Stitchery Witchery and Holy at Ho-Jos

   I'm always concerned when my baldy scalp is exposed to the sun.  So when I realized I was walking in Greater Miami's Hialeah heat with my pate unprotected, I entered a mall in search of a cap.  And there was a vendor at a kiosk-type stand, selling the baseball style chapeau I needed.  I was pleased to notice that he had a substantial supply of plain caps, unadorned.  The shingle signage of his establishment--"Stitch By Stitch"--did not register with me.  Selecting a white cap, I was ready to effect a quick transaction when I noticed a  catalog of images which included various dog breeds.  I said, "Whoa, let's see if you've got the best of breeds, not expecting to find Saints.  But the image was there, the inimitable formidable head, nobly cast.  The merchant, an enterprising gentleman from Turkey, explained to me that he does not transfer decals to the front of the headpiece but stitches in the image.  Of course, he doesn't do the stitching by hand.  He directs the process by computer which has an embroidery machine connected to it.  It takes a little time but it's fascinating to watch.  There are spools of thread of different colors that it draws down into the fabric.  People passing by stopped to take note.  The merchant-operator had to tend to a lot of detail, adjustments and angles while the production proceeded.  I was pleased with this result.

   Not especially expensive either.  About $28.  Since I just happened to be wearing an Illinois Saint Bernard Rescue polo, the cap capped my ensemble.

   In the evening we went to Mass at a Howard Johnson's.  The Irish cruise crowd is residing here prior to embarking tomorrow.  A priest who is actually one of the entertainers (concertina and singer), slated to perform on the ship, celebrated a Mass in one of the conference rooms at the hotel.  Well attended by mick mackerel-snappers.  Father Charlie Coen, explaining there was no "h" in his last name, quipped:  "If there were, I would have had to become a rabbi."  

  So now all of us, the blessed and the benighted, are eagerly awaiting sailing off tomorrow, Sunday.  We are assured the captain of the Norwegian Pearl bears no relation or comparison to the infamous "Chicken of the Sea" skipper who wrecked Carnival's Costa Concordia.  The only irresponsible behavior will take place among the rapscallion Celtic cavorters. 

   By the way, if you're wondering what thematic connection exists between the first anecdote of this post and the second, the answer is there is none.  That's what happens when you blog "live."


                                               

The Quest for Sanity and Sanctity in Irish Literature

                                   St. Michael Church, Wheaton, IL  

                                     Adult Faith Formation Program

                 The Quest for Sanity and Sanctity in Irish Literature  


     February 21—May 8th, 2012; Tuesday evenings, 7-9 PM in the Faith Center  

                                                       Facilitator: Mike Casey

                                      

(Advance registration required: call or e-mail Matt Pozen, Director of Adult Faith Formation and RCIA, at 630-462-5045; or mpozen@stmichaelcommunity.org)

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

   The Quest for Sanity and Sanctity in Irish Literature is a descriptor for the intersection between religion and literature in Irish writing.  Throughout most of the 20^th century, Catholicism and Irish culture were almost synonymous terms.   Also during that period, prominent Irish authors produced work that has become canonical in modern literature.

   We will organize the course around story, poetry and song.  Our approach to the material will explore the ways in which Irish artists create powerful expressions of rage and rapture.  And we will focus on how the energies of Irish voices frequently serve to frame spiritual questions.  For example, Yeats in his early work gives form to what he called the “cry of the heart against necessity”; Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man shows Stephen in a terrifying confrontation with the suffering and desolation of souls lost in hell; Heaney in Seeing Things and in his Station Island limns the closeness of family and friends, and we see in that portrayal the call to love others as we do ourselves.  Other writers—contemporaries and descendants—Synge and O’Casey, Trevor and Tóibín, Kinsella, and Boland and Beckett will demonstrate the richness of the repertoire.  Along the way there will of course be song and music, emollients Irish culture regards as essential to preserve sanity and reveal the path to sanctification.

   Readings will be completed in advance of our meetings, and each weekly session will consist of brief background lecture and group discussions.

   Come join us.  There’s more to this crowd of saints and sinners than St. Paddy’s Day.

