Two more places

I know. I need to blog more.

Here are two quick stories about encountering Christ at play in our world.

One story starts, more or less, on Facebook. My friend Erik, whose life overlapped mine for both undergraduate and masters work, found me on Facebook a couple months ago. He lives less than an hour away from me now, and we talked about getting together sometime, but he had this interesting suggestion: he was going to be going on a retreat on Cape Cod the first weekend of February. Why didn't I come along? So I did, and I reconnected with Erik and some other old friends, and met some new ones. The theme of the retreat? "Christ in Ten Thousand Places." Very nice. Restored my desire to try to look for and write about all the places Christ is playing in my life. And the Cape was beautiful!

So this weekend, I was back at home in my own parish, and undertaking my second time serving as a eucharistic minister. (I've done so before, but it's been years!) I was struck by the sensation of repeating the phrase "The Body of Christ" as I looked at face after face. "...for Christ plays in ten thousand places, / Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his / To the Father through the features of men’s faces." Not hard to see Christ there!

Virtual Reunions

I've been found by and been finding lots of old friends on Facebook lately. It's wonderful, and a more than a little strange. It's viral how it happens. This latest round, best I can tell, went like this.

My church youth group in high school did a camping/adventure trip every summer. I honestly don't quite remember exactly how many years I went, but I think I went, first as a kid and then as a leader, probably every summer but one from the time I was a junior in high school to the time I was a junior in college.

Anyway, so a guy I hadn't seen in at least 15 years puts up a group photo of about 15 of us taken just before we went white water rafting. He tags a couple of folks he's still in touch with, and then they tag a couple more, and then they start looking for the ones they don't know yet. One of them found me, friended me, and tagged me. Then all of a sudden we're all "Facebook friends," and I'm part of the group looking for some others who are missing. We find them. More connections. And suddenly, I'm reunited with this entire group of people that really significantly shaped who I am, how I see myself, and the world, and especially God and church, things that have become very important to me.

I spent more than 6 hours on the phone this weekend with three people that I haven't seen in years. One of them, I spoke to about 5 years ago. The other two, I don't think I've seen or spoken to in more than fifteen years. But these 3 people probably knew me better than anyone in the world from the time I was about 16 to 21 years old.

Strange how such a random set of connections can open a door into the past, into memories and feelings and thoughts, into a sense of self lost and found. My head is still spinning a bit with the wonder of God's providence in the whole thing. We come into each other's lives for a time and we give and receive what we have to give and need to receive. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would not be who I am had these friends not crossed my path 20 years ago. How does one say thank you for such profound gifts?

For now, it is enough to cherish the memories, to embrace the invitation to relish a bit what we meant to one another, how we helped one another to give and to grow. And whither then? I cannot say....

Testing

Just checking a little something. Don't get too excited.

Confessions of a bad blogger

I have no excuses, really. At least no really compelling ones. I could tell you about the sporadic nature of the internet at my house, and how it is most reliable on the porch and how it's a bit too cold out to comfortably type on the porch. Or how my google-identity has become a little confused, so sometimes I'm logged into another account and not authorized to publish here.

But mostly I'm finding it hard to walk the line between saying enough to make it worth my while and yours and saying far too much than I have time for. And so, silence.

Tonight, I'm breaking the silence from the warmth of my office. Much nicer.

I find, however, that I don't have much to say. It is, yet again, that strange time of year where the feeling of fall and of the passing away of the things of this world comes upon me. My father died 6 years ago this October--hard to believe it's been so long. My mom's birthday was last week; she would have been 67. And now, the holidays begin to come upon us, more than a little bittersweet.

I think, though, that it will be good for my soul to try to blog again; I keep being reminded that people do in fact read these musings. So, stay tuned, and I'll see what I can do.

Strange and Wonderful Gift

(Thanks to Jim for the support and encouragement to write. I think you'll like this one.)

One of the promises I made to myself in grad school was that if I ever finished, I would find a way to get involved with an organization called NAMI when I did. NAMI is the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Readers of this blog know that mental illness shapes my life in some significant ways, largely through my brother Paul who has a severe persistent case of schizo-affective disorder.

