Layers of protection

 

I pulled open the drawer of the lecture table, to stash a pair of winter gloves someone had left behind so I would have enough room to work with some students during recitation. Clearly I wasn't the first person to have done that, both drawers were full of detritus (including another pair of gloves!).

I could classify the contents as lost, left behind, or just in case.

Lost and left behind: Those gloves. Cables. So many pens and pencils. There was a Zip disk from 2000. "Hey, that looks just like the save icon!" offered one student, looking over my shoulder. I replied it wasn't a replica of the icon, rather this was the physical object from which the icon was derived.  Another remarked dryly, "That disk is from before I was born." Erk. That made me feel nearly ancient. I can clearly remember when Zip disks were state of the art.

The drawer was a trip to another time. A late colleague's notes. Unmarked vials. A vial of pure vanillin (which isn't the familiar caramel color of vanilla, but a white powder.) Pens for writing on overhead transparencies (what are those my TA wondered, while I wondered in turn when I had last used that technology, or a physical slide deck for that matter). 

Just in case: That extra pen for writing on transparencies, batteries (one so old it had burst open) and spare bulbs for the projector. Rulers, periodic tables. Period supplies. Blue books (which are coming back into vogue again thanks to AI) and scratch paper for exams.  

Beloved. Period.

We are beloved.
     Period.
Not beloved because
Not beloved if
Not beloved but
Not beloved for
Not beloved sometimes, by some people. 

We are beloved. No commas, no clauses.
Beloved, period.

We are beloved, as we are,
      as we were even before the spirit breathed upon the waters,
          as we will be when the sun itself returns to dust.
Be loved.

Be love. 

---

The parish mission, executive summary. A riff at the end on the Zen koan: "Show me your original face, the face you had before your parents were born.”

Jarred silence

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— TinyTalesDaily (@tinytalesdaily.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 9:01 AM

I am, you anxious one.
Don’t you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch? 
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings. 
Can’t you see me standing before you cloaked in stillness?
...And with the silence of stars I enfold your cities made by time.”
— Rainer Marie Rilke

from Rilke's Book of Hours translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

I used to dive into the silence once a month at the Jesuit Center near Wernersville and perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, would offer to bring back a bit of the silence for friends. I have been thinking about how to package up silence recently. Or rather, contemplating how to open a space for stillness and silence for those who are seeking it. What would it look like to set up that sort of portal in the parish church for an hour? What could you give people to take home...if not in a jar, but a gift of a way of drawing that cloak of silence and stillness around themselves if only for a few minutes?

It is so tempting to try to push lots of advice in, but I keep returning to Abba Moses advice, "Sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything." Or to riff on Mary Vorse's advice to young writers (including  Sinclair Lewis) “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”: to sit in prayer is simply to apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. I don't want to constrain prayer.

As to the jars in the TinyTale, I am with Marty Laird OSA (Into the Silent Land) on the notion that contemplation will somehow erase the woundedness we experience. Opening that jar of permanent silence isn't necessarily going to hush the screams in the other jar she bought. Prayer is not snorting lines of euphoric peace, warns Fr. Laird.

Tied up in knots

It was an 18 hour drive from where we lived outside Chicago to the small Long Island town where my mom had grown up. Once or twice a year we would leave after school and my dad would drive all night. (I know, I can’t imagine how he did that.) It was quite an adventure, I remember waking in the night to see a sign on the Pennsylvania Turnpike for Valley Forge. I would imagine the winter encampment, wonder what it looked like now. (And now I live a short distance away from that exit. Also funny to realized I have no memories at all of the 18 hour drives back to Illinois, which we surely must have done at night as well to minimize the kid boredom and resultant chaos.)  

The bakery on Long Island was close enough to walk to from my grandparent’s house. There were sidewalks! For a girl from rural Illinois (no sidewalks, no shops within walking or biking distance) it was exciting to have such independence. My dad loved the poppy seeded hard rolls from the bakery with his coffee in the morning, fetched fresh each day. When we moved to California, too far for even such infrequent visits, my dad began to try to duplicate the rolls at home. My grandfather would taste test when he came to visit (easier to transfer one elderly parent by plane from East Coast to West than six kids and a dog in Volkswagen van.) He finally settled on a recipe that matched his memories (and got my grandfather’s seal of approval as well). 

When I would visit he would make a batch, timed so they’d just be coming out of the oven when I walked in the door. To be eaten hot, with butter. My dad died in 2019, but the rolls live on. The third generation (both Crash and Math Guy) learned from my dad how to tell when the dough was just right, how to tie the dough into knots and how much egg wash to use to get the right color and those poppy seeds to stick.

A few weeks ago, during the snow storm that left us snow covered and encased in ice (it’s been 3 weeks and the back yard is still under several inches of snow) I made a batch of braised short ribs and my dad’s hard rolls, It was the first time I had tried them since Parkinson’s symptoms had become evident. My head remembers how to tie the knots, but my hands had a hard time complying. A subtle reminder that Parkinson’s always lurks under the surface, the medications only (mostly) mask the symptoms. I eventually got a dozen rolls onto the sheet, and baked. They were not perfect, but they were wonderful, hot from the oven, redolent of yeast and memory.