At Considerable Cost

Last year, I discovered The Bitter Southerner, a literary magazine on-line .   They publish a new story every Tuesday morning to share stories of people, places, and activities which represent the new south, the south that seeks to right wrongs and look to the future.   I've looked forward to my Bitter Tuesday mornings.   Today's feature, the beautifully written "Feed," by author Susan Rebecca White , has been on my mind all day, through the breakfast dishes, the fitting for a temporary crown (always the dental patient, never the Queen), and the afternoon routines of school pick-up, homework, and dinner.   I scribbled a bit on my notepad and now I sit to try to write about all those thoughts so I can figure out what I think of "Feed."     As a Born-and-Raised Anti-Catholic   I've written before of my un-churched upbringing .   My dear mama was raised in the Church of Christ, a denomination where e...

Black eyes.   Technically brown, but any border of iris is lost in their depths.   Not just windows to her soul, but to their observer, they seemed to also be a mirror into his own soul.   Eyes whose near blackness had the same effect as the nun's black habit, always turning my thoughts to God.   In the daylight, those turned thoughts were fresh, hopeful and exciting: a new life, redemption, belief sparkled within delicate almond-frames.   Sharp wit and wisdom beyond years.   But then there was the night, as the blackness deepened around, so it did in those eyes.   Still sparkling, but now with a depth of experience and knowledge.   She was close to God, in love and hope, but that proximity also opened her up to the spiritual world.   The reality of battles, forces, of angels and demons.   Sure, knowing, and peaceful, relying on the name of Jesus and to use the evangelical vernacul...

A poem to share from the latest post at If Flannery Had a Blog : ON VISITING FLANNERY O'CONNOR'S GRAVE Milledgeville, Ga., 1988 --MAXINE KUMIN ...but first, an historic detour just this side of what the local intelligentsia in fond self-deprecation call Mudville to take the cart track up to Andalusia, the family seat, a serene remove from town, as in a good Victorian novel. Here, from the first-floor bedroom window even on those last dark days, she could see her beloved peacocks pecking and fanning, the tribe of philoprogenitive donkeys ambling down to the farm pond in the meadow, a grove of ancient pecan trees bending to be picked. Not antebellum grand, but commodious Andalusia, with real gardens harrowed every spring with real manure, so that it's touching but not surprising that when Mary McCarthy remarked, years before, she had come to think of the Eucharist as a symbol, O'Connor, considerably put out by lapsed Catholic rhetoric, fl...

The final Sunday of Advent turned out to be such a special one for me.   I chose to drive past our home parish to attend 5:30 mass at a chapel owned by another parish as part of its school complex.   It was once the building for a large Baptist congregation.   The Catholic parish bought the building when the Baptist church built a bigger building.   It has since been decorated, blessed, and dedicated for Catholic worship. There's something about this chapel to which I strongly relate.   Maybe because it, too, has been reborn for a Catholic life and purpose.   It still holds remnants of its Protestant, or non-Catholic, past.   The Crucifix hangs in what seems a striking blue frame to some.   To the knowing eye, the crucifix hangs above what once served as the baptistry, the pool where baptisms as public signs of accepting Christ, not sacraments of regeneration, occurred.    The baptistry is now framed by the crucifix, a symbol and t...