The Brave Little Pumpkin

Happy All Saint's Day! The local newspaper sponsors a Halloween story contest each year, and I entered for the first time.  Alas I did not win, but here's the best story Mary could put together in 600 words or fewer.

The Brave Little Pumpkin

In a valley between a small grove of the prettiest trees and the loveliest little pond lay the cutest tiny pumpkin patch. A young little pumpkin lived there with her parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and distant relatives of every kind. She loved the beginning of each day when pumpkins and flowers became radiant as they were kissed by the rising sun, and the colorful birds serenaded them with their music. She loved when the farmer’s young son came to skip rocks across the pond and would talk to them about his playful puppies and how there were two new calves and how Banny the Hen wouldn’t lay until they put a golf ball in her nest! The little pumpkin felt that she would burst with happiness because she loved the trees swaying in the breeze and the pond glistening in the sunlight and the birds’ songs.

One ordinary morning, the new sun woke the little pumpkin and she shook away the night's sleep as she slowly opened her eyes. Her parents, brothers, sisters and nearly all her cousins, aunts, uncles, and distant relatives were GONE. She shook with tears and wondered how this could be, because after all it's very hard for a pumpkin to steal away unnoticed. Suddenly she heard a familiar sound of squeaky wheels turning and there was the farmer's son pulling his wagon. She would get his attention and he would help her find her missing family! Pulling herself up to her full height, she imagined herself glowing brightly in the sunlight. “Pick me. Pick me,” she whispered to herself. As if by magic, the boy came straight to her.

“Why, you're a brave little pumpkin left here all by yourself,” said the boy and he plucked the grateful little one from her bed and put her in the wagon. She could not believe what she was seeing. Her world had been so small, but now the land and sky seemed to stretch on forever. As the boy traveled along the long gravel road, she was amazed at the big fields and the even bigger groves of trees. The path was rough, but the little pumpkin didn't mind at all the bumps because she thought about seeing her brothers and sisters, parents, cousins and other relatives. The boy said “almost there” and then there were buildings, cows, Banny the Hen, and...what was THAT?

Familiar globes of orange decorated one of the buildings and some lay in the grass in front of it. She frantically scanned until finally – “Mama! Papa!” – and her brothers and sisters were found! But something wasn't right. She winced and cried out to herself. Her family had been carved! But they did not seem to be in pain. In fact, they looked rather happy. They noticed her and glowed as brightly as they could muster. The little boy gingerly set her on the porch with her family, and she was full of joy. Later, the brave little pumpkin sighed with resignation as the blade approached. She cringed as the first cut was made, but steeled herself. She held her breath, then soon the job was finished. Her relatives looked at her approvingly, and she knew she was beautiful.

That Halloween night, the boy and his parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and distant relatives of every kind placed candles inside all of them and they glowed as brightly as ever. The brave little pumpkin was warm and content because she had even more than ever could be wanted.

How a Mass in German led to a new beginning

The email was ordinary enough: Attend the German Mass This Sunday at Old St. Mary's, and hear the Munich Harmonic Brass play the Schubert Mass.

But it changed everything.

Coincidentally, Older Daughter had mentioned a few days before that she'd like to attend a Mass in German at this gorgeous church, and when I got the email, it seemed perfect.  After all, that Sunday was her birthday.

So last-minute plans were made, a substitute musician was found, and away we went.

We arrived at the church quite early and were relieved to see the security officer at the steps of the church, since it's in mission territory (to put it politely.) As we left the car, we could hear Gregorian chant coming through the open windows.  Hurrying in, we hoped to hear the end of the prior Mass, but were surprised to hear that they had only just finished the Offertory chant.  Bonus!  So we were able to attend the last half of the Novus Ordo Latin Mass.  (The Extraordinary Form was celebrated at 7 a.m.)  By the time Mass finished, there were only 15 minutes left until the Mass in German.

Now you may have thought when you started reading that having a brass group playing music at Mass would be quite irreverent and obnoxious.  Secretly, I may have thought it myself, and I'm pleased to say I was completely wrong.  The instruments were completely tamed and mastered by their players, and the music was not only superb, but reverent.  The music truly was part of Mass and never felt or sounded like a "performance." This is the Mass that I play at my church job, and having learned to pronounce German during Class Voice at university, I was pleased to be able to sing along most of the time.

