I’m still processing the experience I think. But it was a lovely day. We had lunch with a friend, walked along the river, hung out in a coffee shop a bit and went over to the basilica. We joined the silent line of people going around the left side of the Church to pray in front of St. Terese’s relics. People knelt and touched the glass around her reliquary. They touched their rosaries, their crucifixes from home, or laid a hand on the glass. I didn’t know how I would feel. But when I knelt there beside her what I felt was all my love for her. I felt clear and present. I prayed for everyone who asked and everyone I offered to pray for and everyone and everything I could think of. I cried a little bit which surprised me. I almost never cry. My daughter prayed there and touched a rose petal to the reliquary. She has been having a hard time. The day before we left though, a friend who doesn’t know who St. Therese is left her a bouquet of roses on our front porch. I told my girl they had to be from St. Therese. ♥️
We stayed for mass. It was in Spanish but we could understand a little and the mass is the mass. It’s easy to know what’s going on in any language. I thought how beautiful the mass sounds in Spanish.
We went outside to see my friend Fr. Gregory. He was in a great mood. It was so good to see him. I gave him a copy of my new book. They have my other one at their book store and they will get this one too. I also might go do another talk down there in January or maybe during Advent.
They had a booth where people were telling stories about the impact of St. Therese in their lives. So I told our family story about her. * (I will put that at the end as notes. )
Then we found out they had relics of St. Therese’s parents Zellie and Louis Martin so we went down to see them and pray with them a while. They had a special table for prayer requests about child loss and about marriage. They had large prints of some of their letters and pictures of them with their family.
We prayed there with the relics a while then filed upstairs with others to visit Therese again. I remember the lady I saw on our second visit who was holding up her dog to St. Therese, even pressing him against the glass and bowing her head, praying fervently. She was praying for him it looked like. That’s good because I prayed for my dog Joey too and a sick dog (Lucy) of a friend along with everything else. I prayed that all the people there would be touched by St. Therese, that she would hear them all and comfort them, that she would help them. ♥️
My daughter and granddaughter fell asleep on the drive home. I smiled a lot in the dark, continuing to pray, feeling grateful and happy.
*Our best St. Therese story:
My first husband, and the father of my children lost his life in a car accident when my eldest, Maire, was almost five. My youngest, Roise, was a newborn. Maire wanted her first Communion early. I explained that she would do that with her class in second grade. She was upset. She used to cry at mass and after mass. She would say, “But I NEED the Body and Blood of Jesus!” We talked to our priest, Father Dean, about this. He agreed that if I would teach her what she needed at home that summer, he would allow it. We set the date for July 16, the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. She had wanted Immaculate Heart of Mary but we had to be in a wedding that day.
We started our lessons and as the day drew nearer she started worrying that maybe she shouldn’t do it, but go with her class. Maybe God didn’t want her to do this early. After all it was a very big deal. So we started a novena to St. Therese. Every night we prayed at bed time and Maire asked her to send a yellow rose if she should take this step now, and an orange one if the answer was to wait.
Then we went on a trip to visit her dad’s family in Wisconsin. It was a good visit. When we got home she got in the shower while I unpacked. There was a bouquet of yellow roses in our suitcase. I couldn’t believe it. I called them and asked if any of them had done that. Nobody had. So I took the roses and poked them through to the other side of the shower curtain. The sight was received with much rejoicing.
Little Maire received First Holy Communion that July. She had not even known you get a dress and a party. My mom hand made her dress from scraps of my wedding dress. It was a great day. We still talk about the roses St. Therese sent to reassure Maire that even at her young age she was welcome at God’s table.
*St. Therese has been on U. S. tour. She was in San Antonio from October 31-November , 2025
St. Teresa of Avila talked about the role of the contemplative as a standard bearer. She described the holder of the guidon of Jesus, of love, as having the one goal to hold the banner high no matter what chaos whirls around him, no matter if he is cut to pieces. If the standard bearer should fall, he must struggle to his feet again to hold high the symbol that urges on those in battle, gives them hope, lets them know their comrades are nearby when their courage flags.
I have thought a lot in the past couple of days about what was wrong with me in the midst of the chaos; meaning the violence of thought word and deed since the public murder of Charlie Kirk. I couldn’t hold the banner so much. It wobbled, as Winnie the Pooh would say of his spelling. It wobbled, shook, slipped as I took in entirely too much of what was going on. I have CPTSD and it’s important for me to guard how much craziness I absorb. Also I am an empath type person. I feel what people are feeling deeply. I don’t know about you but the last couple of days have triggered me badly. I have felt like a microcosm of the macrocosm of horror and rage, of compassion and sympathy, of fear and dread. My fight or flight has been FIGHT as usual. I too want to fill my mouth with argument along with everyone else.
