Is this really the first book I finished this year?

On Jewel by Bret Lott – Picked this one up as part of my Regional Reading plan. I had heard of it before as an Oprah Pick, but wrote it off, I think because I had it linked in my mind with the story about the girl who gives birth in the Walmart parking lot that I couldn’t finish (Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts). Lotts' writing is definitely better than Letts'. He gives his characters enough of a southern drawl to locate them, without letting the dialect take over.

Half of Jewel takes place not too far from where we live in Mississippi, and the other half takes place in LA, which seared itself into my memory when we lived in Port Hueneme. But Jewel doesn’t quite fit with my conception of Southern Lit. It’s not sassy chick lit, but because it focuses on the raising of a girl with Downs’ Syndrome, it’s too much of an issue oriented book to fit my concept of a true Southern Lit book – it’s not about a family struggling in the south, but escaping it.

So while I enjoyed the book, I didn’t love it. I found it hard to believe that this backwoods family could move so easily to California, find a house and jobs, get their child into the too perfect Foundation for Exceptional Children, and make it. That the daughter, Brenda Kay, who was to be put in an institution until she died at 2, lives to her 40’s and learns seems a little more believable, and Jewel’s dedication to helping her rise above those expectations is admirable. That Jewel’s five other children grow up and don’t resent her devotion to her sixth child also seemed a stretch.

But perhaps the hardest to believe, and perhaps what I appreciated most, was that the marriage between Jewel and Leston survives Jewel’s single minded pursuit of what is best for her daughter. She sacrifices her relationships with her other children and with her husband to force the family out to California. She watches Leston give in to humiliation after humiliation without ever seeming to give him a lift. And when he finally asserts his will that they return to Mississippi, she goes only because “Wife” is her identity, as she realizes one day, looking at the name tags other people are wearing and her simple clothing. She balks and tries to undermine his joy at their return to MS, even prays that he "will have died enough" to see what is best for their family.

"I never knew when or how I fell asleep, only knew that when I awoke each morning I sat straight up in bed, my nightgown soaked with sweat, and shot my eyes round the room in an effort to remember where I was, and who this man in bed next to me was, and that word Wife still circled me, swirled round me like a fearless ghost in the pale, wet light of dawn on a bayou, outside the open window behind me the lonesome, measured drone of a woodpecker in a cypress, this next day in Mississippi already begun."

Finally, when she begins to accept the way things are after a few months, Leston himself admits he wants to return to California, so they move back, not far from where their other grown children are living. (It is telling that the author grew up in California, although his parents were from Mississippi; in the book it is a place of mosquitoes, cottonmouths, and racists.)

Their marriage survives these blows, but in the end Jewel seems to suffer more about the decision to put Brenda Kay into a home than she mourned Leston’s death. I found myself rooting for Leston who finds himself pushed and pulled by his wife and surroundings but never breaks down or runs off or even seems to waiver in his love for his domineering wife.

Even though she was a southern Baptist, Jewel surely would've been happy to see these sisters with Downs', via Pentimento from Laodicea.

Self-consciousness at Mass

“Can I ask you something personal?” my friend from daily Mass leaned up to ask this morning. I thought she was going to ask a question about NFP, even though she’s well past the age of needing to use it. But what she asked was whether I received the Eucharist on the hand or by mouth. A tougher question.

“Usually by hand” I replied.


So she asked me to read a small, worn booklet detailing why receiving by hand is disrespectful. Allowing it was originally a concession to disobedience. A quote from Mother Teresa about the decline in reverence in the church was repeated multiple times, as was an anecdote about how if you go to the Vatican, you have to kneel to receive and you receive on the tongue. Probably the most effective argument was about how the priest has consecrated hands while our hands are not.


I read most of the booklet right there because we had a few minutes before the start of Mass. But half my attention was given over to what I was going to say when I handed it back.


“Well that’s a lot to think about. He makes some good points,” is what I came up with. Then I told the story of how once a priest, a wonderful Cistercian, dropped the Host when he was putting it in my mouth. It was excrutiatingly embarrassing. The priest, gasping, stopped me from picking it up so that he could consume it himself. That was not so bad, but what pained me was the announcement at the end of Mass about opening your mouth up and sticking your tongue out so that this doesn’t happen again. I was sure every eye was accusing me of carelessness with the Body of Christ.

