In actions, in gazes in eyes, in prayer
In body, in soul, in simplest stare
In person, in gesture, in heart aware
In God, in Christ, in Spirit we share.

—John A. Di Camillo

We’re strongly tempted to suggest several more by O’Connor, so we’re instituting a rule that any proposed list can only have one short story per author mentioned. Perhaps something by the much neglected J.F. Powers?

To many, the phrase “hard times in America” brings to mind stark images of the 1930s: Ecological and economic disaster, powerful storms following close upon one another, high crime, starvation, despair, societal depression in every imaginable degree and mode. We may thank Mr. Steinbeck for this mental association: His painting of the “dust bowl days” in The Grapes of Wrath has imbued three generations with a notion of what it’s like when a nation is visited by the Angel of Death.

1934

Most Americans in those days had an idea that a sentence of doom could be carried out from above, below, or somewhere. While the 1920s had been exceedingly prosperous and “liberating” to most classes of people, there was still an honest fear of God left in this country: Like a thief in the night, the Angel of Death snuck up on folks, and even a proud craftsman like Garv Atwood could be left holding the bag.

Garv was a master planer at a door factory near the wharf section of Boston. He earned $47 per week at his wheel and lived in a fine new walkup in South Boston. He was a genuinely contented fellow, proud of his strong hands and happy with a few strong beers on a Sunday evening. Mostly, Garv was enamored with his magnificent wife, Evangeline.

She was a gem to behold: Thick, auburn hair, soft hands, a mind like a bear trap, and a smiling face that caused the streetcars to slow down for a good look when she glided down the street. Evangeline lived up to her name, keeping alight in her bearing an aggressive enthusiasm for the Catholic faith. She’d even founded a society of Catholic scholars in her parlor.

The South Boston Bible Club was composed of seven middle-class, respectably married women, and its membership was growing all the time: Just 10 months before, they’d been four. – Not only did these ladies subscribe to a well-tried regimen of modern Christian conduct in their spheres of influence – modest dress, polite language, no alcohol in the house, and, above all, Mass every Sunday morning – they devoted two hours each week to the study of Holy Scripture.

“We’ll each of us invest in a copy of the Bible, in the best English, that is not condemned by the Vatican,” Evangeline had ordained to her sister scholars, Mrs. Kathleen O’Sullivan and Mrs. Bridget Lansdowne, at the Club’s first meeting. “Our Mission is simple: We’ll read the words of scripture, whereas others merely stare at a wall of letters, and we’ll conceive of the wisdom of God, whereas others are content to conceive without merit into the very streets. – We’ll stand free women!”

That was two years before. Since then, the Club had added Mrs. Mary Stanley, Mrs. Ruth Rosecrantz, Mrs. Gloria Fuchs, and Mrs. Joan Merriweather. – In the past few months, any further talk of conception or conceiving had become increasingly discouraged in the interest of Club harmony: While six of the seven had given birth to a healthy child in those two years since the founding of the Club, Mrs. Merriweather, despite a great desire to become a mother, had found herself unable to conceive, though she was the youngest and healthiest among them.

Her fellow scholars took great pity on her, especially Mrs. Stanley, who had two sons and a brand-new daughter at home; she encouraged her colleague and offered a new suggestion each week on how she might come to conceive. Still, there erupted frustrated ranting and sobbing on occasion, and only Evangeline’s determined leadership kept some of the meetings from deteriorating into a crying jag.

“Scripture releases us from these afflictions, my dear,” opined Evangeline to Mrs. Merriweather one afternoon after Mrs. Fuchs had brought her newborn into the meeting, eliciting a jarring spate of tears. “Take up your Bible and turn to St. Luke: Let us read the passage on St. Elizabeth.”

And both women again read the passage aloud together for at least the 20th time:

And Zachary seeing him, was troubled: and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him: Fear not, Zachary, for thy prayer is heard: and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son. And thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have joy and gladness: and many shall rejoice in his nativity. For he shall be great before the Lord and shall drink no wine nor strong drink: and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb.

Evangeline smiled as she closed her Bible. “Didn’t St. Elizabeth know pure joy when she found herself at last able to know the fulfillment of motherhood, Mrs. Merriweather? Won’t you take comfort in knowing the Angel of the Lord looks after us all?”

1935

Meanwhile, the country sank further into depression, and horror stories emerged in the newspaper of widespread bankruptcy, mass unemployment, starvation, and a rapid withdrawal from hope among the Christian peoples of the world. Many a meeting of the Catholic ladies addressed with anger the anti-Christian sentiment of the new novels currently leaping off bookshelves in Europe and Canada. “Mr. Joyce mustn’t publish a word of his pornography in this country!” declared Evangeline vengefully. “I don’t understand his celebrity in France, where the authorities know full well this filth has been banned by the Vatican!”

One rainy, miserable afternoon in early November, Mrs. Stanley arrived at the meeting in a terrible frenzy: Her husband, Charles, had been laid off from his newsroom position at the Boston Globe, and there were no other prospects to be found in the city. With his wife and three children staring bleak poverty in the face, Mr. Stanley had no choice but to move them all down to New York City, where they could stay with his sister while he looked for work at one of the larger newspapers.

The other ladies tried to comfort their devastated colleague, but there was no way out of the reality: The Stanleys would lose their home, their children would lose their places in Boston’s better schools, and Mrs. Stanley would never again sit down with her dearest friends for an afternoon of Bible scholarship. She left the meeting little comforted and quite certain the sky was falling.

That night, Evangeline went to bed much troubled by her friend’s misfortune and found it impossible to get to sleep. Garv was nestled in a deep, comfortable slumber when his wife decided to unburden herself.

“Garv,” she whispered, nudging him. Her husband rolled over and groaned. “Garfield Atwood!” she insisted, an octave louder. “You wake up! I must have a word with you!”

“What?” he complained gruffly as he rolled back over and faced Evangeline. “Is the house on fire?”

“No …”

“Is one of the children broken out in chicken pox?”

“Garv, really,” snapped Evangeline. “The sky is falling down around us, and you slumber away as though it were the best of times. Well, I can’t ignore what’s going on in the world, and I can’t for the life of me find a wink of sleep tonight!”

“What do you mean the sky is falling?” barked Garv in disbelief. “Our Philip leads the 3rd grade in all subjects; the President has just signed a New Deal to take care of us for the rest of our lives; and Europe is still at peace after 15 years: How can the sky be falling with all of that going right? – Are you ill?”

“No, Garv.”

“Are the children gaunt and windblown? Do they shiver in the street for lack of clothing? Are they missing shoes?”

