Heather King's Blog, page 29

SUMMON THE WHEAT

“The mountain is a white whale and the lanes are lined with ice. The trees have stars in their branches and all the fields sparkle. The night seems to listen to the owls’ carols as the dogs growl in their sleep. The spirits are abroad. It is Christmas. Christmas! Was there ever such a magical word to a child? A word with a world in it, a word containing a silver moon and the crackle of burning twigs, flying things and kings led by stars, berries and gold and pheasant feathers. A word with the darkness of fir forests in it.”

–Horatio Clare, The Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal

I discovered a YouTube site called Sing the Hours that offeres Morning and Evening (Vespers) Prayer from the Divine Office. The guy sings, the text of hymns, psalms and prayers is displayed, and some of the prayers are in Latin. Simple, moving, easy to follow along–this has been especially nice during Advent.

I had cataract surgery on my left eye Monday and before my early-morning post-op checkup on Tuesday, was thrilled to discover that December 13 is the feast day of St. Lucy. The whole thing went very smoothly, and the operative fact here is that I ASKED FOR HELP. I had a friend drive me both to the surgery and (another friend) for the checkup. This is huge as I would just as soon have walked the 5 miles or called an uber and gone by myself. “Contrary action,” as we say in recovery circles.

It’s good to give–but why is it so fiendishly difficult for some of us to receive: to impose, to “bother,” to make a pest of ourselves (or so we tell ourselves?)

Meanwhile I’m deep into the Ignatian Exercises. This morning the reading was Ezekiel 26:35-39:

I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and to carefully observe My ordinances.

28 Then you will live in the land that I gave your forefathers; you will be My people, and I will be your God. 29 I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will summon the grain and make it plentiful, and I will not bring famine upon you. 30 I will also make the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field plentiful, so that you will no longer bear reproach among the nations on account of famine.

Having returned from my two-week road trip to California to a whirlwind of backed-up work, Advent, an Irish passport application, eye surgery, etc., I finally have a bit of room really to process. It was a big trip. My heart was so full, just about every second, for the people, the landscape, the whole sweep of the time I lived there–and the trip was also incredibly arduous, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Now that I’m back, I’m truly accepting that Arizona is not California–and why should it be? I consciously, deliberately moved to the desert. And “What did you come to the desert to see?” Christ asked the disciples of John. “A reed shaken by the wind? A man dressed in fine clothes?” (Matthew 11:7-8).

I’m not sure what I came to the desert to see, but I know it has something to do with my heart turning from stone to flesh. Let me be 1000% present HERE, every moment, is my thought. What can I learn? What can I receive–and what can I OFFER?

“From all your idols I will cleanse you”…Sometimes our idols are the people, places, things, ideas with which we surround ourselves. Who would I be, for example, without the culture of a great city, or friends who “get” me, or my affiliation with a particular political party, or the tribe of my family, colleagues, long-time neighbors or even fellow parishioners who know, trust and appreciate me?

All those things are or can be wonderful and we can be doing important work, and yet my deepest identity can’t rest in any of those things. My deepest identity is in Christ, as all who love him and have died in prisons, memory care facilities, battlefields, and torture chambers know; as all who love him and have lived far from home or in convents, monasteries, leper colonies (Fr. Damien), know; and really as every human being who thinks long and hard enough about it knows.

And to consciously, deliberately live that out–to take up that particular cross (which is definitely not for everyone, just as for example raising a family was not my particular cross to take up)–is…something. It’s one way of working toward the Kingdom. It’s one way of being in solidarity with all the millions and millions of people in the world who don’t have a choice in those matters.

Arizona doesn’t observe Daylight Savings but like everywhere else in the world, it gets light late and dark early this time of year. I’ve been waking around 3:30 or 4, do my morning Ignatian hour, then the Office, then open that day’s doors on my two Advent calendars, and the day is launched.