I have vague memories of my parents talking about NAMI, but what I remember more than anything is all the NAMI folks showing up to their funerals, and, even more so, after my dad died folks from NAMI would email and call to let me know that they'd seen Paul somewhere and he was doing okay. NAMI folks in North Carolina helped me find care and housing for Paul when I had to move him there, and NAMI-RI gave me support and information when I came here with Paul. And now, finally, I'm giving back--in two ways. And you can help with one of them.

First, I want to tell you about NAMI Family-to-Family. This is a program taught by family members of folks with mental illness for family members of mental illness. It used to be called Journey of Hope, and my mom took the class. I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to take the training session, and now I'm helping to teach the class. It's funny, because although there is a lot of helpful information to present, it seems like the real gift of the class is connecting people with others who have similar stories. Imagine sitting in a room of about 20 people and watching a couple of youngish folks who are there because their spouses have been diagnosed with bipolar listening to a couple married almost 50 years talk about having lived through the onset of the wife's bipolar disorder 30 years before; they are coming to class now out of a shared concern for another family member. Think of watching tears in a young wife's eyes as she looks at this older couple and says (very quietly) "Maybe there is hope for my marriage." NAMI connects people like this. My co-teachers and I mostly show up and watch it happen, and they thank us for it like we did something. It's a gift and a blessing.

The second way I'm getting involved in NAMI is that I am captaining a team for their main fundraiser, NAMI Walks. The team is called Paul's Pals, in honor of my brother. We'll have about 15 people walking with us this Saturday. Most of our walkers are colleagues of mine at work, though the Coolpeople (my friends from grad school and former housemates!) will be joining us, and a few of my new NAMI Family to Family friends as well. If you can spare a little cash in these hard times, head over the the Paul's Pals team site and give a little something. And if you have friends looking for a great cause to support with their charitable giving, or if you know someone who would benefit from knowing about NAMI and some of its programs and services, please send this post along.

It's strange and wonderful to be getting involved in these ways. Since August of 2003, when I moved Paul to North Carolina, that relationship really has defined me in some significant ways. Often, that felt like a burden and a distraction from what I needed to be doing. It is, of course, also a gift. It is strange and wonderful to find myself in roles and relationships where I really do remember what a gift it is to be Paul's sister. Not an easy gift, but gift indeed.

A step in the right direction

Well, the (alleged) pedophile who caused so much trouble in our parish, for the province, and, especially to a young man in Maryland and (I fear) several other young men and their families, has turned himself in. A warrant was issued for his arrest. Pray for justice and peace for all concerned. The local news report (Maryland/DC area) can be viewed here.

10, 000 Saints

I realized tonight that, in the spirit of the name of my blog, it was time to blog about the places in my current life. I am teaching a summer class at St. John's University in Minnesota. And I have to say that I love the place names here. Most Catholic colleges and universities where I have been name a few buildings after saints and such, but most end up being named after donors or past presidents.

I'm living in Virgil Michel (a twentieth century Benedictine instrumental in the liturgical movement and quite influential upon Dorothy Day). My office is in St. Luke. My class meets in Emmaus, which means that I walk the road to Emmaus each morning. Along the way, I see St. Patrick Hall, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Benet, and St. Luke, as well as the Liturgical Press.

Anyway, this delights me. The land of 10, 000 lakes is also a land of many saints. I like that.

Because I can

In the spirit of documenting places, especially places of unexpected grace, I thought I would document a small grace in an unexpected place. I opened up my laptop here in the Charlotte, NC, airport and found free internet access (Thanks, citizens of Charlotte!).

I'm on my way to a conference in Miami, where many of my most important friends and colleagues will be assembled. I'm looking forward to it. But for now, I need to get to work on my presentation!

Superbad

Some friends and I watched the movie Superbad last night. Their husbands and some other guys had watched it last week, and we decided, despite warnings about its overly sexual language etc, that we wanted to watch it too.

Now, it wasn't the best movie I've ever seen, and it was saturated with all the worst aspects of an adolescent culture formed by pornography and soaked in alcohol. But, somehow in the midst of all that, friendship and love and even innocence shined through.