“They’re full of ham, quite warm, and sure to be the best-dressed at school tomorrow, but this isn’t about them! It’s about the world! If you’d bother to take a look outside the window once in a while, you’d see what a wicked planet we live on: Mrs. Stanley’s husband has lost his place at the Globe, and tomorrow they must all move down to Brooklyn to live with his sister in her three-room flat.”

Garv shook his head sleepily. “That’s what happens, my dear, when a lad thinks he’s all of Jack London.” The craftsman snorted contemptuously. “Newspapermen: They either bring bad news or arebad news, and every one of them who loses work has answered a prayer of mine.”

“Garv! The Stanleys are our friends! Their situation doesn’t begin to illustrate the danger that awaits all of us out there.” She squeezed her husband’s hand softly. “No one’s heard from Mrs. Merriweather in weeks … We’re afraid she may have found her way to the sanatorium.”

“I’m sure she’s alright,” swaggered Garv. “Ain’t her husband a grand, important lawyer up in Superior Court?”

“Who knows? And what does that matter? These are bad times for everyone, Garv, rich and poor – the worst anybody can remember! All those men lost their jobs at the Quincy Shipyard last summer, decent wages and pensions gone overnight: Surely their families are faring poorly … All the factories are shutting down, one by one, and a dollar buys next to nothing anymore … Coal is up, crime is up … If you believe the dailies, no place is safe …” Evangeline began to cry into the sleeve of Garv’s nightshirt.

“There, there, my darling … A man can do but one thing when the din of the world’s troubles comes knocking at his door like this,” he announced quietly as he stroked her auburn hair. “He puts up a thicker, stouter door.”

By the time the South Boston Bible Club next met, Evangeline was on fire. She’d studied her scripture nonstop for a week in an attempt to calm her general misgivings, and what she brought out of her reading was an inspired strategy to save the world. She believed in her heart that, just as betrayal by a few might spell doom for large portions of humanity, so prayerful action by a small group of faithful individuals might just call back God’s grace.

“Ladies, we live in a cruel world, amid days so thick with tragedy that neighbor spurns neighbor in an effort to escape destruction. This poverty, the rise of these atheists – it’s as though the Angel of Death has descended among us and enjoys free reign over our lives.” The other ladies grimly nodded their heads. “How long must we live under this yoke? Can we really do nothing to bring back happy days? Has our Lord abandoned us at last?” Flush with emotion, Evangeline pumped her fist in the air. “Our Lord will never abandon us! He promised Noah as much! He promised Moses and all the people, and our Lord is ever true to His word! – Open your Bibles to the Book of Exodus, Chapter 12, Verse 7: Could you read through Verse 14 for us, please, Mrs. O’Sullivan?”

Mrs. O’Sullivan straightened her eyeglasses, cleared her throat, and read:

And they shall take of the blood thereof, and put it upon both the side posts, and on the upper door posts of the houses, wherein they shall eat it (that is the lamb). And they shall eat the flesh that night roasted at the fire, and unleavened bread with wild lettuce. You shall not eat thereof anything raw, nor boiled in water, but only roasted at the fire; you shall eat the head with the feet and entrails thereof. Neither shall there remain any thing of it until morning. If there be any thing left, you shall burn it with fire. And thus you shall eat it: You shall gird your reins, and you shall have shoes on your feet, holding staves in your hands, and you shall eat in haste; for it is the Phase (that is the Passage) of the Lord. And I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and will kill every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast: and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments; I am the Lord. And the blood shall be unto you for a sign in the houses where you shall be; and I shall see the blood, and shall pass over you; and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I shall strike the land of Egypt. And this day shall be for a memorial to you; and you shall keep it a feast to the Lord in your generations, with an everlasting observance.

“Praise God!” pronounced Evangeline excitedly. “Here we have a scriptural account of dark, unsure times among a generation of Hebrew slaves: This same Angel of Death walked among them, wreaking havoc, spreading death! Yet he passed over their houses, for they’d marked their doorposts as the Lord commanded, marked them with the blood of the sacrificial lamb.”

“Evangeline Atwood!” scoffed Mrs. Fuchs. “Do you really intend to smear mutton over the doorway of your house, attracting flies, mice, dogs, and all manner of pests?!”

“Not blood, but a gesture, surely,” smiled Evangeline. “We must show Death where the Christians are and demonstrate to him that we are not afraid: We must let Boston and the world know that we trust in our Lord, that we will persevere, as did the faithful tribes of Israel who came out of slavery in Egypt. We will come out the other side of these cruel times free women, victorious women with our families intact and our heads held high!”

“What gesture, Evangeline?” cried Mrs. Fuchs, Mrs. Rosecrantz, Mrs. Lansdowne, and Mrs. O’Sullivan together, their faces tense with glee.

Evangeline glowed with certainty as she declared, “We must all paint our front doors Crisp Apple Red No. 9!”

One by one they appeared, splashes of deep red amid the drab grays and browns of South Boston. Evangeline herself had picked out the color at the hardware store, paid for the paint out of the South Boston Bible Club’s treasury, and distributed it among her fellow scholars in 16-ounce cans. Each woman asked her husband to do the painting on a Saturday afternoon, and, after some initial resistance over the impracticality of such a gesture, each stout oak door – planed, cured, stained, and sealed against decades of Boston grime and weather at Garv Atwood’s factory – was duly coated.

Garv was particularly reticent about the scheme: “I planed this front door myself out of a prize slab of Colorado ash, ever to be a barrier between me and the ruffians out there! Why should I attract attention to it?” Evangeline had to forcibly inject the fear of God into him with a rousing description of roaming devils, civil chaos, and the deep flood of misfortune that was coming: He applied the three coats of Crisp Apple Red No. 9 with an eye on the street for any sign of trouble.

The appearance of red doors where there had stood bland, uninviting doors for as far back as anyone could remember gained immediate notice: Parishioners on their way to Mass the next morning cringed at the doors and dreaded the arrival of yet another butcher, barber, or some worse merchant on their already overcrowded street. The postman more than once approached one of these doors scratching his head and wondering if he’d turned in at the wrong house.

“What’s this?” he mused uncomfortably to a passing policeman, pointing out one of the newly colored doors on his route. “Some kind of red-door cult popped up overnight?”

“It’s the ladies of the South Boston Bible Club,” sighed the policeman. “I caught wind of it last night from Mr. Rosecrantz down at the pub: The wife and her doom-and-gloom crowd mean to chase the devil from Summer St.”

“My, my,” nodded the postman. “Why stop at the devil?”

“And why stop at South Boston?” laughed the policeman. “Let’s throw up a long line of red doors on Prince St. in the North End as well! – If only it was that easy to chase the riff raff from a town …”

Over the next few months, good things began happening to those who’d taken the red paint from Evangeline.

One of Mrs. O’Sullivan’s children found not one but both of the gold earrings she’d lost at a church picnic on Revere Beach three summers before.