It was during this day that I fully realized that at this time next year, my two oldest children will have left home-- one for grad school (perhaps abroad) and the other for college.  We have little time left to enjoy leaving at the last minute for a weekend (especially for Sunday Mass, since we are "church tourists") as a whole family based out of our home.  Although this greatly saddens me, especially since I like my children and enjoy having them around, I have become determined to make the most of the time we have left, and to that end, I sent my resignation last night to the rector. I have no plans to pursue another weekly organist job, but will instead market myself as a substitute.

Already, I arranged to take improvisation lessons after the new year with a Catholic cathedral organist. I'm obligated to my current job for another three months, although I hope to be released before that.  The new year should bring a fresh beginning to the next phase of our lives.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Mass this weekend brought us to the other Catholic church in the same city as last week.  Husband had listened to homilies online and found clear Catholic teaching on "contemporary" issues.  Intrigued, we gave the city another chance.

Upon entering the church vestibule, one couldn't help but notice the soul-salving scent of incense permeating the air. Sounds of Gregorian chant (recorded) filled the air.  We entered the nave to find several souls there in prayer, forty-five minutes before Mass began. 

Narrative continues below pictures...

Nave

All windows looked similar. Note the Vatican City flag.

Real confessionals.

Our Lady of Guadalupe chapel.

Example of the Stations of the Cross.

Why can't this be standard in every Catholic pew?

The St. Michael Hymnal has square notes for the chants! *swoon*

Isn't she lovely?

St. Peter.  Yes. The fire extinguisher is right there because "the gates of Hell will not prevail."

Not perfect, but simple and beautiful.

Proper furnishings.  NOT from Grandma's dining room table.

St. J.

Divine Mercy chapel.

Infant of Prague.

We prayed the rosary with the growing congregation before Mass began, then stood up to sing the opening hymn entrance antiphon.  Wait, did I say Entrance Antiphon?  Why, yes.  Yes I did.

The priest chanted the opening prayer as well as other parts of Mass. Assisting at the altar were three altar boys and a seminarian.  He gave an excellent, easy-to-understand homily about same-sex relationships, which was one of a four-part series on Secularism.  Pretty sure nobody walked out.  I don't want to speculate (well, I DO want to speculate...) about why priests won't consistently, fearlessly, and constantly speak the truth about church teaching, but this very young priest (may God reward him with a long life and protect him from all harm) is bold in speaking the truth. Praise God.

We're happy to have found another church we are comfortable attending.  It's not completely perfect, but it's as close as we'll get in this general area.  And really, they just need only more thing: me. *wink*

A word about the architecture.  I love beauty as much (maybe more) than the next person, and this church is a good example of making lemonade with lemons.  A very plain (arguably ugly) interior was transformed to be beautiful. Yeah, the bricks are hard to ignore, but the eye is drawn to the altar, as it should be, and it's done beautifully (try to ignore the plants.)

A Mass Review That Will Stay Anonymous Due To Some Misplaced Sort of Christian Charity

A few months ago, I made a list of churches within "reasonable driving distance" from my house (which is a pretty high number when one lives rurally) to whom I'd like to send my resume.  This church looked promising as one where the liturgy was done correctly and the music was taken seriously, at least as much as one could surmise from looking at the parish website. Since we don't have a "home" church right now, we thought we'd make the drive and check this place out.

We walked through the front doors and were pleased to hear from the vestibule that the rosary was being recited.  Well, we couldn't really tell that it was the rosary, but what else could it be?  We walked through the vestibule and entered the church.  "Oh, I guess they're not saying the rosary after all," I thought, and noted that all persons in the church appeared to be involved in a conversation, and that's what made the din.  In fact, it was VERY loud, and so I was distracted temporarily from the acrid smell in the church.  The church was very cold (probably to disguise the fires of hell), and I knelt trying to identity that smell.  Aha! Mothballs?

No, not mothballs.

Urine?

No, not quite......

OUTHOUSE!  That's it!  It smelled like the restrooms at a state park.  I sat and looked around.

When the tabernacle is not front and center, I try to get a seat in front of the tabernacle if indeed it's in the church at all.  I surveyed the area and realized that this was the saddest tabernacle area I'd ever seen in my life.  And there've been some REALLY crappy ones. This was depressing.

This makes me more depressed than Richard Lewis. It was much darker when the sun wasn't illuminating. The front of the tabernacle looked almost black. 

At least the Stations were decent.  Best things in the church.

Sorry for the dark stations.  They looked better in *real life*.

Is this church in the desert Southwest?  Nope -- they'd do this better.

This altar, again, is so very depressing.  Just wood as far as the eye can see.  Wood.  Brown.  Brown wood. Would it be wood?  Woody B. Woodpecker.  Sher-wood Forest. No candles. No saints (excepting St. John and St. Mary of Dubious Origins.)

