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the spark of prayer

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He leans forward, eyes bright. Three Hail Marys are his. Each one he has started, and we have followed.

He is four years old, sandy brown curls flopped in his eyes. His brothers have taken turns leading decades for weeks, and now he clamors for his chance, with all the gusto of younger siblings.

He knows more than I realize. He hesitates in spots, but with a glance and a gentle prompt, his eyes sparkle again and he is off.

Here is where he catches me. That breath between “…the fruit of thy womb, Jesus” and “Holy Mary, Mother of God.”

Where the prayer pauses. Where the first half ends and the second begins. Where Jesus meets Mary, child meets mother, leader meets follower, call meets response, breath meets breath, prayer meets prayer.

I see the spark – in his eyes, in my body, in the space between us. It is the rare dazzle of holy.

. . .

Before I was bored, I am unashamed to admit.

Catholic school kid in the pew, winding plastic beads around my hand. Not my thing.

Grumbling teenager, slipping away from the funeral home wake. Not my way to pray.

Tuned-out adult, mumbling halfheartedly, pretending to know the prayers. Not my spirituality.

But now I am becoming the child again. Eyes bright and open, voice stronger for listening, joy in learning a new thing and leading it for others.

Next are the luminous mysteries. Do you know what luminous means? Full of light.

We are learning together, beads threading through our hands.

We are walking into mystery. Energy hums in this habit that I never expected. The space between “Jesus” and “holy,” between “thy womb” and “mother of God.”

I watch their eyes sparkle. We are in, together.

. . .

What if we prayed more like this? I wonder.

Sundays at Mass we stand with duty and recite the Credo: I believe. But it’s tired and rote. We mumble. There is no spark.

We do not take seriously what we speak: I believe there is a God who exploded the universe into being; I believe a human was born who was also divine and he died and then lived and changed everything; I believe I will live forever.

But we trip on strange jumbles of phrase: begotten, consubstantial, incarnate. We used to know what we were saying, but then they changed the words, and will they change them again, and what do they mean anyway?

I remember a boy’s eyes blue with light, cheeks flushed with grin. The flash between thy womb, Jesus, and Holy Mary, mother. What if we could rediscover that Spirit spark? Would we lean in like him, listening, learning, ready to lead?

Unless you become like one of these children, you cannot enter the kingdom.

I claim to follow the God-man who said it. Do I believe it?

Credo.

. . .

The boys divvy up each decade. I am given the leftovers, only one Hail Mary to lead. But when my turn comes at last, I’m startled by my own voice. Brimming with gentle joy and quiet wonder. I am not a tired mother. I am full of something like grace.

The words taste different in my mouth. I have borrowed their spark. “The Lord is with you.” Underlined with awe, ended with exclamation, an opening into unexpected. What if I believed it, with each breath of my day, with each small hand I held?

Sunday morning, I’m stirred to speak the Credo words with joy. To proclaim, not just profess. To believe what I say I believe.

I open a worn hymnal to sing. Amazing Grace, and the hymn is true. Notes soar to the top of the church, a crescendo of Credo, our voices reaching toward something we believe but do not understand.

The hour I first believed. The evening we started to pray.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Diana C Giard says

    31 October 2018 at 6:20 am

    Beautiful. Just beautiful.

    Reply
  2. Kara Cunnane says

    31 October 2018 at 10:51 am

    Your writing moves me on every corner of the internet, Laura! From Collegeville, to Blessed is She, to instagram, to my inbox. Thank you.

    The Creed is one of my favorite moments in the Mass, though it certainly wasn’t always so! I can’t recall the moment, but a few months ago I remember being frustrated by the roteness of that prayer, the prayer that begins with “I believe.” How could I just numbly mumble through the declaration of all of the fantastic and mystifying things we believe? I had to start taking it at my own pace, even if I’m now that obnoxious pew-fellow who’s not “in step” with everyone else, and that has made all the difference for me. I inflect the words differently and find that my tone almost feels like a challenge to the Lord, “Make me believe!” There are so many more moments in the Mass I still need to pause my way into connecting with, but I’m thankful the Lord has made the Creed come alive for me in a new way.

