More than a prayer, Hail Mary is a relationship

Not all relationships get off to a good start.

That was my relationship with Mary, our Blessed Mother. She was ever virgin, ever holy and, seemingly through religious art, ever young – about as far away as possible from whom I saw myself to be as a woman, wife and mother, especially as I got older.

But a friend pointed out to me that my problem was really in not knowing Mary well enough. He advised me to mediate on her life, to learn more about what it was like to be a woman, wife and mother in her culture and time, to imagine her joys and her pains and to think of her as someone who would have a deep empathy for my own struggles.

I made him a promise that I would try, and so, little by little a relationship grew, perhaps not the same kind so many other Catholics might have, but a relationship none-the-less. We didn’t talk much, Mary and I, in the way I often talked to God, but I found that when I was troubled, fearful or in need of prayers for someone I would say “Hail Mary.” Sometimes that is all I would say, other times I would say the entire prayer. It became second nature.

I found a statue of Mary someone had given me as a gift and put it on my kitchen counter.  I put a small votive holder in front of it, and every night I would light a candle, thanking Mary for listening to my prayers and lifting them up to God, and then I would go through the litany of prayers still needed for family members. I still do this every night, and when things get really crazy, during the day, as well. It is a ritual that brings me comfort and settled, for the most part, with peace of mind.

But his past weekend one of my sons was diagnosed with pneumonia, and on top of it, was hit with one crisis after another in the space of 24 hours – a pattern that is frequent in his life, contributing to often overwhelming stress for him, and, subsequently, for me.

I felt like I was coming unraveled and decided he needed a St. Benedict medal to serve as a constant silent prayer for God’s blessing and protection, and for peace, which has been a Benedictine motto for centuries. I was searching on-line for what seemed like an hour for a medal that came with a chain, was affordable and would arrive within two days – since anything could happen in my son’s life within 48 hours.

Then, as we often do in times of extreme stress, I lost my composure and good sense.  I had to get ready for an appointment, couldn’t find what I was looking for and exclaimed out loud, “I need help! Please, someone help me find the medal I want for my son. He needs it.”

A moment later, as I hit the page button one more time, the perfect medal showed up on the screen. It was for a man, on a chain and would be delivered in 48 hours. I burst out in tears when I saw the name of the company which was offering the medal: Hail Mary Gifts.

I realized in that moment what a gift Mary has been to me, and to my son, who is the one most often lifted up in prayer. I realized that through my daily requests to Mary for prayer, I was moving through each day, no matter how difficult, with a renewed sense of hope. I realized that relationships take many forms, and while I do not yet pray the Rosary daily or preach Mary to the crowds, or even to family or friends, the relationship I have with her is still meaningful and fruitful in my life, especially in the absence of my own mother who died so many years ago.

I realize, also, that in the grand scheme of things, especially with so many people experiencing tragedy and profound struggles, wanting a medal for someone is not a cause for divine intervention. But I do believe that God intervenes, whether it is through the saints or angels, other people, or especially through Mary, when he wants us to have faith in his desire to be in a relationship with us.

In his May 10 General Audience, Pope Francis offered some inspiring words on our relationship with Mary: “We are not orphans: we have a Mother in heaven, who is the Holy Mother of God. Because she teaches us the virtue of waiting, even when everything seems meaningless. She always trusts in the mystery of God, even when He seems to be eclipsed by the evil of the world. In times of difficulty, may Mary, the Mother Jesus has given to us all, always support our steps. May she say to our hearts: ‘Get up. Look ahead. Look to the horizon. For she is the Mother of Hope.’"

Photo by Oliver Pacas on Unsplash

Memories made, lessons learned at our family table ~ Lois Rogers, guest blogger

The solid maple dining table is considered vintage now. If things go as I pray they will, it’s well on its way to becoming a cherished antique.

Just recently, it went out the door of my house, where it settled after my parents’ home was sold, never to return. Safely conveyed with its matching chairs by good friends to the young adult son of another good friend, it’s my hope that the table is once again destined to serve as a linchpin, connecting good meals and good conversation with good faith.

Such was its role from the time my mother settled on its wide, round, archetypal Colonial frame – the trend back in the ‘60s when it was new. She and my father found its shape appealing, I remember her saying to all of us.

