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| Our Lady of Velankanni |
We walked through the dark living room with its de rigueur shrine on a crocheted tablecloth: a pious assemblage of souvenirs from other people’s trips to Rome, Lourdes, Fatima or our native Velankanni—cloudy bottles of holy water, silver cameo triptychs of the Holy Family, mortuary cards, “holy pictures.”
The “Sacred Heart” smiled, revealing his thorn-pierced heart. Rainbow lights twinkled around a blue-sashed haloed Virgin who, when cupped in one’s hands, glowed, eerie luminous phosphorous in the conjured-up darkness. The red glow of a Martian flame-shaped bulb bathed rosaries with gold and silver beads, and the recumbent Infant Jesus of Prague who kicked his silver legs in baby glee.
The most frequent spiritual experience of my Catholic childhood was not the numinous–when the veil parts, and you glimpse the elegance of the Grandmaster, and time stands still while you are wracked by joy. That came later. My most common emotion was boredom—continuous mental calculations: the ratio of Hail Marys said to Hail Marys left. Of the Mass said to the Mass unsaid. In fractions, in decimals.
As I walked through Palm Grove, Norman growled from rooms away. “Anita, don’t drag your feet.” “What a disgrace, him having to scold you so often,” my mother said later. “Why do you drag your feet?”
I dragged them to evening prayers at “the family altar”, squirmy phrase. Each evening, as darkness fell, Norman knelt on the cold stone floor to lead us in the rosary, his head tilted backwards to gaze at the Virgin, his arms outstretched like the crucified Christ (a quite unnecessary, unprescribed piety; wherever did he get the idea from?) outstretched rigidly, as sixty-six slow rosary beads dripped through his fingers, Credo, Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Gloria.
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” he proclaimed with brisk gusto and hints of admonishment: “See me, so old; see my reverence. And yours?” Or so I read the language of his body, as he trawled us through the rosary, present purgatory to abbreviate a future one.
My father knelt, which he never did at home, unwilling to be shamed by his uncle’s piety, or perhaps because he expected it was expected. A frown and a frequent downward jerk of his head suggested that I do likewise, which I did not, the embarrassment of conforming to this atypical sanctimoniousness being roughly equal to the embarrassment of refusing to.
“Holy Mary,” my father muttered, frowning grimly as he did under scrutinizing eyes, as he did whenever I was in the vicinity of a nun, or a smiling gossip. And so it went on, sempiternal, Chinese water torture. Mosquitoes buzzed in the darkness; I wanted to itch. I wanted to bay in exasperation.
Though my grandmother, Josephine, sat primly in her rocking chair, studying her rosary beads, serious and contemplative as a Van Gogh woman, I wondered if she was enduring it as much as my father was, as much as I was, this flamboyant fervency imposed on us by Norman.
After prayers, I inched towards the dog on the verandah who strained towards me, snarling, steel chain taut, teeth bared. I boasted that I could gentle even savage Cave Canem watch dogs, talking to them at a distance, going ever closer, my outstretched hand just out of biting range, talking, talking, until their eyes hinted I could stroke them. But—can any crime be uglier than mutating the natural sweetness of an animal or a child?–Tibby had deliberately been brutalized.
And now memory cowers, as at the knowledge of a impending burn,. In the lazy afternoons, Norman, siesta-rested, took his walking stick to methodically, savagely, beat the cowering dog who, with high broken-hearted yelps of desperation, helplessly bent his head, screwing his eyes shut in terror, as if blindness might shield him from pain. At any moment, the dog could have swerved and bitten the man, but did not. Humane, brutish, what ironic adjectives! I rushed out, near hysteria; my father held me back, muttering, “It is his dog.”
“Why?” I asked the terrifying old man. Norman stalked off, glaring, mumbling. To render the dog furious, ferocious, so that, when unchained at night to prowl the grounds, he would instantly bite a burglar—following his new-grafted instincts.
Goals
Start Date—August 27th, 2012
Completion Date—August 31st, 2013
Word Count Goal-120,000
Words per day Goal—470
Progress (Aiming to write 6 days a week, excluding Sundays)
Sept 19th Day 21—9922 words written (52 extra)
More from my site
Do not forget that when we weep, the Lord weeps with us
My Father’s Sisters: Ethel, “The Grand-duchess,” and Winnie, “The Duchess,” and Joyce (From My Memoir: I Lift up my Eyes to the Hills)
Composting–Garden magic.
The Byzantine Art of Mosaics and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna
The Things Worth Doing Badly
Thanks for your replies. It does raise interesting questions for child rearing.
For me, I'm being relatively unforced for my son's exploration – providing him with lots of information, answering questions, modelling an active spiritual and ministry-based life, and laying little landmines of information in his path. I ask him lots of questions too and make sure that he understands that he needs to be spiritual and Godly even if it isn't exactly the same way that I'm spiritual.
My daughter spent most of her formative years with her Buddhist step-mom and dad in Japan, eating vegetarian and with a statue of Buddha by her bedside, and has had the call to clergy since she was 16 and is entering discernment for the priesthood this year. Go figure :).
Personally, I think that modelling a God-centered life is the biggest gift we can give our kids. Every person is different and their spiritual expression is going to be different. My only rules are “God is Love so Love Everyone” and explore your faith to the fullest extent possible – making God the center of your being.
So my question to you is…how did this affect your adult prayer life? Negatively and/or positively?
Negatively, of course. Anyway which makes your relationship with God boring is bound to have a negative effect. Which raises interesting questions when it comes to child-rearing.
What is your adult perspective on this?
I cannot bear liturgy, repetition of words, prayers by rote, anything that reminds me of gabbling. Dislike things that add “canned” noise, in particular. By canned, I mean pre-written words.
As I said, my experience completely eliminated an effective prayer methodology from my adult life. What about yours? Do you ever pray the rosary/prayer beads?
No, cannot stand the rosary, or the Catholic mass, or shows of piety!! Am more of a contemplative, really.
And here I thought we were the only family with the dreaded at-home prayer service :). Throughout the years, my parents (bless them!) tried several different ways to incorporate prayer into our daily lives beyond the usual bedtime prayer. But inevitably, it would fall by the wayside as we kids fell asleep at the table doing countless rosaries. One time they thought we'd totally stay awake by making us kneel during the long rosary (complete with the creepy mysteries between the decades). That worked to keep us awake, but my sister kept passing out and crumpling to the floor.
OK, so the mysteries between the decades are only creepy if you're 7 and the sacred heart is glowing eerily from within the statue on the kitchen table. The lights are all out so that the frighteningly full effect of the statue could be appreciated and the mysteries are always the sorrowful ones never the joyful ones. Mom weeps quietly into her kerchief and dad's voice gravels on. Creepy for a 7 year old with an active imagination.
I still have an unnerving and slightly ridiculous aversion to prayer beads despite having them presented in all sorts of positive fashions by everyone from Taize brothers to spiritual partners to Episcopal priests to friends. No way no how. Sad, really.
Thank you for showing me I was not the only person with early prayer experiences that were less than inspiring. So my question to you is…how did this affect your adult prayer life? Negatively and/or positively? What is your adult perspective on this? As I said, my experience completely eliminated an effective prayer methodology from my adult life. What about yours? Do you ever pray the rosary/prayer beads?
Rachel, thank you for reading. I am aware that the memoir bits are going off-topic for the blog, so am so grateful when people read.
BTW, love your haiku!
Blessings,
Anita
Thank you for sharing part of your story and your goals, it is hard to understand how some people can be so brutal and then say a “Hail Mary full of grace”, so to speak. I think we all have some recovering to do from that form of abuse.