I found myself thinking of a storyline in one of my favorite movies, Love Actually. Two characters lighting stand-ins on a movie set. All of their early scenes find them naked in some sort of sex pose with one another. It's almost shocking enough to turn off the film. But their conversation begins with very awkward banter about traffic, moves into exchange of small stories and small kindnesses, and then, eventually, finds that strangely awkward moment where, naked in bed with her, he very haltingly stumbles through asking her to go for a drink after work. What is so intriguing about this storyline to me is that it shows pretty clearly how, in today's world, sex and nakedness do not necessarily mean intimacy and vulnerability. But, oddly enough, they don't mean that they can't develop, either.

In Superbad, something similar seems to be going on. It seemed to me that many of the characters were enacting cultural scripts that had to do with highly sexual language and action. That is to say, they were talking about enacting sexual fantasies, about what would happen with that girl when they got her drunk enough etc. But the reality of the thing was so much different. One girl turned out not to drink. Another was drunk, and pretty much up for anything, but when they got in bed a whole lotta workup ended up resulting in nothing much but, well, puke.

And the film pretty much ended with the two major male characters meeting their love interests randomly at the mall. And despite all the drunken bravado and overt, forward, sexual propositioning of the night before, they met up with awkward shyness.

It was a rather painful reminder to me, however, of this crazy world that our young people are growing up in, where sex isn't simply casual anymore, but moreover conversation about sex is so mainstream and so pornographic that they end up learning how to talk about trading sexual favors before they have learned how to ask someone to spend a little time just hanging out together at the mall. And, of course, that is superbad.

The Third Degree

Hello, friends.

I know it's been a while. And though I probably could go on for a while on this topic, I'm going to make a brief observation, sigh, and then share a couple of thoughts. Then I'll sigh again and sign off to go raise a glass to my own accomplishment here.

Today is my very last day with any claim to the title of "student." Tomorrow, I graduate and officially earn my third (and hopefully final) degree.

(Sigh.)

This milestone has past oddly in stages, as I haven't been in residence at the university for two years, as I actually turned in the dissertation a couple of months ago now, and defended it nearly a month ago. Graduation itself, which I am not attending, has seemed a mere formality. But tonight, perhaps in part due to the visit of a dear friend from my soon-to-be alma mater, I am surprisingly nostalgic and emotional. Strange.

(Deeper sigh.)

Clink.

I'm back

OK, as promised and by popular demand, I'm going to start blogging again. The dissertation is now complete and defended. All went well with that.

I'm now swimming in the midst of a pile of long-delayed grading as well as slogging through what seems to be the obligatory post-stress illness (just an annoying little sinus thing that keeps everything foggy).

There is surprisingly little to say at this point. Just trying to get through to the end of the semester. I'm incredibly relieved to be done with grad school. But it will be nice to put this whole semester behind me.

By the way, last class day: Thursday.

Small update

Don't get too excited or think that I'm back to even the sporadic blogging that was, for a time, semi-regular, but I thought I would post this here. My dissertation needs an intro, a conclusion, some formatting work and a bibliography. Still a lot of work to be done, but I'll be defending this puppy in mid-April. And then maybe I'll blog here again!

How many words is this worth?

This picture just captures something about my life right now, something that defies expression but is somewhere in the direction of my dissertation going to the dogs. Anyway, it makes me laugh. I like how this somehow reverses our life together; it seems as though I have disturbed her in the middle of her reading.

Of course, the picture I really wanted was ruined in finding the camera: dog sleeping on book.

NPR weighs in

As most of you know, I'm not blogging much as other writing must take precedence right now. But I do have a couple of things to say quickly.

Some of you may have heard it, but if not, NPR did a story on the Dominicans and the alleged pedophile they placed at our parish for a while. You can find both text and audio here.