No one sat at the head of the table or, by extension, at its foot. Everyone had good eye contact with each other. Best of all, our parents explained, sitting in a circle obstructed the view of the equally new, large color television set in the living room during meals, making conversation while perhaps not mandatory, certainly highly recommended.

Since those days, the table has taken a few hard knocks, from myself and my brothers, our friends and the frisky onslaught of the generation that followed us.

While well-intentioned rough housing – a burn here, a nick there – left marks over the decades, the table moved steadily through time, a bulwark that gathered family together into safe harbor at least once a day.

Getting it ready to leave for its new home as part of the “de-cluttering” process recommended by a home sale expert, I couldn’t help but revisit those meals.

The number of graces prayed over the food spread out on its surface like manna on holy days, holidays and Sacramental occasions is incalculable. The bread broken at that table among relatives and friends was something like loaves and fishes, especially in the lean times everyone shared at one time or another.

The image of my mother spreading clear plastic over the table when the grandchildren were just little tykes so they could make as much of a mess as they wanted and just have a good time stands out clearly in the mind’s eye. So does the picture of my dad engaging in philosophical conversations over snacks with our friends who sought out his company on Friday and Saturday nights.

When the table came to my house, I knew I inherited more than a round piece of wood on a sturdy base. I inherited a whole legacy, passed down by my mother and father of traditions that spanned, if not the world, at least Europe.

Blended together were ingredients that sparked the desire to know all about the people who created them, their customs, and their beliefs. It created a thirst to know what caused them to depart Ireland, Italy, the British Isles, the backwaters of the Austro Hungarian Empire and Scandinavia and stick it out in the face of terrible hardship.

The insights I gleaned from sitting with grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and our friends made it hard to give that table up. Still, it would have been much harder to send it off to a secondhand store or a garage sale, where its fate would have been unknown.

Just this week, while researching a story on how grandparents are coping with the digital whirlwind enveloping society, I found a number of stories on how the dining table had dropped from the single most important piece of furniture in the house to fourth or even fifth place.

After years of knowing the mom of the young man who wanted the table for his first apartment and her love of family and home, I have a feeling our family table will buck that trend.

PHOTO: BEARING WITNESS • This photo shows my mother holding her granddaughter, Jeannie, at the beloved family table. The table, now on its way to a new home, was at the center of more than one lifetime of memories.  

This column first appeared in the Aug. 9, 2018, issue of The Monitor, official newspaper of the Diocese of Trenton. 

Resurrection is the reason for our hope and joy

We all have a story.

For families, the story includes those of parents, children and the ones we love, living life intertwined, each person affected, for better or for worse, by the joys,
sorrows, and choices of those whose stories touch ours.

Sometimes, it is in the darkest moments of our stories that we become aware of our own capacity to love.

My epiphany came on Mother’s Day, 2015.  It was not, perhaps, an epiphany to match that of Thomas Merton, the very famous Trappist monk who had an epiphany of love on a street corner in Louisville. But it was my epiphany and all the more meaningful for me.

I was sitting in the locked-down lobby of the county jail while waiting to visit my son. I had been visiting once or twice a week for the past two months, and every time, as I sat waiting, I was thinking, “This was never part of my plan. How did we get to this place?”

My first visit was surreal … being buzzed in, the police officer checking my ID behind a protective shield, the glass window behind which my son stood when he was brought down, the phones we used to communicate, the prisoner’s uniform. It just seemed like a scene from “Law and Order” instead of one from my own family story.

I realized that, in jail, they use the more politically correct term of inmate instead of prisoner, but prisoner is what my son really was – a prisoner of opiates long before he ended up behind that glass window in that uniform. I felt sick, heart-broken, guilty and alone. Surely, looking around the lobby on that first visit, I didn’t belong here, and neither did my son. Still, here we were, at the cross.

But in one instant on Mother’s Day, in that dreary jail lobby, I realized that all of us, waiting for our turn to visit, had entered, in our own way, into the life of Christ. Like the Apostles, each of us, no matter how different and in spite of our own weaknesses, were there because we loved someone, hoping to make a difference in their life by our simple presence – and I heard the words of the powerful Taize hymn, “Stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray.”

In the Gethsemane stories of those who sat waiting with me, I heard their unique, yet familiar, struggles – broken marriages, broken relationships, drug addiction, the death of children, bad choices, bad friends, loss of faith, loss of family, suicide, terrible financial difficulties and, sometimes, homelessness. Some stories were so heartbreaking I could barely contain my emotions, and I was grateful, and privileged, to have exchanged promises to pray for one another.