Mrs. Lansdowne miraculously escaped injury when the city bus she was riding one morning blew a tire and smashed into a utility pole: The driver and two front passengers were killed in the accident, and 16 other persons were taken to the hospital with head and neck injuries. Mrs. Lansdowne, meanwhile, was the only passenger to step out of the wreck without a scratch.

Mrs. Rosecrantz’s chronic back pain cleared up, and Mr. Rosecrantz was so impressed at his wife’s improved mobility that he painted their back door red, too.

Mrs. Fuchs’ recipe for apple strudel was published in a prominent New England lifestyle magazine, and she became somewhat of a minor celebrity in South Boston.

Garv Atwood’s door factory, heretofore hovering on bankruptcy due to competition from the new mills down South, received an order from a waterfront hotel for 1,352 fancy guestroom doors. The work meant at least four months of 16-hour days, including Saturdays, for the master planer. “Never mind if you see me not but on Sundays, my dears,” he smiled to his wife and children the night before the job was to commence, “for when we do meet, we’ll eat and drink well.”

Fr. Mark, pastor at St. Vincent de Paul, brought up the appearance of the red doors with Evangeline as the parish families came streaming out of Sunday morning Mass.

“Your gesture hearkens me back to my year abroad in Warsaw, where, at Passover, the Jewish women would drape strings of red wool over the doorposts of their apartments to commemorate their rescue from Pharaoh.” Fr. Mark paused. “Did you plan to leave your door this color? I can’t recall any instance of such a permanent homage to Passover.”

“Yes, our doors will stay red, Father,” replied Evangeline sweetly. “Colors and symbols are very important in our impressionistic world, and my colleagues and I want to remind people that Jesus will deliver us no matter what! We must take steps to save ourselves from the wickedness and snares of the devil, for we fall more of us into the clutches of the Angel of Death every day. – It’s time for us Catholics to stand up, show ourselves, and welcome Jesus into our homes.”

Fr. Mark puzzled over the unlikely image of a red door swinging open to reveal the politely visiting form of an earthly Jesus. “I can’t quite get my mind around your initiative, Mrs. Atwood,” he finally admitted. “While I can’t for the life of me determine why this activism might prove objectionable to our Lord, I can’t spot the steadfast Catholic virtue in it, either … I suppose it’s a noble enough gesture.”

Evangeline smiled broadly and left the priest with a comment that would ring in his ears all week. “It may not prove outside the realm of possibility that the doors of this church should also be painted red in the near future, Father.”

1936

More good fortune continued to shower over the little circle of Christian ladies. Mrs. Stanley’s husband was called back to work at the Boston newspaper, and soon Mrs. Stanley was in attendance again at the weekly meetings of the South Boston Bible Club.

“New York was awful,” she shuddered over a cup of tea in Evangeline’s parlor. “Everything was drab, gray, and wet, and then the wind started blowing and put a layer of black soot on us. Charles came home literally black and blue from Newspaper Row every night: They had him crawling around among the press rollers like an immigrant from dawn ‘til dusk! A more foreign, inaccessible, unfriendly place I’ve never seen than New York City.

“As soon as we were back in South Boston and moved into our new flat on K St., the first thing I did was have Charles paint our front door the infamous apple red, just as Evangeline advised. – Don’t you know that within six days, Charles had two pieces printed up in theGlobe, and I came across the most unlikely person at the Faneuil Hall market: Mrs. Joline Merriweather! And surprise upon amazement, ladies, if she isn’t eight months pregnant? She looks like a flower plucked from the desert, quite aglow and grateful, as though no woman in any other place has ever expected her first child.”

“Well, God bless her,” smiled Evangeline with a tear in her eye, “for it’s a miracle to one who’s waited so long.”

Three months later, Mrs. Merriweather herself showed up at the meeting, and an entire coop full of well-preened hens would’ve been hard-pressed to shower as much loud adoration upon her infant daughter as did that group of Christian ladies: There was hugging; there was kissing; there was cooing; there was crying.

“Her name is Joy St. Ann,” beamed Mrs. Merriweather. “Her arrival is more than a blessing: It’s God’s divine grace, truly unexpected and unearned. – She’s brought back to me all the lost joys of my life: Sunshine, birds singing, walks by the ocean … And how I’ve missed all of you!”

Evangeline, flush with a deep, emotional satisfaction, embraced Mrs. Merriweather and whispered in her ear, “Welcome back, my dear.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Atwood. – You know, I heard about your initiative to paint the ladies’ doorways, and, indeed, I had our man paint the doorway red, as you’ve suggested to those looking for grace, and, three weeks later, to my infinite surprise, I found myself expecting Joy St. Ann!”

“Heavens be praised,” nodded Evangeline. “Forever and everywhere: Heavens be praised!”

Ecstatic with the measure of success her red-door initiative had found, Evangeline kicked off a publicity campaign for the “Cause”. Meetings of the South Boston Bible Club were converted into letter-writing shifts: Mrs. Stanley, Mrs. Rosecrantz, Mrs. Fuchs, Mrs. O’Sullivan, Mrs. Lansdowne, and Mrs. Merriweather were put to work writing out a form letter on red notepaper describing the biblical importance of their mission and offering advice on where the proper color paint could be bought for the best price. These letters were distributed by the dozen into the mailboxes of the parish and the next few parishes over from theirs. Also, stacks were left on the counter in the dress shop and the market, and customers picked them up out of curiosity.

As news spread among the residents of South Boston of the improbable instances of benefit and blessing in the ladies’ homes, more red doors began to appear. From broad city thoroughfares to quiet country lanes, the phenomenon became so pronounced that Mr. Stanley’s newspaper assigned him to write up a piece on it. His first move, of course, was an interview with Evangeline Atwood.

“Time and again,” ran Evangeline’s testimony in a page-two feature the next Sunday morning, “over the past 18 months, reports have come to me by both visit and letter that those who’ve painted the main door of their dwelling the color Crisp Apple Red No. 9 have experienced a grace and peace that’s been missing from their lives for an awfully long time. It’s as though God has made a new covenant with those who would offer this gesture. The uplifting stories are endless; all you need do to corroborate my claim is approach any red door in South Boston and ask what special grace has befallen the household lately: What you hear will contrast starkly with the rest of the terrible news your newspaper is printing these days.”

Evangeline’s words, along with accounts from five other women who’d taken her advice, were printed under the title “The Red Door Society.” The piece caused an immediate sensation, and red doors began to appear all over Massachusetts and even as far away as Rhode Island.

The article eventually crossed the Archbishop’s desk, and, as he read the claims of “red door miracles”, he grew increasingly perplexed. He finally telephoned Fr. Mark at St. Vincent de Paul and demanded more information about his parishioner.