So I have gone back and forth with how I receive. If I’m holding a baby I receive on the tongue. Ditto if the parish we’re attending has altar servers holding patens. But our current one doesn’t. Some priests and ministers seem dainty about placing the Eucharist on the tongue, so I’m always afraid it is going to fall again.

Since my parents are converts, I didn’t even know about receiving on the tongue until probably college – or maybe senior year of high school when I went to daily Mass once a week with my dad as a part of a Lenten promise. At the time, we went to a typical suburban parish: lots of families, not a lot of super Catholics. It took awhile for the riches of the faith to be uncovered, but they were there and there were people wanting to share them.  Eventually, I met a few people who received on the tongue and read a few things and began to receive that way for a while before that scarring event.


So during the Eucharistic procession, in front of my friend, I went forward feeling very self-conscious. And since I was receiving from an extraordinary minister, I went ahead and received in my hands.

But I do feel unsettled. The book’s tone suggested it was motivated by scrupulosity. I couldn’t find anything specific in the Catechism about hands vs. tongue. In the early Church it was the practice to receive in the hand and St. Cyril of Jerusalem is often quoted about making a throne with your hands, which is what I taught my kids. I wonder if Christ would balk at being touched by hands (also a remnant of our first parish and of years in Protestant Sunday School: my images of Jesus came out of 70’s theology.) At our former parish, the priest once instructed the congregation on when to kneel and stand and bow because too many parishioners were doing things differently, but he did not dictate whether to receive on the tongue or in the mouth. (see pertinent quotes below)


My reaction was similar when I read Dressing with Dignity a couple years ago. After I read it, I went out and bought a few skirts at the thrift store. Even though I had never felt wholly convinced that wearing pants was leading men to sinful thoughts, I did recognize that wearing skirts made me feel more feminine and like I needed to be on my best behavior. But I couldn’t get down and play with my kids or chase them around the park easily. And I resented that the lady who wrote it lived in Texas and didn’t have to wear tights all the time. A friend liberated me from fastidiousness about how to dress by linking how we dress to whether we are called to be more contemplative or active in our lives. Some of us live a more cloistered life; others of us live more in the world and evangelize by our actions and appearance.


Which leads me back to reception of the Eucharist. Like the little book pointed out, we are an example to others when we receive Communion. Either manner we receive should be marked by reverence.



A few good quotes:
From the Bishops:

The liturgical assembly of the baptized that comes together for the celebration of the Eucharist is a witness to, a manifestation of, the pilgrim Church. When we move in procession, particularly the procession to receive the body and blood of Christ in Communion, we are a sign, a symbol of that pilgrim Church 'on the way.' For some, however, the experience of the Communion Procession is far more prosaic, analogous perhaps to standing on line in the supermarket or at the motor vehicle bureau. A perception such as this is a dreadfully inaccurate and impoverished understanding of what is a significant religious action …



Over and over again the prayers of the liturgy and the norms of the General Instruction emphasize this fundamental concept of the unity of the baptized, stressing that when we come together to participate in the Eucharistic celebration we come, not as individuals, but as united members of Christ's body. In each of the Eucharistic Prayers, though the petition is worded in slightly different ways, God is asked to send his Holy Spirit to make us one body, one spirit in Christ; the General Instruction admonishes the faithful that they should become one body, whether by hearing the word of God, or joining in prayers and singing ...(GIRM, no. 96) it describes one of the purposes of the opening song of the Mass as to ... intensify the unity of those who have been gathered and says of the Communion Chant that its function is to express outwardly the communicants’ union in spirit by means of the unity of their voices, ... and to highlight the communitarian nature of the procession to receive Communion. …


It is difficult for some of us to embrace this emphasis on Mass as the action of a community rather than an individual act of my own faith and piety, but it is important that we make every effort to do so. Christ himself at the Last Supper pleaded with his Father: Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us ... Father may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you ... Jn. 17: 11; 21. Baptism has joined us to Christ and to one another as the vine and its branches. The life of Christ, the Holy Spirit, animates each of us individually, and all of us corporately and guides us together in our efforts to become one in Christ.


http://www.usccb.org/liturgy/girm/bul5.shtml

Excerpt from Pastoral Answers

by Msgr. M. Francis Mannion


Communion in the Hand


Question: I know the practice is optional, but where did Communion in the hand come from? Don’t you think it encourages disrespect?


