Character limit

I bent over and whispered in Math Man's ear, "How do you suppose she'd react if I told her she was about to become a character on my blog?" 

We were waiting in line to go to an evening concert in Sainte-Chapelle (the jewel box of a chapel built by Louis IX of France on an island in the Seine in Paris as a reliquary for the Crown of Thorns). When we had walked up we had been a bit uncertain where the queue was, but had inquired of the guards at the gate who told us it was the same spot as the daytime line. We got behind the half-dozen people already there. 

The first person in line was an American woman, casually dressed, and loudly telling anyone who drifted near the line, whether or not they seemed poised to join it, "This probably isn't the line. I asked the security guards [ed.: the guards are standing not three feet away] and they told me with a smirk this is where to wait. They were dismissive and rude. I am sure this is the wrong place." 

In between the shrill warnings we learned she had arrived in Paris just today, all by herself it seemed, and had already walked miles. She was from North Dakota. Her husband had had a stroke. People grew  uneasy as her monologues drifted further away from the concert and she paced restlessly at the front of the queue. No one engaged.

"If this isn't the right place," the woman ahead of me finally essayed, "where do you suppose we should be?" "Well, there is a sign for the company who sold the tickets down the block." I wondered why, if she was so sure that we were being mocked and misled by the security guards, she had not gone and asked at the office. The woman in front of me exchanged glances with her partner and strode off. She returned shortly to announce that yes, the ticket office had confirmed we were in the correct spot. Regardless, our midwest siren continued to sound a warn-away.

Eventually we were let inside to go through security screening.  So yes, we were in the right spot. Our bags were scanned and we walked through metal detectors, and the line got scrambled. Now we are directly behind our miserable midwesterner. Why are we waiting here? Why isn't there an elevator? She has a heart problem, she could just keel over. [Ed.: she has walked past the elevator, which staff had indicated to us.]  People shift away. She tries to move someone at the front of the line by physically touching her, the young woman shakes her off. People are getting tense.  A performer walks by, her violin case slung across her back. Well, it seems call times are pretty late here in Paris. We wait some more. The staff has less than an hour to set the chapel up for a concert after the last tour of the day.  Is that group special? I once keeled over in the supermarket parking lot. "I am sorry," I say, "Let's hope nothing happens here." North Dakota farm wives have to do everything the hard way. 

Finally we are in and Math Man and I fly to our seats, breathing a sigh of relief that she is sitting elsewhere. 

At dinner I told Math Man that while it was tempting to think uncharitable thoughts about this loudly critical midwesterner, I would rather imagine her as courageous. To come alone to Paris, to be out and about all day, to have found out about the concert and gotten a ticket. Was she a widow? Or had she had to arrange care for a disabled husband? And her chickens? What would happen if she keeled over in Paris? 

And what would she think if she knew I was writing about her?

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Photo is of Sainte-Chapelle. The concert was a brilliant hack by Math Man to get us into the chapel. You have to book months ahead, which we didn't realize. 

There are no relics in this reliquary anymore. The Crown of Thorns and other relics of the Passion that Louis IX acquired are now kept in the cathedral of Notre Dame. They were rescued from the fire and I got to see the Crown up close. A tale for tomorrow perhaps, also with characters. 

I encountered yet more interesting characters in a pub in North Berwick, and in a Main Line parking lot, but they, too, are tales for another post.

Lost in translation

Before we visited Notre Dame in Paris, I checked the website to scope things out.  Under the visitor guidelines (Google translated from French) was: Chorus from using your phone inside the cathedral. 

I was puzzled. Chorus? Chorus? Oh! Refrain. Refrain from using your phone inside the cathedral. Got it!

Inescapable Grace

I wrote the reflection for today's readings for Give Us This Day. I was drawn as much to the collect as I was to the images in the psalm and gospel:

May your grace, O Lord, we pray, 
at all times go before us and follow after
and make us always determined
to carry out good works.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The full quote from Teilhard de Chardin is: "By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagine it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact, we live steeped in its burning layers."

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Despite all my years of scientific training, I have a hard time seeing the stars whirling above my head at night not as little twinkling jewels set into a firmament, but rather as enormous, unimaginably fiery suns, their warmth bathing planets millions of miles away. They are so distant, so inaccessible, can I truly believe such a thing possible?

I confess to having the same trouble with grace. I can’t quite grasp the enormity or the power of God’s grace. All too often I imagine it as distant. Inaccessible. Or at least it seems improbable that my sinful self should be able to draw upon that divine warmth. But grace, pointed out Jesuit paleontologist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, is inescapable: We live steeped in its burning layers. Every way we turn, in everything we touch and that touches us, God’s grace assails us, penetrates us, molds us.

The psalmist sings of the earth, full of the kindness of the Lord—full of grace. The sparrows outside my window chirping irrepressibly at dawn, the wind sweeping down the hill, the warm splashes of color streaming through the stained-glass windows of my parish church—always and ever touching and touched by the divine. As am I.