“She’s always been a first-rate Catholic,” insisted the pastor, “and her discussion of the red door effect I’ve considered altruistic enough to be harmless.”

“But have you personally heard this woman endorsing to your parishioners a special indulgence if they but paint their doors red?”

“Indeed, yes,” replied Fr. Mark. “As a matter of fact, she’s advised meto paint the church door red on a number of occasions … She even presented me with a gallon of her red paint.”

“Really?” scoffed the Archbishop. “And did you oblige her?”

Fr. Mark was silent for a time. “I did, Your Excellency,” he finally confessed.

The Archbishop hung up the telephone and immediately set to work on a pastoral letter to be posted in the next issue of the Pilot, the archdiocesan newspaper.

November 3, 1936

Dearly Beloved in Christ,

In the spirit of respectful reverence, some of you lately have been signifying an important biblical event – the Passover – by painting the doors to your homes red. This gesture is no doubt intended to announce to the world and our Heavenly Father that good and faithful people live in Boston’s neighborhoods and should be spared harm by the evil passing through the world.

You would seem justified in this gesture, given recent history: Who can be blamed for seeking a respite from the grinding unemployment, hunger, foreclosure, bankruptcy, crime, atheism, and general dark night hovering over our world? Furthermore, even if I wanted to, this office has no power whatsoever to dictate to you what color you paint your doors or any other part of your houses!

But I’ve read the article penned by Mr. Stanley in last week’s Globe, and, though I do not enjoy taking on the role of grump amid this outpouring of joy, I do feel compelled to warn those caught up in this phenomenon, not a few of whom are ordained and respected clergy, of the unintended consequences of such a gesture.

Let me draw on advice offered in St. Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians. At the time these letters were written, 20 years had passed since the Ascension of our Lord, and some of the new Christians were impatient for the Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgment of the world: It seems St. Paul’s new converts were weary of the evil passing through their hemisphere at the time and had complained to know exactly when Christ would return. St. Paul responded, “Be spiritually vigilant! As our Lord teaches, we must be found ready when He does come!” Similarly, I must ask all of you who have painted your doors red: Has God asked you to do this? Where in the Bible or the catechism does it advise the marking of your doorpost into posterity? Who is this new Moses who has heard from God that we should do this? Aren’t these leaflets, gossips, and cans of crimson housepaint really the hallmarks of Thessalonian impatience? Hasn’t St. Paul advised us against this type of jitteriness before? “Work!” St. Paul advises us. “If anyone will not work, let him not eat!” Is this red-door business really the work of Christ? Is it really anything one could call holy? I don’t think it is: It doesn’t add to the peace of our world, and it doesn’t feed the poor. If anything, it feeds idleness, no matter how well intended!

We all need grace, my beloved, every day of our lives, and God’s grace comes to us wholly unearned, a phenomenon free of man’s will. Grace is not “switched on” by a particular gesture. If you would truly seek grace in your lives, follow the path our Lord has shown to us: Behave in a humble, Christian manner; give to the poor; seek the Sacrament of Confession; and, above all, acknowledge Christ’s kingdom in the celebration of the Eucharist! Through the Eucharist do we honor the victory of God over the devil, our Lord’s triumph over death, and the salvation of the world!

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, I offer you something more meaningful and thrilling than the color of a door: I show you the power of the Eucharist and promise each of you eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Faithfully,

The Reverend Archbishop of Boston

When Evangeline read the Archbishop’s letter the following Saturday, her expression soured. She was defiant against the Archdiocese at the next meeting of the South Boston Bible Club.

“We must continue our crusade to paint red all of Boston’s doors, despite what the Chancellery says,” she announced testily to the group. “The Archbishop can have no clue of all the blessed things that have happened among us! Mrs. Lansdowne’s escape from that horrific crash; the birth of Mrs. Merriweather’s daughter: There’s every reason to see God’s grace in our work! Besides, he admits he has no power to dictate to us what color our doors should be.”

Mrs. O’Sullivan sat frozen in a perplexed trance as Evangeline escalated her diatribe against the archdiocesan officials. As soon as she found an opportunity to speak, Mrs. O’Sullivan blurted skeptically, “But what purpose do we serve by coming down on the wrong side of the Archbishop, Mrs. Atwood? And since when did this arts and crafts project become a crusade?”

1937

The letters and visits that had so buoyed Evangeline’s red-door campaign slowed to a trickle following the Archbishop’s letter and finally stopped altogether. It seems the populace opted to give His Excellency the benefit of the doubt and not risk looking like cultists: Parishioners no longer read her group’s missives, and shopkeepers refused to let her leave the leaflets on their counters. “Folks ain’t findin’ the red-door trick helpful no more!” was the common complaint. Evangeline’s campaign for reform and grace had officially become the latest crackpot idea.

The members of the South Boston Bible Club were stung by the sudden rejection, but no one expected the bad things to start happening.

There passed a scorching summer and several months of nothing happening at all to anyone, a rather boring interlude during which the streets were empty and the pubs were overflowing. Then, one hot day in August, Mr. Stanley lost his position at the newspaper a second time, and it was clear there would be no reconsideration: “I’m still getting flack over that red-door thing,” complained his editor. “Why don’t you go work for the Pilot? Their circulation is way up lately!”

When she heard the news, Evangeline was mystified. “Mr. Stanley must have done something to offend the Lord,” she opined broadly as the ladies sat around looking gloomily at one another the week after the Stanleys had tucked tail back to the black hollows of New York City. “He must’ve painted the door some other color!”

“Nope,” sighed Mrs. O’Sullivan. “It’s still bright red this very day, despite the arrival of a family of Chinese immigrants into the Stanleys’ old flat. It’s not that they could care less about Passover, either: It seems red is an Oriental color of good luck.”

In the fall, Mrs. Lansdowne caught tuberculosis and nearly died. Her permanent installment in a sanatorium wrecked her family and led to the fleeing of her husband out West; her four children were taken in by the Archdiocese.

Next, Garv Atwood’s door factory caught fire one night and burned to the ground in a terrifying inferno along the waterfront. While this blaze resulted in no deaths, the news from management that the factory would not be rebuilt threw 281 men out of work. “I saw this coming,” admitted Garv as he picked over the charred ruins of his workshop. “We weren’t competing with the Carolina mills anyway.” Shaking his head at the wrecked, buckled mess of black brick and metal, he confirmed morbidly to himself, “It’s Carolina or the rock-breaking crew for us, Evangeline.”

The announcement that the Atwood family would depart for North Carolina of course disbanded the South Boston Bible Club, and the few remaining ladies’ last meeting brought the worst news of all.

