Nuns almost always seem to do more with less

Let's write about how they celebrate Easter in a convent!

That's was just one idea I had for an Easter-themed story (my editor needed multiples).

He bit.

I started looking around.

Have you ever tried to FIND a convent in or near Lancaster, bastion of evangelicalism and the Amish?

Right, then.

But we did stumble upon one that was close to Lancaster, or at least in the Diocese of Harrisburg -- in Danville, (near Reading).

(I also found a group of ten enclosed Dominicans right on the Lititz Pike -- and called to ask if I could get their story after Easter.)

I'd spoken with the General Superior of Cyril and Methodius back when the Leadership Conference of Women Religious was being investigated on suspicion of being more liberal than the Pope and most American prelates (shocked, shocked, shocked).

I grew up reading, and rereading, a novel about a group of enclosed nuns in England and their adventures in faith.  "In this House of Brede" gave me what turned out to be some pretty romantic ideas about the religious life.

Aside from chatting with one of the most rockin' priests I have encountered in recent times ("I'm going out now to find the tree where they (the nuns) will hang me" he said after a riotous interview), I really enjoyed writing this story.

There's nothing extraordinary or exciting about it, except that scenes like this are becoming more and more rare.

Fewer nuns visiting the sick.

Fewer sisters teaching in schools.

Fewer vowed ones  serving in parishes, offering female leadership that many Catholics feel is sorely needed.

Are we going to miss the sisters when they are gone (possibly within our lifetime)?

God bless them.

I'm quite sure of  it.

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/832087_Holy-Week-special-time-for-nuns-of-St--Cyril-and-Methodius.html

The darkness within

My Palm Sunday column - a little too "you are there" (as I reread it).

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/829499_Column--Have-we-become-a-nation-of-bystanders-.html

Born to love you

She's free from me now.

I wonder how she'll like being free, I wonder, as I climb off the sofa , languid, sad, resigned..

It could be that it will be forever.

I try not to think about that possibility.

I see twentysomething mothers with young children, and I marvel at the ease with which many conceive them, bear them, and bring them into our complex world.

You assume -- until, perhaps one day, you find that you can't assume.

Pushing grocery carts with kids strapped in at the Acme, dropping off at the nursery school, showing up for the Parent-Teacher meetings, these mothers (caregivers are still overwhemingly female) make motherhood look easy.

At least on the outside.

As will the moms and dads who show up at graduation in another few months, surrounded by relatives, eyes welling with sentimental tears.

My daughter's high school experience, as I said to her dad this morning, has been hell.

Hell for her, and hell for us.

She eats alone in the cafeteria, I heard.

What is there to celebrate, except for the (and I should be happy) fact that she doesn't take drugs, hasn't gotten pregnant, and still has dreams?

She seems precocious -- and naive at the same time, said the counselor who had met her.

What will she do with this freedom?

Liberty -- from me?

You still love her, said another friend.  You're just defending yourself right now -- because, again, and again, your heart has been broken. Loving her feels like a weight around my legs, my head, my heart.

But not loving her -- that's not an option.

Will anything impel her to reach out a hand that has, more times than not, been used to slap me down?

I dream that someday she will discover that freedom isn't all it's rumored to be by her peers.

And I wonder if that's true -- and how long I will have to wait to find out.

When kindness matters

Who said you were  a bad mother? asked a friend a few nights ago.

Was it someone on Facebook? Did someone send you a message? Call you out publicly?

Sheepishly, I had to admit that no one had.

But you're thinking it, right?

O.k., so you aren't.

I think it enough for everyone -- even the people who don't have time or interest.

After all, what kind of woman decides she won't have dinner with her daughter -- or buy her daughter new clothes, or take her daughter out for coffee?

One who has spent 18 years in and out of guidance counselor's offices, paid out big bucks to educational psychologists, paid for endless theater camps, hired tutors.

One who has bickered and quieted and wept until she thought she was barren of tears...

One who has walked around in a cloud of grief for months, at her wit's end.

Thank you, my dear friend, for helping me see that it's o.k. to set a boundary.

That it's not awful to get some distance right now.

That there IS something wrong that I can't fix, as much as I would like to make it all better.

When was the last time you did something nice for yourself? she asked me.

Perhaps it is now.

New Pope will need to woo American Catholics

Conservatives often accuse the mainstream media of leaning left.

Some writers and t.v. reporters do veer sideways -- right and left. Watch Fox News for ten minutes.

But at an even more fundamental level, the media love a fresh face -- and a new narrative.

Even if he is a 76-year-old Cardinal who was the runner up to the newly retired Pope in the last papal election.

He's from Argentina!

He leads a "simple" life!

He's on the side of the poor!

But will all of that be enough to bring North American Catholics back into the fold?

Are many Catholics faithful in name only?

What could the church do to restore a sense of integrity on a national level?

Is it even possible to do that, or must it be done diocese by diocese?

Check out the link to the Pew analysis in my story -- and feel free to chime in.

The bells of Rome have already.

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/826721_Throw-away-the-papal-playbook.html

Can "good people" dish the dirt?

I'm grateful to my editor at the Inquirer for sending me books that stretch me intellectually.

I never thought I'd review a young adult novel, analyze a series of meditations on zines, or delve into an autobiographical account of being locked up by a criminal and having to bear his child.

I have to admit, however, that there is usually a minute when I say (to myself): he is sending me WHAT?

That was certainly the case here.

After reading this autobiographical memoir by Judy Wicks, founder of Philly's White Dog Cafe, I have many more questions than answers.

In the end, I grew to admire her determination -- while still hoping, in spite of myself, for some of the intimate (relatively speaking) details that she chose, for whatever reason, not to reveal.

I have a good idea now of what Judy Wicks believes. But can readers say that they know Judy?

Arguably -- yes.  And arguably -- no.

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/196216571.html

Emptiness speaks

It's the best bedroom in the house, the contractors said to us a few years ago when they built the upstairs extension.

Why don't you live up there?  Soon your daughter will be off to college, and her own life.

It wasn't solely the fact that I wanted her to have the big room, and some privacy.  I also preferred to be downstairs, near the living room and the deck and my son.  Our movie-watching, Downton Abbey and baseball rituals are important to me. He's still young enough to want his mom around -- at least in private.

Now the sun shines in the window, and the stars dance outside at night -- she is not there to see them.

Precious slumbers in the velvet chair near her door, and she does not walk by the chubby cat on her way down the stairs.

Jeans lie on the bed, her chest of drawers is brimming with junk she never sorted out, and a box of books and stuffed animals has been pushed to the room's corner.

But she never made the room her own -- it was if she was camping out, waiting that moment when she was free to go.

She's having a good time, said her dad. She's very social -- hanging out in West Chester coffee shops.  I've tried, but she doesn't want to come back to you.

I spoke to her today.  I'd lose all of my freedom if I came back to you, Mom, she commented. Dad lets me go out on school nights. He wants me to get a driver's license. I'm moving out to a friend's house anyhow when I graduate from high school.

Sometimes, when I go upstairs to shower, I turn on the heat.

Quickly it warms the rooms upstairs, cold and empty since she moved in with her father.

After I punch down the numbers on the thermostat, the emptiness rushes back in.

Wherever I am in the house, I can feel it -- the presence of an absence.

My daughter. My beloved child. My life.