with him, so to speak be near him, get to know him by speaking together.  Spend time in other words.  Is it even possible to truly care about someone that you’ve never taken the time to know?   Of course you won’t talk to a person that you don’t believe is actually listening in return. If you did, someone might call you crazy.  Faith is the prerequisite of course, for without it, a court of law may indeed find you mad! God has faith. Some how or other He has faith in us even when we are oblivious of Him.

    When I only believed in God, I never spoke to Him.   Since belief became faith however, I’ve never stopped speaking with Him.  How I went from belief to faith is still something of a mystery.  It is God’s work.   I do remember a time in my early twenties, when I was most distressed.  More distressed than I can even say.   I remember also, ‘the moment’ that I made a decision.  I didn’t know at the time that I had just committed to a life of faith in the “God of my fathers”.  I clearly recall, after a very intense painful argument with someone close to me, putting my head down on a table, seeing the dimly lit proverbial light bulb shine just enough upon my soul to realize that our relationship had nothing to do with LOVE.  At that moment, an inner knowledge of the nature of LOVE was made simple and clear as a cloudless summer sky to me. God spoke silently in a ringing voice, to my heart.  I didn’t know it was Him, but I recognized the Voice.   I decided then to find real love, if it did exist in this world. When I discovered that it was Christ’s voice that spoke to my heart, I decided to follow and obey, like the sheep that turn to their Shepherd in obedience.           

     That was the moment for which I must thank my Grandmother Mary Flynn.  It was she who convinced my parents to send me to a Catholic grammar school.   The cross and Jesus’ dead corpus, hanging upon it, was the dimly lit bulb shining upon my weakened conscience.  How much more powerful that image is, than an empty cross.  The apostle Paul puts it this way,  “but as for me, I will preach Christ and Christ crucified.” Jesus Dead is LOVE!  This is the thought or awareness that seeped into my heart that day.  It was the Gospel that converted me.   Love is all about sacrifice not about having your own needs met.  My head down resting out of pure weariness with the life I had created, living according to my own best guess as to how to live, had crushed me.  I thank God often for that crushing.  I thank Him that he made me weak enough to cry ‘uncle’ at a young age.  As is always the case, when it comes to an incarnate God, there is paradox, foolishness and the absurd.

 

      Now to my mini or maxi miracle, depending upon your own view.  Three days after I gave birth to our first child, a very beautiful perfect little girl, I was sitting in an antique   wicker chair in the back room of our small but cozy apartment in the old family homestead. I was nursing her and wondering how I could love someone so much, someone that I didn’t even know. The feeling was powerful, overwhelming even.  It wasn’t based in knowing her at all. I didn’t know anything about her, what she would be like, what her personality would be like etc. I didn’t know anything.  As I sat there nourishing this little life from my own body, pondering the intense welling up of LOVE I felt for her, I heard a voice. It was an audible voice not just an impression in my heart. I have on many occasions experienced an impression of God’s voice, the intention of His will.  It wasn’t that.  He actually spoke to me audibly in my ears of all things!  It’s not something we expect, yet if God is indeed incarnate, why not?  He does as He wills.  These are the exact words I heard that day as I pondered the deep emotion I felt, “This is how I love you Louise”.  His voice was gentle calm and manly.   It was natural, so natural that I didn’t take note of it for several days afterwards. That probably seems really strange, but if you consider that what we deem beyond the normal is really only perspective once again.   From God’s viewpoint our supernatural is His natural!  

    So,  it was perhaps three days later, when I became consciously aware that I had heard the voice of, I believe, Jesus.    I’ve never forgotten that grace and do on occasion purposely recall His words to me when I find myself struggling even to hold on to my faith in Him let alone my belief.

 

     Jesus once said, “If your eye is full of light, then your whole body will be full of light.”  What began in me as a feeble stream of light emanating from that proverbial light bulb barely able to disperse the darkness of my heart, has gradually matured into a greater light, filling a room, and someday will probably reflect more of the outside summer sunshine. Day by day, that is.     

