Finding Redemption in a Darkened City

“It’s important for us to be apostles and evangelists for the faith in the world today,” a priest advised me yesterday. “Especially in today’s society…and in this city…”

Today I ventured into Manhattan in another vain attempt to visit a specialty tea shop. On the train Scotty and I encountered a group of commuters around our age. They were discussing McCain’s vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin.

One passenger proclaimed, “I don’t understand the big deal about her keeping that baby. She should have just aborted it.”

After listening to a few rounds of the same my husband decided to jump into the conversation. “By saying that a particular baby is better off dead, you are essentially saying that all people in that condition should be dead,” he logically explained.

“No it should be the mother’s choice, and she can choose to prevent a baby from suffering with a horrible disease.”

“Who are we to decide who should be allowed to live or die? I’m not qualified to make such decisions; Are you?”

“Sure, it’s a decision we all have a right to make. In many cases it’s better to end a life than to allow further suffering.”

“But what if there is meaning to be gained in enduring suffering. For example, many people in Russia have endured great suffering, but they also have found meaning in that suffering. That’s what makes Russian novels so good….”

At this point we arrived at our stop, picked up a friend at Penn Station, and switched trains to go to the tea shop. This tea shop is located in an area of the city that can best be described as “the gay district.” Rainbow flags adorn Christopher street and shop windows contain all various types of pornographic videos, attire, and sex toys. Luckily the tea shop is only two blocks away from the Metro station.

We reached the tea shop only to find it closed for Labor Day weekend. The three of us decide to go to the giant four-story Barnes and Noble instead. Seeing a book about Flannery O’Conner, we discussed the dark quality of her novels and the way in which redemption plays out in strange ways. I bought a book of Wendell Berry poetry.

Returning home from the day’s excursion, I thought about that conversation on the train as we waited for the BX 12 bus to take us home. The 12 bus usually runs slow, so it offered plenty of time for reflection. Two children were waiting at the bus stop, a boy and a girl. The little girl pointed at the night sky, saying “Look, a shooting star.” I directed my gaze upwards only to see a plane, but for a moment I also pretended to see a star shooting across the starless New York sky.

My mind wandered to this morning’s mass. The gospel reading was from Luke 14:1-11. In this passage Jesus heals a man with dropsy on the Sabbath, even though this scandalized those around him. In the homily, the priest said that we should avoid unnecessary work on Sundays except when opportunities to provide acts of charity present themselves.

As the plane flew out of site, I looked once again at the intersection where our bus would arrive.
Hobbling across the street was a woman carrying a lady on her back with deformed legs. An eight year old girl was following behind. The lady with deformed legs clearly could not walk, and the woman was a bit small to be carrying her. A few people offered them seats at the bus stop, but they were trying to get to the 2 bus stop and didn’t need the 12 bus. Most people paid no attention to the strange group.

My husband offered the lady assistance and tried supporting the woman with deformed legs. She would not cooperate with his assistance, wanting to be completely carried while saying something about not wanting her child to see her in this condition. She had clearly been drinking.

A sweet lady wearing a t-shirt advertising a children’s home and some gaudy plastic beads around her neck stopped to analyze the situation. Meanwhile one generous woman had offered the group some money to take a cab, which she was attempting to flag down. The woman with the beads said that someone should call a priest to pray for the lady with deformed legs. She looked at my husband and me and told Scotty to take care of himself and to take care of me in my pregnant state.

When the cab finally arrived, it took Scotty several minutes to pick up the woman and put her in the car. Meanwhile, I held the lady’s belongings while keeping watch over the child.

The woman with the beads crossed herself a few times, as Scotty and I prayed silently that the group would make it home safely.

Now sitting in my apartment, in the company of my loving husband and precocious cat, I am trying to make sense of the days events. Fr. Miara was right yesterday, we are called to be apostles and evangelists in a dark and starless city, in a culture that so often embraces death instead of life. When the opportunity to defend human dignity presents itself, we should jump at the chance, whether in conversations or through acts of charity.

I found a poem fitting for this city and its people while browsing my new Wendell Berry book:

Desolation

A gracious Spirit sings as it comes
and goes. It
moves forever
among things. Earth and flesh, passing
into each other,
sing together.