Answer: Communion in the hand was the norm for most of the first millennium. Because of the dangers of misuse and the growing concern for reverence, the practice of giving the Host on the tongue was introduced about the ninth century.


The present practice of giving communion in the hand dates from 1969, when Pope Paul VI opened the way for episcopal conferences who wished to reintroduce the practice. Permission was granted to the U.S. bishops in 1977.


In my opinion, there is nothing intrinsically more reverent about reception on the tongue or less reverent about receiving in the hand. Reverence or irreverence are generally determined by other factors: the spiritual attitude of the recipient, the demeanor of the one giving communion, the adequacy of eucharistic understanding, and the manner in which the eucharistic elements are treated both within and outside Mass.


St. Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century offered a powerful catechesis on the mode of receiving communion in the hand that is still applicable today: "When you approach, do not go stretching out your open hands or having your fingers spread out, but make the left hand into a throne for the right which shall receive the King, and then cup your open hand and the Body of Christ, reciting the ‘Amen.’ Then sanctify with all care your eyes by touching the Sacred Body, and receive it. But be careful that no particles fall, for what you lose would be to you as if you had lost some of your members. Tell me, if anybody had given you gold dust, would you not hold fast to it with all care, and watch lest some of it fall and be lost to you? Must you not then be even more careful with that which is more precious than gold and diamonds, so that no particles are lost?"


http://www.osv.com/OSV4MeNav/Sacraments/TheEucharist/EucharisticQandA/tabid/498/Default.aspx

Fom the Catechism:

1378 Worship of the Eucharist. In the liturgy of the Mass we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by, among other ways, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord. "The Catholic Church has always offered and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist the cult of adoration, not only during Mass, but also outside of it, reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession."208


http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a3.htm

Winter comes to the South

“I wonder why someone has lined rocks up along the edge of the bay?” I thought when I saw the white line along the low water line. On closer inspection I realized it was ice forming a break line on the shore.

Every conversation and local radio broadcast from the past few days has begun with a discussion of the cold weather. Our landlord called to ask us to wrap the hose spigots in towels and plastic bags. The kids didn’t go outside for recess all week. The stores have had a run on hats and gloves.

Having spent the first 20 some years of my life north of the Mason-Dixon line, I want to scoff at all these soft southerners who are getting so worked up about temps in the teens and twenties. During the day the highs are in the 40s, so the freeze isn’t even sustained through the day. This is nothing, I want to say. As a teenager in the Midwest, I would go out for runs and come home with my nostrils frozen and my scarf stiff and crunchy with frozen condensation. When we lived north of Chicago, I kept an extra supply of hats, gloves and scarves, a blanket, and a foldaway snow shovel in the back of the car just in case we got caught somewhere. I regularly wore two pairs of socks. We kept a basket of boots by the back door, so the kids could go out and skate on the puddle that froze over the low spot in the back yard.

I want to tease these Southerners who have wrapped their palm trees and tropical plants in sheets and tarps and Saranwrap. But gosh darnit, I’m too cold.

Quick Take Resolutions

After spending a week conducting various informal polls and researching ideas on the internet, I hereby resolve:



1. To be a better person (ha.)


2. To handwrite a letter per week to my husband after he deploys next month. 7 months x 4 = 28 letters. We already bought a new netbook so we could skype and a new camera so we both could take photos. Then I splurged on some nice Uniball pens. Now I just need to stockpile some stationary.


3. To lose 5 lbs by giving up sugar (after I finish a last bag of holiday M&M's. Since I already run nearly daily and eat mostly healthy foods, I figure totally eradicating the midafternoon chocolate fix is the only way to lose weight. That goes before the evening glass of wine. I suppose I could also try to give up the breakfast cereal and cut back on dinnertime pasta, but my spirit is too weak. Either the choc or the carbs, not both.)


4. To get up 30 -45 mins earlier to read Magnificat and do morning pages.

              4b. To accomplish #4, go to bed 30-45 mins earlier.