St. Teresa would be the first person to say our real war is against ourselves. she advised us to return again and again to “the room of self knowledge.” Well today I am trying that.
Simeon the Prophet told Mother Mary that a sword would pierce her heart “so that the secret thoughts of many [would] be laid bare (Lk. 2:35). I have thought about that at times of tragedy and reckoning over the last several years. It does seem that the secret thoughts of many are laid bare in the midst of tragedy, of horrific events. Mary’s heart was pierced through by her love and compassion for her Son, and really, for us too. Murder surely pierces her heart. Injustice, people doing harm to one another, these must hurt her terribly. Jesus Crucified by hate. Again and again.
I have had my PTSD triggered by the event itself; a horrible murder. A father and husband with little kids suddenly dead. I lost my first husband in a car accident when my youngest was three months old and my eldest three weeks shy of her fifth birthday. I can hardly stand to think of what Kirk’s widow is going through today and what she will go through in the days, weeks, months, years ahead of her. She will have to watch her children grieve. She will have to be there for them as her world is ending. I can’t imagine people watching video all over the world of my husband dying a gruesome death. I was surprised when the sun still rose the day after my husband died. I watched in shock as the news came on and people went to work and school and drove around as if the sky hadn’t fallen. I feel for her very much.
The secret thoughts of many have been laid bare haven’t they? I’ve been triggered by some of their reactions as well as the original event. Some people have been sanitizing the murdered man as if he had been a saint when he was a rank racist who said things every day that could get people harassed, threatened and endangered and did. His public life was all about hate. Then people I thought were sane are saying his work should be “continued,” (Gavin Newsom) or that he “did politics the right way.” (Ezra Klein).
Some have been fawning over him. Their hero is dead. Incomprehensible to me. He was horrible. Look up the things he said for yourself if you don’t believe me.
I think of St. Edith Stein’s saying that truth without love or love without truth is a destructive lie. And look. It is. Historically Black campuses have had bomb threats. The DNC had a bomb threat. Why? I guess because Kirk hated black people? Or because they assumed a black person did it? Because he hated Democrats? They assume the culprit is a Democrat? Brawls have broken out. The president wants to give the man a statue in DC and award him the presidential medal of freedom. Of course he does. He hasn’t helped with his incendiary blaming of “radical left Democrats.”
The outpouring of grief and praise for the man must be a gut punch to the people he harmed with his bullying, with his hate and his stirring up more and more hate. I know it’s a gut punch for me. My heart is the most with the vulnerable and persecuted. That’s where I think it should be. However that solidarity of mine has caused me a lot of rage over the last couple of days. A friend said, to my prayer online for peace and an end to political violence, “You’re a good person.” I replied, “Not really.” I noticed one of my kids put a laughing emoji on that. Thanks a lot Roise.
Also triggering to me is the response of people who want to skip the ugly process of truth and reckoning to get to the peace they think would come if we all decided to just get along and lay aside our differences. To me that’s fake peace. After the things I have been through I have seen enough of that. How can we love our enemies if we whitewash and sanitize what they have done? That’s fake love. It’s useless, wrong even.
I see how I have been freaking out about all this; angry, horrified, scared for our country, taking in too much of what everyone is saying and what the news is when I know that makes me so upset.
Maybe I can offer up all the wild inner agony I have had about all this to God to help someone somewhere. Mary’s piercing of the heart was co-redemptive. I can entrust my little offering of a struggling heart to her.
I pray that I’ll be able to love Kirk- who by all accounts would be an enemy of mine at least as a public figure- in the way God wants me to. Right now that seems to me to be to pray for his salvation, for a beautiful forever life with God for him. Whatever he is doing, Charlie Kirk understands more than any of us do now. He has a completely different perspective. He has encountered eternal love and life. May he embrace them, embrace him who is love and life himself with all of his heart and possess them forever. God says he will give us all new hearts instead of our stony hearts. Amen amen.
