All Saints, 2009

Today is the Feast of All Saints in the Calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. Instead of commemorating them one by one, today we think of all the saints in the aggregate. Somewhere, I think in my Catholic childhood, I received the idea that this feast was also about those not in the calendar, all the household saints, our ancestors whose lives were lived privately. I remember as the Litany of the Saints was chanted adding silently, "All ye holy Grandmothers and Grandfathers, Great-Aunts and Great-Uncles and ancestors in any way." Now I think of my parents, too, for they have gone on. In fact, we have been without them for too long.

Tomorrow, on All Souls, I will pray for their souls. I think this is called hedging my bets, something that Catholic tradition makes room for in other ways too.

Today, with the sun shining in and the bread baked, the smell of patchouli mixed with cloves and rosemary filling the air and reminding me of incense, I prefer to think of them as saints.

My parents taught me my prayers when I was so young that I don't remember a time that I did not know them. I do remember my Mama lifting me up so that I could dip my fingers in the holy water font as we entered the church to "make a visit". This also always included lighting a candle--real flames and real matches, no electric or battery operated votive lights then. The church was always dark and mysterious and had that smell of left over incense and candles burning--the potpourri I have been working with today is very evocative of that.

Most of the saints made it to heaven by simply doing that daily work of keeping themselves alive for as long as they could. Without all the medical and media rigmarole that we possess some of them had good enough genes--and luck--to make it into their 90's. Other dropped where they stood doing the housework on a Monday after attending Mass on Sunday, a massive stroke or an embolism or something else that they may not have recognized taking them instantly out of the mundane and into the sacred. (I think of heaven as the sacred and afterlife as the culmination of this one.)

The ancestors that I have traced did not, for the most part, die in hospitals, but at home. There were some exceptions. My father remembered that he was four years old when he was taken to the hospital and watched his maternal grandfather being wheeled down the hall on a gurney. He never came back. (Later, my family history research yielded up this man's death certificate and the information that he had died of stomach cancer.) His youngest daughter, my father's aunt told s the story of how her father led the family to church every Saturday afternoon for confession. They where Irish. One Saturday, instead of going to the Irish church they detoured to the German one. There they were told to go to their own church. Which they did. I am sure this same man led this same procession on Sunday to Mass.

They all "kept the Faith". Confession on Saturday, Mass on Sunday, fish on Friday. Rosaries at wake services, Gregorian Chant, the Dies Irae, and all the other lovely music of the annual cycle. And when there lives were completed they were laid to rest with the Requiem Mass.

I remember them with joy and thanksgiving, grateful for their lives on this earth and all that they passed on to me, my cultural heritage as well as my DNA. I am grateful for them, every single one and hope that they are all rejoicing in heaven. Today I rejoice in the beauty of the sunshine streaming in my window on this glorious Sunday.

New and Fun Things

You will notice, if you scroll down a bit through the links on the right hand side, that I have added an RSS feed to St. Anthony's messenger for the listing of the Saint of the Day. I notice that today is St. Hyacintha. I have never heard of this saint, but I am familar with the flower, so I will have to follow the link myself to find out more.

I have also been knitting this cold month of short days. New yarn from one of my most favorite EBay sellers, Over the Rainbow Yarn.

One project is now done, although this is what it looked like when I snapped a picture on Wednesday.



This is yummy yarn, handpainted in a subtle colorway that I think was called "Painted Plums".

More yarn arrived this week and it is shown in the next two photos.



I called the image, "Wild about Yarn" and then took a second one, "Wild about Yarn,2".



I am making simple, garter-stitch triangle shawlettes; mindless knitting for the hour so each evening that I watch mindless, "guilty-pleasure" television, usually re-runs of NCSI on cable with the space heater taking the chill off the living room and the clock ticking until it is close enough to bed-time to turn up the heat before going to bed. (If I don't start out warmed up and with the chill off the house, the electric blanket doesn't heat up enough. New technology.)

Probably the yarn has cost more than I have saved on the heating bill by rationing my use of it so tightly. Paying for the yarn, however is a pleasure, while the utility bill is not! The woman who handpainted the yarn is in business for herself and we all know about the utility companies...

So today I am grateful for sun shining on my keyboard and warming me as I type. (Although I will rejoice if we finally get rain, which we desperately need), for St. Hyacintha, whose name sounds like a flower and for yarn.

And I do wish I knew how to tell Blogger to insert the pictures where I want them instead of at the top of the typing block!

February Saints

Yesterday was the Feast of St. Brigid of Ireland. Today is the Feast of Candlemas also known as the Feast of the Purification. These are wonderful feasts. I particularly love Simeon who says upon meeting the Christ Child, "Lord now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation". The Elizabethan composer, Gibbons, set it to music--a fine and beautiful motet indeed.

I am watching the Democratic candidates debate. They are making history. I hope that one of them will win and make further history. An end to an unjust war that has besmirched our national character and our standing in the world. An end to poverty in our life times. (Perhaps and economics of generosity instead of scarcity. Certainly higher taxes for the ultra rich to discourage CEO's from walking away with tens of millions of dollars. A pricing structure for energy that puts money back in consumers' pockets when the the company profit reaches a certain level--Exxon Mobil is a scandal in my estimation.)

What does this have to do with two women's feasts? Am I digressing. Not really. St. Brigid was a nun who had charge over a community and is reputed to have been responsible for a miracle involving making sure there was enough beer to go around. The Blessed Virgin was a mother, who watched the household economy as women ever have; when her son came of age and performed his first miracle it had to do with making sure there was enough wine to go around.

Women have always fed and washed, combed and clothed, the children and the elderly. We haven't always had a strong voice in politics, although history shows that queens have led as well as kings, and that the pantheon of saints shows us women leaders.

Only in recent times (the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) have we had fewer women leaders (I think of the demise of Catholic women's religious orders here) and an economics of scarcity.

So on this Marian feast, one of my favorite in the calendar because of its text and images, the music and the candlelit procession around the church, I pause to ponder women's role yet again and say a prayer for Hillary, a strong woman who is making history.