Tuesday through Friday, as often as I can, I set out for the U of A Newman Center mid-afternoon, take a long walk, and arrive in time for 5 pm Evening Prayer and Mass. I’ve come to love this humble chapel, always with 5 or 10 or 20 students in attendance. Yesterday I noticed I could see Jesus on the Cross in back of the altar WAY MORE CLEARLY with my new eye! (“What do you want from me?” Jesus asked the blind man. “Lord, restore my sight”…)

Stand by for news of the workshop I will offer, on succeeding weekends, on the Vocation of the Artist at Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland, September, 2023! That’s right. I will be presiding from what appears to be an enchanted castle.

Like I said–Christmas.

KYLEMORE LOUGH (LAKE)

RICHARD DIEBENKORN’S OCEAN PARK SERIES

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1933), American artist, has been credited with restoring a sense of the sublime to late modernism.

He is also widely known as a “California” artist: a native of the West Coast who lived most of his life here, diving his time as an adult between the LA and Bay areas.

Diebenkorn started out in the mid-40s as an abstract painter, firmly of his generation, and recognized early on as an artist of stature and integrity. In 1955, he suddenly segued, inexplicably to the critics and art world, into representational painting.

Until 1967, he did still-lifes, portraits and landscapes. His work was both bold and sensitive.  He did interesting things with perspective and planes. He liked windows. He seemed never to paint strictly what he saw, but rather what was going on in his head.

And then, in a move that could have been career suicide, he switched back to abstract painting—or switched to something new.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

THE FOLKS I DIG

Wow.

I am back in Tucson, after a two-week triathalon of a road trip to the great city of Los Angeles and then up the Central Coast of California to Big Sur, Monterey, back down through Santa Maria, a night in Palm Springs, the last long leg of an action-packed journey, and at last–my own coffeemaker, birdfeeders and bed.

Where to begin? The drive into LA the Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving with NO TRAFFIC? Cruising into downtown around 9:30 was like the parting of the Red Sea–Welcome back, sang the 101 as I exited at Alameda, zoomed over to my favorite parking lot on Judge John Aiso Street, gathered some of the insane bits and bobs of gear, snacks and drinks I carry when on the road, and walked, no soared, up Temple and cut over toward the Starbucks in Grand Park. En route every person nodded, smiled, or said hi! The very trees whispered, Where have you been?

I paused to salute City Hall where my friend Ellen works or used to pre-COVID and that I now forever associate with this altogther splendid human being.

The Superior Courthouse bike messengers were milling about, giving each other the high sign and looking vaguely like drug dealers. A couple of tents were set up–literally against the wall of the courthouse (that was new). As always, the unhoused, Eurotrash, hipsters, nannies, tourists, lashionistas, and people just out…walking, looking around, sniffing the air–seamlessly mingled.

And when I walked into Starbucks, I swear–as if I’d never left California, or had never come in the first place–The Beach Boys were singing “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

Also if on cue, the weather, in late November was perfect. Cofffe in hand, I settled in on “my” bench, turned my face to the sun, and basked. Up on Grand, a sharp-looking female lawyer stilettoed along, phone to ear. An old Asian guy rode slowly alongn his bike, plastic bag dangling from the handlebars. A tall and gloriously trashy silver tinsel tree stood sentinel before the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I can’t remember the last time I felt so thoroughly, deliriously happy.

I know I’ve already (briefly) written about this little interlude but it was as if, for a couple of hours, I was given the grace to see the world through God’s eyes. I wasn’t hallucinating but it was kind of like when I used to drop acid back in high school–an altered state except not dark, not delusional. If only I could see through those eyes and feel that way all the time!

Grand Park is itself a kind of garden, and as soon as I finished my coffee, I made a beeline for another garden: the one at the top of Disney Hall. You can reach it by outside but unmarked stairwells to the west, north and east of the building (that I know of). It’s three or four stories up with a nice view to the west over downtown and just about any photo you take up there comes out great.

WHO SAYS LA DOESN’T HAVE SEASONS?FRANK GEHRY ISN’T ALL BAD

Then I walked around the Dorothy Chandler and the Ahmanson Theater, also dotted with some nice plantings, and then I made my way over to Our Lady of the Angels, the LA Cathedral, for noon Mass.