  Day by Day

 

 

A Little God Story Involving a Cat

 

    After five long years of attending St Pius Grammar School, Lynn, MA I finally exhaled.  I don’t know how I managed to live so long without breathing.  The day I resumed oxygenating my body and adding my spent breath (co2) to the world’s future global climate change crisis was the day I first encountered Mr. Tom DiLorenzo, 6^th grade teacher, room opposite Miss Pallidino, who was my own homeroom teacher. She was rather an aloof woman with very big blond teased hair kept in the style of many children’s drawings at the time, large on top and then swooping out below the ears like two waves rushing skullward from the sea .  There were all of two sixth grade classes in my particular Catholic grammar school, perhaps a total of 50 sixth graders and we would exchange classes for the various subjects. I don’t recall what Mr. D. taught me academically but I do recall his kind smile and gentle ways.  Somehow or other I knew that my fearful little heart and ego was safe when in his presence.  Up until that day I was firmly gripped by an unspoken, unknown fear of the authority figures that surrounded me at St. Pius, personified by the somewhat menacing black robed nuns and priests.  In those days many nuns wore the full habit and only their faces were visible, not even a wisp of hair on their fore heads in sight.  The priests seemed to me to be of a different species entirely and my intimidation up until meeting Mr. D had been complete.

 

     Mr. DiLorenzo, today is Father Tom DiLorenzo.  He was my first experience of love, outside of the family structure, love given in the form of simple kindness and compassion.  He didn’t yell.   He taught us songs.    C O F F E E   coffee is not for me, it’s a drink some people wake up with, and that it makes them nervous is no myth!   So thanks to their coffee cup they can’t give coffee up!   I wish I could hum the melody for you as it does stick.  Of course there also was the obligatory Kumbayah my Lord and Bridge Over Troubled Waters.  The seventies you know. 

 

     You’re probably wondering when the cat enters the cast of characters in this tale.  I’ll just skip my angst ridden teen years and my dramatic conversion or rather reversion to my childhood faith returning  that is after my many wanderings in the valley of the shadow.

 

Leaping into late summer 1986, I was a young mother of our first child, a daughter of about two years old.  Our little family lived in a quaint old-fashioned town in mid MA. Called Medway. We were never quite sure where it was medway to.    Perhaps medway between Boston and Worcester, or maybe Boston and Providence?  In any case the area was idyllic small town America and hope and youth were restless in my heart. 

 

      That morning I was driving along the main route through town, route 109 to be exact, when I saw a cat by the side of the highly trafficked road staring anxiously across the sea of cars.  As the poor thing looked nervous and confused, I offered a prayer for its protection.  I still pray for all little creatures that look lost and confused having been one myself on too many occasions.  Anyway, the cat abruptly made its decision and dodged headlong into the morning traffic. Somehow it safely reached its destination amidst only a few swerving vehicles. I am always curious as to why small animals wish to go to the other side with so much determination and courage, to the other side of where?  Do they even have a clue?

 

    As it was my habit then and now, to listen to talk radio, I switched on the local Christian radio station.  In Season and Out of Season was the show that I listened to that day.  I believe it is still on air today, over twenty years later.  It was Father Tom Dilorenzo’s show, 15 minutes of faith and passion offered over the airways to the listening ear and yearning heart.  I say passion because I still remember His words spoken to me that day, as if he were actually present to me, even though it was almost 22 years ago.   After his stirring talk, Father Tom continued his efforts to persuade the listener,  “You have the Life of God within You!”    TODAY you must ask God to bring someone to you that you can pour that life into!!!!     Well, driving along busy route 109, baby strapped safely into the car seat behind me, I complied.  I eagerly, ardently, fervently, and with my eyes hopefully still open, obeyed Father’s command and pleaded those very words aloud,  “God bring me today someone that I can pour your life into!”  Then, unexpectedly the sound of the In Season and Out of Season ending melody intruded on my fervent appeal to the Almighty, and then Father Tom’s daily exhortation abruptly ceased and then another voice suddenly replaced Father Tom’s with another, I’m certain, very valuable message.   Never the less, still, gripping my steering wheel, a bit tighter than was probably was necessary, I repeated my appeal.

