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A Prayer for Asheville

A Prayer for Asheville

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As the death toll mounts in North Carolina, I think about the beauty of the place and the terror of the storm. Most of all, I think about the lives lost. More than 100 already confirmed dead; 200 still missing.

We visited Asheville almost two years ago. It was a quick trip sandwiched in between obligations. It was January, and a cold rain fell one of the three days we were there. But despite the weather and the haste, I loved the place: its mountain beauty, its funky vibe.

Now, residents are searching for survivors, digging out homes, queueing for water. At this moment, Asheville is not a resort town; it’s a crisis zone. My heart goes out to all those in Western North Carolina. May you find relief soon.

Sunset in Asheville, January 9, 2023

Immortality

Immortality

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Today, my dear friend Nancy will be laid to rest in the Indiana earth, less than 150 miles from where we first met. But where is she now, really? 

My faith tells me that she is sleeping and will rise in glory on the Last Day. My skeptical self says, “Hmmm…” 

One thing I know for sure: Nancy lives on in the hearts of those who love her. It’s an immortality in which we all can believe — and to which we all can aspire. 

(The Bernini columns in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, one of many wonders I saw for the first time with Nancy. Photo: Wikipedia)

Family Bibles

Family Bibles

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They hold newspaper clippings, holy cards, photos of babies in long cotton gowns. Century-old flowers crumble in their pages, and their bindings are frayed and worn.

Yesterday I paged through a stack of old family bibles looking for names, dates, relationships. Some of them had elaborate closures; others were falling apart. Some of them gave up their secrets; others did not.

But all of them held the fears and triumphs of mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins. They were the ceremonial center of recorded family life. I studied them, photographed them, copied words from their pages. Then I brushed their dust off my hands and came upstairs, to the land of the living.

Worthwhile

Worthwhile

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The rain has stopped, the sun has peeked through the clouds, and I have in mind a piece of music I always hum this time of year: “God So Loved the World,” by John Stainer.

Not knowing much about the composer I looked him up this morning. He’s not as contemporary as I thought. His dates, 1860-1901, mark him as a Victorian through and through.

Though his choral music output was prodigious, nothing much is performed these days except “The Crucifixion,” from which this piece emerged as an Easter and Passiontide favorite. 

Give it a listen, if you have time. Maybe you’ll agree with me that to be remembered for one piece of music — if it were a piece like this — would make an entire life worthwhile. 

Religious Recycling

Religious Recycling

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For years I collected palms from Palm Sunday. I grew up learning that they are a sacramental, something sacred that you can’t just toss in the trash.  I brought them home from church, tucked them up high on a shelf in the closet and there they stayed, collecting dust. 

In the old days, in the homes of an earlier generation of Catholics, I remember them being displayed behind sacred art, paintings of the Sacred Heart, the sorts of iconography I don’t have.

But in the last 10 years or so, my church has put out a call for old palms a few weeks before Lent begins. They burn the palms and use the ashes on Ash Wednesday — a lovely example of religious recycling. 

I was able to shed a large backlog of palms that way. Now, my house is almost palm free. The “almost” is because … I picked up another palm yesterday.

The Sé

The Sé

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We had been in Funchal for a full week before I darkened the door of its main attraction, the cathedral, or Sé. I attended mass there, which featured one only brief reading in English, the rest in Portuguese. But that didn’t matter. I sat (or knelt or stood) and let the experience wash over me: the setting, the music, the piety.

The cathedral was built in the 16th century, and features a carved wooden ceiling made of Madeirian cedar and a gleaming gold altar. The service was beautifully accompanied by a small choir and orchestra in the loft. The worshippers beside me seemed as awed by the place as I was.

At one time, this cathedral oversaw the largest diocese in the world, because it encompassed all of Portugal’s territories in Africa, Asia, North America, South America. A mighty Sé, indeed.