The Collect, too, reminds us that at every moment grace goes before us, grace trails after us, grace propels us outside ourselves to work for the Gospel. Christ above us, Christ beside us, Christ underneath our feet. Every hair on our heads counted, every breath vouchsafed. As improbable as it seems, God is with us. Now and always, inescapable.

Michelle Francl-Donnay

Michelle Francl-Donnay is a wife and mother, a retired professor of chemistry, and an adjunct scholar atthe Vatican Observatory. 

[CREDIT] From the October 2026 issue of Give Us This Day, www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2026). Used with permission.

Alarmed

We only took carry-on suitcases for the week in Paris, where the weather was expected to be delightfully warm, and left the wooly sweaters and turtlenecks and extra-toasty PJs packed up in the large bags at Crash & Company's in Scotland.  I confessed to Crash's Companion that I had packed my Parisian PJs! Little did I suspect that I would get to model the outfit for more than Math Man.

It happened to be the tail end of fashion week when we arrived in Paris, but I was not walking any runways. Instead, on Sunday morning, just after 7 am, the fire alarm went off in our lovely hotel. I grabbed room key, glasses, and phone, slipped on my jacket and the black flats I'd left by the door when we'd come home the night before and proceeded down the stairs in my Parisian PJs. This is not my first fire alarm. It's not even my first fire alarm in a hotel. 

The staff are at the bottom of the stairs, reassuring us that their alarm system is very sensitive and that probably someone was just smoking in a room, urging us toward the lobby. More people began to arrive. There were people dressed for the day, suitcases ready to roll. Their taxi came, and they left. There was a couple in bathrobes over nightgowns, wishing aloud they had a drink. 

The alarm turned out to have been triggered by a hair dryer. The couple in their robes now wished for champagne, which the staff sent up. We went back upstairs. I had no desire for champagne, just a bit more sleep after a long day and late night. As we went past the room next to us, the door cracked open and a woman peeked out. "What was that?" "The fire alarm, set off by a hair dryer." "Ah!" What I wanted to say was, "How did you ignore that? It was loud enough to be painful." Also, "Why didn't you evacuate??"

We crawled back in bed, ears ringing, until it was time to get up for Mass.

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Working in a science building you get used to hearing the alarms go off. Sometimes (three times in my career) there really is a fire. I learned as a grad student to always take your keys, I didn't and we were out of the building for 8 hours after an explosion in a lab left a faculty member burned and _moved_ the wall several inches. Without my keys I couldn’t get into my apartment!

Four times I've been ousted by fire alarms in the middle of the night, once from a hotel during a conference and three nights in a row from the dorms while at a Gordon Research Conference. The latter were false alarms (and we attendees were quite grumpy by night three).

Then there was this alarming experience while on retreat. 

Photos is of a fiery evening sky in Paris, taken from a boat on the Seine.

A trip to the past

 

Math Man and I have been on the road recently, mostly to see family living on the other side of the Atlantic, celebrating a new-ish addition to Norwegian Niece's family and the legal joining of Crash and his significant other. And Paris, I got to go to Paris. 

As lovely as it has all been (and there were very few bobbles and many delightful adventures), it is very nice to be home. What did I miss most, aside from my own bed? A clothes dryer. When an unanticipated Scottish rainshower leaves you a bit damp, you can't just toss things in the dryer, you must hang them on the drying rack and hope they will dry in time for you to pack them later that day!

One delightful adventure in the forest:

We left modern Norway behind and turned into the forest. Two kilometers uphill we came to a small 19th century cabin set into a small knoll. Elgsrud was originally a smallholding — a farm — settled in 1860. (Elgs means "moose" in Norwegian and rud means "clearing.") The one-story building housed two families, with perhaps 7 kids all told. The photo shows almost the entirety of the interior of the house. This would have been very tight quarters. The ceiling is low, there is an open hearth in the corner and a ladder leading up to an attic space near the door. This last is a modern addition. When the cabin was originally built more than a foot and a half of soil was up there to act as insulation.The land surrounding the cabin is not flat, but falls off steeply to a small glacial lake below. There are not any flat open areas such as what you might expect for a classic farm. This is a remote spot now and would have been even more so in 1860.

We had come to have dinner with two Norwegian friends, joining two more of their friends, one of whom would paint for us the history of the place while we ate a candlelight dinner mostly foraged from the surrounding forest. We began over a creamy wild mushroom soup, enjoyed goat burgers, an incredible lingonberry rye porridge with coffee (in Norway no meal is complete without coffee). 

The farm was sold around 1900 and used for hunting and recreation. In World War II, the Norwegian resistance hero Max Manus hid here while recovering from an illness or injuries. His friend carried him there on his back. Manus was a trained and highly successful saboteur, part of the Oslo Gang, responsible for sinking Nazi ships in Oslo harbor among other feats. Since WW II the cabin has been used by the Scout and by high school classes. Today it is managed as a historical and cultural site.

Just above the cabin is an area where a huge collection of buried flints were found. The site is roughly 11,000 years old and is the earliest known human settlement in Norway. At the time the area was at sea level, but has risen as the glaciers retreated. Both expert flint arrowheads were found along with chips that suggested novices were learning the craft. A flint knife was unearthed, which our historian got to hold, he said it fit his hand in the same way his own hunting knife did.