 

 

 

    Several hours later, dinner was in the oven cooking and I was waiting for my husband to return home from the studio.  “Come on Sarah we’ll take a little walk before dinner”.  Feeling the need to get outside and breathe in the fresh air I took her little hand and we walked together down to the end of the road.  It was a rather lonely time in my life.  We lived in a great neighborhood yet we didn’t fit in.   John was a fine artist, and sculptor but we struggled to pay for the simple basics of life.  There were no vacations, no dinners out, and more importantly in middle class suburbia, no money for home improvement!  Only the oldest of old cars graced the Winant dirt driveway.   We lived gratis, in an old family house that was in great need of updating and repair and I am quite sure, that it was considered the neighborhood eyesore. Property values were on the rise after all!!!

     

     It was a dead ended cul-de-sac, a perfect neighborhood for young children but although there were some younger families, for the most part, it was the older generation that befriended us.  They remembered Nanny and Bessie and Earl and Harold and for their sake the older folks were always kind to us. I also had the added grace of working for the town’s elderly drop in center and many of the old timers remembered and were friends with the Winants. The connections to the past and the town’s history helped me to feel a sense of belonging even though I had no close friends near my own age.

         That particular evening, I was just glad to have gotten out of the house and was feeling a simple joy in holding my daughters hand as we strolled.  We were headed back home, when a small red Renault rolled down the street in a seemingly deliberate crawl.  As the driver pulled up beside us she leaned her head out the window and questioned me, accompanied by a worrisome frown, slim smile and a heavy French accent.  “Did you see

My cat?”  She was a dark haired petite woman probably in her forties. “Did you lose your cat? What does it look like?” I asked  “Well”, she replied, “He is white with golden brown patches.  I cannot find Him.  I have been looking all over.”  As she continued her description I had a sudden visual memory of her cat!  She was describing what seemed to be the very cat that I had prayed for earlier that morning, the same cat that I had prayed for earlier in the day.  “ I did see your cat I exclaimed!   I prayed for your cat.” “ She responded,  “You saw my cat? You prayed for my cat? Where did you see my cat?”  To be quite honest up until that moment I had completely forgotten the incident and even forgotten my fervent prayer to the Almighty to bring someone my way that day to  “pour His life into”, as Father D had demanded I do.  You dear readers, no doubt, see the obvious alignment, yet at the time I still didn’t.  I thought hard, but simply could not exactly place where I had actually seen the cat.  I thought perhaps a mile or two down route 109. 

 

 

      My natural Inclination no matter what the problem appears to be is to ask God for help.  I can only chalk it up to the fact that I recognize what a weak and foolish creature I am and how much I need help most of the time and about most things.  So I immediately asked her if she prays.  She told me that she asks St. Anthony to find things for her. Quite an aside, I often ask his help these days and am amazed at his stirring ability to find my many and sundry lost items… As my Saintly Aunt Mary says to me, He is a wonderful man”.   I said to my little French friend,  “I liked to Pray to Jesus.” And she questioned, in all sincerity with her heavy French accent, “Do you think He is more powerful?”  “Oh yes,” I said He is God.”  Then I asked her if she would like me to pray with her for the return of her cat.   So there we were, she, still sitting in her little red Renault, me standing, holding her hand joining our intentions in request to the God above all, to please return her cat.   It wasn’t until later that day after dinner that I realized the prayer I had prayed because of Father DiLorenzo had been answered in a most delightful way.  What was even more striking was the fact that I had seen and prayed for her cat  even before I had made my own request to God.

 

 

A small addendum. About a month later I was attempting to expand our social acceptance in the cul-de-sac  suburban neighborhood and asked one of the younger families to stop in for coffee and dessert after dinner one night.   As we, sat and exchanged trivialities my neighbor suddenly broke the continuity of the conversation with a question,    “Louise do you remember praying with a woman that her cat would return”?  Well she works with me at the hospital and she just wanted me to tell you that it did.”

 

 

Small animal stories to be continued . . . .   