Taizé Prayer

Taizé Prayer

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I’d heard about it for years but usually have a conflict on the night it happens. Last night I didn’t, so I drove to the church in the dark and walked into a shimmering, candlelit chapel that scarcely resembled its everyday self.

There were icons on the altar and candles flickering around the sanctuary, illuminating the rough-hewn brick walls. There were two tables of thin tapers for lighting to elevate your prayer intention. There were many in attendance, but a hush filled the room. 

Taizé is an ecumenical monastic community in France with worship services of repetitive chanted prayer. Its model has become popular around the world. 

We sang in Latin, we sang in English. We were accompanied by piano, organ, violin, oboe and clarinet. The melodies were like plainsong, and in their repetition was the music of the ages.  

Silence punctuated the service: a silent entrance, a silent exit, and a stretch of silence in the middle, time for quiet contemplation — “essential to discovering the heart of prayer,” the handout told me.

I left feeling renewed, inspired, quieted. 

(Photo: courtesy Arlington Catholic Herald.)

Creeping Jenny

Creeping Jenny

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It’s Advent, the season of waiting. But waiting for what? The birth of Christ, the gathering of the clan, the arrival of yet another box from Amazon? Or for a contentment I long for but can’t explain.

Advent is also the season of preparation, not just wrapping gifts and baking cookies but preparing ourselves spiritually. For me, the best way to prepare is to stop waiting and bask in the moment.

Today’s moment is noticing the jaunty upward growth of the Creeping Jenny plant. I’ve been neglecting it, putting it on top of the bookshelf in my office so it would trail down from on high in romantic tendrils, like wisps of hair escaping from a Gibson Girl bun. 

But it gets no sun there, so I moved it yesterday to a free corner of my desk. It already looks healthier, greener, more in sync with its surroundings. I want to be like that plant: well placed and pointing toward the sun.

Every Verse

Every Verse

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“Second verse, same as the first,” goes a line from an old Herman’s Hermits song. 

Two verses used to be the limit for the processional and recessional hymns at my church. But there’s a new music director in town, an organist no less, and he plays all four verses of every entering and leaving song.

Is it my imagination, or is there a certain restlessness as we plunge into verse four of the entrance hymn, a narrowly avoided temptation to glance at the watch? 

As for the recessional, people are voting with their feet. This morning, about half the congregation left before the last notes of “The Church’s One Foundation” sounded and the postlude began, organ chords thundering down from on high. 

This is how we’re supposed to leave the sanctuary, I thought, as I made my way to the holy water font and out the door — caught up in a marvelous swell of sound. 

(This organ is from San Bartolome Church, Seville, Spain, not my church. I wish!)

A Pilgrimage

A Pilgrimage

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Yesterday, a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Catholic church in the country, which was (amazingly enough) only completed this decade. Organized by my church, it was a day of prayer and discovery, a capstone of the bible study we’d been doing during Lent, with its theme of pilgrimage.

But for me, the pilgrimage took on an additional layer of meaning because it was also a return to Catholic University, which is next door to the basilica. Once upon a time, I worked at Catholic U., writing articles for their alumni magazine and website. This was in the days of in-person work, so five days a week I trundled down to northeast D.C. 

Yesterday’s return didn’t disappoint. There were the old buildings I remembered and a few recent additions. There was the grandly grim McMahon Hall, home of the College of Arts and Sciences and where the communications team had a small warren of offices on the third floor . 

I never tired of walking two floors up the broad and inviting stairway, never stopped being amazed that I was working in an office again after 17 years of freelance work. I turned my desk around so I looked out the window over the campus and beyond, into Maryland. There were treetops and steeples. I felt like a bird perched on a ledge. In fact, birds did perch on my ledge, and the stones of the thick walls were medieval in their size and roughness.

Then and now the neighborhood feels like a world apart. Yesterday’s visit reminded me that one of the things I loved about working at Catholic was its sense of place. I felt at home there. I still do.