Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is today. My new room, the one that M painted last summer has three pale green walls to blend in with a beautiful poster of Our Lady of Guadalupe that is now mounted where it is a focal point not only for the room but for me as I walk down the hall. I remember reading the story when I was still a child; roses and a miraculous and splendidly beautiful painting. It is one of my favorites. When we moved to California, we became much more aware of the contributions of Mexican culture to our area. Many of our fellow parishioners were several genaration Mexican as we had been several generation French Canadian. They maintained cultural heritage and so our parish celebrated a Posada as part of the Christmas pageant and the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

A mariachi band processed down the street our church is on, turning into the parking lot just before the beginnings of early Mass (I think 6:30 am). After Mass a feast was held in the Parish Hall. My late father relished the story of how he accepted a steaming bowl of minudo and when he ate it rather gingerly his friend's then six year old son, said, "Daddy if the man does not want the minudo can I have it, please?"

Today M is flying home to California after her first semester of college and I am tracking her flight via the Internet. I won't know the precise moment that she and her Mama greet each other, but I will be close.

Now if Our Lady will help me to find the thing in my house which is lost, I will be much happier tomorrow for M and I will have a much easier time decorating my Christmas tree if I have it. (It is a small notebook with the inventory of Christmas boxes.)

December 8, 2007

Yesterday was Pearl Harbor, "a day that will live in Infamy" as Franklin Roosevelt said. The commemorations were not so big as they were when I was growing up--there are not so many veterans now who remember Pearl or the war that followed. Other wars too, have crowded into our consciousness and sixty-six years is a long time.

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. One of the beautiful Marian Feasts in the Catholic Church calendar and appropriately timed in Advent, which I have always thought is Mary's season, the time of the year when the feminine finally, only briefly comes the fore in the Church's celebrations and recognition.

Today is a crisp, cold clear day where I live, dry after a two day rainy spell and somehow it feels more like winter than the late fall that, technically, it still is here in California. The rain brought snow to the mountains so that skiing is now possible. The winter snow pack is also important to our well-being in this state that is so dependent on water from the winter wet season.

More later, perhaps.