Flannery O'Connor & The School of the Holy Ghost

For the last few months I've been on a Flannery O'Connor kick. Years ago my eldest son gave me her Complete Stories, but I never got very far with them. Then a friend mentioned enjoying O'Connor's letters even more than her stories, and I promptly got The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor from the library. I love that book, and I hope to own it someday so I can highlight all of my favorites of O'Connor's profound and pithy comments. O'Connor was born in 1925, two years after my now deceased mother, and there is a certain attitude I recognized in Flannery's letters which seemed reminiscent of my mother. Or maybe it is just that they were two Catholic women who grew up in the same time period, but whatever, I felt I closer to my mom reading O'Connor's correspondence. And my own mother was living in the Quad cities in Iowa when Flannery was some 50 miles away at the Writer's Workshop at the U of I in Iowa City. I wonder if their paths ever crossed?

Reading the author's commentary in The Habit of Being on several of her stories sent me back to the book from my son, and I read most of them with newfound understanding and appreciation. Then I picked up her novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away. I thoroughly enjoyed the latter; Wise Blood will need another reading before I give my opinion.

But the reason for this blog post is the book I am now enjoying: Paul Elie's The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. From the inside cover of the jacket: It is the story of four American Catholics in the mid-twentieth century who, "working independently of one another, came to believe that the best way to explore the quandaries of religious faith was in writing...a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us." Who were these writers? Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, Percy Walker, and Dorothy Day. I don't know what Flannery O'Connor would think of such a summation; Elie paints at times a different picture of O'Connor than the impression given in her letters. His is an intentional telling of the stories of these writers' lives whereas Flannery's letters were not necessarily written with a mind to a larger reading audience. Nevertheless, Elie is skillful in describing his subjects' parallel lives and drawing the reader's attention to their commonalities and differences.

Flannery carried on a correspondence with Walker Percy--which I will now want to re-read. Percy went to medical school and specialized in pathology before pursuing writing in earnest. He, like O'Connor, was from the South. Thomas Merton was quite taken with O'Connor's work and she was pleased that he "got it." It is Merton who is quoted on the front flap of the jacket of The Violent Bear It Away, likening her to Sophocles. In her letters, O'Connor makes only passing references to Dorothy Day, about whom one of Flannery's friends, Caroline Gordon, writes a biography. Day's name does not immediately call to mind "writer" as I associate her with social justice issues and have not read her books nor her articles, so Elie's portrayal is a revelation to me, in more ways than one. Merton, Percy, and Day are converts to Catholicism, while Flannery was "born Catholic."

I'm less than half-way through Paul Elie's book, yet I'm finding it fascinating enough to propel me back into the blogosphere to encourage others to read it, others who also recognize "the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience," and "the power of literature to change--to save--our lives." (from the front jacket flap)

Big Government Healthcare

Laugh, and then weep...

Despite the fact that in 2010 we will pay double what we used to for private healthcare insurance that will provide far less than half the benefits we had in 2009, I still don't want the government to manage my healthcare!

Jesse Tree Garland

It's not too late to add meaning to your Advent by making Jesse Tree ornaments! And nothing helps prepare us more for Christmas than reflecting on our salvation history!

The ornaments in the pictures were each made by a different mom or homeschool family. Each of them made 28 of one design and then they got together to swap them. Great idea, no?

Ron Paul Interview

Check this out!
Ron Paul on H1N1, govt. run healthcare, and more.

H/T Mark Shea

I've Got Blogging on My Mind

I just misread a book title as Blogger Stories for Little Folks instead of Bigger Stories....

My Granddaughter

Last summer seems a lifetime ago!

In September, on the feast of St. Pio, my granddaughter, Vivian Marie, was born. When we realized that she was alive and was going to live, at least for a time, there was such joy in the crowded birthing suite! Two sets of grandparents, two aunts, an uncle, cousins, and dear friends celebrated her birth with her parents and brother. Prayers had been answered and the glory of God was visible.

You see, Vivian Marie had a condition called anencephaly, in which part of her brain and skull did not form. Her chances of surviving birth were a little less than 50:50. But survive she did, and we were graced with 15 hours of miraculous life. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that her 15 hours with us changed our lives. Her parents gave their fiat to God, and agreed to accept whatever time God would give them with little Vivian. What's more, they did so with love and a desire to honor her life, however short it might be. I could not help but think of our Blessed Mother as I watched my daughter-in-law labor for hours, knowing all too well that she would be giving the life of her daughter to God, much as Mary gave Jesus to the Father.

