Evening Mass at St. Paul’s, Sauk Centre. (December 28, 2024)
As I said Saturday, getting to Mass is a big deal for me.
I stayed in all day Sunday, and probably will do the same today.
That’s doubly frustrating, since Sunday morning Mass is one of the two times I get out each week, and I prefer doing my weekly errands Monday afternoon.
But Saturday night and Sunday morning we had freezing fog. There was more in today’s forecast, and looks like we’re in for another session this afternoon.
Getting to Mass is a big deal, but so is avoiding accidents.
Good news: no fog in tomorrow’s forecast, and we’ll see temperatures well below freezing.
More good news: Parishes on the Prairie, our cluster of parishes — there’s a story behind that, which will wait for another time — records the Saturday evening Mass at St. Paul’s the other parish in town, so I could join the “online celebration of the Eucharist” Sunday.
With an “online celebration”, I miss out on the most important part. But it’s what I could do, and it’s better than nothing:
Be aware, if you play this, that the audio level and quality is very uneven. I don’t know what the problem was there.
The humming you’ll hear throughout isn’t just in the video. Fr. Greg mentioned it, along with apologizing for the elevator being out of service. The latter would make it difficult for folks in my situation to get up to the sanctuary.
Anyway, the humming might have been coming from the organ: but it wasn’t. And I’m drifting off-topic.
Two Women, Two Children, and an Important Mission
Before I get back to sitting by the window with a cup of coffee and a P. G. Wodehouse story, something from the Old Testament, and something from the Gospels. Along with my take.
“She conceived and, at the end of her pregnancy, bore a son whom she named Samuel. ‘Because I asked the LORD for him.’
The next time her husband Elkanah was going up with the rest of his household to offer the customary sacrifice to the LORD and to fulfill his vows,
Hannah did not go, explaining to her husband, ‘Once the child is weaned, I will take him to appear before the LORD and leave him there forever.'” (1 Samuel 1:20:22) (emphasis mine)
I haven’t dug into whatever socio-cultural context that bit reflects, or what folks have been saying about it over the last couple dozen centuries.
One thing I did notice was something that would have been unusual, at least, in the culture I grew up in.
Hanna, mother of Samuel, TOLD HER HUSBAND where their son would be living.
Now, my mother might have done something like that — not dropping me off at a temple, but rather telling my father where I’d be going.
But she was emphatically not of the ‘barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen’ persuasion where her role in the household was involved. Or outside the household, for that matter.
My father wasn’t the ‘henpecked husband’ stereotype character — can’t say I’m sorry to see that stock character having been de-emphasized — but he acted as if my mother was a ‘real person’. Which, of course, she is. And that’s another topic. Several, actually.
The Gospel reading was Luke 2:41–52: a vignette called Finding in the Temple, The Boy Jesus in the Temple, and probably more monikers.
There’s a lot going on there, but I’ll wrap this post up with something that strikes me about what happened.
Mary and Joseph’s mission was being parents for the Son of God. They both knew this.
Then, on a fairly routine annual trip to a big city: THEY LOST HIM!!
Under the circumstances, I think Mary’s remarks were extremely calm: even understated.
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying this Christmas season.
Number-two daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter were here last weekend for part of a day, the night, and part of the next day.
We stood and talked. We sat and talked. Then we slept, and did more of the same the next day. Somewhere along the line we exchanged presents. Granddaughter and I watched a few episodes of “Shaun the Sheep”. The latter is a must-do, and has been since rather early on.
Our Christmas get-togethers are on a vastly smaller scale than those held by Aunt Jule and Uncle George. I talked about those family feasts last month.
Our house isn’t quite as big as theirs, which is a story for another time. Besides, my wife and I aren’t Aunt Jule and Uncle George. We do and enjoy what we can. What we can’t — we don’t.
We’re not all alike. That’s okay. We’re not supposed to be all alike, which is also okay. And that’s another topic.
Mass in Minnesota: Freezing Fog and Celebrating Anyway
I’d been planning on getting to the Christmas morning Mass at our parish.
Number-three daughter came to my desk Tuesday, pointing out that freezing fog and/or drizzle was in the forecast. And, on a more practical note, she wondered if I’d prefer getting to the Christmas Eve Mass. She had a valid point.
Freezing fog and/or drizzle isn’t a problem by itself, aside from being cold and restricting visibility. When it lubricates streets and sidewalks: that’s a problem. Particularly for someone with my pedal dexterity.