FACILITATOR:

   Mike Casey has been an active parishioner at St. Michael Church for six years.   Both of his Catholic parents were born in Ireland.  While Mike was born and raised in the U.S., he lived and studied in Ireland for a time as a graduate student and has made additional visits to the ancestral homes in recent years.

   Mike has taught literature courses at the secondary, college and adult education levels for over 40 years. Last year he completed the three-year New Wine lay ministry program, and facilitated Adult Faith Formation courses that explored the spiritual themes in literary material.  In November 2011, Mike and his spouse Anita welcomed their first grandchild, a girl who is the first born of her parents who reside in Moline.  The route to and from the Quad Cities is increasingly well traveled.

What Child Is This?

   We heard this hymn, we sang it, we heeded it or we ignored it, as we had over so many Christmas seasons.  At the end of last year, I found myself unable to sing or focus on any of the lyrics beyond the interrogative in the title.  The question posed in those four words--what child is this?--forced this new grandparent to ponder an event he thought he would never live to witness.  My granddaughter was born at the beginning of Thanksgiving week.  And give thanks we did.  The joy in our family was omnipresent and multi vocal.   We splashed photos and text all over facebook and reveled in the hurrahs. 

   She arrived hale and hearty.  Beyond her lovely name, Kinley Clare Sederquist--wherein the initials of her first and middle names give voice to my surname which her mother has retained--there is still an answer that needs be found in response to "What child is this?"

   She's a well born child.  Her parents are persons of character and determination.  They have already provided a stable sanctuary of care and commitment.  They will attend to her needs, help her to develop (in the words of Yeats) "a glad kindness," and show her that the soul "learns at last that it is self-delighting,/ self-appeasing, self-affrighting, / And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will; /."  Furthermore, her mother, Catharine Erin, and her father, James Thomas, will no doubt convey to their daughter that "she can, though every face should scowl/ And every windy quarter howl/ or every bellows burst, be happy still."  

 Those hopes and aspirations are forecasts for the future.  But the operative question is in the present tense.  And, strangely, it asks "what" is she not "who" is she.  And it refers to her with a demonstrative pronoun, "this."  So essentially the question is about the nature of the existence of the life that has emerged aborning.  From whence did she come to be, how did it happen and why did it happen?  These are not biological queries, or comments on generativity within marriage, though they can certainly be answered in that way.  "What Child Is This?" is a philosophical--ultimately theological--reflection.  What does it mean that she came to be? 

   I believe that the answer resides in the inextricably connected forces of mystery and the ineffable.  I have been aided in this reflection by the serendipitous discovery of a poem by Mark Jarman, an American writer whose work has been described by one commentator as "God-haunted."  The Jarman poem I turned to while browsing is an eponymous working out of an answer to our four word title question.   The poem is not, however, a treatment of the origin and nature of new life but the opposite.  The speaker is the grandson who, along with his father, ministers to the grandfather at the end of his days.  It's not long so I quote its four quatrains in full.

What Child is This?


Out in the parking lot, preseasonal,

the Christmas carol stops with a car engine.

And the lovely tune it is set to, "Greensleeves," 

continues, like a dimming light in a radio,

haunting us as we go on talking to Grandfather.


Hovering like adorers at his chrome crib,

Father and I might make him laugh, if he could stand

outside his coma, his scrawny doll's body,

reading the crack in our attention, the worry--

Will he remain like this through Christmas?
 

He might wonder that himself, waiting for heaven. 

But when he sighs and smacks his lips

the sounds are so personal, I jump. And Father,

snapping on his razor, sighs back to him

a commiserating "Yes," and tells me to keep talking.

And it's like talking to the one-sided past,

telling him he's released, his God is waiting,

and hearing only his silence, the razor shaving him,

and the old hymn yoked to the older folk song,

the cast-out lover complaining through the holiness.

 ----Mark Jarman.  The Rote Walker.  Carnegie-Mellon UP, 1981.

   So the end of life, as well as the beginning is suffused with mystery and the ineffable.  I love the last four words of the poem.  It is uncomfortable to admit, but I have developed a near habitual patios of "complaining through the holiness," even when miracles have occurred and are looking me in the face.  But when I hold this grandchild gift in my arms, this Kinley Clare, this child of my child, it requires no resolve to rid myself of complaining.  All I need do is harbor her holiness and praise her ineffable mystery with the words of the psalm: "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life."