It was an extraordinary experience to have shared the meal and to hear the stories of the space. 

You say tom-ay-to

... and I say to-mah-to...so goes the song my mother used to sing. For some reason, tea and salt are back in the news again in the UK tabloids.  There doesn't appear to be any contemporary hook for the piece, though tomatoes do come up: Use less salt in a cup of tea than you would on a tomato, advised a Reddit user back when the controversy was fresh. I would say, probably a lot less!

An eye for the extraordinary

Annie Dillard died yesterday. I was looking for Bird by Bird on my shelves yesterday (by Anne Lamott). I know it is here — because there is no longer anywhere else — but I kept bumping into Dillard. The Writing Life. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. That weasel essay. I gave it up for the day.

Today I tried again. Book by book. But no Bird by Bird. Instead I pulled Dillard's The Writing Life off the shelf. Its bristling with sticky notes, notes from past Michelle to present Michelle, I suppose. Or a note from the universe to remember Annie Dillard's gifts to me.

I gave the reading at the undergraduate commencement this spring. Traditionally the choice of reading is left to the person giving the reading. And of course, it should be short. The students I had taught in the first year writing seminar were graduating and I wanted something that might reach back to that class (titled  “Women who see through walls” and reading women poets, mystics and scientists — and some people who crossed those lines). I decided no wild life from Mary Oliver . “Antidotes to Fear of Death” by the late Becky Elson (an astrophyscist and poet) felt a little too dark for this event. Annie Dillard’s weasel essay called to me, but also felt a bit violent..stalking your calling? But Dillard? Yes, Dillard! I used a piece from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek written when she was young (though not quite as young as the graduates.) There is some stalking, but no blood.

"For the scientists, mathematicians, social scientists, humanists, poets, writers, for all of you who have peered through the walls of the universe, dug under them, clambered over them, taken them apart, and made something new…stone by stone. From Annie Dillard, “The Waters of Separation” in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

“The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time…unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock…they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fjords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish, too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn and unlock—more than a maple— a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.” 

(Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Harpers, 1974, p. 269)

 

Monk mode

64A distraction-limiting lifestyle trend 
MONKMODE 

— NYT Crossword Sunday, 13 September 2026

A friend sent me an article yesterday about the sale of a Trappist monastery in Colorado. The community had grown too small and so the remaining monks were returning to the community that had spawned them. The author wonders about the ways in which the vocation of a monk and the yearnings of those who go into the wilderness parallel each other. She quotes Douglas Christie  in The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology, who describes the “desire to be immersed within an immensity—to become endlessly, hopelessly lost in it, tumbling down, out, into a vast space, borne along, carried ever deeper by love—is itself endless.”

To me the call to the monastic life is the antithesis of a trend, however trendy it may seem at the moment. Nor am I at all certain that "distraction limiting" is the best description of a monk's life. Having never been a monk, I can't really say, but immersive would be one description I might reach for. Attentive. Still. Mindful. Simple. Extravagant. Open. Cloistered.  

Whatever it is, it's not an antidote to a loud and chaotic world. Martin Laird OSA in Into the Silent Land suggests, "This is why most people don't stick with a contemplative discipline for very long; we have all heard all sorts of talk about contemplation bringing inner peace but when we turn within to seek this peace, we meet inner chaos instead of peace. But at this point it is precisely the meeting of chaos that is salutary, not snorting of lines of euphoric peace." 

Perhaps the call to the monastic life is like a rickety ladder leading into the unseen depths. At times you may cling to the ladder for dear life, too terrified to go down another rung.  Or breathlessly, you dart up until you see the feet of the monk above you,  to be sure that you are not alone. Then there are the moments where you simply wait, drawn neither up nor down. The ladder shakes and creaks. And whatever is in the depths is calling your name with such intensity that eventually you will continue to descend.

Magic decoder

I have been blogging in this space for more than 22 years. Almost a third of my life? When I began in 2004, blogs — online diaries — were having a moment. People wrote about science and parenting and hobbies and teen-aged angst. MySpace was a year old, and reaching a global audience. I ended up on what was then Blogspot and is now Blogger for reasons that now escape me. There were monetized mommy blogs and science blogs and hobby blogs and blogs that started and after two posts stopped. There was WordPress for the blogger who wanted to micromanage every aspect. There were readers that tracked the blogs you read, letting you see updates at a glance. And then there weren’t. MySpace had a meltdown and lost more than a decade of users’ content. (Always back-up!) And a couple of years ago, MySpace became read only. The rise and fall of blogging. 

Now there are Substack and Medium. Blogs by another name.