Not long after Mother’s Day, my son called to tell me he had been paroled. His time in jail had been good for him. He was drug free, though he would need continued support to stay so, and he was positive and prayerful, looking forward to a new chapter in his life. “See, I make all things new,” filled my heart.

I remember breaking down in tears. “My son is coming home,” I thought, and I wondered if God might have had a similar feeling on the day of the Resurrection. Surely, the God of Love would have felt the pain and anguish of his only beloved Son, and would have known the joy of Jesus’ coming home, the joy of new life. Certainly, Mary did.

How far we have come, my son and I, since the days when an exceptionally inquisitive toddler would find ways to escape the locked doors of our house and wander happily in his pajamas in the new winter snow in our backyard. Loving him has taken on new forms as he’s grown into a man. One of the most meaningful has been waiting with him in Gethsemane, and walking with him as he embraced his crosses. It has not been easy. After all, the hallmark of a mother is to fix everything, to take away pain and make things better. Part of the growing up process for moms is accepting that there are many things we cannot control.

For us, as Christians, Jesus’ Resurrection changes everything.  With love at its heart, the Resurrection is the reason for our greatest hope and our greatest joy. It allows us to accept the invitation to new life that is inherent in every cross, and to hold on to our faith in God’s promises.

For me, the Resurrection has become a new focus of my faith, one that as allowed me to believe, when others didn’t, that my son would experience his own resurrection through his singular faith in God.

That is reason for a very joyous, “Alleluia!”

We must open the gift to discover what's inside

My mother loved receiving gifts, as most of us do, but for her it seemed to be a sworn duty to
display as many of them as she could, and once displayed they rarely came down.  It didn’t matter if the gift was a small, wild-haired troll or a beautiful porcelain sculpture of Rapunzel, with golden locks cascading around her feet.  They all shared a place of honor in our home.

Among those gifts were a variety of painted and jeweled eggs, most often given to her by my dad. Their beauty was in the remarkable designs and craftsmanship on their shells.  So when I received an exceptionally lovely porcelain egg music box from a special friend several years ago, I assumed all the beauty was on the outside.

I placed it behind the glass doors of our hutch, for protection, but close to the front so I could see it every time I walked by. But today was different. After having a heated “discussion” with my guardian angel earlier in the morning, and not being surprised if she were to take the day off, I stopped in front of the hutch and stared at the gilded egg.  Something inside me said “open it,” and for the first time, upon closer inspection, I realized the egg was formed of two separate halves.

I pulled the halves apart and there stood an enchanting guardian angel adorned with rhinestones.  Finally, the guardian angel prayer written in gold letters beneath the egg made sense, and I wondered if it were possible for me to be any denser.

I immediately moved this very thoughtful gift to my desk, leaving the egg open so I could see the little guardian angel who brightens my day.  She also serves as a reminder of a few things: Guardian angels are very patient with our humanness, friends are a true blessing for which we should be grateful, and never be impressed solely by outside appearances.  You never know what waits on the inside.

" ... let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart ... " 1 Peter 3:4

My Mother's Lessons

Sing ~ Study ~ Read books ~ Wear gloves ~ Learn to type ~ Serve muffins ~ Be kind to animals ~ Practice the piano ~ Write thank-you notes ~ Learn to be self-sufficient ~ Always carry pens and tissues ~ Never forget where you come from ~ Speak up and speak out when necessary ~ Smile and make the world more beautiful ~ You can run but you can’t hide from your mother ~ A mother's love is the source of incredible strength ~ There will never be anyone who will love you with the unconditional love of God, except your mother.

A small thank-you makes a big difference!

During my visit to North Carolina for my granddaughter’s third birthday I had the chance to sit in
the upstairs gallery of the gymnastic studio and watch this petite whirlwind and her classmates run,
climb, tumble and spin their way to pure enjoyment.  

At several points during the class, when the instructor had assisted my granddaughter in some way, I heard her adorable, three-year-old voice say, “Thank you.”  Her expressions were priceless, and memorable, especially in a culture that has all but forgotten the value and meaning of gratitude.

I’m proud to say her cousins have learned the same graciousness. My sons and their wives are passing on something that was taught to them, and it is something that was certainly handed on to me by my parents, especially my mom.