“Mrs. Merriweather’s baby has caught pneumonia and died in the Children’s Hospital,” shuddered Mrs. Rosecrantz with a deathly pallor. “No amount of nursing or medicine would bring her back, and the tragedy has left me unsure of the existence of angels anymore …” Tears spilled down her cheeks as she described her recent visit to the Merriweather household. “I’ve never seen a woman so thoroughly crushed, sunk on the floor, wasted away and shivering, staining the boards with her tears: If there was a way she could flip a switch and end her life, I’m sure she’d flip it without hesitation. – The whole affair has made me doubt my faith in God these past few days … I’m sore afraid now of the way I’ve become and where we’re all going. – What have we done to draw the devil’s ire? Was the Archbishop right after all? Was there no good in this red-door business? Was it truly an ungodly farce in the end?”

Mrs. O’Sullivan shook her head; with Evangeline gone, she’d become the unofficial chairwoman of the group. “You say ungodly, but let me remind you of something, Mrs. Rosecrantz,” piped in Mrs. O’Sullivan with feeling, “if anyone should know the Bible, it’s us, and shame on us for not seeing all along that the stock market crashing, the men thrown out of work, the women and babies sick and dying are hardly the vicious tales of Old Testament woe and Mosaic horror you make of them. Rather, it’s all about the New Testament: Agony in the garden, scourging at the pillar, crowning with thorns, carrying the cross, crucifixion.” She sighed and looked away with a wry smile. “We’re the Holy Women of Jerusalem, for crying out loud! When will we start reminding people there’s a resurrection to be had above all the rest of this disaster?”

1939

One bright Sunday morning in May, the same day the parish was to assemble and say a rosary for peace round the alabaster statue of Mary in the courtyard in front of the rectory, Fr. Mark made a few announcements from the altar at the conclusion of morning Mass.

“Remember we’ll all gather at 11:45 AM at the statue, rosaries in hand. – And yes, there will be Fenway red-hots and cake afterward.

“Recently a few of you have informed me of some rather wonderful developments among several of our parishioners who’d left the area a couple of years ago, and since we all shared in those sad times, I thought we should also collectively share in the good news together this morning.

“First, Charles Stanley has published his first-ever short story in a farmer’s journal out West. I haven’t seen it; the title of the story and the journal both escape me, but I believe Charles’ sketch had something to do with strapping cowboys, wild ponies, fishing, and great adventures … Anyhow, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley send their best and hope to return for a visit very soon.

“Mrs. Bridget Lansdowne has recovered her health enough to leave the hospital and take a flat in Dorcester. She’s even collected her children from the temporary home provided for them by Catholic Charities and has registered them in our parish school for next autumn. I understand she plans to resume Mass here at St. Vincent de Paul once her strength has returned fully. I expect you will all give her and her children a warm welcome when we see them again!

“Garv Atwood has taken a lucrative job as master planer in a coffin factory in North Carolina, and he sends us his best. – Mrs. Atwood also sends her fondest wishes …”

“Finally, you’ll remember the unfortunate set of circumstances surrounding the Merriweather family and the passing of their infant daughter, Joy St. Ann. Well, it seems Mrs. Merriweather is expecting again, and so we must all pray for the safety and health of mother and child.

“Oh, yes – before I forget: The front doors of the church are to be repainted a pleasant, dark green Tuesday morning, by decision of our new janitor, Mr. Kirkpatrick. Please use the side entrance through all the rest of this week, and we’ll see each of you back here next Sunday … May the Lord be with you!”

(with apologies to G.M.H.)

Stove-knobs, strange numbers, goblin-glinting dials,
Flame-plates atop, caged conflagration hides,
Broil, bake, baste, burn, bent digit-discs deride—
O how to cook Spaghetti-O’s at whiles?
Filth-floor no-man-mopped, wretched refuse piles:
No trash-can-space for pizza boxes I'd
Consumed last night: alas, they're now inside
The stove whose every knob I've blindly twiled.
Enough! Extinguisher, thou scythe of might,
Gush gas at gaping jaws of jagged flame.
Away, Sith smoke tsunami, leering light,
Piss off, thou smoke alarm of blaring blame:
Th’apartment shall not be destroyed tonight,
Nor my Spaghetti-O’s be lost in shame!

Palest is his face to me
my dearie.
Tis a tint
Of the overcook of mil’.
All hint of heat
Has left it.

Here ran his horse and hied through the heather
and ran a pretty mile from the brink o’ the river.
The eddies are ruddy and dark in the gloamin’
the laverock sighs amid the river a-foamin’.
The heather was hewed in at the hoo’
purple hued in scarlet cut in the roo’
coarse is the line run by the horse
A meander of many which crushes the gorse.
And hewed was his frame as it lay by the byrne
by axe and by claymore and by rude Englishmen
and dark lay his locks, the rings of his hair
black as the mail-coat he suffered to wear.
Like t’ bite of the spider that comes not to heal
the break of the body will ne’er be weal.
The tale of his flesh lay open to wonder
the smile of his wounds tore our dreams asunder.
For we hoped he would gang as he was when he left
with bright mail-coat shining and standard aloft
our spirits would lift in the burn of his gaze
and the darkness would wilt for the smile of his face.
So Our Laird returns from over the main
and the pibroch rejoices to hear him again.
Of green soil a barrow his sins will atone
that our Laird of Barra may never leave home.

Ejected, exiled, homeless, Eden banned,
   no fires called Adam home at end of day
   but Eve’s; and there alone where Sarah lay
held nomad Abram any share of land.
Beside the garden locked seemed naught but sand
   to Solomon his court in royal array;
   and home enough was Egypt’s farthest quay
to Joseph, if but Mary held his hand.
No, on this earth man has no fixed abode,
   but seldom reaping what few fields he sows.
     Yet to this rootless, shipwrecked traveller’s life
comes oft a woman’s heart to share the load,
   be tent and hearth, and go where’er he goes:
     God pities him and fashions him a wife.

For Blaise Gerard Kurtz

To him who overcometh, says the Lord,
A white stone will be given whereupon
Is writ his name, known only to himself
And God Most High: his true, eternal name.
I AM has sent us, given us His Word
(The Word Who is God and is with God too),
By word brought forth the firmaments of earth
And peopled them with everlasting souls:
We see His Name in bird and flame and breath,
And every blade of grass; and yet–and yet–
These are but adumbrations of that Name.
The Holy Name, in verity, is Joy,
Light, Beauty, Truth, Might, Goodness, Unity,
The Deeper Magic ancienter than Time
And Love immortal from before the Dawn–
A Word that only He can fully hear,
Within the borders of the Triune Land.
But every child of God perceives one part,
One aspect of His nature’s majesty:
The quintessential destiny of each,
Which none can apprehend but he and He.