So I decided, finally, that not risking a fall made sense. Then I asked about shuffling my/our eating schedules, had an early evening meal, and got to the Christmas Eve Mass about 40 minutes ahead of time.
I found an empty parking spot only a block from Our Lady of the Angels. Which, for Christmas Eve, is doing pretty well. If I have to do this another year, I’ll try getting there an hour early. As for this year’s one-block walk, I’ll regard it as extra exercise for the day.
Babies and Expectations
For me, Christmas is a big deal: and one of our holy days of obligation. Those are days when we’re expected to be at Mass. Unless I’ve got good reason for not being there.
Good reasons include but are not limited to being sick, or being obliged to care for an infant who can’t be brought to church. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2181)
Just having a baby in the house doesn’t mean not going to Mass, by the way. I can count on hearing an infant or two almost every Sunday.
On the other hand, the small one behind me Tuesday night slept through everything. The older sister didn’t, and that’s yet another topic.
Or maybe not so much. I really don’t mind hearing that we’ve got families among us. With kids who have good, strong lungs.
One more thing about holy days of obligation.
As a Catholic, I’m expected to be at Mass. But if I’m not there, the immediate consequences are missing out on Mass that day: period.
That said, if I skip Mass on purpose, because I don’t feel like it or whatever — I’ve already got problems that need attention. And that’s a whole mess of additional topics.
As it is, I like Christmas (Eve, for me, this year, which counts as Christmas Day — it’s complicated).
I’ll try that again.
As it is, I like our Christmas Mass. The music. The people — individuals and families. That whacking great evergreen behind the altar, covered with lights. And being there to celebrate, worship, and receive our Lord.
Since it’s Christmas, we’re celebrating our Lord’s birth.
It’s a pretty big deal. I’ve talked about this before. There’ll be links near the end of this post.1
Holiday Weirdness
Rotisserie revolution: Sir Loin and two turnabout turkeys. Victorian Christmas card. (ca. 1890s)
Sauk Centre is a very ‘Catholic’ town. But we’re also a town in America.
Folks living in the next block north of our house have inflatable yard decorations out and lit up for this Christmas season. So, on my way to Mass, I drove by Baby Yoda and SpongeBob SquarePants wearing a festive Santa hat.2
Baby Yoda is holding what I’m pretty sure is an orange Halloween treat bag.
Meanwhile, on our block, one of our neighbors has set up a huge wire mesh snowman covered with tiny white lights, and sporting orange lights on its mesh-carrot nose. I haven’t measured it, but I’m guessing the thing’s some 15-16 feet tall.
How they disassemble and store it, I have no idea. But they’ve had it spreading cheer along this side of the street for a few years now: so obviously they have their methods.
Another neighbor, across the street, has a more traditional monochrome array of red lights across their home’s front. Elsewhere in town I’ve seen assorted manger scenes and colored lights on display.
With or without a Santa hat, I don’t see anything particularly Christmassy about SpongeBob SquarePants. Apart from that look of indefatigable cheerfulness.
But that household’s yard decorations are nice and colorful. Plus, between Spongebob’s hat and Grogu’s complexion, they’re adding this culture’s traditional red and green colors to their part of the street.
Make that lighting their part of the street. Grogu and SpongeBob glow in the dark. Brightly. I suppose I could indulge in virtue signaling by denouncing that effort to cheer up our midwinter.
But — no. There’s enough screed shrieking around already. Far too much. Besides, I like how they help light up these long winter nights.
Meanwhile, at Our House
Christmas Eve where I live: ’tis the season!
This household has nothing outside for Christmas this year. We’ve none of us been particularly well.
But my son set up our Christmas tree in the living room. Along with shepherds, sheep, angels and the stable/creche scene. Number-three daughter put those three “JOY” snowmen on the keyboard.
My son also set up our Advent calendar. It’s one of those fold-up card stock things, unfolding into a Dickensian Christmas scene — showing old-fashioned shops, anyway — Christmas Carol, post-ghost, Dickensian; where everybody’s cheerful.
That reminds me —
Two Incidents After Mass
I’d been moving toward the back of the church Christmas Eve, when someone came up, expressing hope that what she said wouldn’t be offensive. Then she asked if I’d like her to get my car.
That wasn’t an offense, that was an offer, and I said so. She’d seen me walking toward church, and made not-inaccurate assumptions about my mobility.
Thanks and the keys followed, with her assurance that she wasn’t a car thief — which wasn’t a big concern for me.