Turned against that song, we go
where no singing is
or light
or need coupled with its yes,
but spite, despair, fear, and
loneliness.

Unless the solitary will forbear,
time enters the flesh
to sever
passion from all care,
annul the lineage of consequence.

Unless the solitary will forbear,
the blade enters the ground
to
tear the world’s comfort
out, root and crown.

I am thankful for small lights in this dark city, for people willing to help those in need through prayer or direct assistance. I am thankful for my husband who provides me with such a wonderful example of Christ’s love and compassion. And I pray that in some way that God’s grace will be poured out upon this city, even if we experience redemption in dark and unexpected ways.

I Love this Missal

If anyone is interested in learning more about the extraordinary rite (Latin mass). I highly recommend this missal. I have been using it since we started attending an extraordinary rite mass in New York. It's very easy to follow, and I am now slowly becoming able to keep up with the flow of the liturgy and understand what is going on. Not only does this missal contain all the traditional prayers and some neat meditations, it also contains a copy of the Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum. I found mine at Halo Works.

Vandalizing Criminals or National Heroes?

Here's a fun news article from The Independant:

The two are the somewhat nit-picking brains behind the Typo Eradication Advancement League (Teal), a sort of provisional wing of the Plain English Campaign. In March, it launched an Outreach Mission to correct grocers' apostrophes and spelling faux pas – coast to coast. Armed with only Tipp-Ex, chalk, and permanent markers, Messrs Deck and Herson travelled nearly 12,000 miles in 73 days, and identified 423 instances of signage marred by mistakes in spelling, punctuation and grammar. They made 231 corrections.

[snip]

A star of local spelling bees as a child, Mr Deck set up Teal after attending his five-year reunion at Dartmouth College. He said: "I was speaking with some of my classmates who were becoming doctors and lawyers, and other people who could have an impact on the world and I started to wonder how I might be able to do that... fixing typos was what I came up with... I've always been aware of typos wherever I go [and] I figured that it was a national problem".

Soon Mr Deck had founded Teal, complete with a website, blog and a typo correction kit. The tour began on 5 March from Mr Deck's town of Somerville, Massachusetts, and led the pair through more than 20 states correcting public signs and "other venues where innocent eyes may be befouled by the vile stains on the delicate fabric of our language," according to the Teal website, jeffdeck.com. Asked if it had all been worthwhile, he said: "Certainly! There are a lot more people out there now carrying Sharpies [a brand of marker pen] around with them."

And Mr Deck and chums are collecting a fan base. One Ruth M Newton, for instance, wrote to the Teal blog: "Bless your heart for reassuring me that I am not the only spelling and punctuation nut left in North America."

At the Grand Canyon National Park, the men had found a 60-year-old sign with a misplaced apostrophe and a missing comma. They duly whipped out Tipp-Ex and pen, and made the corrections. They then spotted that "immense" was spelled as "emense". They were shocked, but stayed their hands. Mr Deck later wrote: "I was reluctant to disfigure the sign any further.... Still, I shall be haunted by that perversity, "emense" in my train-whistle-blighted dreams."

And for more grammar fun, I direct your attention to The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks, where I found the picture for this post.

Foods of Home

Awe, for a little taste of home this morning! After mass, Scotty and I enjoyed a nice big breakfast eggs, bacon, and pancakes with ribbon cane syrup. I have a particular fondness for ribbon cane syrup. My grandmother grew up on a syrup farm in East Texas where they used contraptions attached to horses to extract the juices from sugarcane. These juices were boiled and stirred to make homemade ribbon cane syrup. As a child my mom would take me to the syrup festival in her hometown of Henderson, TX. Here I got to watch people making syrup in the same way, and we would often purchase a jar of the dark, thick syrup to enjoy at home.

A while back I was able to procure a large jar of ribbon cane syrup at a pecan farm somewhere along the drive between Longview and Waco. The jar survived our move to New York, and eating it on my pancakes this morning reminded me a little bit about my family history and the East Texas woods where I grew up.