To him who overcometh. May we all!
St. Francis of Assisi, long ago,
Made pictures in the snow and cried aloud
That they sufficed him for a wife and child.
And why, to him, that sacrament was barred
The rest of us need never understand;
We know enough: his yearning was denied,
But in its place from wounded hands divine
Received an infinitely greater love.
Perhaps the snow of his fidelity
Reflected or foretold his final name,
Its graces shining backward through his years?
Perhaps our absolutely brightest days
Are shadows thrown by what we may become.

And he who overcometh shall become
A splendour of humility refined
Before the Lord and men. Death opens all:
But there is much in life to overcome
Ere we embark upon the true crusade.
We bear, each one of us, a blackened stone–
Sin-heavy millstones lashed around our necks–
Through weeping vales beneath a shadowed sky–
Unhallowed vultures watch for us to fall–
oft enough we doubt our enterprise–
For sweet and seemly seem our sins betimes.
(Late, O Ancient Beauty, have I loved Thee!)
So toil and sorrow, death and Hell’s array,
Beleaguer every mile-post on the road:
But wise and loving counsels guide our steps,
And strong and loving shoulders bear our weight,
When we would falter, fail, or turn aside.
And far beyond the iron and the flame,
A place of light has been prepared for us,
A mansion in our Father’s holy House;
And there, at last, we shall be told our names.

After living on both coasts of the United States, working jobs as diverse as waitress and lawyer, surviving alcoholism, cancer, and divorce, and undergoing a life-altering conversion, Catholic writer Heather King might be said to have seen it all. Her most recent memoir, Redeemed, strives to set down these experiences and more as viewed through the fresh eyes of a new Catholic. In her writing, King expresses a truth that her heroine Flannery O’Connor described: that, though faith may seem to some a “peculiar and arrogant blindness,” it can be an “extension of vision” when the believer engages and records reality with honesty and clarity. Or, as King puts it herself, faith enables us to see in a unique way “the meat and the splendor and the wackiness and the grittiness” of the world and of our experience. It must be working: King’s previous memoir, Parched, has been widely praised; her writing has appeared in recent Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies; and she writes commentary for NPR’s All Things Considered. Recently, Ms. King agreed to share her thoughts on vision, faith, fiction, writing, and life with the readers of Dappled Things.

Your book about your conversion to the Church, Redeemed, is written through a very Catholic lens, but with both Catholics and non-Catholics in mind for an audience. How has it been received among those of your friends and co-workers who are not Catholic and those who are?

Heather King: The majority of my friends are not Catholic. Many were raised Catholic and have a really firmly entrenched hostility against the Church. For the most part they’re very courteous and careful not to openly “dis” Catholicism. As you know, some people have terrible experiences with Catholicism through given people or schools. I don’t want to purport in any way to imply their experience wasn’t as horrible as it was, so it’s a delicate subject. We try to extend every courtesy to one another. I don’t have a ton of friends who are able to exult with me in my faith and my work, but I do have eight or ten practicing Catholic friends, and a great priest friend who I talk about in the book. They’re all very supportive of and happy for me.

Just as I’d hoped, though, people in general don’t have to be Catholic to respond to this book. It’s about our humanity: questions like “what are we here for?”, “how are we to live?”, and “what is our purpose on earth?”…. I think we’re all hungry for spiritual writing that is neither preachy nor dry but just has the meat and the splendor and the wackiness and the grittiness of our everyday life. That’s where it all happens: it’s where we find how broken we are; it’s where we find Christ.

In the course of telling how you came to Catholicism, you talk about Church teachings that are different or countercultural. What insight did this process give you about how to approach countercultural truths that you know may not be well received by some of your readers?

HK: By countercultural, do you mean non-PC? [laughs] Our culture is of course in many ways gruesome and abhorrent. That comes as much from the left as from the right. I think any real follower of Christ [is] after the truth. So that’s how I approach my faith…. Think about someone like Flannery O’Connor. Is she “countercultural?” In one way, no: she buys and sells real estate, she lives on a farm and tends her birds. But always, I think, if you’re really keyed into Christ, you’re in some way countercultural. You don’t calculate to be, but that’s just the way it is, because the culture is not and has not been Christ-based…. Really, the only cool thing that [you] can ever be is totally yourself. You don’t have to feel this need to make yourself different. We’re all different enough without trying to be, without having to attach our identities to a particular political stand.

Take abortion for instance. In the ’70s, the received wisdom was that women could now be like guys, sleep around and, if [they] got pregnant, just have an abortion…. That’s just one simply pernicious cultural lie. You don’t have to attach any political label to it. To have an abortion has infinite, eternal consequences. Every woman I’ve ever talked to who’s had one will tell you that. It resonates in the heart, and our hearts and souls are the basic compass for our lives. We have to listen to them….That’s how I approach subjects like euthanasia and capital punishment–I love the Church because it stands for life in all circumstances. It totally embraces our defects and diminishment as all part of the universal plan. You don’t have to fix [life], you don’t have to sanitize it: you can accept it in all of its bloodiness and brokenness and all of our not knowing what to do with it…. The moment you purport to know what’s going to save someone else from suffering, often it’s really yourself you want to save from suffering. We don’t want the discomfort, the awkwardness, the drain of time and energy, of interacting with old people, crazy people, crying babies, people who “love” us too much, or not enough. But that’s what makes us human. That’s what we’re here for.

[In much of American culture] the impulse seems to be to figure out what you’re against and make fun of it to let people know you’re superior. You want to make yourself impervious from having to be vulnerable and awkward and not know the answers. It’s harder to figure out what we’re for. It’s hard to leave yourself open to the love and connection we all crave yet all keep at bay with our own defenses and self-promotion. We tend to think, “If I promote myself enough, that will make me happy.” It only works for five minutes, though, and then what? You’re forced inward…. In the Litany of Humility there’s a phrase: “From the desire of being preferred, deliver me, O Jesus.” The desire of being preferred is a very real bondage, and I’m prey to it big-time…. I think we have a huge fear of being forgotten, overlooked, falling through the cracks–more than ever with the Internet. If you’re in any kind of public eye or have potential to be, there’s this real impulse, I think, to grab attention…. We all should try to get our work out there, we all need and “deserve” a certain amount of attention, but I have to remind myself all the time, and this is why I’ve been going to Mass every day, to ask: Why am I living my life? Why am I writing? It has to be for the glory of God, even when I want the credit. [Remember] the parable of the woman at the well? Christ talks to the Samaritan woman about living water, and she runs to the town shouting, “You’ve got to see this guy, he’s unbelievable, he knows everything about me.” And everybody just looks up, like they’ve been sitting in front of the TV watching COPS, and says, “Huh?” You want to tell people about this amazing thing you’ve found, this “living water,” and most of the time they’re not very interested. You have to accept that they’re not very interested [while] not being pissed off, not getting discouraged, and not falling into despair. Just keep on making your little lame pathetic movements [laughs] toward the light. Just like in His day, there are always going to be a few people who are just desperate and bereft and lonely and hungry enough themselves…. They’ll find you eventually, or you’ll find each other.