For one thing, this is Sauk Centre: we’re not exactly a high-crime area. For another, if she did abscond with the rusting hulk of a van we have, the consequences for her would be much more serious than for me and the household.
Her words and my assumption matched reality. She drove up with the van, returned the keys and began looking for her husband. I drove back to a very pleasant Christmas Eve evening with my wife, son, and number-three daughter.
Before I wrap this up, a conversation between a couple guys after Mass, outside the church, last Sunday:
“Any words of wisdom?”
“The girls are the brains, I’m just getting the truck.”
Looks like I’m not the only one who feels that way. Sometimes, at least.
Desolation, Dissatisfaction, Depression, and a Prayer
Caspar David Friedrich’s “The Abbey in the Oakwood”. (1809-1810)
Again, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying this Christmas season.
But this is also a bad time of year for me. That’s probably due in part to something that happened when I was 12.
“…my mother had a severe stroke. I’m told that I was with her at the time, and accompanied her in an ambulance. My father tells me that he blamed me. That’s understandable. Dealing with me can be stressful….” (“Ritalin, the 2020 Summer Olympics, and Me” > Delayed Diagnosis (August 7, 2021))
The point is that I’ve been dealing with depression at least since I was 12, and didn’t get diagnosed until I was living here in Sauk Centre.
That — and an intercessory prayer chain giving me a couple ‘pray about this’ items for specific individuals dealing with depression — finally prodded me into looking for appropriate prayers.
I found this:
“O Christ Jesus When all is darkness And we feel our weakness and helplessness, Give us the sense of Your Presence, Your Love and Your Strength. Help us to have perfect trust In Your protecting love And strengthening power, So that nothing may frighten or worry us, For, living close to You, We shall see Your Hand, Your Purpose, Your Will through all things. Amen.” (From St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Prayer Against Depression, Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida)
Saint Ignatius of Loyola isn’t one of those storybook saints, with the inhuman buoyancy of SpongeBob Squarepants, but without the cartoon character’s brooding intellect.
On his way to becoming a Saint, he went through a really rough patch.
I can see how folks might miss that facet of his life, though. Wikipedia ‘s Ignatius of Loyola page mentions his experience with “desolation and dissatisfaction” in a single sentence before moving on to joy, peace, and the rest of his life.3
I’ve talked about Saints, holiday celebrations, and why Christmas matters, before.
This time around, I’ve organized and labeled the links:
My father told me that a few generations back, his forebears got stuck with farmland near Lake Michigan. It wasn’t a marsh, but it wasn’t particularly good for growing crops, either.
They found someone who’d buy the place and moved west. Again.
Time passed.
My father’s father got hired at a construction site, working there until someone dropped a crane on him and several of his colleagues. Unintentionally.
I gather that the crane operator relieved the tedium of his job by what he might have viewed as a harmless drink or seven.
At any rate, folks were sorting the resultant mess out into live bodies, dead bodies, and inorganic debris when a rescuer noticed that one of the dead bodies was bleeding.
I haven’t verified this, but I’ve been told that dead bodies don’t bleed: and that this is why my father’s father got reclassified as not-dead. Under the circumstances, not being dead strikes me as good news. Moreover, most of him had been pulled out in one piece.
One of his legs, on the other hand, stopped being a leg somewhere above the knee. But medicos found enough extra skin to cover the stump. Which I’ll also see as good news.
If there’s a story about how he got equipped with a wooden leg, I don’t know it. But I do know that a knack for refocusing, plus maybe skills picked up in construction work — with a fair portion of determination — helped him make a living as a woodworker. And that’s another topic.
Meanwhile, that land near Lake Michigan changed hands quite a few times. Can’t say I blame the owners. It really wasn’t good farmland.
But if the family had somehow managed to hang on to it, they’d now own a sizable chunk of Chicago.
——————————
I could try coming up with morals for my family’s stories: particularly how these ancestors avoided owning some of the choicest real estate in the Midwest. Maybe something along the lines of ‘wealth is a burden’, or this bit from Proverbs:
“It is better to be humble with the poor than to share plunder with the proud.” (Proverbs 16:9)
I won’t, since then I’d feel obliged to start talking about context. Which would involve Sirach 29, loans and neighbors, truth and beauty — basically, it’d be more effort than I’ve planned on for this week.
So here’s the usual link list of family-related good news and other experiences:
The weather this morning, with a winter storm in my area. (December 19, 2024)
A Winter Storm Warning is in effect.