I need to ask for that for myself, too. For all of us.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”
It’s my maternal grandfather’s birthday today. It’s been a long time since he died- February 5, 1985. I was wishing I had a picture of him but all the old pictures burned when my mother’s house burned down. I don’t know why but I went to crying about him this evening. He never got an obituary or anything- not that I can find. But I remember him. I remember his scraggly whiskers and the smell of tobacco and coffee in his hugs. I remember his stories, his laughter and how he always knew even from another room that my granny was about to “start belly-achin’ “ about something. How I would tell him my troubles and he would listen carefully and say tenderly “Well now- doggone it all.”
I remember the old pictures of him when he was young, too. My favorite was of him in a pin striped suit, long-ish well groomed finger nails, cigarette between his fingers, slicked back hair of the period and those cool round glasses. He was a bit of a dandy in that picture. Grandaddy was born Richard West Wallace August 3, 1911 in Cross Tracks, Texas, a town that doesn’t exist anymore. It had been near Lubbock, he said.
His father had been an oil field worker who was killed on the job when Grandaddy was twelve years old. He had three younger siblings, Edith, Jewel and Dudley. His mom’s name was Myrtle. Grandaddy had to quit school and go to work to support his family.
He had been a professional gambler when he was a young man. He played mostly a game called “Kelly Dice.” He had a hardened leather bottle with the dice in it. You shook it and threw the dice out a certain way. I never understood the game. He played card games like poker of course and could do the fancy shuffling. He played Dominoes and nobody could beat him. He had a scar from his ear down his neck where an angry opponent had cut him with a broken beer bottle.
. He is not my grandfather, we found out many years later but actually my great uncle. His brother had an affair with my granny and she got pregnant. What a mess. So my granddaddy stepped in to marry my granny to “give the baby a name.” An “illegitimate” child was a very big deal back then and they didn’t want that to happen.
He spent most of his adult life at 1518 Dewitt Street im Flour Bluff (Corpus Christi) where he raised my mom and had a seemingly stormy marriage with my granny. Their song, though, was “Walz Across Texas,” so they must have been at least a little romantic at some point. He once told me he still “held a candle for my granny.” She laughed when I told her that.
When he married my granny (Ruth Grady) he seems to have become a painter – not an artist but the kind that paints buildings. I remember his white jumpers he wore, splattered with paint of all colors. He fell off a water tower he was painting once and broke his feet to pieces. So he always hobbled. He was one of those people who could whistle a symphony if he wanted. I was always amazed at this as a child. Every morning he would come shuffling out of his room on his broken feet whistling like sunshine. When I was born he was still bed bound with his injuries. My mom used to put me in a cardboard box next to his bed and I would hold his finger for hours.
He was a good companion when I was a kid. Like my granny he drank coffee all day and rolled his own cigarettes. He had this fascinating cigarette roller. I loved sitting with him and listening to him as he rolled cigarettes with it and stacked them for himself and Granny to smoke later. He was an excellent story teller. He had pithy observations about life and people, and often drifted into philosophical speculation I thought was interesting. Memorably he was talking to me about the idea of hell. He told me he believed God was his daddy. He lit a match and asked me if he would ever burn me with that. Of course he wouldn’t. So he didn’t believe God would burn him either.
He taught my brother, Mark, and me how to play dominoes and Go Fish. We liked hanging out. He took me fishing once out in the ocean. I caught a huge crab and he was all excited. But I felt sorry for it and I cried so much he had to let it go. He wasn’t too happy with me and he complained loudly about it to Granny when we got home.
He read all the time and had a stack of ten or fifteen books next to his bed and others next to his chair. He liked westerns and detective stories. He loved my brother, Mark and me. He laughed while we talked to him. He made us “flapjacks” and and asked how much butter we wanted. (Put a lot Grandaddy so I can lick it off!”) He let us drink coffee. He used to say”bah” like a goat when we pulled his short white beard. He was a kindly and eccentric presence to us. He had a glass eye – a reminder of a suicide attempt when he was younger. He used to take it out and set it on the table and laugh at our reaction. He had a coffee can full of change in his room that my brother never got tired of counting for him. Granddaddy had an alcohol problem that affected my mom a lot but as kids we weren’t as aware of that. To us he was funny and told a good story. He was always trying to convince me that “the same thing happened to me when I was a little girl” I was indignant every time. “Granddaddy you were never a little girl!”
In some ways he was a lonely stranger and there is so much I will never know that went on inside him. He walked around quietly, deep in his own thoughts. He spent a lot of time in the hot garage outside but we were always welcome to go out and talk to him. He would sit down on a bucket, light a cigarette and talk to us.
