VIEW FROM THE PEW
I’m sure most families have insider buzz words or phrases that are shorthand for some wisdom from the elders or reminders of a shared trait or an inside joke. One of ours is to say “pat, pat, pat” when someone is enduring pains or worries. To an outsider it may sound like blowing you off. But it’s like a hug for me and my sister because it calls up memories of Mom whose cool hand on our forehead would quiet an emotional storm and dry our tears. It works when someone just speaks the words even if they’re not in actual patting reach. We’ve passed it down to the youngers but I’m not sure they remember the back story.
If you were even deeper into distress or illness or sadness, the comforting came with an old refrain our Grandpa Murphy brought from Ireland: “Poor snipey, all wet and droopy, coming through the bog.” It refers to the snipe, a long-billed bird that chooses to live in wetlands and bogs, kind of a thoroughly Irish trait of embracing hard times as your fate in life. My ancestor didn’t invent the mantra, it’s to be found in Celtic poetry and song. It always offends me a bit that the bird’s name has become a word with dark modern translations of a sniper as a hidden killer, and sniping as nasty gossipy verbal attacks.
In these times we’re living in, I try to pass on the “pat, pat, pat” when I can: a friend mourning for a brother who died of the virus, families enduring changes in jobs, income, school days, social links, health issues that make life a wobbly spin in orbit. I tell the workers I encounter in stores, restaurants, clinics that I appreciate their stress and courage on the front lines. If I said “pat, pat, pat” what would they think, nevermind the bird in the bog!
Sometimes the sympathetic voice about slogging through the mucky bog is my own, in my own head, finding comfort when I’m weary of bad news and constant fears and missing people who are too busy with their own coping to check in on mine. And, mental health check, I do have the sense of humor to laugh at myself for being such a poor t’ing and step out of the bog, for heaven’s sake.
May the Lord protect
There’s another thing that I’m playing in my head these days; it has been a personal ritual for years. Back in the day as a news reporter, I’d hit the freeway after covering a night event, sometimes exciting like a crime scene but more likely a tedious neighborhood board meeting, needing to return and write a story on deadline. Yes, girls and boys, those were the days before laptop computers, dashing back to the newsroom to write.
At the freeway onramp, I’d sing, “May the Lord protect and defend me, may He keep me safe from harm,” a slightly revised snatch of the Sabbath song from the musical “Fiddler on the Roof”: “May the Lord protect and defend you, may the Lord shield you from shame … May the Lord defend you from pain. May you be deserving of praise. Strengthen them, Oh Lord, and keep them from the strangers’ ways.” It was my prayer for my own safety and I kind of lost track of it for a few years. Some memory replay button was pushed this year and I find myself back in those lyrics as I leave my quarantine cave to face other people. Mostly, though, I have my family in mind in this ad-lib prayer of mine. Careful as they may be, they’re out in potential danger at work, school, wherever. I worry, and I pray.
Usually, my habit of reading the daily Mass liturgy leads me to Scriptures that give me courage, comfort, consolation. It’s been my best kind of praying experience. And a reality check, reminding that there’s much more depth to our life than this fraught moment in time. But ‘tis not the season to be jolly. The end of the church liturgical year brings us readings from the Book of Revelation. Much as some scholars delight in unveiling the meaning of numbers and symbols and relish the poetry or allegorical imagery, it’s not for me. I like to read a good complicated mystery, but this is too Dan Brownish, hidden secrets and evil-lurking conspiracies. I don’t like Armageddon stories or horror writers with occult obsessions or grim dystopian novels and TV series about life after civilization was destroyed or unraveled, either.
Gospel of the day
That’s why I totally abstain from social media sites. A footnote memory from a college theology class is the priest-professor saying that if people try to learn about Christ and his teaching by taking a shortcut to the last book of the Bible, we’ve probably lost them for good. By the way, I do get it that the point of that distracting book is that Jesus will come again in glory and the end of the world will gather in his believers.
