At the End of A Difficult Day, Love Endures

 

I had a tumultuous traveling day, flying from Newark to Birmingham, Alabama, with a layover in Detroit. I forgot some important items at home, which will make my travels difficult. Tonight I find myself visiting with old parish friends before I tour civil-rights sites in Alabama and attend a teachers' conference in author Harper Lee's hometown. How ironic to find myself here, in a state that has endured so much violence and racial strife, on the day a Florida jury found an unarmed black teen's killer guilty of absolutely nothing. It can be so discouraging, this search for justice.

Five Favorites

Linking up with Hallie Lord, who is very ready to give birth to her latest baby! Patience, peace and a quick labor to her.... This week I am going to share five videos I have been looking at. Not all of them are happy or cute, but they all made a big impression on me.

"In Cold Blood": Heartache and Violence

 Photo of Holcomb, Kansas courtesy of 

incoldbloodtrumancapote.blogspot.com

I decided to read Truman Capote's 1966 book  "In Cold Blood" because I have become intrigued by his close friend, Nelle Harper Lee. Lee wrote the luminous novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," which I teach every year to high school freshmen and her character Dill Harris is modeled on her childhood friend, Truman Capote. Lee, now 86 and living a private life in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama,  never has published another book. I wanted to know her better and I figured I might find traces of her in Capote's nonfiction novel.  I haven't researched how much of her fingerprints are on this book of richly drawn characters, real people whose presence has remained with me days after finishing this book.

My Evening Without Quentin Tarantino, in the Company of the Belfast Cowboy

The second day of Christmas has been quiet; walking the dog under a gray sky, my husband and younger son heading to basketball practice and all of us managing long naps while we could hear the wind blowing through the trees.

watercolor by Sandra Ovono

Amid Lock-Downs, Christ is Coming

As a public school teacher in the United States, I am accustomed to lock-down drills. In fact, as it happened, we had one Friday. We have one once a month, as the state of New Jersey requires. We have "non fire evacuations" and "lockdowns" and "active shooter" drills. The teens in my care know what to do; we turn off the lights, we lower the shades, we huddle in a corner and we stay quiet and we wait until the all clear. I can see from the news coverage that those kindergartners and their teachers were trained too, on how to deal with a shooter in the building.

At Sandy Hook Elementary School, teacher Victoria Soto knew to hide her children in closets and lockers and the children knew to keep quiet. In this way, she saved her first graders, but lost her own life to the shooter. How is it this is the world we inhabit?

Yesterday, I felt like our Church's liturgical calendar was off kilter. Today is Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent and we are called to rejoice. This made no sense to me. Today, after Mass, I understand. "Rejoice the Lord is nigh," the readings tell us. My heart is heavy. How can we rejoice? At Mass, I cried. So, too, did an older woman in the pew behind me. Parents who normally let their young children walk beside them in the Communion line were carrying them, holding them tightly. Rejoice?

AP photo of a mourner at St. Rose of Lima Church in Newton, Connecticut

In the Wake of a School Massacre, The Smallest Actions of Love

The murder of 26 innocents in a Newtown, Connecticut elementary school and the suicide of the shooting suspect are evils I am unable to absorb. I struggle to even pray about this. Words feel inadequate.

Instead, yesterday and today, I have tried to make my actions my prayers, focusing on the children put in front of me: my own children, their friends, and the dozens of students I teach. Is this self-absorption? Is there something more, something bigger I should be doing? In a piece he wrote today, Father Christian Mathis' words reassured me that the conversion of my own heart has got to come first: "Prayer and even the smallest actions of love are powerful weapons in the battle against the evil still present in our world today."

A Priest's Prayer Opens the Door to A Conversation about Mercy

As you might know, my husband is a trauma survivor who faces post-traumatic stress disorder. Greg somehow survived the Sept. 11 terror attacks and he also lost dozens of colleagues. He and I continue to consider what it all means.

We both have what we call "trauma fatigue" meaning we are not able to immerse ourselves in the details of other acts of inhumanity, such as the deadly violence that occurred in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater last week. We haven't watched the nonstop cable news reports, or read any of the extensive newspaper coverage.

He and I were not able to have the conversations that our sons wanted to have about it. I had to explain that discussing the details of the shootings brought up far too many troubling feelings for their father and me.

But a comment by one of my pastors at Sunday morning Mass made possible a small conversation  about the Colorado shootings with our older son.

Brutal Blessing: "Saints of the American Wilderness"

Let me tell you, there is no way I would have our 12-year-old child read this book. I ordered "Saints of the American Wilderness" by Rev. John A. O'Brien because our younger son has chosen Antoine Daniel as his Confirmation name and I was planning to read the book with him. Antoine Daniel is one of eight Jesuit missionaries martyred in 17th century Canada.

 It is so brutal in its details that many times I had to put the book down and take a breather. That said, adults should read "Saints of the American Wilderness" if they want to understand the sacrifices our ancestors made to bring the message of Christ to the North American continent. Be forewarned: within the first few chapters, we read detailed, and I mean detailed, accounts of cannibalism, finger chewing, sadistic torture and on and on. These details are not gratuitous. They go a long way in helping the reader understand exactly what these French men faced as they evangelized among the Hurons of what is now Ontario.

"Cape Fear": How Far Would You Go To Protect Your Loved Ones?

Because I teach "To Kill A Mockingbird" and show my students the Oscar-winning film, I ended up buying a six-DVD box of Gregory Peck movies. Among the box's treasures is "Cape Fear," a film that came out in 1961, the year before "To Kill a Mockingbird" and stars a very different Peck from the sedate, level-headed Atticus Finch.

My husband and I settled in to watch "Cape Fear" this weekend. It's a psychological thriller that takes place in Georgia. The action is set into motion when Max Cady, a convicted rapist, played by Robert Mitchum, finishes his prison term and tracks down lawyer Sam Bowden, the key witness against him. Peck portrays Bowden.

When Hate Hits Home

Returning home from a long day of work and carpooling, our 15-year-old asked me if I had heard what happened in town overnight. I hadn't. "Someone smashed the windows of Jewish-owned businesses," he told me. "It's all over the news and facebook."

My son well understood the echoes of this act came from Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, a series of attacks against Jewish synagogues, businesses and homes in Nazi Germany and Austria in November of 1939.