Utterly, utterly familiar; utterly dear. Utterly home.

From there I walked to the Geffen Contemporary, then drove to the Autry Museum in Griffith Park for an exhibit called “Dress Codes” (column ahead) with my dear friend Julia, and then back to Julia and her husband Aaron’s manse in the Hollywood Hills. This, too, was utterly familiar. I’ve attended countless Thanksgivings, gatherings of other kinds, teas, and dinners here. I’ve house-sat. I held my own birthday party here one year–60 maybe?

Over the course of the next week we had many adventures, tons of unbelievably delicious food (Julia’s an incredible cook and Aaron is no slouch either), hours of hilarious conversation, and deep discussions over the state of the world. Julia and Aaron have a garden front and back, and during the week I also visited my landscape designer friend Judy in Beachwood Canyon (STUNNING garden); my friends Donald and Alan, who also have a fantastically unique garden that includes a grape arbor, fig and lemon trees, a couple of raised vegtable beds, tons of succulents, roses, and chickens; and my friend Erik who not only has his own California native plant garden but WORKS at Theodore Payne Nursery.

I spent my last night in LA at my friend Lori’s also lavishly-appointed and recently-renovated house up in Altadena near the San Gabriel foothills. (Landscaping already charming and in progress, including an arbor of white crepe myrtles).

Everyone was so thoughtful and so kind. I couldn’t really take it in and the whole time was inwardly kind of wailing, Wait. Wait! I am the type who takes three hours to “process” one hour of actual happening/reality. So it was a lot. Also I was obviously way out of “my routine” which now that I’m home I realize in a whole new way actually involves a lot of “work” or what is work to me. Keeping up with people, responding to communications of various kinds, reading, taking notes, bookmarking. copying down quotes, making lists and files, pondering. Not to mention actual writing.

Meanwhile I may have mentioned I’m doing a 9-month Ignatian Exercises which requires at least an hour of prayer and writing each morning (that’s not even counting the Office, that day’s liturgy etc.) So my internal alarm clock woke me at 4 or even earlier each morning.

Anyway Lori sent me off with a huge ham and cheese sub from the Italian place off Lake in Pasadena, and a bar of dark chocolate, and a bunch of snacks, and off I went north up the 101 past Santa Barbar and San Luis Obispo to Pismo Beach, Route 1 and Big Sur! A five or six-hour drive, after which I washed up on the shores of New Camaldoli, a Cistercian hermitage that sits up a two-mile drive at the top of a bluff. The rooms overlook the Pacific and SILENCE IS KEPT, which was extra nice as by this time, having done more talking in a week than I usually do in about two months, I was thoroughly sick of the sound of my own voice.

VIEW FROM MY WINDOW, NEW CAMALDOLION THE WALK DOWN THE DRIVE, BIG SUR

There was no wifi and no cell reception up there, which I didn’t really mind except it would have been nice to know the weather. There is no other way to get from the monastery to my next stop, Monterey, except Route 1 which is one lane each way, hugs the coast, is extremely windy in places, goes on for 50 miles or so, and most troubling, is prone to rock slides from the towering bluffs above, many of which have gigantic boulders sort of hanging off, a situation that was exacerbated by the fact that almost the minute I left, the skies opened and began deluging rain. Every quarter mile was a big orange sign with a picture on it in black of giant rocks splattering down on some haples motorist. I gripped the wheel of my tiny Fiat, prayed the Luminous Mysteries, and all was well!

Monterey is another old haunt. Here I stayed, as I have many times before, at the San Carlos Mission Cathedral rectory. The highlight here was attending a private evening Mass at the Carmelite Monastery down the coast a bit with my friend Fr. Pat, then 8 am Mass there again the next morning. The convent is all wrought iron gates, rose-covered white stucco walls, a charming sanctuary with Colonial art, again, a beautiful garden, and the ocean (or I guess it’s a bay) literally acrross the street.