 

Making A Visit

 

  Tuesday, I stopped into the neighboring Catholic Church in the town next to where I live.  When I told my husband this story he insisted that I write it down and share it with others.  He’s been urging me for years to start a blog of, as I call them, mini miracles or M&M’s.  A dear friend of mine once coined the phrase.  I’ve found that once you breech the subject of mini miracles, it is surprising how very many of them are happening in so many lives.  So here goes...

 

    I often stop in St. Brigid’s Church to  “Make a Visit” as it’s called, in Catholic old time circles. Usually I first detour to the ladies room for a handful of tissues, as I rarely make it through a visit without losing a lot of fluid, at least lately, that is. There was a time five or so years back when I would visit the tabernacle just to be close to the Lord, to pray and secretly sing songs to Him.  I say secretly, because I would never have presumed to sing singularly and publicly with a voice as off key and weak as my own.  I figure since He made my voice, He’ll just have to put up with hearing it.  The last several years my visits to Jesus are more out of need than joy or longing.  

 

   So, on Tuesday I made direct route to the bathroom for a generous supply of tissues, which I clasped firmly in hand and then headed for the pew as close to the tabernacle as I could get.  Upon entering the sanctuary, I heard the loud echoing sound of the industrial vacuum strapped firmly on the Back of Owen.  Owen is the all round maintenance man at St. Brigids but I remember him very well from earlier days, when he performed a similar service for the other Catholic Church in town known as Our Lady of the Assumption, the French connection, St Brigids being strictly the Irish parish at that time in the mill town's immigrant past.  I used to faithfully exercise over there with a group of other mothers whose children also attended Assumption grammar school and I recognized him immediately. He is an older man, perhaps in his seventies and has a still heavily Scottish brogue of sorts.  He used to teach self-defense and if I’m not mistaken has a black belt in Karate. He is a rather large man who still emanates a manly and youthful strength despite his years, and as I waved,  I caught his eye.

 

  In consideration of Owen’s presence,  I steeled myself to a greater self-control over any copious overflow of emotion a “ visit” to the tabernacle usually elicits from me.  I set out to pray my usual pleadings and lamentings before God but the roar of the vacuum was building as Owen made his way slowly and surely closer to the altar area.  I was having real trouble concentrating.  Lately, St. Brigids is not the place to visit if you are seeking solitude with God.  There is always somebody else around, construction workers, Owen or the Devout Ladies dusting the sanctuary. 

     The reason I still go there is a combination of convenience and beauty.  Since the new pastor took over the shepherding of the St Brigids flock two years ago many changes have come to the parish workings, I’m sure not all are either appreciated or desired.  This seems always to be the case when a new pastor is assigned.  The most obvious change is to physical structure itself. The bell tower is gone, to the removal cost of what must have seemed an exorbitant sum of money, no doubt dwarfed by the estimated cost of a bell tower repair.   The change inside the sanctuary, however,  is what draws me on occasion to St. Brigids, rather than to my own parish church.  Since Father L’s receiving the pastorate, the inner church has been transformed into a place of real beauty that would indeed encourage prayer if only there was a little more quiet available, which,  I have almost no doubt, there will be,   soon,  as the construction is nearly complete!    

     

      Anyway, I finally gave up my attempt, at least for the moment, to convince God of the justice and need of my wishes, desires, prayers etc… and as Owen approached me with his vacuum now a loud echoing roar, I smiled a small greeting.  He responded by shutting off the vacuum and returned to me the semblance of a smile and said  “How do you like it?”  His Scottish accent added a certain mystery to the question.  “It is beautiful” I replied, “I love it”.  He seemed gratified and moved a bit closer to me, standing, vacuum strapped on his back, looking for all the world as if it were an oxygen tank supplying needed breath.  Then he said something completely outside the realm of my expectations.  Something about something he did when his daughter was killed, and then he commented on the paint colors that Father and he had chosen for the new sanctuary design.  My mind and attention was still on the beauty of the their combine efforts when I seemed to recall, as if it were a past fact of my own history that he had said the words, “When my daughter was killed.” I wasn’t quite sure in fact; if indeed he had said that.  I frowned inside and probably outwardly as well, feeling perplexed and confused. I don’t know where his conversation went from there as my mind was suddenly in disarray.   A moment later I interrupted him and asked plainly, “Did you say your daughter was killed”?  “Yes” he said, “Three years ago. She was 46”.  My mind raced from his words to the fact that on my Birthday, this Sunday I will be 49 and that means I was also 46 when Hugh’s daughter died. We were the same age. The sudden and odd exit from my somewhat complaining, meditative prayer time to my inherent and sometimes driven need to understand, coupled with a certain lack of tact prompted me to ask him directly what had happened; how she had died?  