    Reply
  3. Erin says

    31 October 2018 at 11:52 pm

    I honestly tell people that you are the most beautiful writer I have ever read, Laura. Wow. Every time. I love this – I will reread it and pay attention to the pauses and what they mean, and pray the rosary more deeply. This just takes my breath away. Thank you for sharing your writing with me and the rest of those blessed to read your words.

    Reply

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I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

thismessygrace
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
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“How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “H “How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “How did you let your heart break a thousand times?”

I want to call my mother and ask her impossible questions, to probe her heart that held five children and let each of us go in the hardest ways. But I know what she will say, “It’s hard. But you’re doing a beautiful job.” She can’t give words to the deepest yearnings and groanings. None of us can.

I wish I could ask my grandmothers, each of them gone for decades now, each of them matriarchs who raised big broods of their own. I never got to know them as an adult, but I have heaps of questions: How did you do it? How did you not lose yourself or your way? Or did you, and that was precisely the point?

I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

Is it any coincidence that birth often brings both cries and screams, laughter and joy?

We hold it all within us. We cannot give words to the enormity of what it means to mother.

I sit outside a coffee shop two blocks from my children’s school on a sunny afternoon, the last day of the year. I wipe away tears for the natural nostalgia, but I also feel the gutting grief welling up from my own wounds of motherhood to know a deeper truth: marking milestones with love and longing is nothing compared to the gaping loss of not having your child here to break your heart in a thousand tiny ways.

So I resolve again, a hundred times again, to let this vulnerability become the strength that keeps me fighting for all children to have what I want for my own: life, love, health, safety, support, opportunity, community, hope. This is how parenting asks us to change. To let the particulars of our lives stretch us to love more widely.

I once thought “to mother” meant to have and to hold.

Now I know it also means to let go.
Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I s Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I shared after the school shooting in Uvalde.

Remember: we can’t do everything, but we can each do something.

Just because we can’t eradicate evil overnight doesn’t mean we can’t take small strong steps toward change.

Any work for justice and peace is long and hard. But we can build this work into our daily lives in concrete ways.

Look at the children in your life. What would you do to keep them safe and alive?

Start there. Let your life and love lead you.
When women meet, the world changes. Today is the When women meet, the world changes.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. A day when we remember the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Two women pregnant with new life, blooming with prophetic power.
Two mothers called to change the world.

What would happen if we gathered together like this today?
How could the world change if we made Mary’s song our own?

“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached t Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached today on the Ascension.

Right now is a time to be prophetic and pastoral, a time for each of us to ask how God is calling us to act.
I am writing this to us next week. When our right I am writing this to us next week.

When our righteous anger will have quieted down. When the white-hot fury pulsing through our veins will have subsided. When the news cycle will have moved on.

Do not forget how we felt tonight.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

We cannot live like this. Literally—our children are dying. Our elders are being murdered. We have accepted violence as—a way of life? An unfortunate side effect of freedom? A helpless shrug?

No. I am not resigned.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

Remember how it felt today to hear the news and feel the world crack open—again, for we have heard it a hundred times now. Remember how you felt sick to your stomach. How the children around you glowed, alive and fragile, miraculous and vulnerable.

Remember how you wanted to do something, anything, how you wanted to act, how you wanted to stop and scream for it to end, how every cell in your body cried out that this was evil and unjust and horrific and cannot continue.

Press into that memory like a bruise.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

The only way anything changes is if we change. Change what we believe. Change who we support. Change how we vote. Change where we give. Change how we act. Change how we speak. Change how we pray.

There are no easy answers to terrible, complex problems—which is what gun violence in the US has become. But the lack of easy answers makes it all the more urgent and vital that we press into our righteous anger and say NO MORE.

Stay angry. Flip tables.

I am writing this for us, for tonight, for next week. And I never want to write it again.
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