And here I am, still blogging. Still on bare-bones Blogger. I have written 2140 posts, 300 of them remain in draft. A total of 653,464 words. How do I know that last? I learned Python and wrote a few hundred lines of code to take a feed.atom file (what Blogger gives you for a back up) and turn into a tidy Scrivener project, each post in its own document along with any images, tagged with its publication date and carrying its metadata along. I can pull up all the posts from 2015 and turn them into a cleanly formatted file (PDF or Word or RTF or…). I can collect all of Barnacle Boy’s adventures. [His comment: “My whole childhood is on there.” Not quite, see below!] Or everything I tagged “Ignatian.” I can mine my own data. How many em dashes have I used over the years? It’s like having a magic decoder ring.

Why have I kept up the blog all these years? The tag line at the top of my blog says (in Latin , because everything always sounds more profound in Latin, right?): Tenet insanabile multo scribendi cacoethes.“An inveterate and incurable itch for writing besets many.” It besets me and certainly the blog scratches my itch to write, the need to wrap words around what I notice.

Writing is thinking through your fingers, said Isaac Asimov. I write to think through things, to clarify and sharpen my ideas, my arguments. It’s what was so devastating to me before I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, when my typing mysteriously became glacial and writing by hand impossible. Denied my usual tools to write, I felt stripped of my ability to think. Ideas swirled around, but it became harder and harder to capture and refine them. (Note the absence of posts in early 2024. Note also my gratitude for the diagnosis and the medication that has given me back so much.)

The blog is a seed bed for my writing over all. On occasion it has led to opportunities to write for print, more often I can pull a phrase or return to an experience years past in a new piece of writing, the details kept fresh in a post. I certainly could have kept a private journal or written some version of morning pages, but the discipline of writing cleanly and clearly for a public audience, no matter how tiny, made those bit and pieces richer.

Because the blog is public, and not anonymous, I have tried never to write anything I would be ashamed of seeing on the front page of the New York Times. Or to write about students or colleagues or family in a way that embarrassed or denigrated them. (So, no, my kids’ whole childhoods are not here, and there is not a juicy academic roman á clef to be dug out of the posts.)

I have met some amazing people through the blog, some have become incredible friends and colleagues outside the confines of the interwebs, some who I only know as a screen name on a comment. What is a writer if there are no readers? 

I have enjoyed having this space to think aloud, to wrestle with ideas that had no other place to go. I hope to continue to enjoy it for years to come (and yes, I back up regularly!). Thank you for reading!

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The interface keeps suggesting I “correct” blog to blob. 

I have eaten of the tree of knowledge

A couple of years ago I went around the corner from my back yard to find a substantial snake coming the opposite way. The snake quickly headed under the forsythia and I decided to go around the other way. I hadn’t seen any snakes in the yard since, though I’d seen snake skins on the sidewalk, and earlier this week a large snake on the side of the road nearby. So I knew they were here. Somewhere.

Today I was doing a bit of yard clean-up. I tidied up my pile of kindling, ready for the first cool night and a fire. I thought I’d deal with a raised bed under the apple tree, and the old tarp that was covering it, weighted down by some bluestone pavers.I stacked the pavers, pulled up the tarp and there was a tiny snake, not even a foot long and no thicker than my little finger, wrapped into the top of an upturned pot. Whoops! 

No picture, alas, by the time I went in and got my phone, it had decamped. Also, alas, my snake identification skills are non-existent. The picture with the post is from an encounter in the Maryland mountains some years back, and this one I could identify. I am certain that the little one I disturbed was not venomous.

I have eaten of the tree of knowledge (even if the apples are long gone), the knowledge of good and evil. Or at least the knowledge of snake habits, and decided that perhaps today was not the day to turn that pot over, particularly with my naked hands.

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel.” Genesis 3:15

A Tale of Two Offices

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way..." A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

The office was full, the office was empty. I have everything packed, I have nothing unpacked. I once had two offices, now — incredibly — they have collapsed into a single reality. Things are still jostling for space, the beakers of bright colored markers and sharp pencils patiently wait for me to decide whether they get tucked into a drawer or live on a desk. I sometimes despair of taming the chaos. 

Everything remains before me, even as nothingness blooms on my calendar. I have new projects hatching into those empty spaces: I'm learning to code in Python — my 7th coding language, a retreat to prepare and give, some exploratory noodling around for a new book. Older projects are simmering: two books in various stages of completion, a couple of talks on tea coming up. 

And there are tendrils of grief. I watched the Bryn Mawr back-to-school reel on Instagram and realized how deeply I miss the brightness of my classes, their energy, their curiosity that drove my own. I miss having that other space on campus to call home, where I hung my keys in the little cubby by the door and like Mr. Rogers donning his sweater, draped Dr. Francl across my shoulders. 

I ran into a former student this morning at the pharmacy waiting to get my flu shot (and my Covid vaccine and my shingles vaccine...I got my tetanus shot a couple of weeks ago thanks to the epic altar crash, I am awash in immunity). She came over, offered me her coupon reward for getting her vaccines and then vanished before I had a chance to catch my breath and ask her how she was and what she was doing. I miss the students.

"(Be)comings all involve goings. I keep musing about how Christ holds all these things in tension: birth/death; emptiness/fullness; light and darkness; dance and stillness….and perhaps that’s what it means to be fully human, to live in death and life, light and darkness?" 