He had a sepia silhouette on the wall in his room of a cowboy looking tired and droopy in his saddle, bowing his head. Grandaddy wasn’t religious at all though I know he believed in God. I wasn’t religious either but I always thought the cowboy was praying. I think Grandaddy felt like that cowboy; “rode hard and put up wet” as they say. The image I think of when I think of him is of a man with a tired body and a tired heart who read westerns in a cloud of cigarette smoke and coffee steam. I loved him.
By the time I was a teen he had developed what they called “wet brain” He thought he was late to work. He would yell about it. He thought there was an old man trapped in the mirror and he had to get him out. “I have to go to Whitney!” He would yell, thinking he had work out there and everyone was waiting, or that his friends left without him. He was sure my brother was stealing the change from his coffee can. One time he banged on the door for twelve hours. I ran out of patience at one point and yelled at him, “WHY?!?! Why are you doing that?!” He stopped and looked at me and then said, “”Cuz I’m crazy *** damnit!” I couldn’t help it. I started laughing and he did too.
He couldn’t remember my name by the end of his life but he trusted me. He would ask for me: “Where did that little brown-eyed girl go?” I would go to him and he would look at me earnestly with wild eyes. He whispered conspiratorially “Get me out of here!” I would say “I’m trying, Grandaddy.”
There was a lot of pain for my mom about their relationship. Her mother had been physically abusive but to her he had been the kind and tender one. As his drinking progressed she had felt betrayed and abandoned by him. There were a lot of resentments and deep hurt there for my mom as much as she loved him.
I’m always going to be grateful for the moment my mother had with him before he died. He didn’t know who she was while she was taking care of him. She said, “Oh Daddy don’t you remember me?” He said,” I’m sorry darlin” I don’t.” She said, “I’m Dinky” (her family nickname) and his eyes lit up. He said, “Well that’s my baby!”
To me that sums up his life even with all of its contrasts- that my mom was his baby.
Richard West Wallace 8/3/1911 – 2/5/1985 Now he has an obituary of sorts. And someday I will write down his stories.
Things are so crazy right now. The world is crazy and our lives are crazy. We all know this. My life has had a lot of what people call “drama.” Right now is no exception. As I worked on my book about St. Teresa’s Prayer of Recollection (Meeting the One who loves you; St. Teresa of Avila’s way of prayer. Scheduled to be released on her feast day, October 15,) I thought about the development of my discipline of prayer in the middle of stress and difficulties.
My discipline of daily prayer was, of course, very imperfect. I had trouble being consistent. I was, as I mention sometimes, widowed young then raising two kids alone for many years. I could hardly get a moment to eat or do the dishes when the youngest was a baby. How did I develop a contemplative life?
I was reading over again a few pages from the book Poustinia by Servant of God Catherine Dougherty last night and came across this wonderful quote from her:
Deserts, silence, solitude, are not necessarily places but states of mind and heart. These deserts can be found in the midst of the city, and in the every day of our lives. We need only to look for them and realize our tremendous need for them. They will be small solitudes, little deserts, tiny pools of silence, but the experience they will bring, if we are disposed to enter them, may be as exultant and as holy as the one God himself entered. For it is God who makes solitude, deserts, and silences holy.
Poustinia
This is what I did. I found little deserts, tiny pools and pockets of silence in the midst of my harried days, in the midst of daily tasks like folding laundry, doing dishes. I have clear memories that are precious to me of the tenderness and wisdom of God, passing by as if brushing near my cheek, touching my heart at times I was doing little things like sweeping the living room floor. There were brief but fruitful moments of silence after taking the trash out when I looked up at the night sky and smiled at God, or in the middle of cooking, working or doing dishes.
Catherine writes that when we carry out the duties of our state in life, and when we are disposed in heart to receive these moments of quietness, they will come. We will notice them like a gentle hand on our shoulder saying, “Wait just a minute.”
I was so overwhelmed as a single mom. I had a great dream, during that time though, that I went into the kitchen and Jesus was there, hair in a ponytail, wiping out my refrigerator for me. I was so grateful in the dream, and happy about it when I woke up. Maybe he meant that if I took care of my prayer when I could, he would make sure things got done, and he would be there for me when I turned to him.