 

 

     Owen, must just have needed to speak of his daughter’s death that day, or perhaps my presence and the similarity of our ages had prompted the disjuncted statement about his daughter’s death.  She was killed, murdered during the same news cycle,  as when Katrina hit the U.S. coastline, which somewhat explains my lack of memory on this particular rampage.  The story is one of those tragedies that anyone paying attention at the time, would have to remember,  like Waco or Colombine.  A madman had entered a Texas church and opened fire on the local pastor killing both him and the deacon who was also present.  The killer then left in a rage and began a tour of the town shooting wherever and at whomever he wished.   Hugh’s daughter, an accomplished horsewoman, her trailer full of horses, was enroute with a friend that day, to some horse event or other, when  a man drove past her vehicle shooting wildly at them.   After he had passed,  she got out to check on the safety of her horses.  He must have seen her in his rear view mirror and  spinning around and headed towards her.   He shot her in the back, killing her, and then proceeded to shoot her girlfriend several times finally shooting her in the forehead and leaving her dead in a ditch.  As I write this, a vague distant memory returns to me of seeing this story on the news that fateful day three years ago.

Owen finished his story,  telling me that the killer, holed up in his home with the police surrounding him, ended the ordeal by shooting himself. “It’s a good thing he did. Or I would have killed him and then I’d be in prison today. I couldn’t have let it go”.   I don’t know what I said in response to his words, perhaps because I didn’t say anything.  When we see these tragedies displayed almost as commonplace crimes on the nightly news, they simply do not have the same impact as when speaking to an actual victim of such a grave, evil and seemingly senseless crime.

 

     I asked Owen what his daughter’s name was and told him that I would pray for her.  He thanked me and responded, “That’s what they want me to do. Pray.”  Again I was without words.  He began reminiscing, and asked me if I used to exercise at Assumption Church having recognized me from there.  I was actually surprised that he remembered who I was.  I always remember a face,  but am surprised when someone actually remembers mine. He told me that when his daughter died he had decided to retire from Assumption, but within a very short time span, the diocese of Worcester had contacted him requesting that he work for the new priest at St. Brigids.  He replied with a certain characteristic aggressiveness, “If I like him I’ll work for him if I don’t, I won’t.”

 

   And so the Non-praying Scottish black belt, ex-retired maintenance, construction, worker turned interior design and lighting consultant and all around get it done man at St Brigid’s, has been working almost nonstop since his daughter’s death.  He has been implementing Father L’s vision for meditative worship, turning what was an average church experience into a place of richness and harmony.    Beautifying the place of worship and sacrifice where God incarnate visits His people, a place where I go to visit with Him and sometimes with those He brings my way, a place to unburden my soul, pleading my hopes and desires for my loved ones and for their needs.   When Father L. invited his non-praying all around handyman to Christmas Mass, Owen questioned Father, “Do you know anybody else who has spent more time on his knees in church than me”?  Why should I go to Mass?   After all, Owen assured me that he and his son had raised the altar themselves, rebuilt the flooring and personally tiled the sanctuary, and all that during the sweltering heat of last summer. “ I’ve spent more time than any other man I know on my knees in this church”.    Never the less, this past Christmas found Owenn present and accounted for, front row, in full Scottish Regalia, Kilt and all while his wife and daughter sang in the choir.  I see God’s hand and love at work in Owen’s life and although I cannot account it a supernatural work of God It strikes me more as a miracle of the natural where God in his mercy does as Jesus said. “Your Father in Heaven knows what you need”   P.S.   Thanks be to God ,  Owen isn't in prison : )