Check the October archives for some of my earlier commentary. I have a couple things to add. The Dominican provincial has really been trying to do right by the parish, and has been in residence here (more or less) since the week before Thanksgiving. He can preach and he strikes me as a holy man and a good priest. I'm afraid, though, that he will fail in the end to really do right by the people his brothers have hurt. I mean not simply the (alleged) pedophile but also all the folks who lived with him, who supervised him, or who had administrative responsibilities for him. The pattern I see is a tendancy to protect the brother and the Order, even at the expense of children, the truth, and the Gospel. It actually saddens me greatly. I think I have more respect for this man than for most priests, most people, I have met. And yet I think he has been a part of the problem and I think he will likely--despite intentions to the contrary--remain so.

Let me be clear: I do think that there is a very real desire to deal with the problem of pedophilia. But what I have seen in reading some of the depositions attached to the legal proceedings related to Fr. Cote indicates to me that there are very deep patterns of prioritizing a brother's input and needs and marginalizing lay persons and their concerns. I think there is a system which (contrary to the stated aims of religious life) encourages one brother to look the other way in the face of his brother's shortcomings/issues/sins, because, after all, then he can look the other way if (when!) he notices those of the first. I think the good friars, like the rest of us, find it hard to live Christian community in this age of "live and let live."

In the depositions it was clear that there were a few friars and a few lay persons who really tried to step up and say something. And there were friars, diocesan staff, and lay persons who ignored the stated concerns, missed the warning signs, amd dismissed or marginalized the folks who spoke up.

I wish I could somehow bring together in the same room some of my friends who think I should leave the Catholic Church and/or the Dominican institutions I've associated myself with over all of this with some of the good Dominicans I know. I wish that they could see how deeply this shakes their credibility, how important it is that they respond not just with the "justice" that the legal system demands but with that deeper justice which is enlivened by charity. I want to see them give all involved their due, but more than that, I want to see their love of the Gospel, their love of the people they are called to serve (especially the children), and their willingness to do something radical to show that love. I'm not sure what that would be, but I sure do wish that the responses (on all sides) to clergy sex abuse involved more love and fewer lawyers.

Last day of class

I taught two sections this semester of a course on social justice. I never write out what I am going to say--I have outlines, plans, but never anything word-for-word. At the end of one class, I sort of stumbled through a "here's what I hope for you" speech, and walked away thinking, "I sure wish I'd said...." So I wrote it down. And the next day, when the other section met for the last time, I mostly said, but at points actually read them this:

Whether you are Catholic or not, Christian or not, I hope that you come away with a deeper sense that a better world is possible and that you can work in small ways and/or in large ways to help make that possible

Again Catholic, Christian, or not, I hope that you have come to a deeper understanding that the Church is convinced that the gospel demands that all people, especially Christians, should work for justice in the world, and especially that they attend to the needs of the poor and marginalized. (I know the Church fails to live this, I know I—like most “first world” Christians—fail to live it, but) I hope that you have seen something more of the Church’s vision of a world where the dignity of the human person is respected, the common good is worked for, creation is cared for, and the poor and marginalized are included and have all that they need.

I also hope that those of you who do consider yourselves Christian have come to see that the Gospel demands more of you than going to Mass an hour every week on your way to the same ole American Dream the rest of the world is pursuing. I hope that this class has helped you to rethink a bit what you will do with your life. It’s funny. Sometimes I wonder if the next Dorothy Day, the next Daniel Berrigan, the next St. Francis, the next St. Therese of Liseuax might not be sitting in my class. Their lives, to borrow Daniel Berrigan’s line about Dorothy Day, were lived as though the truth is true.

I know none of us will live it perfectly. But I hope this class has given you something to aspire to. The gospel that God so loved the world that He gave his only Son for us, and that we encounter Christ in each encounter with the least of these. I hope that all of us go forth from this semester together a bit more equipped to live as though that truth is true.

I loved watching their faces as I said the line about the next Dorothy Day being in the class. I actually added a line there about how they all had to start learning that truth sometime, somewhere. Why not here?

Anyway, it occurs to me that it is of course a good Advent message, heck, a good anytime-of-the-year challenge to all of us: let us live as though the truth is true. Of course, I'm also tempted to add: and if we don't know what's true, by God, let's start trying to figure it out!

Happy New Year!