I have mentioned before the importance of food in a sacramental worldview, but here I'd like to discuss the importance of food to community and tradition. There are many different sorts of people in my neighborhood, but mostly Italians. At the grocery stores one can find homemade pasta, canned Italian seasonings, and a huge selection of various Italian pastry items. The foods here serve this community, reminding them of home and heritage. In the restaurants recipes are passed down through the generations to guarantee authentic tasting Old World food to visitors. Italians serve their guests huge quantities of their delicious cuisine, and it is always polite to leaving a little on your plate to show the host that he was more than generous in the abundance offered.

When I first arrived here, I was excited about all the new foods. With the yummiest Italian food I've ever tasted, a pizzeria that claims "the best pizza in the universe," and a clam house serving super fresh seafood all located on my block, how can I not be more than thrilled? Unfortunately all the gourmet offerings of Little Italy, have now begun reminding me that this is not my home. This is not the food of my family or Scotty's.

We can't even get standard ingredients to make the foods we grew up with. I can't make chicken spaghetti, a recipe that has been passed down in my family and improved upon each time. I certainly lack the essential ingredients needed to make a Cajun style gumbo, a technique I learned from Scotty's mom. And don't even get me started about the lack of Tex-Mex.

This is not to complain (too much). I love the Italian community in our neighborhood, and I'm hoping to learn how to make a mean homemade lasagna while we're living here. It's just that in a lot of ways food can also serve to show how isolated we currently are right now, away from our families, friends, and familiar local dishes. When we leave here, we will probably leave with a little bit of this Italian culture in us, perhaps in the food we cook. In the same way I picked up making Cajun lasagna, I'll learn to include authentic Italian food among my usual meals. But for now, I miss the combination of Southern comfort food and Tex-Mex I grew up with, which is why I am so happy to have this ribbon cane syrup. It reminds me of my family and the community in East Texas.

P.S. If anyone in Texas is reading this, send Rotel Tomatoes!

About the picture: Texas sugarcane plant

The truth about the bourgeoisie

In honor of starting grad school in a few weeks, which will undoubtedly include reading various social theorists on class struggle, I bring you this clip from Metropolitan. Heck, I also just happen to really like this movie.

Obama and Infanticide

When I opened my browser this evening, I was surprised to find a link to this article on my AOL homepage about Obama voting against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois. Pro-life bloggers have been noting this since before the primaries, and now I am happy to see that AOL has brought this issue to the attention of the general public. Of course with the democratization of everything, including straight-forward issues, AOL has turned this matter into a poll asking:

Did Barak Obama protect infanticide in Illinois:

Yes

No

I'm not sure

Right now 63% have voted "Yes," 27% "No," and 10% don't know the definition of infanticide. Read the article even if you don't plan to vote. It includes a full quote of Obama's argument to the senate and an analysis of said argument.

Skunks and Water Birth

So we are finally getting settled into our new apartment, and discovering the more interesting aspects of living in a huge city. We've found the joy of having access to a four story Barnes and Noble and same day home delivery options at Bed Bath and Beyond. I've been yelled at by an old lady speaking a different language and heard anti-white people preaching from this group being yelled on a corner at a bus stop. This was particularly awkward, as Scotty and I were the only white people in sight.

I have found a birthing center that will provide me with a natural birth experience in a home-like setting. I can even have a water birth, which is what I have wanted since I learned about the soothing qualities of warm water during labor. I have started reading up on natural child birth (thanks to four story Barnes and Noble) and am learning pregnancy yoga, which is supposed to help during delivery.

The parish up the street from our apartment is gorgeous and offers an extraordinary rite mass (Latin). We intend to attend this mass on a regular basis since I didn't see very many families at the "family mass." I imagine they are all at the special language masses, as the parish offers a Spanish and an Italian mass.

Last night while walking around campus we saw a skunk hobbling about around the University Church. That's right, a skunk in the middle of the Bronx! I grew up in the North East Texas woods, and the only skunks I ever saw were roadkill. Now I move to New York and find a skunk at my school.

About the picture: We got a cat! She is very sweet and jumped into my lap as I wrote this post.