I was raised during the time of Emily Post manners, which meant white gloves when you went shopping, tasteful clothes for Mass and cultivating the now lost art of the thank you note.  What I learned is that manners, and expressions of gratitude, are more than just trite social mores.  They are opportunities to express respect and appreciation of others, to build relationships, and to be reminded that we are not the center of anyone’s universe except our own. 

Imagine my delight when I discovered that Emily Post’s great-great-grandson, Daniel Post Senning, is carrying on Emily’s legacy. He writes, in The Costco Connection, “Good manners are about more than fulfilling bare-minimum social obligations. They are an opportunity for us to connect to the people in our lives in a meaningful way. In an increasingly informal digital world, continuing to pull out pen and paper is a way to distinguish yourself. The handwritten thank-you note speaks volumes simply as a medium and sends the message that you care enough to invest yourself personally in acknowledging another.”

In my work as a writer and columnist, one of my greatest pleasures has been the notes I’ve received from readers, some of whom have stayed in contact and who I consider as friends. I have kept all the notes I’ve received during the past 20 years and I take them out every once in awhile and re-read them. The thank-yous I've received for my writing
give me the boost of encouragement I need sometimes when my spirit is lagging. I am grateful for them and the people who wrote them.

One of my greatest regrets is losing the envelope with the return address of a reader who sent me the very meaningful gift of a dishtowel from the Sunrise Café in Ortley Beach. I tore my office, at home and at work, apart looking for it because I wanted to send a thank-you note. I actually lost sleep over it.  

Perhaps, she will read this column and know that I absolutely loved the towel and have it hanging in my kitchen. It is especially meaningful now that the café is gone, a victim of Sandy, and we are forced to sell our home in Ortley Beach.

You just never know how much a handwritten note, or seemingly small gift, will mean to someone.

"Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father ... " Ephesians 5:20

 

Image from apartmenttherapy.com where there's great article on making thank-you notes a fun activity for kids.

Taking Jesus with us on the ride of life

Children in church can be both a blessing and a challenge. And from my vantage point in the choir loft, I've seen it all. But nothing tops the Sunday when a young family with several young children in tow took a place in one of the first pews, right in front of the entire congregation, seating their most gregarious child on the end.

 

I noticed when they first walked down the aisle that this little boy, maybe five years old, was carrying rosary beads in his hands. As a mother of six sons I winced a bit, remembering even rosary beads can be an unintended weapon in the hands of a young child.

At first he was fine, running the beads in and out of his hands, as if he was actually praying. But before long, he had discovered the “rosary bead spin.” Propelled by the weight of the crucifix, the beads circled faster and faster in his rotating hand until he lept out into the aisle with what looked like a small propeller in his little fist and yelled, “Hang on Jesus, we’re going for a ride!”

A delighted laugh rolled through the congregation and even the celebrant laughed out loud.

On the way home from Mass, with a foolish grin on my face, I considered how the whole scene was like a metaphor for our daily lives. With so many ups and downs, and things often spinning out of control, any of us could be the one yelling, “Hang on, Jesus!”

The image came to mind again recently when I was visiting my son and his family in North Carolina.

My almost three-year-old granddaughter loves to climb, jump, swing, and do just about anything a nervous grandmother would hate, and my son happily obliges her.

One day, he had her by the ankles and was spinning her around and around as fast as he could turn in a circle. She was screaming and I was screaming, except she was laughing and I was hollering “Stop!” 

I was worried to death that my son’s hands would slip or he would trip over his own feet or a million other scenarios only an anxious grandmother could imagine, but all my granddaughter wanted was, “Do it again, daddy!”

“How could she want to do that again?” I thought to myself, but I realized she wasn’t afraid because she trusts him completely.

On my long drive home to New Jersey, I began to think about Mary and her unfailing trust in God.

Mary could have easily thought that her life was beginning to spin out of control when the Angel Gabriel visited her to tell her she was going to have a child, and not any child, but God’s child.

Surely, before that moment, Mary had plans for how her life was going to unfold. I don’t imagine her plans included a visit by an angel, or giving birth in a stable, or following her son to the cross, perhaps remembering Simeon’s words that the “a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

How many times throughout her life did Mary have to consciously put her trust in God?

How many times in our lives do we need to do the same thing, believing God is walking with us through some loss or illness or struggle, either our own or that of someone we love or for whom we care?