If pic wasn't fuzzy, you'd see that Mary is NOT paying attention. Most bizarre statue choices.

Sorry Cornelius.  You've been remembered with THIS window.

I'm quite sure these were stolen from Grandma's dining room table.  Give 'em back, you thief!

From the moment we saw the pastor before Mass, chatting with the womenfolk and such, and giving the altar nary a bow, we wondered at his casualness.

He couldn't seem to manage a true orans position during prayers, preferring to keep his elbows and arms close to his body, almost as if embarrassed to act as the Church requires of him.  He recited the prayers as if to get them over with.

And then came the homily.

The priest said that there was no reason in the Mass for the response "And with your spirit".  That it makes no sense and he doesn't even know what that's supposed to mean. He suggested that he could make up something else and try that.  The congregation laughed.

He continued in the vein and then ended the whole thing saying that Naomi and Ruth were called into the fields to work, and given that evidence that women worked back then, the Church needs to examine who it's calling to work in the vineyard.

Wymynpriests, anyone?

The priest passed out the hosts to the extraordinary ministers like he was dealing out cards. I was so angry that I was unable to go to Communion. He didn't like the position of my son's tongue, so he told him, "Stick out your tongue," which can be a feat when you're literally tongue-tied. No other priest has had a problem with this, but to be fair, this may be the first time this priest ever had to place a host on someone's tongue.

Mary is no shrinking violet when it comes to such matters, so I confronted (yes, I tried to be discreet and gentle as possible) the priest, who was as defensive as possible, and finally yelled at me and walked away.  Then one of the wymyn of the parish walked up to me and spat, "We're so blessed to have him," then said something unintelligible as she walked away.

In case you're wondering about extraordinary minister count, out of five, only one was a man.  All three servers were girls.  Just raisin' up workers for the vineyard, yo!

Sure do hope this priest is up for retirement soon.  I recommend a quiet monastery accessible only by boat and very old rope bridge.

Adding insult to injury, Oldest Daughter attended Mass today at this church.

Cathedral of St. Paul, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

I received a rare Sunday off because the church where I'm employed was having Youth Sunday, complete with "praise music" with lyrics projected on the wall.  Seizing the opportunity to get the heck out of Dodge, we traveled to my husband's hometown.  My plan was to go to a Mass with fantastic music, something that rarely happens.  My husband's home church is very beautiful and has a holy priest with wonderful homilies, but the music there sounds like something that'd be sung by Joe Biden at an LCWR convention in Vegas honoring the most reverend Joan "Joanie-Babes" Chittister on the occasion of her ordination.

I thought perhaps we should just do penance and go to Mass there anyway to make some family members happy, but I was reminded of this post at The Chant Café and decided to stick with the original plan and attend the choir Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Pittsburgh, where we'd be guaranteed beautiful music. The kids and I left with plenty of time to take pictures before Mass began.  We assumed the church, which is adjacent to the University of Pittsburgh campus, was beautiful inside because we'd passed the stunning outside several times before while visiting museums in the area.

1962 Von Beckerath Organ

Note the beautiful woodwork and the stations above.

Very charming (and very narrow) stairway in the rear of church, leading to the choir loft and to the basement.  

View from the rear of the cathedral

Baptistry 

Detail of baptistry, featuring St. Joan of Arc

Windows above baptistry

Holy Family garden outside the cathedral.  If the pictures seem out of order, it's because we walked outside to get jackets from car, then returned to cathedral. :)

Pond with the hugest koi I've ever seen.

Cathedral doors. Note that the priest is wearing red for Pentecost Sunday.

Delicious gothic architecture

Very similar to a picture above, but sunshine is coming in these windows.

Gorgeous altars and a nice simple crucifix.

I thought it was interesting that modern doorways were installed inside the original doorways.  Curious.  A security measure, maybe?

Nice cathedra there on the left, eh?

What a fantastic altar. So beautiful. Too bad those chairs are in the way.

Our Lady! And Baby Jesus!

Another altar, this one on the left side of the church.  The altar with red on the far left houses the tabernacle.

Check out that communion rail.  Fantastic!

Tabernacle.  Sorry about the lighting.

I assume this is a baldacchino, but have never seen one used over a side tabernacle before.

Very sweet St. Michael statue. NOT girlie.

Copious candles

Mass was beautiful and reverent. The choir, though not professional, was a joy to listen to, and the organist was fantastic as one would expect at a cathedral.  We were treated to Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony from Thomas Tallis, and "modern" music from Maurice Durufle. Also included were hymns such as Hail Thee Festival Day, and O Breathe on Me O Breath of God.