Anyway, I usually go to the Gospel of the day, but this last month of the church liturgical year is a rough slog through the bog. Just Tuesday this week, we hear Jesus telling his disciples about the future destruction of the Temple “when there will not be left a stone upon another stone.” Then he said “nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines and plagues from place to place and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.” In the Nov. 20 Gospel reading, Jesus was predicting that “The days are coming upon you when your enemies … will smash you to the ground and your children within you … because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”
We’ve heard the disheartening Sunday Gospel readings about the foolish maidens who let their lamp oil burn up so they missed their duty to light the way for a wedding procession and got locked out of the party. And a couple of readings about a master who trusted the servants with money — “talents” — and then punished the one who didn’t make more money with wise investments but held it close rather than lose it. Those were parables that may have made a powerful impact on his first-century listeners and portray the urgent message to be prepared for God’s call. But I’m hearing it filtered through my own flawed, procrastinating nature, in sympathy with the losers. I’d project myself into the story as someone who’d whine and try to bargain myself out of trouble.
The liturgy calendar set years ago for Nov. 26 has a passage from Luke’s Gospel that is difficult to read for people living through turbulent times and certainly not Hallmark sentiments for Thanksgiving Day. “Know that desolation is at hand,” Jesus tells his disciples. “A terrible calamity will come upon the earth and a wrathful judgment upon this people … nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the ocean and the waves.” Parishes do have the option to choose a thanksgiving alternative.
That Gospel reading ends with the punch line for this whole end-of-the-church-year ordeal: “And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”
Contemplating daily lessons
Our liturgical calendar runs in three-year cycles, structured to give us pieces of all the books of the Bible, an introduction to opening the book to look for the whole thing. Some other branches of Christianity have similar lesson plans. And in some churches it’s a preacher’s choice, and woe to congregations whose pastors are fixated on hell and sin, or on Revelation, to the exclusion of forgiveness and the Sermon on the Mount.
I walk my path through the liturgy with a guide; the best gift I’ve ever had. So the “Word Among Us” daily meditations keep reminding me that these end times tales aren’t meant to be horror stories to scare us to death. The monthly Catholic devotional magazine goes beyond the missalette we get at church. It includes a few articles by contributing writers — the theme of this month was forgiveness— but its main function is contemplation of the daily lessons we’re hearing or reading.
So, here’s the comforting insight by an anonymous writer about the Thanksgiving day text. The real theme of the month’s readings is that “Jesus will come again. Our faith tells us that this is good news, but these readings can still scare us … God doesn’t want us to live in fear. He wants us to remember that he is not only just but merciful as well. As long as we stay close to the Lord, we have no reason to be afraid … In spite of the darkness around us, we can place our hope in him and look forward to the reign of God when all things will be put right.”
Thank goodness, next week we will segue into Advent, a time of looking forward to the wondrous event of Jesus’ birth, the new beginning.
I’m guessing I’m not alone in having an attitude about this year’s holidays, but I’m fighting my way out of it. Christmas IS, whether we’re warned not to observe it in the usual way … no shopping in crowds, no big parties and toasting in restaurants and pubs, no bringing the whole clan to the same table, no hugs. How many other ages in history have people suffered from a shadow cast over the happy, holy celebration. Wars, plagues, famines, conquerors, despots and divisions. Christmas still IS.
So I’ve gone from “nevermind a Christmas tree because who’d even see it” to a resounding yes to a tree, yes to digging out the decorations, yes to Christmas gift shopping, yes to baking goodies for masked delivery, maybe even yes to some housecleaning. How’s that for a “pat, pat, pat” selfie?!
While I have made a heavy plowing job of pondering the lessons of the month, I kept hearing a cheery little voice in my ear offering another bit of the family collection of bywords that brought us poor snipey. It comes from a grand-niece whose Catholic school kindergarten class’ role in the school Christmas pageant was a simple one-liner. It was chanted with great passion and that’s how to deliver it to this day:
“Be awake! Be ready! The Lord is coming soon.”