I am going, so I must perforce be becoming? But what and how and when? Where I know — my study!

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Images: My office shortly before I packed it up, and right before I closed the door on it. Last photo is of my space as a first year graduate student (a corner of a windowless office on the 3rd floor of what is now Rowland Hall at UCIrvine.) Until very recently the black and red organic chemistry textbook on my desk was still on my shelf.

The quote is me, which someone else captured and tagged as wise. 

Rearranging deck chairs

A futile or pointless task is sometime described as “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” My study at home has been in chaos for months now. Between finishing off the manuscripts for two books and packing up my office at the college, I have just let entropy have its way. But I have been doggedly working my way through the stuff that came home: boxes in the dining room, bags in the entryway, bin and boxes and bags in the living room. All that stuff needing to find a spot to live (aside from the floor) or be gone…

Last weekend I finally emptied the last box in the dining room and have only a bin left in the living room. The rest has been shelved or stashed or sent off. Or moved to my study floor where no one but me sees it. Except on Monday evening I agreed to record an interview for an evening news show Tuesday afternoon, inviting who knows how many people to see my working space.  Something had to be done and fast.

Since I no longer have my college office as a back-up, Tuesday morning had me taking the semi-organized piles and really sorting them. More stuff went into the recycling. And hey, the Lent book and its Spanish translation have been proofed, so all those books can get re-shelved. Same for the stuff I used to prepare to preach this week. There were still a lot of piles, which I then lined up like those deck chairs in front of the shelves where they did not show on camera (I checked!). I did the interview (you can see it here - about the Nancy Grace Roman telescope that launched this week), whew. 

What surprised me was how much less cluttered it feels with those deck chairs re-arranged. I am not tripping over them when I try to get stuff from the shelves. Each pile has a focus, which I can now tackle one at a time. Sometimes just getting the deck chairs lined up makes a difference, if nothing else I have a clearer evacuation route from my study!

An examen for the present moment

My parish has been running a reading and discussion group called “Theology Untapped.” We meet monthly and over the summer we have been working our way through Pope Leo’s new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. The encyclical is long (45,000 words!) and the conversations could only begin to explore the theologically rich and pastorally challenging landscape that the pope walks us through. The conversations provoked some passionate, almost heated, conversations. I had some thoughts (which were shared in the parish bulletin this weekend)…

While it is tempting to call this the encyclical about artificial intelligence (AI), Magnifica Humanitas’ principal focus is the inviolable dignity of each and every human person as a cherished daughter or son of God. AI may be the current challenge to our humanity, but there have been others in our history —  slavery —  and there will undoubtedly be more in our future. How do we respond to current technological developments, including AI, in the light of faith and two thousand years of Catholic social teaching? What serves our sisters and brothers, particularly those unseen and those living at the margins, and what strips them of their humanity, turning them into living, breathing widgets, where productivity becomes the principal measure of a person’s worth. That’s the question Pope Leo is asking in Magnifica Humanitas, and it is the question that’s driven some intense conversations among those coming to Theology Untapped.

How are we to respond, as individuals and as a parish community? As valuable as the discussions have been, we kept returning to the need for more than just words in response to the present moment. Yet it can seem daunting, what can one or two of us do to change the course of the world? Yet, as the pastor reminded us, the work of twelve fishermen arguably changed the world. Like the loaves and the fishes, what we bring to the table can seem like very little, but God can multiply our efforts. 

Pope Leo does not let us off the hook either. [sorry, I could not resist the pun!] Near the end of the encyclical he writes: “At this point, however, a subtle temptation may emerge, namely the thought that the problems are too big and we are too small, and that our choices, therefore, cannot make a difference. This is a polite form of resignation…We all have our own areas for action, and it is precisely there — and nowhere else — that we must choose whether to fuel the mentality of force (even if only through indifference, cynicism, lies or hatred), or to preserve the mindset of peace (with truth, moderation, closeness and care).” (Magnifica Humanitas 212)

Pope Leo suggests five ways we might navigate the present challenges: “the need to disarm words, building peace through justice, adopting the perspective of victims, cultivating a healthy realism and reviving dialogue and multilateralism.”

One of those attending the last meeting said he was so moved by Pope Leo’s challenge that he was committing to reading that one paragraph of Magnifica Humanitas (212) every day. I was inspired to do similarly, making of Pope Leo’s path an examen: How have I wielded my words? How have I worked for justice and so for peace? Have I had eyes for the poor, have I sought out such encounters? Am I listening closely to all the world and not hiding within my own bubble? What might I do going forward — tomorrow — to walk more closely with Christ on these paths?

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Want to try a bit of an Ignatian exercise? Begin by reading Jesus’ challenge in Matthew’s Gospel (Matt 25:34-40). Imagine yourself in the crowd, what do you hear? Now skip to the end of Magnifica Humanitas and read the section titled “We can all do our part” (paragraphs 212-228). Imagine sitting down with Christ and having a conversation about the five paths and your next steps. 

