Once in a while I have to take time out from drinking from the fire hose of bad news, and just be in the present. A few weeks ago, Jim Pauwels posted about family and personal landmarks. The month of June is one of my personal landmarks. As James Russell Lowell said in his poem, "...then, if ever, come perfect days..."
For one thing, the month is sweet scented. The honey locusts, lindens, Russian olives, and catalpas are in bloom. You know what month it is when you step outside and take a deep breath.
Speaking of catalpas, a personal pilgrimage I have to take in June is to walk under catalpa trees in bloom. I call it "the time of falling flowers". The blooms are heavy scented, and look like big fluffy popcorn. As you walk under the trees, a breeze usually stirs the blossoms, and a few come floating lightly down.
June is a good time for walking. Our favorite place to walk is Lake North, the aptly named lake north of our town.
Unfortunately I won't be taking any long walks for a few weeks, because of walking into a store on last Tuesday. I was wearing a mask, and didn't get a shopping cart, because I only wanted a couple of items, and didn't want to bother with sanitizing a cart. Long story short, because of the mask and carrying the merchandise, I tripped over cement bricks on the floor (they had been part of a display) and fell hard, on my face. Required nine stitches in my lip, and have a couple of hairline fractures of toes on my left foot. I was lucky it wasn't much worse.
Word to the wise, wearing a mask does impair your vision downward. If wearing a mask, always get the damn cart, it will help prevent you from tripping. Worth the few extra seconds to wipe it down.
The month isn't ruined, I can still enjoy it from our deck or in the yard. The first day I felt rough, but right now am doing okay. Will be glad to get the stitches out though.
We did make it to Mass this morning, since it is the feast day of St. Anthony of Padua, the parish patron saint. Ordinarily it is kind of a big deal. Today was attended by about 15 people; no music, because we haven't resumed that yet. But our priest gave a rousing homily on the life of the saint, more about him being a doctor of the church than about his legends.
St. A is considered the patron saint of lost things. He is also the patron saint of our younger son, AKA "Tony". It's funny, when our son was little, he was always the one to find whatever object was missing.
We have had two weird experiences with St. Anthony's ability to find lost objects. I don't believe much along those lines, but I do have no doubt that he'll find what you are looking for.
ReplyDeleteSeems like he most often works through people, like a lot of other answered prayers. My brother once lost his wallet. We turned the place upside down, but didn't have any luck. Of course Grandma said pray to St. Anthony. We were surprised when my brother's friend Anthony showed up at the door carrying the wallet. He had taken a shortcut across the field where brother had been working, and saw it laying on the ground.
DeleteYou are just upset because your house didn't sell fast and over the asking price.
DeleteOops … that's St. Joseph, verdad?
Anthony is back good graces yet again.
Katherine, I am so sorry about your accident. How awful - on top of everything else that is wrong right now. Get better soon!
ReplyDeleteOK, as the resident doubter here, very suspicious of superstitious piety, I will come clean and say that St. Anthony is the reason I am not an atheist. Whenever I am at the edge of being a 100% non-believer, I lose something. I pray to St. Anthony, and - under sometimes impossible circumstances- the lost is found.
One example - as a teen (still a strong believer and devout Catholic) I worked at a summer beach park - lots of sand, and a picnic area with lots of trees and tables and leaves and pine needles on the ground. I didn't work specifically at either of those areas of this park, but at the entrance. One day, for some reason, my mom had let me drive to work. A rare privilege (I usually walked - about 1.5 miles). When it was time to close up and go home, I couldn't find the car keys. I was sick to my stomach at the idea of calling my mom and telling her. I searched all over my area of the park - nothing. For some reason that I couldn't explain EVER, I went to the picnic area at the opposite end of the park from my work area. And fairly quickly spotted the keys on the ground. Some years later my husband and I were skiing with his brother and wife. End of the day, getting dark, and the lifts were closing. My brother in law had realized he didn't have his wallet. Up on the lift one last time - he and my husband had already been going up and down searching for an hour or so trying to find it, in churned up snow. The last trip up for the lift was the last hope. It was getting hard to see. My sis in law and I waited at the bottom of the hill and eventually spotted our husbands as they made their way down for one last time. AS they got closer we saw that my husband's brother was holding up his wallet! I was still a true believer then too, but St. A reinforced my beliefs.
There have been dozens of less dramatic finds by St. Anthony in my lifetime, even as I have edged towards atheism at times.
Last night I lost a contact lens in the bathroom. I crawled around on the floor, looking in every nook and cranny. I carefully inspected the rug on the floor, shook it out. I had carefully brushed my clothing (a lifetime of contacts has taught me all the tricks). I finally took a chance and got a flashlight, because often the light picks up the lens. Nothing. I resigned myself to wearing an old lens and coughing up $100 for a new lens of the new prescription. I told my husband what had happened and asked him to look too. He did - and in a minute he said "Found it". He shook the rug and it fell on the tile. The same rug I had thoroughly inspected, the same rug that I had shaken more than once, and nothing.The rug is white. My contact lens is tinted light blue to make it easier to find. But I didn't, not even on a white rug. I had told my husband that I had asked St. A to show him where the contact was. And he did.
Even my very mainstream Protestant husband is a firm St.A believer after marriage to me for 47 years.
St. A hasn't assuaged all my many doubts, but he has made me believe that there is a God. And some kind of afterlife. Maybe at some point I won't be so close to the edge of total unbelief as I have been for years now. But St. A has kept me on the "right" side of that cliff - so far.
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