Certainly, the next time I feel like my life is spinning out of control, I will remember the Rosary, both for Mary and for one little boy who is a philosopher at heart!

Love, like bread, needs to be made and remade

My mother may not have been the best of cooks, but there was never a night or a Sunday afternoon when she didn’t put a home cooked meal on the table in spite of working every day. She had some specialties, like a mean macaroni salad and an awesome salad dressing which still gets me rave reviews when I make it for family or friends. But when it came to making meatballs, she should have taken lessons from her sister, my dear Aunt Ginny.

Aunt Ginny’s meatballs were robust and tender, full of spices and homemade bread crumbs, and it seemed she always had a pot full of meatballs and sauce on the stove when my cousins and I came to visit.  On the other hand, my mother’s were small and hard and, I discovered by accident, made a loud thud if they fell on the floor.

My mom never mastered the art of making shankleesh like my Aunt JuJu and Aunt Jeanette, so I always relished the Sundays when a mound of this (mold ripened) cheese, covered with spices and drizzled with olive oil, was sitting on the kitchen table with warm Syrian bread when we came to visit after Mass. In spite of the fact that my five cousins were almost always there, along with any number of adult family members visiting from downstairs or down the street, there was always enough.

And who didn’t love when my Aunt Evelyn came to family gatherings at our house carrying a pot of stuffed grape leaves or a bowl of tabouleh? I swear I remember someone taking a good number of those stuffed rolls and hiding them in a separate container in the back of the refrigerator “for later” when most of the guests had gone home and the immediate family was left to clean up…and eat leftovers.

But I also learned from my mom how to make some of my favorite Syrian food: riz and lubee (rice and green beans), mamool (dough stuffed with chopped nuts and sugar), and pita bread.

I especially loved the days when she made bread. The anticipation of warm round loaves coming out of the oven, of pulling off a piece and spreading the inside with real butter and then having a good strong cup of tea was heavenly. But sharing it with family seemed to make everything taste better, and, certainly, the animated conversations of a house full of Syrian women, and the occasional courageous male of the family, was always memorable.

But I didn’t realize how much work went into the bread making until I went through the whole process by myself as a young married woman – the measuring the kneading, the rolling, and then the waiting. The experience was a lesson that helped me see the truth in a lovely quote by writer Ursula K. Le Guin:

“Love doesn't sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all of the time, made new.”

In looking back, I've realized her words are a beautiful description of the most important work of a family - love ... made, shared and made new all over again.

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Spend today riding dragons into the future

My mother had a fondness for dragons, and it caused a tussle between us on more than one occasion.

You see, whenever she came to visit she would steal the little pink plastic dragon that came with my sons’ Fischer Price Play Family Castle.

One summer weekend, when I took the boys to visit my parents in Albany, I noticed the dragon sitting on the book shelf in the spare bedroom. Well, that was the last straw! We had a dragon showdown.

My mother's  excuse was that my children did not care about the dragon, and were always leaving it on the floor. My logical response, that a house full of young children, six to be exact, are likely to leave toys on the floor, fell on deaf ears.

I confiscated her ill-gotten gains, and my oldest son decided the best course of action was just to hide the dragon when Nanny came to visit. Eventually, as the boys got older, they gifted her with the little pink bit of fantasy and it moved to a prime spot in my mother's dining room hutch.

My mother never completely lost the heart of a child, and her fondness extended to fairies and unicorns and the little people of the old sod, though she had not an Irish bone in her body. She loved the romance of pirate adventures, mystical places like Brigadoon and the tales of the Knights of the Round Table.

I can imagine her delight had she been able to see her youngest grandson, now 6’ 2”, greeting customers with his heavy Scottish accent at a pub in the shire of the N. Y. Renaissance Faire, and to take a step back in time with other costumed guests to a little piece of Elizabethan England, made a bit more comfortable with flushing privies!

From my mother I caught the enchantment of myths and the romance of days gone by. From my father I learned to appreciate the endless possibilities within dreams for the future. But from the example of how they actually lived their lives, I learned to embrace the gift of the present, full of potential and the need to be God's love for others.

As Thomas Merton wrote: “Humans have a responsibility to find themselves where they are, in their own proper time and place, in the history to which they belong and to which they must inevitably contribute either their response or their evasions, either truth and act, or mere slogan and gesture.”