Well, the vestments have changed to purple, and a single candle of four is glowing on all the wreaths. It's always fascinated me that we have so many kinds of years--calendar years, school years, fiscal years, and, of course, liturgical years. So strange that this particular year begins as so much is coming to an end--the semester, the leaves, etc. It's also a bit scary to feel so scattered, overwhelmed, and not-ready-for-anything in the face of that for which advent would have us prepare. Find us ready, Lord.

Transcendent rational animals

On a lighter note than recent postings....

As most of you know, I currently have the Coolclan residing with me. It makes for many fun and interesting and sometimes strange moments, most of which I have been too busy to blog about. But here's one I couldn't let go by.

As I headed upstairs this morning, I heard the sounds of Handel's Hallelujah chorus echoing forth from the bathroom. The door was wide open so I risked a peek inside. There was young James (4 years old) sitting completely naked on the toilet, singing at the top of his lungs. The mood of the music was such that I had to ask the question "Are things going well in here?" I got his pretty typical joyful smile and the seemingly delighted claim "I'm pooping!" I said, "I figured that. But you seem so happy about it!" He added "I'm singing!" "I know, I heard you." He said--with no change in mood at all--"Did you know that people aren't supposed to see other people pooping?" I said, "I've heard that. Did you know that people ought to shut doors when they are pooping so that other people don't see them? I'll get it for you." I closed the door and walked away.

There is something so strange and beautiful about the whole thing. His innocent joy, which certainly had more to do with the echo-y quality of the bathroom than with nakedness or poop, was still just unabashed by my presence. And of course he merely sang Alleluia after Alleluia because he knew the words and the tune, not because he was trying to express that kind of joy, but it sure seemed like it. It seemed like he was celebrating the transcendent in the midst of this very animal human moment.

What a strange and beautiful ability children have to embody, more deeply than they can possibly know, the strange contradictions of being a trascendent rational animal.

Good news, bad news, and hope

If you haven't read my last blog entry, you probably should before you continue with this one. When last we left things, the provincial (let's call him Fr. D) had done a lot of listening and basically refused to respond, prefering to sit with what he had heard and come back about 10 days later for another meeting and respond then. That meeting happened Thursday, on the feast of St. Francis. The humble peacemaker seemed to have intervened for us, because the meeting could not have begun better.

Fr. D began by saying that he had heard a lot of pain and anger and disappointment, but also a love and care and concern for the parish. He admitted (more clearly than I imagine could be prudent from a legal point of view) that he made a mistake when he assigned the priest in question to the parish, and he was also mistaken not to come in person to talk to the parish about the law suit and about the settlement when each of those things occurred. He said that he listened to lawyers and all the concerns about what could not be said, when he should have listened to his own instincts about the importance of presence and all the things that could be said, without regard to the law. He said very clearly "I apologize for all this and I ask for your forgiveness." It seemed to be just about everything we could have hoped for.

He went on to talk about the new norms the Order has in place to review their personnel, and they seem, for the most part, to be the right things. He spoke of ensuring that the children of the parish get Safe Environment training and that outside professionals come to talk to children who had significant contact with the priest in question (especially them and their parents, but actually, this is extended to anyone for whom this has created or re-surfaced issues). This will include informational sessions on everything from working through anger issues to recognizing signs of abuse in your child. In addition, there will be counsellors available for those who have individual issues to talk about. I mean, really, this is all the right stuff, right?

He mentioned that he knew there were other issues in the parish and he is sending a trained facilitator to help the parish through some listening sessions and a visioning process for overall healing and renewal. Again, seems pretty great.

But apparently even St. Francis cannot hold evil at bay, because then, for some reason, perhaps in response to a question, he began to talk about the settlement, in which the Order paid a young man $1.2 million dollars related to his allegations of abuse by this priest that Fr. D had just apologized for assigning to our parish. It started pretty informationally: "By the way, although some alleged victims insist on such a clause, nothing in this settlement demands or includes or implies an admission of guilt." And then, the very clear statement: "I do not believe that this priest has ever molested a child."