5. To limit internet time to 2 hrs, unless working on a project (such as taxes, bleh…)

              5b. To accomplish #5, write a blog post, if I’m going to, before I read a bunch of blog posts.


6. To make something pretty. And/or useful. And to get rid of any clutter that is neither pretty nor useful. Ditto on clothes. Goodbye, ill fitting clothing.


7. To work on that book list – I meant to add Bleak House after reading recommendations here and here and somewhere else that I can't find now. And for spiritual reading: Spes Salvi. I have a plan to pick at least one Brit lit novel, one American, one spiritual classic, one nonfiction work, one book of poetry, one book in translation, one Greek/Roman classic, at least one new chapter book my kids are reading, one short story (Nabokov's "Cloud, Castle, Lake" for Reading for Believers) and one fun book. And then fill in with recommendations or what grabs my fancy.


Last year my resolutions were

1. To fear less, regret less, enjoy more. Um, pretty much a silly resolution that I made little if any progress on.

2. To be more willing to accept help. I actually did better with this one. Same with

3. To capture memories in writing. Thanks, blog. But I did not do so well with

4. Reading aloud more to the kids. Mixed results were had with

5. To be more conscientious about shopping. Moving caused me to shop frequently at Walmart, but I tried not to shop for Christmas there. And because we now pay tuition, I don’t buy as many organics, but I am buying more fruits and vegetables for their lunches. Another resolution I failed at was

6. To pray more openly – listening instead of asking. But I did better with

7. To get organized. Moving into a bigger house with built in book shelves, office files, and cupboard after cupboard with tall, deep shelves or pull out shelves and plenty of drawers helped with that resolution, as did the major purge before the move.

Books of '09

This is Miss Kitty Jenkyn, daughter of Thomas Hart, who took her godfather's last name, Reading, when he died, before she married Charles Packe. So the informal name of this portrait by William Beechey is "Miss Reading,"  a cute double entendre. Painted around 1820, the formally titled "Portrait of Kitty Packe (nee Hart)"  is not in my Women Reading calendar, which I want to keep pristine so I can tack every month up in my office when the year is out, but was a find at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. The gift shop didn't have a postcard of this piece.

I’m a little late to the party, but I intended to make a list of my favorite books of 2009 some time ago. In the midst of all the Christmas celebrating, I just couldn’t remember what I have read this year, which is part of the reason I started this blog. I’ve been a book consumer instead of a book digester for the past few years, although when I was thinking about it, I realized I remember more books that I read in 2008 than in 2009. 2008 was the year of Brit Lit with my homeschool group: I returned to Beowulf, the Everyman play, Canterbury Tales, MacBeth, Robinson Crusoe, Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth, and David Copperfield with new appreciation. (Although my opinion remains that Robinson Crusoe is dull. All those details about how he made his house and bread don’t interest me.) At the beginning of 09, we read Pride and Prejudice, no comments needed, and we ended the class with Murder in the Cathedral, which, while it tied together British history, really didn’t bind me in interest.

Last year was also the year I discovered Tim Farrington’s Lizzie’s War and Alan Bennett’s An Uncommon Reader, and George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic. Nancy Mitford’s Love in A Cold Climate stands out too. Maybe because of our move or because of blogging, I don’t think I read as much or as well (which is not part of the reason I started blogging.)

Anyway, here are a few of the books I can remember:

• Favorite Novel I hadn’t read before: Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty. Evocative.

• Favorite Novel I had read before: Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. Haunting.

• Favorite Fun Novel: The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Gripping. 

• Favorite Religious book: I was involved in Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain for a long time. But I was surprised and delighted by Caryll Houselander’s The Reed of God, which was the May pick for my dearly loved and sorely missed Catholic book club back in Virginia. When the group decided to read yet another Mary book for May, I was initially disappointed, but after a few pages of Houselander’s book, I was entranced.

• Favorite Nonfiction book: I picked up a lot of books on writing and reading this year at the library because I considered trying to teaching an entry level class at the local community college. (I applied, had an interview, and was offered a night class at the campus half an hour away. Too inconvenient with my husband frequently travelling and my kids frequently having activities.) But while I enjoyed all these books about books and the process of writing books, I really preferred Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything – a run through scientific history. Accessible but challenging.

