A prarie home sunday service

 Garrison Keillor, of Prarie Home Companion, who was once cancelled for giving a friendly back rub to a neurotic lady, is still on line with a blog.

Last Sunday his essay was about attending mass: although it was at the local Episcopal Cathedral, one that supports peace and justice, and is nice enough to mention it's memorial healing service for the Red Lake school shooting on it's Wikipedia page. 

But the service he attended was close to that of the Catholic church, so go and read it with pleasure.

an excerpt:

I remembered as I came into the cathedral that there is no music at the 8 a.m., no chipper Bach chorale to brighten the mood, no rousing opening hymn, just this scattering of folks in the vastness, like the Church in apostolic times, a few believers hiding out in the catacombs, hoping men in heavy armor don’t break in and bust our heads.

I knelt and prayed for my loved ones, that they be spared my anxiety.

..... What I found inspiring were two Scripture readings, one from the prophet Micah, where the reader faced the line, “O my people, remember what happened from Shittim to Gilgal that you may know the saving acts of the Lord,” and she slowed down when she saw “Shittim” and got traction and very carefully pronounced it “shi-team.” I was the only one in the sanctuary immature enough to enjoy this moment. There were no 13-year-old boys there, just me. I could tell from her voice that the reader had been dreading this for an hour, trying to decide between “shy-tim” and “shi-team” and fearing that she’d slip and pronounce it phonetically and a marble angel would fall and crash and red lights would flash and people would require treatment for post-traumatic stress.

And then moments later she read from First Corinthians that we do not find God through wisdom. No, God chose what is foolish to shame the wise, for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.

The thought of God’s foolishness is a radical one, seldom mentioned in church, and near me were some highly educated people, including a man who got his Ph.D. in classic philosophy from Harvard and here I sat, a writer of limericks and a lover of juvenile jokes (Knock-knock. “Who’s there?” Eskimo Christians. “Eskimo Christians who?” Eskimo Christians, I’ll tell you no lies.) and when I went forward for Communion I felt foolishly happy.

.....The world is a mess but dread gets us nowhere so cheer up and then go do what you were put here to do. I was put here to cheer you up. So smile.

Before there was hospice: The Hawthorn sisters

My mother used to sew incontinence pads for the local cancer home run by the Hawthorne sisters: soft cloth on the outside but layers of newspapers within. We now use blue pads of course, which is a godsend for people with incontinence and cheap and convenient. 

 The Cancer home was rum by a group of Dominican sisters in an order founded by the daughter of writer Hawthorne: So they are known as the Hawthorn Dominicans.

Plough Magazine has an article on their work.

in Hawthorne, New York, the Dominican congregation of St. Rose of Lima lives a quieter charism. The sisters nurse terminal cancer patients. Their community was founded in 1900 by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne). Lathrop converted to Catholicism and took the religious name Mother Mary Alphonsa. She began by caring for incurable cancer patients on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and the congregation carries on that work today, outside the city.

,,,Sr. Stella Mary was nervous when she began working with patients, but older sisters gave her two pieces of advice. “Remember, you are first a religious.” She would be trained in basic medical care, but her first work would always be to pray and love the patients. Nursing was a way to express that love. The other piece of advice was more practical – all the patients are terminal. She wouldn’t be a surgeon whose smallest gesture could save a life or end it. Everyone came to the sisters to prepare to die, and hopefully to die well.