Blisters, irony and mercy

It is cold and rainy in London. Yes, it is July. Yes, I brought my umbrella. And yes, I’ve been walking everywhere or taking the buses. Yesterday I wore my “conference flats“ which are great for walking many miles in city streets. My day was ending with a visit to the theater, so I thought perhaps an upgrade from my sneakers was in order. 

My trusty flats have never given me blisters. That is until yesterday. Fifteen minutes into a twenty minute walk to the Underground the back of my heel was hot. By the time I got to Russell Square for a lunch meet up, it was raw. I grabbed a bandage from my little first aid kit in my bag and patched it. By the end of lunch, I’d patched the other heel. On to my next meeting. By the time I arrived, I had another blister. You would’ve found me sitting on the (very clean) floor of the  bathroom of the very prestigious journal publisher patching up my foot. 

When I left, I hit the button on my app for navigating the city for “less walking“ and was relieved to find I could catch a bus right in front of where I was that would take me straight to dinner.

By dinner, two more blisters had blossomed on my now sopping wet feet. My feet have not been such a hot mess since I did ballet in graduate school. As we headed home from the theater, my companions pointed out the perch I could lean against in the bus stop. “Ah,” I said, “a misericord. A mercy seat.” For sure it was a mercy for me at this point, at least as much as its predecessor must’ve been for the elderly monks of old. “Not really,” responded one. “ It’s unwelcoming urban architecture. No place for someone to lay down and sleep.” I sighed. There is an irony in having  a mercy seat that doesn’t offer mercy to those most in need.

Broken threads

My maternal great-great grandmother, Leah Lopes Dias Mercado, is buried in London. She rests in the Sephardic Jewish cemetery at Mile End, or what is left of it after much of it has been taken over by Queen Mary University’s expansion in the 20th century. One of the buildings that was erected is the chemistry building, which now abuts the northeast edge of the cemetery. I wonder if my great great grandmother would’ve been pleased to discover that her great granddaughter and great great granddaughter were both university trained chemists.

I visited her grave this week in between London rainstorms. Finding the university was no problem, getting in a bit more of a problem. It’s an urban campus and closed, except for those with IDs. When I asked to visit the cemetery, the security guard told me that I needed to have arranged for that ahead of time by email. I had checked the university website, which did not mention that and asked her who I could contact because I was only here from the US for a short period. At which point she said, “Well, just this one time!” and waved me in. The graveyard is just 100 feet or so beyond the entrance. It was also locked up. But as I circled it for an entrance that might be open I found the spot where people clearly climbed over the wall, and I followed suit. I was a little worried that I might get booted from campus by security for trespassing, but thankfully was left undisturbed.

I had an index to the burial ground, but it was still challenging to find her grave given how worn the inscriptions were on most of the graves. I found a grave where the inscription was legible and a relatively uncommon name, Jane Botibol, wife of Isaac. As I tried to find it on my online index on my phone, it finally popped up and turned out to be only three graves away from Leah. It was an extraordinary experience to stand there, and to pray for her, and to wonder what her life must’ve been or like that of her daughter, my great grandmother, who was orphaned at 12 and eventually immigrated to the US. I left two pebbles on her grave so that she might know she’s remembered. There were a few others, and I wonder if family members here in London might’ve left them. I washed my hands and did not dry them and wished I  I knew more about this part of my family, but I fear too many connecting threads have been broken to ever know much more. 

Thorns and grace

From Give Us This Day for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

(Written last fall! Readings are here.)

Last week a colleague welcomed a new baby. Her good news meant I abruptly acquired two extra classes to teach and fifty more students whose names I have yet to learn. My husband had surgery, so I am caretaking. Dear God, I prayed, no more thorns this week. I grabbed the laundry basket and opened the basement door to find water lapping at the steps. Oh, God. As I reached for the mop, I prayed for just enough grace to get through the day.

What was I expecting of this just-enough, just-in-time grace? After all, grace didn’t relieve St. Paul of his thorn in the flesh, nor was I expecting God to miraculously deliver me from the grading or the wet basement floor.

God assured Ezekiel that regardless of the success of his mission, people will know that a prophet has been among them. Perhaps that is the grace that Paul—and all of us—are promised. Not that grace will relieve us of the troubles that beset us, but that by the light of that grace we will know that God has been with us through the thorny days. Like the people in Jesus’ hometown, we may not see great miracles come to pass, indeed, we might not even dare to hope for such signs. Even so, Jesus moves among us, quietly healing our wounds, setting us back on our feet.

Nada te turbe, begins the little prayer found tucked in St. Teresa of Avila’s prayer book: let nothing disturb you. All these things will pass. God alone is enough. For today, it is grace enough for me to know that, too.

Statio: a sacred pause

Michael Peterson OSB, a monk of St. John's Abbey in Minnesota, had a reflection in Give Us This Day in April that has stuck with me. He writes of the monastic practice of "statio", where the monks line up two by two to process in to the church proper for a liturgy. It is, he says, a chance for a sacred pause, a chance to stop and collect oneself to be sure, but also a chance to reflect on what God is calling you to do, here and now, to consider what you believe and why. A full intentional stop.

I'm at the very start of a sabbatical leave. An intentional stop, a full year pause in my teaching. This reflection is a reminder that my vocation (unlike the pneumonia vaccine I got this week) is not "one and done". It is the relentless call of God, shaping and reshaping my life.

So, yes, the sabbatical is for rest and renewal, a stop, but it's also a sacred time for growth. I'm getting ready to retire from teaching, one more year after I return from sabbatical. "What next?" I wonder. "What now?" I ask God.  

Pause. 

Stop. 

Breathe. 

Listen.

________________

Reflection is here.

Deliquescent: I am melting

I am currently reading "Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries against Despair" by Christian Wiman. It is part poetry, part lyric essay, and part commonplace book. In the third entry he quotes Imre Kertész, "under certain circumstances... words lose their substance... they simply deliquesce..." Kertész is, I think, referring to grief, but I was struck by the Dali-esque image of melting words that deliquesce implies. It is originally a term from chemistry, referring to the process by which a salt absorbs water from the atmosphere and turns into a solution. Looking for all the world like it is melting away, but of course it has not. All the ions that were in the salt are still present, simply now unseen in the water, and the water that swirled around the salt unseen is now made manifest. 

Ten entries later deliquesce appears again, this time in a long ouroboric discourse on snakes. I look deliquesce up, wondering what the non-chemists make of it. Metaphorically, suggests Merriam-Webster, it means to soften, perhaps with age. Am I deliquescing as I write? (Certainly as I age.) Pulling something unseen from the air, making it manifest, while I myself vanish? Still there, tucked unseen between those water molecules...those words. 

It makes me think of efflorescence, where water flows through a salt, dissolving it, carrying it to the surface where it then turns back into a solid. But instead of the tidy crystalline packing, now it looks like flowers have erupted on the surface. Perhaps that's another metaphor for my writing, looking for what's in the depths to carry it up to the surface where it can flower. (Or lose its intended structure -- not an image I'd chose.)

All things visible and invisible. All things exchanging and interchanging.

_______

Sodium hydroxide is what I think of as the iconic ionic substance that deliquesces.