I still find little deserts in my still busy life today. I have built on these moments over the years, to include quiet moments of connection with the young special needs people I work with, a quiet moment petting my dog, Joey, or listening closely to someone needing to be heard. As Catherine and all the mystics point out, the fruits of conscious contact with God spill out to contact with others. Love always moves and flows. By it’s nature it can’t keep to itself. If our prayer is authentic, it won’t even stay in it’s scheduled time and place. God will start splashing it all over our lives and the lives of others too. It has to grow, it has to flow, it has to blossom to be real.
Prayer and love of others, of service, support one another, each setting off and intensifying the colors of the other. They don’t exist without one another.
St. Teresa, S.O.G. Catherine Dougherty and St. Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) wrote extensively of how contemplative prayer actually has an effect on the growth and conversion of others. It goes out even further to change the world. We all need to take this very seriously right now. Not only do we need to be supported in these scary times by God, we also need to be his light, and as St. Teresa of Avila says, his hands and feet, his clear voice in this world that needs his compassion and love. We have forgotten these things and closed our hearts. We need conversion of heart as a people.
God has made us all connected to one another. So your moment of “found desert” while your’e waiting in line, stuck in traffic, putting gas in the car, taking a deep breath and reaching out to God, can open a window in Heaven, letting the wind of the Spirit rush in. God can work in an instant, even change everything, making our little second of love BIG.
So let’s pay attention today to our possibilities, our tiny pools of silence, pockets of inner solitude, the quietness of heart that come with God’s touch on our faces, the peace that comes from him in those moments. They are more than we could ever imagine. They will shine on us, on others, on the whole world.
“ … a silent heart is a loving heart, and a loving heart is a hospice to the world.”
“We will be protesting today in Austin. I dedicate this act of resistance to the Lord and his mother Mary, who praised the One who brings down kings from their thrones and lifts up the lowly, who fills the hungry and sends the rich away empty. I pray for all of the protestors today, that our acts of resistance may be given their full power for righteousness and Justice, amplified by the Holy Spirit. May everyone be safe and may peace prevail over all. The American people bow before NO KING, ” I wrote on social media the morning of June 14, 2025, the day of nation wide “No King” protests.
We bought stuff for our signs in the early afternoon. While we were there we saw a lady buying canvases and American flags and markers. I said, “Oh I think I know what you’re up to!” “You do?” “Yeah that’s what we’re doing too. We’re going to Austin.” I have to explain that my town is VERY conservative. If your’e not, you’re not going to talk about it in public to someone you don’t know. It’s not like anybody is going to beat you up or anything. People here are mostly kind and friendly. It’s just natural I guess. We’re definitely in the minority. Weird for a college town but it’s Texas A & M’s college town. We are always kind of excited to run into another not-conservative around here.
She invited us to come to her car in the parking lot for some masks. While there she told us about the local No Kings protest. I had thought it would be about ten people but was thrilled to hear the number was closer to 600. I could hardly believe it. I regretted not having being there.
At home we made our signs. My daughter Roise’s was so funny. (Rosie is how we pronounce it- it’s a Gaelic name that would usually be pronounced “Roh-sha” but we just say Rosie.) I had to laugh at hers it was so typical of her. It’s said,
“Dump your MAGA boyfriend.” On the back she wrote,
“They are a drop, we are the ocean.”
I wrote “He has brought down Kings from their thrones and lifted up the lowly- Mother Mary, Lk.1:52.
On the back I wrote,
“If you want peace, work for justice – Pope Paul VI” and “The American people bow to NO KINGS!”
I was happy with it. I took a dollar store red rosary along as well, to keep in my hand. I took a dollar store rosary so if it got broken it wouldn’t bother me as much as one of my usual ones, all of which are special to me for different reasons. And I made sure to wear my Our Lady of Guadalupe socks. Plus I brought bubbles. I really wanted some rose petals but by the time I took care of what my dogs cats and chickens would need for the day, and my girl wrote down all of our numbers we might need in case of arrest or losing our phones, we were pressed for time.
We dropped off my granddaughter at her godmothers’ and headed out. We both felt more nervous than we usually do for these things. There were a lot of reasons for this. Namely the president is doing dictator stuff regarding protests as if they are illegal which they’re not. Secondly two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses had been shot that morning, one of them and her husband had died. The president was having a dictatorship type military parade that day on his birthday. Protestors in L.A. were being overshadowed by a federalized national guard against the will of the governor of California, and so many other signs of text book authoritarianism, including ignoring court orders, were cropping up as if out of a fascist playbook. Today y’all know all this. But someday we might forget so I want to write down some context. It felt like this day could be a sea change, either in a good way or a bad way, as “No Kings” protests took place all over the county. I still don’t know, at this writing, what that sea change will be. We alternated listening to social justice themed songs and more calming songs in the car. We played a lot of Kendrick Lamar (love him) and I pulled out some 80″s hardcore punk with anti fascist themes. (I was a little punk rocker in my teens. In some ways I haven’t changed much.) My daughter didn’t like it so well . But it was my turn.