Well, that's when the wheels began to come off. Now, I have read many but not all of the depositions and supporting evidence that we have and let me state this clearly: I do not see anything in all of that that makes me what I would call "absolutely certain" that this priest ever molested a child. But there are very clear descriptions of inappropriate behavior and there is testimony about concerns dating back to 1985, in four completely different locations. And there is this very clear allegation that was settled for over a million dollars. I am not absolutely certain that this priest ever abused anyone, but I cannot imagine any reasonable person claiming to be even relatively convinced that he did not.

So, the responses went in three basic directions. One set pointed toward specific information from the depositions: how can you know that blah blah blah and still believe that he is not a child molester? Easy answer, but deeply disturbing: I haven't read all that information. This led many to another disturbing question: why are many of us so interested in understanding what happened here that we stayed up late in the last two weeks reading this and you ... didn't? Do you just not care that much about us? About the truth? Direction #2 was simply but poignant: so then, the children who made these claims ... do you think they were lying? You must not understand much about children. And direction #3--perhaps this was simply where the first two directions rejoined, because everyone seemed to go here eventually: so, if you think he never molested any children, what exactly were you apologizing for at the beginning?

I actually felt quite bad for him. I really believe that he means well and that he really is doing all the right things. But another great saint of a friar used to insist (quoting Aristotle of course) that the virtuous man is the one who not only does the virtuous thing, but does it in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason, etc. Any defect is enough to make an action--even a mostly good action--evil. And it just began to seem to people, I think, that he was apologizing and changing the norms and attending to the needs of the parish not because his desires are rightly ordered and he truly sees the good of all these things, but because the legal and financial well-being of his Order demands it. One can be a prudent thief, Thomas says, but such an end distorts the virtue itself. I would suspect he would also argue that if the provincial is prudent qua CEO and not prudent qua friar, prudent qua priest, even prudent qua Christian, he is pretty distorted as well.

I remain deeply hopeful that this particular friar means to be putting his prudence at the service of charity, which is the right way around. I think he is open to hearing from us, his brothers and sisters, the ways he has allowed a disordered charity for his brother friars to become uncharitable both to them and to us, and, of course, especially to our children.

Please continue to pray for our parish, and for the victims, the perpetrators, and the unwitting abettors (lay, religious, and ordained) of clergy sexual abuse.

Under the Ruins

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I've been trying to do other sorts of writing. Which are coming along ... slowly.

I know some of you have been concerned about life in my parish. That's what the disturbing statuses on Facebook have been about. Quick reminder of some old news can be had here. For the past month, I've been going to Mass across town, but also meeting with some folks who want to save the parish. A little research and a few phone calls, and the lawyer for the alleged victim in the case emailed us all the depositions of everyone involved.

Now, let me acknowledge a couple of things, which still astound me when I think about it. Having read most of these depositions, I now have more information available to me about the alleged abuser's history than the relevant responsible parties had available to them in 2003 when they assigned him to the parish. I also want to acknowledge that I have read what is basically the alleged victim's case (his lawyer deposing the alleged perpetrator, who took the fifth on everything, and a bunch of other witnesses; the exhibits and supporting evidence that they filed etc). But it's pretty clear to me that there were a TON of red flags on this guy and he could have reasonably been denied access to children as early as 1985, but by the mid-90s it was getting increasingly unreasonable not to deny him access. And, at this point, it looks like so many people in his religious community could have easily decided to look a little deeper, but instead, they looked away.

So, here's this horrible, horrible situation, right. And a bunch of us wrote letters to the priest in charge of the Province, who made the assignment, and more or less demanded that he come up here and meet with us regarding the whole thing. He actually agreed, and came, and we had the meeting last night. So here was the train-wreck waiting to happen: some of us having read all these depositions, convinced this guy was really the best face of the sex abuse crisis since Cardinal Law; him and his entourage, who seemed likely, from his initial email responses to some of us, to dismiss our concerns; plus, many people in parish leadership who had no clue about any of this, and thought we were simply going to talk about 1 abusive priest and had no idea that there was even a hint of anyone else's complicity in the thing.