CARMELITE MONASTERY, CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, CHURCH COURTYARDSAN CARLOS CATHEDRAL, MONTEREY

I had a nice walk around downtown Monterey and along the coast a bit to look at the seals (I forgot to say that wherever I was, I also took a long walk each day), and then I headed down, in heavy rain, to Santa Maria. Here, I visited with my beloved comadre, Tensie. Her husband Dennis was on retreat, her charming and beautiful daughter Rozella cooked scrumptious meals and the next day, Tens and I had a long walk along Pismo Beach in the Central California coast mist. I picked up sand dollars while Tensie explained how to tell a curlew (beak turns down) from a godwit (beak turns up).

DENNIS, TENSIE AND I. FROM ANOTHER VISIT, OBVIOUSLY, BUT AGAIN AT THE CENTRAL COAST SHORE!

That’s just a bare outline and I didn’t even get to the good Fr. Tom Hall in Palm Springs, and his crazy hospitality, nor to Msgr. Terry Richey who I was graced to visit at the Silverado Memory Care Assisted Living Home in LA’s Fairfax District. We said the Serenity Prayer together, or rather I said it, and I know absolutely that he followed along. And let’s not forget my side trip to Victorville, CA, where I got to see my beloved brother Roscoe, his wife Edilia, his son and my nephew Allen, and Edilia’s daughter Laura and husband Rob! SO MUCH FUN. I nabbed a succulent cutting from Ross’s garden, ferried it around for a week, and potted when I returned home.

Tensie sent me off with a little bag that held a persimmon from the tree in their back yard, a California avocado, a mason jar of the MOST delicious rhubarb-raspberry preserves, a bar of home-made lavendar soap and a hunk of cheese from the Redwoods Monastery with which she’s long been connected (and where Dennis was making his retreat, and collecting a Christmas tree with which he was about to drive 10 hours south). And a lovely conical, brown-and-white striped sea shell.

This all puts me in mind of one of my favorite essays of all time: E.B. White’s “What Do Our Hearts Treasure?”

Here’s what I treasured: Every cup of coffee, vase of flowers by my bed, fresh towel. The early pink camellias. The sea breeze wafting the smell of wild fennel. The magic-hour California light–surely more magical than just about anywhere on earth. Every second. Mass. The faces of my friends.

Christmas, Christmas, everywhere.

THE UNION OF THE HOLY SACRIFICE

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Back in the mid-90s, a newly-minted Catholic convert, I often attended daily noon Mass at St. Basil’s in Koreatown. I found it thrilling—I still do—that the Mass on any given day was the same everywhere, subject neither to the whim of the priest, the sensibilities of the worshipers, or the free-spirit caprice of, say, a parish council.

Beforehand, an older lady led us in the Angelus, followed by the Morning Offering that begins: “Oh Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day, in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world.”

I’ve thought of that prayer a lot lately. On one end of the spectrum is the “Mass” I recently attended that featured a large likeness of the Buddha, “hymns” by Leonard Cohen, and the Gospel read by a woman. 

The Trinitarian God, maker of all things visible and invisible, already includes everybody and everything. To purport to be more inclusive than Christ by individualizing the Mass only de-sacramentalizes the Eucharist.

On the other end of the spectrum is the crowd who wants to return the Mass to pre-Vatican II times and finds a non-Latin Mass sub-par.  

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

HIRAETH

From a Penn State site called Word of the Week:

“Hiraeth is a Welsh word that is somewhat difficult to describe in English, for the reason that there is no single English word that expresses all that it does. Some words often used to try to explain it are homesickness, yearning, and longing.  

However, there is more depth to hiraeth than in any of those words on their own. It seems to be a rather multi-layered word, which includes a different variety of homesickness than what is generally referred to. This kind of homesickness is like a combination of the homesickness, longing, nostalgia, and yearning, for a home that you cannot return to, no longer exists, or maybe never was. It can also include grief or sadness for who or what you have lost, losses which make your “home” not the same as the one you remember.”

I’ve been back in California all week and in LA since Tuesday.

When I left a year and a half ago, I was SO DONE with this place! The traffic, the noise, the expense, the overload, on every level.