A friend let us park at his house in Austin and use it as a home base while he was out of town. So we met another friend there we were going with and called an uber. Our friend looked adorable. He had a back pack on with a bouquet of colorful roses sticking out of it, with a small American flag. Otherwise, we all dressed as plainly and comfortably as possible.
A friend from home was coming too, with her husband. We never did find them. There were 20,000 people there so this is no surprise. We texted each other but still gave up after a while.
People were excited and happy to see each other. It felt good to do something about the scary situation in our country while we still could. I’m not exaggerating here as some may think. Not being able to protest anymore is a distinct possibility. Our governor had called out the national guard of Texas too. I don’t think I saw any National Guard people though. Police and State Troopers were everywhere however.
Oh it was hot. We couldn’t really see anything up front. There was speaker after speaker on the Capital steps but we couldn’t see; a drag queen and activist called Bridget Bandit was first. Apparently the number performed after the speech was pretty good but I could only see the top of a big yellow wig. Loved the music. Then there were veterans, immigrants, immigration lawyers and Democratic state legislators, young people whose parents had been taken away by ICE, various activists. I was surprised that Dan Rather spoke.
I didn’t like that we had to stand around in the heat for three hours listening to people talk and we weren’t marching. Marching is the fun part to me. It really feels like community and shared purpose. It’s a powerful experience, walking with others. There were a lot of great signs though. People get so creative and artistic with their signs sometimes. And it was Austin so of course. There was a lot of color – people with clown make up on, Cowboy hats of course, with flags draped over shoulders or worn as capes. Plenty of baseball caps and the ocasional sombrero. One person was carrying a watermelon (a symbol of Palestine) or wearing the traditional Palestinian scarf of black and white checks and fringed ends. There was plenty of colorful hair as well. I enjoyed the variety.
I saw a sign or two with pictures of Elvis thst said something to the effect of, “The only King in America.” This just seemed typically Austin to me somehow. There were lots of flags; American flags, Mexican flags, the Texas flag, even a few Palestinian flags. There was an inflatable Elon Musk that was pretty creepy.
Lots of people were blowing bubbles. Who could be un-cheered by bubbles? So I remembered mine were in my pocket and joined in.
We lost our friend for a while. When he found us I said dang when are we going to march? He said he didn’t think we were going to because we were absolutely surrounded by law enforcement. I was mad. How annoying. I thought about leaving. But we didn’t. I was feeling dizzy but thankfully there was free cold water and even popsicles. People are great.
Finally people started leaving. I thought we were all going home but actually it turned out to be the march. It really was fun in spite of the ubiquitous police and state trooper presence. People came out of buildings along the way and cheered us on. Others rolled down their car windows to yell some of the chants. There was lots of honking. I saw a line of police in which one of them seemed to be trying to read my sign so I walked over and showed them all both sides. One of them said, “Wait it didn’t finish reading the other side,” so I flipped it over again. We smiled at each other. We should always be kind, I think. They’re just people doing their jobs. One of them said, “Watch your back!” There was a car coming up way to close behind me. They told me to move aside and I said “What about you?” I mean we didn’t know whether it was a friendly car or not. I moved on of course.
Somebody gave me a bouquet of white roses. I loved that. I held them as long as I could but it ended up being kind of a pain. I handed them to somebody who had just joined us and didn’t have anything to carry. She was happy.
Our friend we were marching with started a couple of the chants. “FREE FREE PALESTINE!” Hey this was about everything. We chanted that for a while. There was a young woman there in our part of the marchers who had a megaphone and she started some chants. Some were in Spanish and they meant, “The people united will never be defeated.” and then we would say it in English for a while. There were chants about ICE. The one most familiar to me from all the other protests I had been to was, “No fear, no hate, no fascist USA.’ I told my daughter and her friend about my first big protest. I was a teenager then. That protest was about trying to get Texas A&M to divest from South Africa over Apartheid. I had been to Brazos Valley Peace Action protests before (this was during the Cold War and the concern about nuclear weapons build up). But in this town those were fifteen people or so getting ignored on the side of the road. The anti-Apartheid was actually a pretty big protest. I carried a very big metal sign that said “FREE South Africa.” It was exhilarating for me. It felt so good to DO something about stuff that was out of my control and to do so with people who were as concerned as I was.