But the funny thing is, the wreck didn't exactly happen. First, the priest involved was very reconciliatory and, by my read, humble. (Others mentioned that they found his silent nodding offensively condescending.) He did NOT defend his actions in assigning the priest here. That was somewhat disappointing, as I would still love to hear what he possibly could have been thinking. Basically, he let us beat him up for about an hour. Then he responded a little and we beat him up a little more.

By the way, he told us what penances he was doing related to clergy sex abuse and volunteered to do more if we didn't think it was enough. He didn't quite give us the satisfaction of the truth, nor did he give us platitudinous affirmations. He did apologize.

Many people spoke of the pain of this assignment, of the fear that struck them and the news came out and they began to wonder which of their sons or their friends' sons might have been victimized. They also spoke of a long pattern of poor communication and pastoral neglect that the order as a whole has shown the parish, and how this assignment was not an abnormality but the straw that has broken the camel's back. But they also spoke of how much the community has meant, how much life it has given them, how much of their own lives they have given it. And then the message, loud and clear. Never said quite like this, though close: we are the Church, Father, and we will be the Church with or without you. We don't exactly trust you anymore, but we'll give you another chance. Help us rebuild this place. Help us nurture a place where our kids can learn the faith and be safe. Or get out of the way.

I really was inspired, and I'm still not sure why. It is certainly too much to say that forgiveness and reconciliation have been accomplished. Perhaps I'm astounded that everyone hung in the conversation as long as they did. It feels a bit like a miracle, a bit like Christ's promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against us might be true.

I'm so hopeful, and so afraid to hope. And I've only been here about a year. A strange gift to discover a community I think I might value so much in the basement under the ruins of the nearly-empty church that has been killing my soul all year.

Adventures in Dog-parenting

I alluded to more chaos coming, and it has arrived. The Coolclan is coming to stay for a few weeks while they await the completion of some work on their house. They stopped in for about an hour today to drop off some stuff before heading out of town for the long weekend.

Their 4 year old son James (who has had his own share of adventures) handed me an empty container and said "I fed Lily her food." The problem was that the container he handed me had formerly held raisins. There was a little debate about what had actually been in the container, but I was pretty sure it had been half full of raisins. I had a very clear but unsubstantiated memory that the top three foods never to feed a dog were chocolate, grapes/raisins, and onions.

I headed out to the back yard, where Lily and Digger were tied up running around, and all looked normal. I came back inside and checked the internet and found that, indeed, raisins are among the most toxic foods for dogs, at least potentially. As little as 9 ounces of raisins has led to death through renal failure. My guess is that Lily consumed about 6 ounces of raisins. The article I clicked on said that you would see vomiting immediately and then ... well, all sorts of scary things would happen. But no vomiting ensued right then, so we figured all was well and the Coolclan left.

But I am, apparently, an obsessive dog parent. I googled again and clicked on another 3 or 4 articles. From these I basically gleaned that symptoms would not appear for 6-24 hours. So, I decided we weren't out of the woods. I was basically thinking about rushing off to the vet with no apparent symptoms. I did a little more reading. The main recommendation that emerged was not going to the vet but inducing vomiting. I pictured myself trying to shove a finger down Lily's throat and didn't like the image at all.

It turns out there is a much easier way to induce vomiting in a dog: hydrogen peroxide. You give them 1 tsp for each 10 pounds of body weight. I couldn't figure out if she would just drink it or not. By the way, this is the part where I really started to feel slightly evil. I took 2.5 teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide and mixed it into Lily's favorite creamy snack: peanut butter. My poor unsuspecting pup thought she was getting a treat and lapped it right up.

About 10 minutes later, she was puking all over the backyard. Poor thing. Five or six gross little piles. And let's just say the piles clearly ended any debate about whether she had eaten raisins or dogfood.

And here's the moment where I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she is mine and I am hers and I'll always take care of her no matter how gross it gets. I realized that she (and Digger) were going to eat the puke if I left it there, toxic raisins and all. So I went through my yard and picked up all the puke, making certain not to miss a single raisin. I didn't do it bare-handed or anything, but it is among the grosser things I think I've done.

And I'd do it again.

Lily, though somewhat subdued for a while, seems no worse for the wear now. I do wonder if she'll ever eat peanut butter again. I have a feeling the answer is yes.