All week I’ve been in a kind of euphoria. Everything looks almost surreally beautiful. Every street, neighborhood, foodstuff, plant, color, smell, sound evokes a memory. While I was still living here, near the end, I’d think, Thirty years and it was ALL SUFFERING. All exile. All struggle, toil, heartache, loss.

Sitting by the Grand Park fountain Tuesday morning with a Starbucks, as I used to in the early 90s after arguing a motion at the downtown Superior Courthouse, I felt as if time…not exactly had stood still. But I felt way more fresh and hopeful and new than I did way back then!

And at Mass this morning at Our Lady of Good Counsel–First Sunday of Advent–tears filled my eyes as I gazed up at the Crucifix above the altar. Thirty years and every moment was halcyon. Thirty years in which I made a life, was formed in Christ and as a writer, pursued a vision, stayed the course, made the heroine’s journey. Thirty years during which every thought, action, and word registered.

At the end of the day, what’s left after all that loneliness and uncertainty and anxiety and suffering is love. I had no idea how incredibly much I love this crazy place.

Emily: But, just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama, just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s look at one another.

I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. All that was going on in life, and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill – to my grave.

But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners. Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking. And Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths. And sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?

Stage Manager: No. The saints and poets, maybe they do some.

–Thornton Wilder, Our Town

COURTYARD HAMMER MUSEUM, WESTWOODDUSK, THE OAKS, BRONSON CANYONSANTA MONICA BLVD., BEVERLY HILLSMY FRIEND JUDY’S GARDEN

THE ANXIETY OF THE JOYFUL MYSTERIES

Regular visitors here I’m sure haven’t heard quite enough about The Rodent Situation chez moi these past weeks. To that end, and in keeping with my compulsion to turn every single thing that happens to me into a story, here’s the way this week’s arts and culture piece begins:

Recently I committed to a nine-month Ignatian Exercises “Adventure.” This involves an hour, first thing in the morning, of prayer.

So far, so good, but it turns out a ground squirrel — which, not to put too fine a point on it, is a giant rodent — has dug an extensive warren and set up camp beneath the foundation of my rented house. I know tolerance levels vary in this area, but my level happens to be extremely, extremely low.

As I’m trying to pray around 5:30 a.m., in the cold, dark, and silence, the thing might suddenly start scratching about in the wall or under the floor, a deeply unnerving sound that floods my body with cortisol.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

CROWN HIM WITH MANY CROWNS

Blessed High High Feast/Solemnity of Christ, the King of the Universe.

I went to a vigil Mass last night (preceded by Confession and then what I’d hoped would be an hour of prayer but what was actually the guy two pews ahead looking at his phone for an hour (okay but why not stay in your car?) and another guy audibly intoning the Rosary (or something, thereby making peace or recollection of any kind impossible).

During Mass, there was absolutely zero visible  enthusiasm or life from either the priest or the parishioners on this momentous occasion: the last Sunday before Advent begins; a day when we are especially called to recognize and rejoice over our BELOVED SAVIOR WHO RULES O’ER HEAVEN AND EARTH!!!!

HORRIBLE hymns the tune of which no-one could follow (though no-one hardly would have sung anyway). Horrible responsorial antiphon. All I could think was–And I think no-one recognizes ME? Imagine Christ, on this, one of Very Special Days…the world, including his own followers (including of course me), passing him by…

Every time I look at Christ on the Cross lately, I think of my late friend Dennis, of whom I’ve written before. Dennis was shot in a convenience store holdup at the age of 18, rendered a paraplegic, and lived the next 55 or so years in a wheelchair. All that time, his spine was basically deteriorating, so he was in constant, chronic pain.

They never caught the guy who shot him. I once asked Dennis, “How do you feel about that? Are you resentful?”

He said, “Nah. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing, and I was doing what I was supposed ot be doing that day. I can’t afford resentment. My body’s shit, so I HAVE to keep my spirit in halfway decent shape.”

Or as someone else once said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Like Jesus nailed to the Cross, Dennis couldn’t get away from the many people who besieged him: wanted to seek his counsel, longed for a kind word, just wanted to touch his hand because he was a champion who ran his course and everyone who ever met him could see it, and bowed before it.