Redeemed is a story of two new beginnings: your conversion to Catholicism and your entrance into the writing life. How do you view the relationship between the life of faith and the writing life?

HK: In a way, Redeemed is a story of how I came to writing, of writing as vocation or as religious calling. That is certainly how I see it. It’s no accident that I had a lifelong desire to write; I came to it relatively late in life, partly because of my drinking itself, the logistics of being constantly hungover and physically and emotionally debilitated, but partly because alcoholism, or any addiction, always squelches what’s most truly vital and passionate in us. Subconsciously, I think, we’re afraid of a “call” and avoid, it, sometimes for decades, or even worse, forever, because we sense it’s going to mean giving up everything, dying to ourselves, requiring something mysterious and glorious and dreadful. That’s how I view writing: as a call.

It’s also no accident that I came to the Church and writing at the same time. Even though I wanted to be a writer, I didn’t have the ground from which to write before I became Catholic. I didn’t have the convictions, the view of the world, my little patch of ground to stand on. I’m not saying I’ve figured everything out, but now I believe certain things, so I have a lens through which to view the world.

I literally order my life around writing: you need time to write and time to ponder, to let things ferment, percolate. Because I write about the spiritual path, I take it as a real matter of integrity to cultivate a discipline and live my life in such a way that I will have something to write about; that my path is a path toward compassion and truth and love…. You start to think about how you spend your time, what kind of movies you see, what your relationship is to food (for us food is sacrament), how you keep your apartment, what kinds of things you talk about with your friends. You start to see, “I can’t have the smallest bit of me that’s still corrupt or disordered or overattached.” Of course you still do, but you’re way more aware of it, and how that stuff stands in the way of your relationship to Christ. Spiritual principles always apply across the board: what’s good for me is good for my writing, is good for the world, is good for my relationship to God. It’s all one seamless, dynamic, organic process.

I truly believe writing saves the world. Books saved my life when I was drinking: I’m not sure I would have survived if not through what was basically my only connection to reality: literature. Now that I write, I know about how these people burned their lives out. If you’re really writing hard, you can sometimes feel a sense of: “Wow, I might die earlier than I might have otherwise if I keep this up.” It’s not that you’re not taking care of yourself–I do, I eat right and exercise–but when you give every single thing you have to it there can be a sense of being consumed by writing. You willingly allow yourself to be consumed. If only the corollary to that were that your writing is just genius. Immortal. [laughs] Of course quality matters, but as Flannery O’Connor said, we’re not judged on our gracefulness or success but on how hard we use what we’ve been given. We can all have some kind of peace in knowing that, even though maybe no one’s ever going to notice our writing, painting, music, cooking, mothering, work at the factory, this incredible job putting together a motor, or whatever it is we give to the world–but if we do it with incredible attention and gratitude and love, that’s why the world has survived as long as it has, and that’s what’s going to give it the chance to continue to survive. Writing is the most important thing in the world for me, and I consider myself blessed beyond all imagination to have found my way to this vocation that means so much.

It almost sounds monastic in a way.

HK: I don’t think you have to be an ascetic to be a writer. I don’t think you have to choose between, say, having a family and kids and being a writer. But it may be you can’t have both fully. No matter what, though, you have to have some kind of community–as a human being, never mind as a writer–and as a Catholic in particular: a community you are accountable to, that you have to show up to, where you contribute your little widow’s mite. Community is essential, because otherwise you get too crazy. [laughs] You need to be tempered, and you need people. When you think of the truly great female writers–Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Flannery O’Connor–so many of them did live a sort of monkish existence. I’m not sure whether that existence comes about when you put writing first, or whether you become a writer because you’re drawn to a monkish existence. I’ve always had sort of hermitic tendencies myself. As long as “monastic” conveys something rich and full, that resonates with all the feeling of the world, then yes, writing can be monastic in that sense. But I think everybody longs for . . . spiritual intimacy, moral intimacy. That’s been a big ache in my life, particularly these last years since I got divorced. There are struggles and gaps and massive, sometimes searing loneliness, but as [Thomas] Merton and a whole bunch of people have said: as long as we can descend into the loneliness and not try to fill it, we can see that this is the loneliness of Christ in the Garden, the loneliness of humanity. We can see it as a kind of gift and richness. I think, in a way, loneliness is the scourge of the twenty-first century. Technology has isolated us further than ever before. But maybe, if we can delve into the depths of that loneliness, we’ll find riches and a new way of connecting.

Finally: I’m dying to ask you about Flannery O’Connor. She’s your literary heroine, and mine too. What do you love so much about her? What can we learn from her?

HK: First of all, she’s just a genius, genius writer. I really think someone like this only comes along once or twice a century. She’s comparable to Dostoyevsky or Kafka in that way. You read the first sentence of her story, and you just gasp with glee because you know you’re in unbelievably great literary and moral hands. She’s funny; she has a gimlet dark eye; she has beautiful concrete details; she situates you immediately in the midst of the characters and the struggle…. Some stories that I read in the New Yorker: three paragraphs in, I don’t know what the story is about, and I couldn’t care less because the author is trying so hard to be clever or edgy or abstruse. There’s often a withholding, a stinginess of heart, in these stories that seem to be written in an insular, hip, self-consciously edgy little world, for that same world, and that tell us nothing about ourselves, if you can even get to the end of them.

Maybe they’ve lost sight of what it was they loved about literature in the first place–like the critic in Tobias Woolf’s short story “Bullet in the Brain,” who literally has to get shot in the head before he remembers why he began reading?

HK: Yes. You don’t convey [experience] by being boring and oblique, even if you’re writing about hateful, shallow, dull characters. You convey it the way Flannery did, by writing out of absolute love for the world, knowledge of your own contribution to and complicity in the brokenness of the world, sorrow at the brokenness of the world, and your sense of wonder, of mystification . . . Flannery O’Connor used vivid, vivid details, so firmly grounded in a sense of place. It’s not necessarily my place or the place of most of us, but because it is so specific, it becomes part of our place and our psyche. Then the characters: Mrs. May, Hulga in “Good Country People”–people who, like many of us, are arrogant, cynical, holier-than-thou, wanting to be holy in the wrong way, and they get blown apart by grace. Grace is always astonishing and comes in a way we wouldn’t expect and, most of the time, don’t want….