• Saddest Endings: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene.

• Most disappointing novel: Elinor Lipman’s Then She Found Me. Boring.

• Favorite Children’s Book: Elizabeth Goudge’s Linnets and Valerians. Enchanting.

Books I want to read in 2010:

• Still working on reading Mississippi/Southern writers: On my table are Faulkner’s As I lay Dying and Go Down, Moses, the later of which I haven’t read before. Also before or after we go to New Orleans, I want to reread Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer.

• A friend gave me Ian McEwan’s Atonement before we moved, and I’ve been waiting to try to forget the movie before I read it, but it is a hard movie to forget…

• My son just finished To Kill A Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies before I could get around to rereading them, so they're under my table.

• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith has been recommended enough times that it has come to my attention. I also have never read anything by J.M Coetzee.

• I borrowed Edmund Campion by Evelyn Waugh from my mom a long time ago, and still need to read that. I also plucked Alice McDermott’s The Bigamist’s Daughter from her shelves. I have mixed emotions about McDermott: Loved Charming Billy and After This but was disappointed by Child of My Heart.

• For spiritual reading, I’ve meant to pick up Kathleen Norris’ Acedia and I have had Peter Kreeft’s Prayer for Beginners for a long time.

• Wendell Berry has out a new book of poetry, Leavings, and a book about food with Michael Pollan, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food, and Whitefoot, an illustrated book about a mouse.

• Some authors I've been intending to get around to: David Lodge, Kingsley Amis, Mary Doria Russell, Julian Green, Jose Maria Gironella

Hmm, the list keeps getting longer. I'm usually not very disciplined about following a reading plan, except when I'm in a book club, but just look to see whom I recognize at the library.  Maybe I should make being more ordered in my reading a New Year's Resolution, when I get around to that . . .

An honor

A big thank you to Anne from Imprisoned in my Bones for reading my blog and enjoying it enough to pass on this award that recognizes bloggers who encourage and inspire you to live your faith. Although like many other bloggers, I sometimes wonder if I should spend as much time online as I do, I also find that often that time is well spent when it leads me to a prayer, a reminder of a feast day, a suggestion for living the faith, an opportunity for reflecting on my faith life.

So in that spirit I'm going to pass on the award to a few whose pages have encouraged me:

Maria at Two Ways of Renouncing the Devil just announced she is taking a break for awhile, but I've enjoyed getting to know her and hope she'll be back with more thought provoking reflections.

Gretchen Joanna's blog Gladsome Lights has needed reminders of things to be thankful for, and right now she has some good book lists up.

Lots of ideas at As Cozy As Spring.

Jamie at Light and Momentary writes with humor and intellect.

Of course, a hattip to my reallife sister, Betty Duffy, who is way cooler than me, who has a gift for recreating moments of metanoia without sounding preachy, and who forces me to grow in holiness by bringing my shortcomings into focus - another helpmeet on the way to heaven.

And finally, I love the community I've found with my Reading for Believers friends.

Vacation Snapshots

We've returned from the hinterlands. As we pulled out of my parents' icy drive, the thermometer in the car read 12 degrees; as we crossed the bay bridge 12 hours later, it read 45.  Welcome home. Despite the warmer weather, I still had to snuggle deeply under the covers of our own wonderful bed before I felt warm, maybe because I had left the thermostat in the house at 55.  No matter how much I love visiting family, it is always comforting to sleep in my own bed.

Some snapshots of some of our favorite Christmas gifts:

Snow in Oklahoma - a record breaking 14 inches.

Learning to ice skate

Entering the OKC art museum, warm and bright, after skating

Enough snow to sled in Indiana

Watching a calf's birth

Puppies and cousins

Other favorite gifts: safe, uneventful travels, reading Scott Cairns' Recovered Body (poetry as good as Eighth Day Books claims) and Debra Dean's Madonnas of Leningrad (a woman with Alzheimer's recalls the WWII siege of Leningrad when she and others hid in the cellar of the Hermitage. There she walks from room to room to build a memory palace of all the works of art that have been removed to a safer location. A beautifully written, pleasant read, but slight, more of a novella), and unhurried time with family.