Mary Month Of May

I grew up in a Protestant family. My brothers and I went to Sunday school, got confirmed, and later married in the same Methodist Church on Pittsburgh’s Northside. Overall, it was a good experience. But I always envied Catholic girls, especially in May.
Our working class neighborhood was a mixture of Protestant and Catholic families. Kids were divided by schools: Spring Hill Public or Saint Ambrose Catholic. But it was a close neighborhood and we all played together after school. We were in and out of each others houses often, and one mother could stand in for another when it came to discipline or first aid. The differences were few but the Catholic girls seemed to have something special.

It was in second grade that my feelings of envy emerged. My Catholic friends were having their First Holy Communion. My friends got to wear poofy white dresses and headbands with flowers and little veils. They were given medals with pictures of saints, rosaries and most intriguing, scapulars.

A scapular is two small patches of cloth with holy pictures on them, connected by a loop of string. My girl friends told me that it protected them from evil and all manner of bad things, and it was a sin, they told me, to take it off. The idea of a passionate commitment to something, even a string with holy pictures, was very appealing.

Catholicism offered my friends other comforts. As a kid I would have liked a patron saint or a guardian angel, but the Methodist church didn’t offer any of those. Instead we were counseled, in an ecumenically respectful way, that all that stuff was Catholic and kind of magical. Now, this was at the same age that I was fascinated with writing in code, creating invisible ink, becoming a blood sister, playing with the Ouija board and making up secret societies. I was made myth and magic out of anything I could get my hands and mind around.

The best thing, though, that Catholic girls got was Mary. She was presented as motherhood and sweetness, but Catholic girls got a very clear message that there was a woman in heaven, that somebody understood the female side of things.

For Protestant girls, Mary shows up once a year-- at Christmas --to give birth. She might get dragged out again on Good Friday—but only in the background. No role model, no intercessor, no friend.

My Catholic pals had statues of Mary. Some had the plastic glow-in-the-dark kind, and the older girls had painted plaster Marys, dressed in blue robes with big doe eyes like my Barbie. And Mary was always standing on a snake. I certainly did not understand the symbolism, but I knew at ten that this 12 inch woman had some power you could not buy for Barbie.
Best of all, my friends had May altars. A May altar was basically a table with an old lace tablecloth thrown over it. They put their Mary statues on it with flowers and candles that they were allowed to light when they said their prayers.
It still strikes me how feminine those altars were. The Catholic girls had total permission to identify with the feminine in spiritual matters. But no one gave little Protestant girls such romantic, mysterious things to do or own.

This carried over into all of a Catholic girl’s life. Mary got prayers, devotions, pilgrimages and even architectural consideration: there is a Marian shrine in every Catholic Church. Talk about having a room of one’s own. Mary’s presence meant that the Catholic Church included at least one woman at a high level. In her assumption into heaven, Mary had broken Christianity’s glass ceiling.

We pretty much get the shape of our beliefs early on, and what Catholic girls got was a She and a Her, someone like them, to pray to. And they got all those accessories: medals, scapulars, rosaries, ruffled altar skirts and little white prayer books. Protestant girls got black leatherette New Testaments, Jesus stories, but nothing that said, “We’re glad you’re a girl.”

Of course, later, Catholic girls ran into, the birth control issue and the wall that said, “You can’t be a priest”. But what I saw my Catholic friends get was faith in their girlhood and an image of feminine power. That’s not a bad way to start out.

What will I Be When I Grow Up?

It seems that I come around to this question again and again: What is my true work? What is God’s Will for me in my work life? Does God care about how I earn a living? Can a regular person—like me—have a “ministry”? I’m a writer and a teacher and a speaker. I have skills with language and persuasion. So is it ego to want to be these things publicly? To want to be recognized? In writer-land that means published. In speaking land that means invited and hired and, yes, paid.

I know I’m not alone in asking these questions in recovery. So what work should we do? And how do we know if it is God’s will?

Today sorting through files I found these three people wiser than me on this topic:

In 2005 I attended the International AA Convention in Toronto. One night, at one of the big stadium meetings. I heard one of the really old timers speak about his recovery and his work. He was a retired commissioner for corrections in a Southern state. He was sober 47 years. He described how he went from being a double-felony-manslaughter inmate to the state commissioner for corrections. He killed two people, went to jail, got sober in prison. Step by step he listened for God’s will and took each step toward doing recovery work in prisons. He had many hurdles to overcome. AS he described each hurdle, some seemed impossible at the time, He said: “If God has work for you to do the walls will come down.”

In 2006 I went to see a film on Choreographer, Bob Fosse. (If you have seen Chorus Line or Chicago or the movie Chicago you have seen his work)
When he was interviewed about his work and his distinctive style and choreography he said he had always had bad posture and so he created his dances with his now signature curved shoulders. He also said that he had "bad legs" (for a dancer)--and so rather than use turn-out like in ballet he turned his dancers legs in.
And that he started to go bald at 25 and so always wore hats to dance hence his incredible use of hats as props in all of his major works...
He said:” All of my gifts have come from my defects."

Theologian Frederick Beuchner wrote that vocation is from Latin Vocare to be called. Our vocation is the work God calls us to do. But how do we know?
Buechner gives this formula: The kind of work God usually calls you to do is the kind of work that A. You need most to do AND B. the world most needs to have done.
If you get a kick out of your work, you’ve met requirement A, but if that work is writing cigarette ads, chances are you have missed requirement B. On the other hand if you are a doctor in a leper colony you have probably met B, but if you are miserable and depressed you probably bypassed part A.
He said: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.”

It’s a way to sort this, “What am I gonna be when I grow up”? question.