The priest announced at the end of Mass that the next two Sundays would have Adoration immediately following the noon Mass; we were all calculating inwardly how long it would take us to drive up there.

Unfortunately (maybe) for me, attending this Mass drove home the point that I'm wasting time at my current position.  The resume is updated and ready to go out.  Now it's time to contact some Catholic churches.

Road Trip: Washington D.C. & the Basilica

Older Daughter was presenting at a conference in D.C., which meant Road Trip! for the other children and me since Husband was out of town. I approached this trip with dread, since the advice I'd heard about driving in the city (including from daughter's conference materials) went something like this:

***DON'T DRIVE IN DC!!!!!  IF YOU LOVE YOUR LIFE AND VALUE YOUR CAR, FIND ANOTHER WAY TO GET AROUND!!!!!***

That's good advice for people who have a choice, but some of us must drive in the city with a minivan that is reaaallly looooong. We dropped off Daughter at her upper-crust hotel and eventually made it to the *right* hotel, the one at which I'd actually made reservations for the rest of us (don't ask.)

Thank God for GPS.

I don't know how a tourist could possibly navigate that city without GPS, which made traveling around *relatively* painless. It probably would have been even more painless had we gotten a hotel along the metro line and had taken the train everywhere instead of having to drive to and park at Union Station twice so that we could take tours, only to be effectively abandoned by one of them, entailing a walk (albeit pleasant) from the Capitol back to Union Station, which is the location in which I've learned that Younger Daughter is really claustrophobic because she really hated it there and there were so many people, and because the bottom floor is a bunch of food-court-style places underground where people prepare food where there are no windows to look out not that I felt like it was a prison or anything or at least one huge t*e%r(r#o@r target.

Union Station 

Plus it's expensive to park there.

The only building we got to see fairly close up was the Capitol.  The building is immense and beautiful.  And locked up.  The steps were blocked off, and there were security people even under the large growth of bushes on the sides of the building. If I'd realized that the rest of our bus tour wasn't going to happen, we'd have stayed there and visited the museum.  As it was, we visited the gardens both around the building and in the park between the Capitol and Union Station.

Want to see the White House?  There are no tours because Sequestration and this is as close as you're going to get.  Sorry, suckers.

The area in front of the White House is the lawn where the Easter Egg Roll is held.  Or is that the Spring Holiday Egg Toss?  I know of a few things I'd like to see roll on that lawn. Mainly heads.

This is the view with the Capitol behind the camera: Washington Monument and National Mall and reflecting pool.

Panorama of the immense Capitol

Panorama of the side and rear of the Capitol.

Three days after dropping off Daughter, we picked her up, gave her a mini driving tour of the main sites (since she was busy with the *very successful* conference, she'd seen none of the city), then headed to the 9:00 a.m. Mass at the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. 

The thought that kept occurring to me during our visit was, "Why didn't we come here first?" The place is stunning, and we could've spent the whole day there. I want to go back. 

View from the parking lot.

Front of the Basilica

One of the many chapels in the lower church dedicated to the different titles of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  I think this is Our Mother of Divine Providence.  The walls of the lower church (outside the chapels) were filled with memorials to individuals.

A view from inside the chapel mentioned above.

Pope Benedict sat in this chair when he visited the Basilica in 2008.  I miss him.

The museum in the lower church had many such items in it from various popes.

The chapel of Our Lady of Lebanon, patroness of the Maronite rite.

Explanatory plaque in the rear of the chapel.

St. Maron

Crypt church

Pipe organ in Crypt church

Chapel on the Gospel side of the crypt church

Crypt church altar

Mosaic of St. Cecilia

Chapels behind main altar of upper church

Chapels beside main altar of upper church

Closer-up picture of above chapels

Eucharistic chapel on Gospel side of upper church

One of the domes

Miraculous Medal chapel

Dome of Miraculous Medal chapel

One of many apparitions with which I'm unfamiliar - Our Lady of Brezje

Just because we wanted to stay there all day didn't mean we could, so we were off for a quick visit to Arlington National Cemetery to see the Tomb of the Unknowns.  Oldest Daughter urged me not to, since I was tired and we had to drive home, but she'd wanted to see this place for many years, so allons -y!

Solemn and beautiful

Tomb of the Unknowns

We were fortunate to see the Changing of the Guard, an unexpectedly moving experience.

Seven or so hours later, we arrived back safely at home.  God is good.

And I have next weekend off from The Job.  Where should we go?