They have washed their robes

 

[T]hey have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb — Revelations 7:14b

My sharpest memory of last Saturday's epic fall on the altar is the sound of the water cruet breaking. It sounded like I imagine a hand grenade might, more of an explosion than a shattering crash. I remember sitting on the floor trying to process what had just happened. Was I hurt? Nothing hurt. But the blood on the hem of my alb suggested there was damage somewhere to someone. 

Shock is a funny thing. Sitting in the small chapel behind the main altar I was still trying to figure out how I had managed to get a spatter of blood on the hem of the alb, when I turned over my wrist to see the blood soaking through my sleeve. Right. My right wrist was dripping. And now it hurt. 

Once the immediate things were dealt with, and the wrist wrapped up so that I wouldn't drip on anything else, I took off the alb. I didn't notice the wine that had soaked the left side. (Really, shock is quite a funny thing.) One of the other servers drove me home, and we wondered if the alb was salvageable. 

When I discovered the next morning that I would need to get out both blood and all that red wine, it looked dismal. But if the problem could be solved, I have just the right mix of people in my life to help me tackle it: chemists, artists, Episcopal church women, priests and deacons, monks, and mothers. I put the robe in cold water to soak and posted my dilemna to Facebook. My friends did not disappoint! 

I learned about WineAway (which might also remove blood.) Would salt do it? Club soda?  Peroxide? Oxiclean? Would that take out the wine, too? Or maybe the Carthusian novice master was right and the water would be enough?

I ran the alb through a rinse cycle in cold water. I clearly am not as holy as a Carthusian. The blood stains are all still there.  (Perhaps I should have used holy water?) The violet wine stains, though, have utterly vanished. On to the Oxiclean. I made a paste of the stuff and worked it into the stains using a toothbrush. I let the alb sit overnight on an old white towel. By morning some of the smaller stains were totally gone! I rinsed and repeated, fascinated to watch the stain move from the alb into the towel, like paper chromatography. Three rounds — how Trinitarian — and the stains seemed gone. A final wash, and I hung it up to dry. 

My alb, once awash in (literal) blood and in the wine intended to become (literally) the blood of the Lamb was white. It feels like a small miracle.

---

Larger miracles. There are a lot of moving parts in your hand, and the glass managed to miss them all. 

All the advice reminds you not to put the stained item in the dryer or iron it before you are sure the stain if out. Don't set the stain.

I am sure there is a homily/reflection in here about sin and reconciliation.

Sacred laundry

“There are many helpful Episcopal Church web sites about getting lipstick off purificators and candle wax off altar cloths but nothing about removing blood stains from albs.” From a 4:20 am text to Crash Kid and his partner.

My soon-to-be daughter in law shot back, “This is written like the opening line to a mystery novel I would want to read!!”

Maybe this is the next book? The current mystery is more practical. How do I get the blood stains and the red wine stains out of my white alb, currently soaking in cold water? Just like in a mystery novel, let’s use a little flashback here…

I was the altar server at the 5pm vigil Mass last night. We had a visiting priest who preached a banger of a homily, and I was trying to be attentive to both those weird “unique to this parish” things for the visitor and to the ways he prefers to preside. So, you know, I was trying to be mindful and attentive to the liturgy. Pride, as we know, goes before a fall. And it surely did.

The gifts were presented, I took the wine with me to the credence table at the back of the altar to collect the cruet with the water. As I turned and took a step I caught my foot in the hem of my alb. Suddenly I realized I was going to fall and there was nothing to stop me but the marble floor. My training in how to fall (thank you UCI Dance and El Gabriel) kicked in and I tucked and rolled. The water cruet flew from my hand and shattered with a tremendous crash. In seconds the altar was swarmed by people. I am mortified, also wet. As they began to help me up I looked at the hem of my alb and saw a bright red stain. Uh-oh.

"Someone is bleeding," I thought. Then a few seconds later,"It's probably me." It was. Off I went with two parishioners who are nurses to the small chapel behind the main altar where we staunched the bleeding. Presumably clean-up went forward, but I was out of play. The presider came back to make sure I was ok, and told me it was going to be a memorable visit. Someone popped back to ask me if the wine had been consecrated. No. Definitely not. Someone else said that the wine was sitting, apparently unspilled and unbroken on the floor. (As it turned out, a great deal had spilled, all over my alb, but I didn't drop it and apparently set it neatly on the floor. Huh.) They got fresh wine anyway. Good. 

We hunted up a first aid kit to bandage things up so I didn't drip on my alb anymore. The pastor came. It's communion, the helpers went out to receive, the ministers came back so I could receive. (Is this technically allowed? Is it covered under communion for the sick? Did I satisfy the Sunday obligation? This is Roman Catholicism, thereby there must be a rule. No one invoked it. There are definitely rules in place that cover what happens if the priest can't go on — see De defectibus.)

I went home, carrying the alb. Math Man took me to the ER. It took four hours and three rounds of X-rays to locate and removed the glass embedded in my hand. There were jokes. Math Man sent Math Guy photos of the damage (to reassure him I was told). "Stigmata!" he chortled. The transport tech wanted to know if I'd been in a bar fight. (It didn't occur to me that I must have reeked of alcohol, all that red wine on shoes and pants, which were at least black. Parkinson's has dulled my sense of smell.) 

