The Best of Intentions

Several years ago I was invited to join a meeting of exceptionally talented writers, all teachers, professors, and published authors. And then there was me with my small yet loyal blog following. Back then Wholly Jane was still just a half-finished work in progress and I was feeling entirely out of my league, an insecurity which I quite openly voiced. I was assured that I was precisely what this group needed because I wrote from my gut. Our task was to write the Prayers of the Faithful for all Sunday and Holy Day Masses. The feeling was that this vital piece of the liturgy had grown stale. People mentally checked out and were composing their grocery lists and checking their watches. The hope was that by bringing a variety of voices to the liturgy, we would recapture them by making the prayers more meaningful. These prayers are a key role in the laity’s participation in the Mass. They are intended to represent the prayers of the community, to bring before The Lord the everyday concerns of those sitting in the pews. So in order to keep them meaningful, they needed to be tied closely to Liturgy of the Word and also be in touch with the real world issues that lay just beyond the church doors. This was something that none of us ever took lightly. It takes time. It takes thought. Most of all, it takes prayer. Lots of prayer.

Over the years, we learned to recognize each other’s writing voices and we each have developed our own unique way of connecting the community to the liturgy. For me that always meant trying to speak for those who were barely seen and rarely heard. The forgotten, the lonely, the abused, the addicts, those facing spiritual darkness, those who felt unforgivable and unloved, the sick whose illnesses were not always obvious: all of these fell within my bailiwick.

As my regular readers know, over the past year my growing discontent in the Catholic Church has led me to other denominations, to begin dating other churches so to speak. And yet, here I am, still writing these Prayers of the Faithful, lending my own unique voice and life experience to the Sunday Mass that means so much to so many of my family and friends. I struggle now more that I ever did and I find that I will pray most of the week with those six relatively short sentences.

Who am I missing? Who hasn’t been heard this month? Lord, show me.

And He never fails me. The voices of the unheard come to me.

Over the years, I have been asked on a handful of occasions to change the wording on what I’ve written. The reasons varied. Perhaps the language felt awkward or unclear or perhaps could be construed as leaning too far towards one political party or another. Sometimes no such request came and the priest or deacon who read them simply made the alterations himself. There was no drama in any of it as we all did what we felt called to do.

Last week, as I read the reading from Romans, what deeply struck me was the image of the Spirit praying within when we don’t know how we are to pray. And the voices that came to me were those of all the Catholic women I’ve come into contact with over my lifetime. The issue that all of us have had to grapple with at some point or another is the issue of women clergy and our feelings and convictions on that topic. The truth of the matter is that many, many women don’t know quite what they feel. And the prayer that emerged was this:

Farewell Old Girl

For over eleven years, my Dandie Dinmont Terrier, Dusty, has been at my side – or sitting on my foot as I write – but this morning I came down the stairs and no one was waiting for me. I went to run errands and came home to empty silence. The welcoming bark is no longer a part of coming home.

After a year of declining health, Dusty suddenly went downhill in less than 36 hours. She was too sick to be given a grand last meal or a nice long ride in the car. All I could do was sit by her in the very early hours of yesterday morning and talk to her. She let me know it was time. She was ready to go home. I woke up my boys so they could come down to say goodbye. Forever devoted to her ‘puppies’, after they bent down to kiss her, she bravely forced herself to her feet, shook herself and trotted to the back door to go outside in the yard one last time. She walked down into the yard, then looked for me to come get her. She had walked her last steps.

My boys decided to come with me to the emergency vet, all of us knowing that it was Dusty’s last ride. We reached the decision to let her go as a family and stayed with Dusty until she was peacefully snoring from the sedatives. We went home with an empty collar and her paw print set in clay. We’ve been looking at old pictures, laughing and crying over a dog that was so different from any I’d ever know.

She brought unquestioning, unconditional love into our home. When life got really rough, her floppy ears heard many whispered fears and confessions and her fur absorbed many tears. For this human, she was the right dog at the right time and we had some long talks about faith, trust, steps and staircases. Her alpha dog, terrier badass personality never changed but as her health failed, she reluctantly learned to trust our help and finally surrendered to being held and carried when she was weak and in pain.

We humans aren’t real good at accepting what we can’t see so God sent us dogs. Dogs are a sort of sneaky gift, almost a Trojan horse, full of other gifts like love, trust, forgiveness, and acceptance. Their big eyes and playful antics mask the many lessons we learn from them over the years when we thought we were just playing fetch. They never see our faults. They only see the goodness in us, even on our worst days. Their only mission here is to show us what unconditional love looks and feels like.

Well done Old Girl. Well done.