He couldn’t get away either from people who wanted to tell him long, boring stories, or talk trash about someone, or pour out their self-pity. At the 12-step meetings where I saw him, he had his special corner and it’s not like he couldn’t navigate his chair–he drove himself to the clubhouse–but he would just sit there patiently with a welcoming smile and a wisecrack and after the meeting kind of hold court. When he was ready to go, he’d cry, “Step aside, minions!” crack up laughing, and zip out.

But he was nailed to the cross of his chair.

Christ is like that, too, except he’s also nailed in place when people come to spit on him and throw stones and jeer and spew hatred.

And when he walks about among us, no-one hardly notices or recognizes him. I’ve thought of that lately, too, in these days of early winter when I always feel especially keenly the exile and loneliness of the human condition.

Especially living and working by myself, I’m always eager for a nod of recognition, the merest smile, a tiny act of courtesy–the person on the sidewalk who steps aside with their dog, or thanks you for stepping aside. I’m alert to people’s faces, to their personhood, to the (of course unvoiced) fact that Hey we’re both alive! Breathing! Walking! Look at that huge Western sky! How about those clouds! Look, the Christmas lights are coming on already!

But 90% of the time–nothing. Oblivious. Apparently even to say Hi now marks you out as an insane person, to be shunned and avoided. Hi? you can hear the person thinking. Go back to the asylum, Granny. What the f is WRONG with you??

What I’ve been thinking is-Isn’t that exactly the way we are with Christ? He too walks about with a little spark of hope, thirsting for connection, eager to respond to the slightest invitation, ready and willing to meet us so much more than halfway! Knock and the door shall be opened, seek and ye shall find. And we’re scurrying along thinking, Should I buy the dark chocolate or the milk? IS Alex Murdaugh guilty? Isn’t that Kari Lake vile?

Like us, in other words, Christ gets looked at either when we need something from him or when we want to blame him for something. And the rest of time he’s ignored.

In my Ignatian Exercises, whenever I feel conflicted or frightened (i.e. all the time) or bewildered or attacked, I’m being encouraged to think of Christ in a similar situation and ask him: What was that like for you?

Last time I spoke to my spiritual director, I was saying I didn’t think I felt equal to some task or other (probalby just living another day). I didn’t feel equal to my little mission on earth

She paused for a second, then asked: Do you think Jesus felt equal to his?

FINDING FREEDOM AT THE LOST KITCHEN

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Erin French grew up in the small town of Freedom, Maine, working at her father’s diner. Pressing down grilled cheeses, arranging fries and tartar sauce on clam plates, spooning mashed potatoes and gravy around her father’s famous ketchup-cloaked meat loaf were second nature.

Her father was a hard-driving, hot-tempered alcoholic whose approval she craved and never quite got. But she loved the work anyway: loved the long hours, the jostling camaraderie of the kitchen, the look on people’s faces as they dug into a morning plate of eggs with bacon crisped just so, or a ham and bean lunch special, or a slab of prime rib with green beans for a special occasion dinner.

She never left her hometown where, in a converted hydro-powered grist mill, she now owns and operates a world-famous restaurant and foodie “destination” called The Lost Kitchen. 

Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story Remaking a Life from Scratch (2021) is both a follow-up and a prequel to French’s first book, the recipe-focused The Lost Kitchen (2017).

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

CALLED TO GIVE UP

I am six weeks into a nine-month Ignatian Exercises “Adventure,” as the title of my guidebook runs.

Each week you ask for a different grace. This week I’m asking for “a grateful awareness of the many ways God calls me.”

Well!

An hour of prayer first thing in the morning I must say has been just the ticket, especially because I am now well into Week 3 of the Ground Squirrel. That’s right. The gigantic rodent, who apparently has an IQ of about 180, is still romping and frisking around beneath the foundation, digging about while I’m trying to write, scaring the crap out of me with its abhorrent scritching when I’m trying to sleep, and yesterday, tapping behind the heating grates in the dining room and living room in the most unpleasantly startling way as I was trying to do my YouTube yoga. (This could account for the fact that I literally sprained my own ankle the other day as I attempted to stretch my upper thigh).