There were apologies from the staff that it was taking so long, and thanks for my patience. I didn't tell them that I had once been in that ER and not had to wait. It didn't end well. Waiting is good.  Except that waiting gives the ghosts time to gather. 

This morning I picked up the alb from where I'd left it yesterday and noticed the violet stains everywhere. What? Oh. The wine. Which leads to the question at hand: how do you get both red wine and blood out of a white alb?

---

Odd thoughts: 

Is the clean up protocol different if the wine had been consecrated? Short answer. Yes.

There is advice about cleaning blood stains in First Initiation into Carthusian Life (a manual for Carthusian novices, mostly on prayer, but with practical advice on mail and meals and laundry tacked on to the end).  Soak in COLD water and the stains will vanish in short order, it advises (But only in a Carthusian charterhouse, the rest of us might need to summon the imps of Oxiclean.)

Spelling: the sign “waive here” outside ED radiology (to open the door) a place I visited repeatedly; the clinical notes say I fell on the "alter".

"In Residence" - the Shonda Rhimes mystery we've been watching. Lots of flashback. A scene where the White House chef Marvella smashes glasses on the floor, screaming "Broken glass!"

French Sundays

On Sunday, Math Man announced he was taking a breather. Reading a novel, trying a new recipe (gazpacho - it was great) and watching the US Amateur golf (being played right down the road from us). The last few Sundays he has been busy: visitors, conferences, building new bookshelves to house the books coming home from my office. Nothing sounded like a great plan for a rainy Sunday. 

As I had my tea and browsed the news on my tablet, I noticed an article "French Sundays." The author advocated for a day of rest and recreation, based on the practice in France (where the law provides for a day of rest and many things are perforce closed on Sundays). Don't plan on chores, don't plan an elaborate brunch, don't plan much at all, in fact. Embrace the chance to noodle around, pick up a novel or decide at the last minute to take a walk with your partner. Above all, don't look at your work email.

All good ideas, but what really struck me was that this article managed to never once mention or even intimate that the practice was not merely a French curiosity, but had deep roots in religious traditions. Sabbath has been practiced for millennia. Though if it had, then it might have had to wrestle with the fact that the choice of Sunday as the day of rest is primarily Christian, and other faith traditions have made other choices.

________

Gazpacho recipe (after Julia Moskin's in NYT Cooking)

Makes enough for two for dinner with leftovers for Math Man's lunch the next day.

1 lb fresh tomatoes, cored and roughly chopped
1/2 bell pepper, seeded and roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled
1/2 cucumber (peeled and roughly chopped)
1/2 small onion (yes,  roughly chopped)
1/3 cup good olive oil, extra to drizzle on top
1 tsp champagne vinegar
salt to taste

Put the vegetables into the blender (we did this in two batches) and blend until very smooth. While the blender is running, add the vinegar and then stream in the olive oil. Taste. The soup should be creamy, not watery. Add a bit more olive oil if it seems watery and then salt to taste. 

Chill in the refrigerator while you chill on the sofa. Serve in a glass, with an optional drizzle of olive oil.

Is my office bugged?

Is my office bugged? Short answer. Yes.

Well literally, yes. Also metaphorically. Or it least it feels that way. My latest column for Nature Chemistry is titled "Bug Bites," about the taste of bugs (and having a taste for bugs). It hatched while at my niece's wedding reception early in the summer. The crew of cousins got onto the topic from a conversation about cilantro (stink bugs taste like cilantro, as it happens), and then suggested I write about it.

As I was drafting the piece, I went downstairs to grab a second cup of tea from the carafe in the kitchen. I carried it upstairs, set it down on the desk, and got back to work. I absently-mindedly picked up the mug and noticed something off with the scent. It wasn't quite as floral as I expected. I peered into the cup to find a (dead) earwig bobbing about. Oh dear. Its alarm cocktail of dimethyl disulfide and dimethyl trisulfide had given my tea a mephitic edge.

I removed the unfortunate earwig, and drank the tea.

It seemed beyond coincidental that my tea should be bugged, was the universe listening in? I still can't figure out where it came from. I had rinsed the carafe with hot water before filling it with tea, and it had been tightly sealed. I had already had one cup of earwig-less tea in the mug. The sugar bowl is covered. Where did it come from? 

---

I took a photo of the bugged tea and of the earwig I fished out, but it felt a bit too gross to illustrate this post. (I described it to Math Man over dinner who winced every time I said "mandible".) So the mug is my organic chemistry mug.

Proof

 

My seventh (!) book will be published this fall. A book of reflections for next Lent. The proofs came a couple of weeks ago, and once the manuscript for book eight (eight? eight?) went out the door, I had some time and space to devote to this devotional.

I still proof on paper, circling errors with a red ballpoint, pressing into the surface of the paper, leaving a literal wound to mark wounded text. I read it end to end, cold, then again side by side with the text I submitted. Were those snippets of scripture exactly what was in the lectionary? Quotes from the psalms sometimes are pulled from my memory (and my heart and my soul) as I write, not from any specific text. Better check against the source!