Along our way yesterday I kept giggling about the funnier signs and nudging the kids. One just said, “BRUH.” Some of them would qualify as great folk art. That would be a cool exhibit I think. Protest signs through the ages.
Mine was certainly not the only sign with Bible verses. I saw some with Psalm 107 about “may his days be few and someone else take his office.” I thought that one was kind of mean. Several people had the verse about “You shall love the immigrant and treat them as one of your own.” (LV. 19:34) Of course “Love your neighbor” showed up a lot. A girl marching in front of me had a sign that said, “Jesus is my only King.” I had thought saying that on mine too. I was pleased to have met other Catholics too. They saw my brown scapular and said, “Hey we’re from St. Austins’ what’s your parish?”
When we passed the Cathedral of St. Mary’s, I waved up at the statue of Our Lady over the church doors. I told the kids, “Yay, I knew she would be here!”
Eventually it was 8:30 and getting dark. In my experience if anything crazy is going to happen it was going to be after dark. And anyway I had started to feel sick. And we had to get home to our animals and pick up my granddaughter. We had my other daughter go and pick her up from her godmothers because we realized we would never get there on time.
The protest was supposed to end at 8 but I read online that it was still going at 10pm. I thought that was great. So we took an Uber back to our home base. We walked down the street to eat Indian food and talk over the day with hoarse voices. We were proud of our friend for starting some of the chants. He is usually pretty quiet. Who knew he had it in him? We complained about the heat. I remarked about how though there were jubilant parts of the day, this protest had seemed different to me. It seemed more somber than ones we had been to before. I think the overwhelming police presence put a bit of a damper on things of course. But I also think it was those shootings that morning and the clear signs of authoritarianism we are seeing in our country, like people being “disappeared” off the streets by masked men, put it unmarked vans and detained without warrants or due process. And a real grief along with the worry- grief yes, for what we were already losing- the whole idea of our country; its identity and what we have always thought we stood for, the freedom and human rights we were founded on, things we had taken for granted.
I am hoping there is still time to turn the tide and that’s it’s not too late. All three of us felt like this was an historic moment. I’m glad we were a part of it.
My late husband, Bob, during our engagement, had been deeply moved by his first Holy Thursday mass. Watching the priest wash parishioner’s feet impressed him profoundly.
One time we were talking about Vigils the night before Catholic funerals. He wondered if the same thing happened before a wedding – a service with readings, prayers and a rosary. I said no but I wish that there was a tradition like that.
Bob thought we should have one. Well why not? We found out this was something that had to be a private thing we did at home rather than in the Church. We started planning our at home wedding vigil.
We looked at books like The Blessing Cup and a Catholic wedding prep book called Marriage, Sacrament of Hope and Challenge, for ideas since both contained little rituals that could be done at home, and then we wrote our own.
We invited friends over for the night before our wedding (we had our bachelor and bachelorette parties earlier in the week).
Bob definitely wanted us to wash each other’s feet, and he wanted a way to include my kids from my first marriage (their dad had died in a car crash when they were little). He felt he wasn’t just marrying me but becoming family to them too. So he bought them both necklaces as tokens of his commitment to them too.
Bob was not Catholic (yet). Most of his friends weren’t either. So while we Catholics prayed the rosary, the non- Catholics could go to the back yard where Bob would have a fire going and could play guitar and sing and people could talk or join him. We rosary pray-ers would join them when we finished.
Our ceremony included an opening prayer, a Scripture reading, intercessions, and an exchange of words of commitment before we washed each other’s feet. We included Bob’s gifting the necklaces to the girls, the sharing of a “Blessing Cup” we passed around, an Our Father and a closing prayer and plus lots of hugs.
I mostly remember that just as he finished washing my right foot, he gave my toes a squeeze with those big warm calloused hands of his.
I think a wedding vigil is such a beautiful idea, a wonderful thing to do. A couple needs as many prayers and as much support as they can get!
Bob was already fighting brain cancer by the time we did this. Our marriage was far from long enough but it was a beautiful one. I am extra glad we started it this way.