Vivian Marie is our little lamb, my son and daughter-in-law's, my husband's and mine, all of us who loved and love her still. Certainly we, and hundreds of people on prayer chains far and wide, were praying for a miracle, were praying for Vivian Marie to be born intact, whole, and healthy. God had other plans. We who love her suffer, and yet we are called to unite our sorrow with that of our Lord in His Passion. "Not my will, but Thine," said Jesus to His Father.

I pray that God will do wondrous things with our suffering, with my daughter-in-law's and son's acceptance of theirs and Vivian's cross. My mother used to tell me that God loves more those to whom He gives greater sufferings. (She probably learned that from St. Terese of the Child Jesus.) Experiencing Vivian Marie's birth, brief life, and death has shown me a reason why. It is because He is thereby allowing us a fuller participation in His Passion, and therefore in His Life. That is indeed a great gift.

I give thanks for Kyle and Genece and Jonathan. I marvel at their love that was incarnate in Vivian Marie and shown to all through their actions, as they carefully honored her life and cherish her memory. God gave the Virgin Mary (and all of us) the joy of the Resurrection. I cannot but hope that He will--even in this valley of tears--give Kyle, Genece, and Jonathan a resurrected joy, a healing of their brokenness, and a peace which surpasses all understanding.

A Manual Man

That's who I'm married to-- a guy who knows how to troubleshoot, reads the manuals that make my eyes glaze over, and, solves problems! Woo-hoo!

The latest, or should I say "la test" began with my asking if the old (and I mean really old) surge protector that I found in the basement and used for my computer in our bedroom was still good, and how would we know. Krazyglue said he'd check it out. His first discovery: that the surge protector has a red and a green light, but only the red one was lit. So he looks for a brand name in order to research it online. I call out that it's probably by a company that no longer exists. Don't know why I was so pessimistic. He found the site and quickly found the explanation for the lights. If the green one doesn't light up, then that outlet has no functional ground and the surge protector is rendered useless.

Next, Krazyglue checks on the other outlets in the bedroom, and guess what? None of them seems to have a working ground. Yikes! A nearby lightning strike about 6 or 7 years ago fried the phone and answering machine that was in our bedroom. Was the damage from that strike? So being the systematic guy he is, Krazyglue begins checking out most of the rest of the outlets in the house. Green light comes on for all. All except those in our room.

Now we have a most peculiar design in our bedrooms. All the rooms come with a light switch by the door, but there are no overhead lights. Instead, the light switch operates the upper plug of the outlet nearest to the wall switch. Not the outlet across the room, so that you could plug a light in across the way and not have to stumble at night to turn it on. Noooo. No, the clods who did the electrical on our house put those little wall switches in I guess to save us from reaching 6 inches further to turn on a lamp plugged in adjacent to the wall switch.

Krazyglue decides to look first at the outlet where we had plugged in our zapped answering machine. It looked normal. Next he took out the wall switch that operates the upper half of that outlet. It did not have any neutral or ground, but he later determined that that was normal. He consulted a handyman friend who gave him some other things to check, as well as with his dad, an electrical engineer, who told him to look for an outlet that was wired in reverse. He pulled out more outlets in the bedroom. They were all fine. It was then that he noticed that the small dorm room fridge we have to keep insulin in was running. Wait a minute! All the outlets were supposedly on the same circuit! So he finds the breaker for that outlet, turns it off, and pulls that outlet out. Bingo! It was wired wrong. He corrected the problem, but really, would that fix the lack of grounding in the other outlets?

It did! Which is truly strange, seeing as it was on another circuit. Not only that, but our bedroom outlets were on the same circuit as outlets in other rooms, and all of those had functional grounds. Now our bedroom ones do, too. The computer is once again plugged into the old, old surge protector, and now the green light comes on. We're so glad that this problem was discovered--the lack of grounding in our bedroom outlets! And the credit for that goes to Krazyglue who immediately went to look for an online manual to learn about the surge protector.

Now we wonder, did we lose our phone and answering machine those many years ago because the ground in the outlet wasn't working? And why is that lone outlet in our room not on the same circuit as our other outlets, but instead shares a GFI (ground fault interrupter) with the bathroom, kitchen, and basement outlets? Very strange indeed! And how is it that the GFI has been working with that outlet being wired incorrectly? It's almost enough to make me want to study electrical wiring. Almost. Maybe I'll get Krazyglue another manual for Christmas.