When the latest revision of the US English Catholic Lectionary came out, I didn’t add it to my collection. I have the most recent British one, the previous US one, but mostly I turn to the USCCB site or use Give Us This Day. The ritual books in my parish are stored behind the main altar, in a space reserved for quiet meditation in front of the tabernacle. So one afternoon last week, I laid the proofs on the small wooden altar, pulled the Sunday and daily lectionaries from the shelf, and with the Word before me, and the Word at my right hand, I proofed the pericopes. I could have taken the books and proofs to the small library next door, or to the sacristy, but this space felt right.

I used a book called Stones Before the Lord (about monastic architecture) when I taught a course on the history of contemplation in the West. Proofing on the altar left me feeling like I was laying stones of a different sort before the Lord. Stepping stones from Ash Wednesday to Easter, perhaps, or maybe a staircase cut into a cliff taking you from from a rocky beach on the wind-whipped Scottish coast to a chapel nestled high above. Or living stones, to use the image from the first letter of Peter, pulled from my own prayer. Stones I wanted to be properly cut and laid so they might support people's path though next Lent, and not be  stumbling blocks.

I found a few errors and marked them up, now it's headed back to Liturgical Press.

_______

Proofs. It's been a week of proofs. I proofed yeast last night to make pizza crusts. I proofed this book. I sorted through proofs of once new quantum mechanical theories, snapping a picture or two to remember the work I had done (and long ago published), then sent them into oblivion (actually the recycling bin!).

Grief’s half-life

I am slowly (glacially?) clearing off shelf space at home, so that some of the books in my office can have a spot. I skim the shelves, looking for books that I can’t imagine reading again (or that I could get from the library should I wish to revisit them). Intermingled with my and Victor’s and the kids’ books are some of Tom’s. Books from college courses, novels. In some ways Tom’s old books were easy to triage. He does not require physical copies of them on this earth, and I have no memories attached to them (we didn’t meet until graduate school). Off they go. 

Tucked into one shelf in the wall of books off the kitchen was a journal I didn’t immediately recognize with a photo of a pair of battered pointe shoes on the cover. I pulled it out and opened it to find letters I had written to Tom after he died. I read two and closed the cover. It seems they are still hot, radioactive, like Marie Curie’s cookbooks.

What, I wonder is grief’s half-life? And how many have elapsed? We say that after 10 half-lives have elapsed the material is safe to handle (less than 0.1% remains). But even then radioactive events are still occurring, randomly spitting out particles and gamma rays.

What's my name?

 

I needed the receipt for a recent flight. Easy-peasy, right? It was mailed to my work account. Except it didn’t show up. OK, I’ll get a copy when I check in. Ooops. I forgot to ask outbound. My bad. No problem, I’ll get it on the return. Yeah, no. There was no staff available for that in the steamy Frankfurt airport. You can get it online, madame. 

Props to the clear web site, clicked on “get receipt.” A webform appears which wants my ticket number, which I have, and my name. Which I know. I paste in the ticket number, type my name and hit the button. Nope. Nope. “You must use the same name you booked under.” Did I mistype my name? I must have. (Thank you, Parkinson’s, typos happen more often these days.)  I tried again, no typos. Hit the button. No? No. “ You must use the same name you booked under.” 

Ok, was my name truncated by the computer system? I check my boarding pass. Yeah, no. My name is what I think it is. First and last. Do I want to chat with an agent? I do. The AI agent takes my information, suggests I try the webform that isn’t working, then offers to pass me to a human. “You are number 486 in the queue!” 

I am working, so leave the window parked in the corner and periodically check. By lunch (two hours in) I’m 276 in line. Am I still there, the AI wonders. You bet. I wait four and a half hours to get a human (who the AI confesses is helping multiple customers at the same time, so don’t worry if they are slow.) 

The human suggests the webform. I point out that hasn’t worked. Can they give me a copy? That is against policy. Well, I asked, what can I do? Silence. I can email it to you. Awesome. “Can you doublecheck the email?” Sure, sure. I type in my work email. That’s it, I’m assured. It will take 15 to 20 minutes. “Thanks again,” I chirpily type. The chat ends.

Thirty minutes pass. No email. Five hours in and I am still without a receipt. I check to see if I can retrieve it through my credit card. And that’s when the shoe drops. That receipt says the ticket was issued for FRANCL, MICHELLE PROF/DR. Oh. It thinks my first name is MICHELLE PROF/DR? It sure does. The web form cheerfully regurgitates my receipt. 

---

I note the booking form asks for your first name separately from the title. 

Interestingly enough, the typing of people with Parkinson’s has a distinctive pattern, which can be used to screen for possible Parkinson’s. A bit about the development of the screen is here. I did the screen shortly after my diagnosis and correctly directed me to consult a neurologist as it was positive for potential Parkinson’s.

UPDATE: So, a funny thing happened. It’s been about a week since I had this conversation. At 6:33 am today, the receipt showed up in my email.