By guest blogger, Roise Manning (my youngest daughter)
Funnily enough, watching The Martian has shaped how I think about science in a deep, personal way. There’s something uniquely inspiring about Mark Watney, a man left behind on Mars, completely alone, with the world assuming he’s dead. He doesn’t give up. Instead, he leans on what he knows. He’s a botanist, not an action hero, but he starts solving one problem at a time. How to make water, grow food. How to modify a rover that wasn’t meant to go very far. How to get in contact with NASA, then how to communicate with them. It’s not flashy, it’s survival through science. And more than that, it’s survival through hope.
What moves me most is how he gives himself hope by trusting his knowledge, his training, his ability to think critically, and how to manipulate what resources he does have to survive. That kind of inner resilience feels like the heart of science: believing that the world is knowable, that problems have solutions, and that knowledge (even imperfect knowledge) is power. Watney doesn’t wait for someone to save him. He builds his own way forward, one equation, one experiment, one small decision at a time. When I’m feeling hopeless in today’s climate, like I just can’t take it anymore, I rewatch this movie. I always get chills when he looks around after taking a shower and getting the glass out of his abdomen and says, “I’m not going to die here.”
The whole world begins to root for him. China gives NASA a device they had been keeping secret in order to help them get him food, until a young astrophysicist at NASA comes up with an entirely new idea for how to bring Watney home. He’s not part of the leadership, he’s not a veteran engineer, he’s just a kid. He works through the math, tests it, brings it to the top, and ultimately turns NASA on their heads. And that idea, built around using China’s booster, ends up being the turning point that makes the rescue possible. That moment drives home how science is collaborative, and how progress often comes from unexpected places.
In the end, the entire world, every single country, is listening in to his crew’s dialogue. When the Commander says “We got him!” The screen shows everyone in the whole world jumping up and down, crying, hugging, and I just get this burst of hope and togetherness.
That story reshapes what I think it means to explain something in science. It’s not just identifying causes or finding the “right” answer. It’s about making sense of the unknown by drawing on what we do know. It’s about unifying past experiences and theories, leading us to a path through uncertainty. I used to think science was mostly about answers, but now I see it’s just as much about process. How we think, how we question, how we adapt, and how we use what we have.
I find myself especially drawn to the idea of unification, the way science pulls together knowledge from different fields to create something greater. In The Martian, botany, chemistry, physics, and engineering all come together to keep one person alive. And in real life, it’s the same: science isn’t just a subject; it’s a way of seeing and solving problems that connects everything.
This understanding of explanation gives science a deeper purpose to me. It’s not only a method for discovery, but it’s a mindset of persistence and possibility. It tells us that even when things seem impossible, there is a way forward. Maybe not right away. Maybe not perfectly. But step by step, with the right tools and mindset, we can make sense of the unknown…and survive it.
At the end of the movie, Watney is teaching a group of students, and he breaks it down perfectly. He says, “You solve one problem, and then the next, and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.” He reminds them that when you’re in space, you have to think on your feet, as space does not cooperate.
“Something WILL go south.”
So what are YOU going to do? What are you going to do with your knowledge, and the things at your disposal?
When I used to volunteer for Hospice I would deliver flowers every week or so to an old man who had kidney cancer. He lived way out in the middle of nowhere in a small, very old wooden house with his wife, Priscilla. He was my favorite stop. We used to talk and talk. I prayed with his family, sons and daughters, cousins, brothers and sisters, in the kitchen holding hands. They prayed spontaneous vocal prayer. I was shy so I prayed Come, Holy Spirit but they were delighted and said it was wonderful.
He liked to pray for me about things that came up in my life. He would say he had “pondered” in his heart and reflected on a situation in my life and tell me what he felt he got in prayer about it. He often worried about me being a widow so young, and thought I should marry again. He prayed a “holy Christian man” would come into my life. Years later, this did happen, and I’m sure Mr. J.D. had something to do with it. I was surprised he could worry about anyone else when he was dying. But that’s how he was.
When I came in, he used to tell me how his day was in spiritual terms. He would say, “I been deep in the Lord, deep in the Lord all day today.” Another time, in his last few days, he said, “I’m sorry I just can’t talk about anything else but Jesus Christ anymore.” I said “No need to apologize. That’s what I think about all the time too. “ This was in 2002. I still remember him sometimes and smile. He’s deep in the Lord for sure
Bethany Hang Out 