Then, of course, [Flannery's] writing was so hard-won. Her life was one of suffering and isolation. Disfigured from the cortisone with which she was being treated for lupus, she had to move back to the dairy farm with her mother. She was isolated from the slick New York “literary world”. . . She died so young, but she came to see that moving back to the farm was what she needed, a blessing for her writing. If you read her letters, they’re utterly devoid of sentimentality. There’s not a shred of self-pity. There’s one where she’s practically on her deathbed and she says to her friend, “Pray for me.” You can’t read it without bursting into tears because you know she’s really near the end, she’s never asked anyone to pray for her before. And she’s still writing, literally revising stories on her deathbed. She’s burning herself out.

I.

Some years ago, I volunteered at the San Miguel school where for the past ten years the LaSallian Brothers have run a low-cost middle school in the center of Chicago’s most violent area, giving Latino children from low-income families the opportunity to receive a quality education. San Miguel is run out of an ancient parish building, all brick walls and tile floors. Classrooms are cavernous and musty, ripe with the scent of old chalk and cleaning agents. Windows dimmed with years of dust and grit overlook the school’s tiny parking lot, which is framed by a rusty chain-link fence. The dilapidated building sat unused for years until the Brothers moved in, and as time has passed, art classes have brightened it with murals and paintings. One such work of art is a ten-foot image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, painted in vibrant blues, greens, and yellows, watching lovingly over the main stairwell.

During my time at San Miguel, I went to daily Mass with the students and faculty. Their church is small and low-ceilinged, rich with years of incense and prayers, its atmosphere thick with memory. The priest who celebrated daily Mass was newly ordained and answered easily to the title of “Padre” or “Father.” Every day he said Mass in two languages, Spanish and English, calmly and fluidly switching between the two.

After several days of working at San Miguel and attending Mass there, I was struck by the unique beauty of the liturgy. Granted, I had sat through many hundreds of Masses as a congregation member and altar boy, but this one was different. I could not put my finger on it until we stood and held hands to recite the Lord’s Prayer and the words fell from the lips of several hundred people: Our Father, who art in heaven, santificado sea tu nombre. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, en la tierra como en el cielo. The way the students and faculty recited it tugged on my spirit in a new way. I could feel the past and present blend in each sentence, beginning in English and ending in Spanish like footfalls—the spiritual stride of children, daughters and sons of immigrants, part of this country and yet part of other countries, their Catholicism binding them to this church which was not part of either place.

II.

Being citizens of an extremely young nation, we American Christians sometimes forget how ancient our faith is. We forget that our roots are in the Orient, in the streets of Nazareth and behind the walls of old Jerusalem. Sometimes it seems that in our collective American Christian subconscious, Jesus speaks English instead of Aramaic. But attending Mass that day at San Miguel and reciting the Our Father (or the Padre Nuestro, if you will) made it startlingly clear to me how our faith is intertwined not just with our native culture, but with the very words we speak. Christianity being the immigrant religion that it is, there is no better context in which to explore the blending of language and faith into prayer.

I remember how, as a small child, I would go to church on Saturday evenings with my grandma and watch her pray a decade of the Rosary after receiving Communion. At the time, I couldn’t make the connection between the Hail Marys my teachers recited before class and the Ave Marias my grandma prayed during church. Looking back at the experience years later, I still hesitate to claim that they are truly the same prayer. Instead they reveal two Marys, unique but complementary: an English Mary and a Latin Mary who, though different, both aid us in drawing closer to God.

III.

Many years before penning his fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien was inventing languages as the cultural backdrop for his imaginary world of Middle Earth. No one knows how many hours he spent toying with sentence construction, verb tenses, and syntax, but the result was an astoundingly realistic and beautiful language called Sindarin. Staunch Roman Catholic that he was, Professor Tolkien couldn’t resist rendering the Hail Mary in his new language. It begins “Ai Meri, meleth-phant, hîr ah-le…” Tasting these strange words, one can’t help but wonder if Tolkien found another Mary, another facet in the gem of prayer and language.

IV.

Long before he became a priest, John Paul II was a college student studying linguistics and writing poetry at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, a bookish young man with a passionate love for Poland and her language. When he was elected pope in 1978, John Paul began his pontificate by addressing over 250,000 Italian pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square in their native tongue, something no pope had ever done. Ignoring the usual sonorous Latin blessing, he boldly proclaimed “Non temete! Be not afraid!” and instantly won the admiration of the whole of Italy. John Paul became in that moment a Pole and an Italian, crossing cultural boundaries by shaping language in prayer. He cemented the bond of friendship with the members of his new diocese by asking them for assistance: “I don’t know if I can make myself clear in your … our Italian language. If I make a mistake, you will correct me…” Showing himself to be a true son of the Church, John Paul reached out to touch all Christians that day, rejoicing in his faith in a new context—a truly “catholic” thing to do.

The word “catholic” comes from the Greek katholou, which means “according to the whole” or “universal.” But by no means does “catholic” imply that the church is the same everywhere. Instead, the many parishes and communities that make up the Catholic Church draw upon a universal Christ who is manifested through the lenses of language and culture. The Igbo people of Nigeria and the French-Canadian people of Québec worship two different faces of the same God who is, in essence, a mystery. He reveals Himself to us in many ways, according to our understanding. Like pieces in a puzzle, the ways in which cultures understand God add up until they are far, far greater than the sum of their parts. This truly universal experience of the divine—English, Spanish, Latin, and Italian—almost scrapes the surface of the Creator’s infinity.

V.

After Mass in Chicago, we crowded into the main stairwell to head back up to class. Everyone else was laughing and talking loudly, but I stayed silent. I absently toyed with the Miraculous Medal around my neck, a small gold pendant engraved with the figure of the Virgin Mary who appeared to Sister Catherine Labouré in France almost two centuries ago. Turning the corner, the painted image of the Virgin of Guadalupe welcomed me back into San Miguel.

Compelled, I reached out with my other hand and touched the hem of her dress, feeling the smooth texture of the paint beneath my calloused fingertips. I accepted both Marys—the dark-skinned Mary of the Mexican barrios and the light-skinned Mary of the French convents. I was a Caucasian man in a sea of Latino children, immigrant children who knew better than I what it meant to be connected to many traditions, many homes. These children prayed to a God who knew all these things, a God who reveled in the sign of contradiction they were to the world, children who lived on violent streets, in poor neighborhoods, children who fought, apologized, argued, and prayed together. They were valiant children, courageous children, fighting their way towards heaven. Watching them clamber up the stairs to class, I prayed. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, en la tierra como en el cielo.

Inside, unseen innards
can goosh and grow and mix
a dash life- color, and down
in sticky strands to fluff
and feather flower forth,
a chicken, not an omelet

Not an over-easy
nor a cheesy scramble
nor a freckled lizard
nor a stippled trout
nor a Bengal tiger
nor a gilded vase

And it is well one would wonder
“why?” What wills or miracles,
will well proportion chickens
from this, an oblong thing?

—Matthew Crane