Sometimes the thing is quiet for hours but knowing that at any given moment its loathesome subterranean scuttling will begin has done quite a number on my nerves, which are set to the highest possible frequency even when I’m “relaxed.”

Apparently he’s stored enough poison down there to kill a hippopotamus but is slyly “saving it for later.” Then there’s the trap that Mike the Exterminator baited with Nutella and a couple of Snickers bars and, I guess to give The Squirrel the illusion of privacy, draped with a bath towel. The SLIGHTEST TOUCH is supposedly enough to trip the door and slam it shut behind the Squirrel, who Mike would then transport to a faraway field and set free. (Naturally this is the end we would both prefer).

The trap sat there untouched for days. This morning I went out and found that The Squirrel had managed to REMOVE THE TOWEL, thrust it aside like a messy teenager, probably nab a candy bar or two, and leave the door wide open.

Apparently most squirrel problems are squared away within a few days. So the unfortunate upshot of the fact that my own has dragged on for so long is that I am beginning to fear that I will 1) have to live with The Horrible Ground Squirrel forever, or move; 2) even if I move, I will never ever feel safe or non-jumpy in any place I live again, ever, for the rest of my life (It’s certainly difficult to see how I could ever feel safe here). I could go on and on about the previous places I’ve lived and why I sort of felt that way already, and in fact moved to Tucson in large part to try to give myself a fighting chance in that direction.

On top of it, I’m scheduled for cataract surgery, first eye December 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I know this is a highly safe and highly routine “procedure,” but still–it’s your eyes. I had to sign a consent form this morning that included a delightful clause about how the anaesthesia can have side effects, one of which is DEATH.

AND I’m going on a two-week road trip to LA and the Central Coast of California for Thanksgiving–which I’m super excited and super grateful about but again, still–you know. Travel.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but any woman who lives alone and is “older” will corroborate that a special vulnerability comes with this particular station in life.

So, back to graces, and the many ways God calls me…

Obviously, I’m being called to see that my own situation is NOTHING compared to the uncertainty, anxiety and suffering under which much of the world lives. That’s not to diminish my anxiety, but it is to reminded, and to recognize that all suffering, if we allow it to, puts us in solidarity and at the center of all the suffering in the world.

Two, my dawning awareness that I may not feel safe where I live, ever, as if this is some huge tragedy…same principle. We never really ARE safe in this valley of tears, in these mortal bodies. So maybe I’m actually being called to let go of my life-long illusion that if only I can manage well enough, everything will be okay. As in, join the human race.

Beyond that, maybe I’m even being called to prefer the precariousness, or at least to be “indifferent” as St. Ignatius puts it (we tend to use the word “detached) as to whether I feel calm or anxious, embraced or rejected, consoled or abandoned, understood or unfairly maligned. Indifferent as to whether I’m rich or poor, sick or healthy, living with a giant rodent uner my house in Tucson or maybe somewhere far far away like over an ocean, like, say, in Ireland…more on that last idea later.

As my friend Fr. Terry says: “If you’re lucky, you’ll give up all idea of ever being happy in any way you thought you were going to be.”

I am going to wander over to Sts. Peter and Paul and sit before the Blessed Sacrament for a bit. Thank you for listening!

ST. MAXIMILIAN KOLBE: LOVE WITHOUT LIMITS

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins:

On a recent trip to the Chicago area, I was able to visit the National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe in Libertyville, Illinois. The shrine comprises the Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, a Rosary Garden, and a Conventual Franciscan Friary.

Kolbe (1894-1941) is the Polish priest who offered to take the place of a fellow prisoner condemned to die in the starvation bunker at Auschwitz.

The chapel, open to the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, is dedicated to Perpetual Adoration, and has been since 1928 (the original temporary chapel moved to the current site in 1932).

Marytown, as the site is called, serves a broad apostolate—locally, nationally, and internationally—through Eucharistic Adoration, a prison ministry, daily Masses, weekday Confessions, and a retreat program.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.