It’s not just for Sauk Centre, Minnesota, although we’re pretty close to the center of today’s banana-shaped weather event. I gather that we’ve already gotten most of the snow we’re going to get this time around.
“Snow likely, mainly before 2pm. Cloudy, with a high near 22. East wind around 15 mph becoming north. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Total daytime snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible.” (Extended Forecast for Sauk Centre MN / National Weather Service)
Even so, the W. S. W. is still in effect until midnight.
I get the impression that the National Weather service has learned from past mistakes, and realizes that the common folk don’t panic all that easily:
…A high-pressure air mass tangled with its low-pressure counterpart over Nebraska on June 7, 1953. The June 7th storms weren’t particularly memorable.
But one tornado on June 8th killed 116 folks. The body count was 247 by day’s end.
That photo shows part of Flint-Beecher, Michigan, after the storm passed.
What’s sad is that many of those deaths were most likely avoidable.
Officials at the National Weather Service knew that tornadoes were likely when the storm started ripping through New York state.
Folks in the New England area aren’t accustomed to twisters, though, so the powers that be didn’t issue a warning.
The official decision was, apparently, well-intentioned. Decision-makers at the Weather Service didn’t want common folks to panic. They did, however, issue the first severe thunderstorm watch in Massachusetts history…. (“Sane Environmentalism”, Stormy Weather (August 11, 2017))
And a lifetime here in the Upper Midwest tells me that even the trailing edge of weather like we’re having now makes situational awareness a useful survival skill.
It also tells me that, although we’ll probably still have snow on the ground for Christmas — that’s not guaranteed. It’s like a character in “Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures”, or maybe another of those animated series, said about weather back home:
‘We get thunderstorms, blizzards, tornadoes, but we never let it spoil our Fourth of July!’ (one of Barbie’s friends, in one of those animated series: Maybe “Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures”)
Maybe our familiarity with this region’s variable climate explains the Sauk Centre school system’s decision to go ahead with classes today, after a two-hour delay this morning.
But we’re among the few around here that didn’t simply tell the kids to stay home: and that’s another topic or two.
Now I’m going to get a cup of coffee, sit in an easy chair by the window, and be glad that I don’t have to go outside until Sunday. Right after I list other times I’ve talked about the weather, including last year’s end-of-Advent:
Moorhead State’s gate, a few blocks from where I grew up. (October 2011)
My wife and I met while we were Computer Science students at MSU.
I don’t remember if MSU was Minnesota State University Moorhead by that time, or Moorhead State University. Either way, it was Moorhead State to me: the place where my dad worked, a block or so from my home.
My wife earned a Computer Science degree, I nearly learned calculus a few times. The first time we talked was in the hallway near the Computer Science department’s entrance: a square arch leading to another hallway.
Someone — students, I figure — had put a banner of continuous-feed paper over the arch. It bore a motto: “ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO PROGRAM”. Having written a few programs in the two years I lasted there, I appreciated the sentiment.
We were both in a circle of friends we called ‘the computer gang’, who were also enthusiastic RPG players.1 A bit overly-enthusiastic, and that’s another topic.
A Movie and Pizza, Coffee and Conversation
After seeing “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, we went to a pizza place — Godfather’s Pizza, I think, but don’t quote me on that — on Moorhead’s south side.
I remember that my wife-to-be was sitting by the window, facing north, and that I sat in the chair next to her.
What I don’t remember is practically climbing over an unspecified number of my friends to reach that chair. But that’s what I did, they told me, and I believe them. I really wanted to sit next to her. That, I do remember.
At any rate, pizza and conversation followed. Both eventually ebbed. By that time, I’d noticed that this young woman had not thoroughly enjoyed the movie.
Now, I’m not one of those perceptive, astute, and insightful guys; just simply brimming with sensitivity to the inner feelings of others. I can generally tell if the other person is about to go off the deep end, but that’s about it.
Anyway, I’d been rather tightly focused on this young woman for maybe an hour or more.
Again, I’m not all that sensitive to emotional cues. But noticing words, their context, and their plethora of meanings — connotative, denotative, and allusional? That, I am good at. Freakishly so.
This young woman was, I thought, if not in actual need of more time to get over that movie’s intense imagery, was at least in a position to benefit from opportunities to focus on something else.
Besides, I saw in the then-present circumstance an opportunity to enjoy a bit more of her company and conversation. Selfish? Oh, yes. Altruistic? Maybe that, too.
So I asked if she’d be okay with getting a cup of coffee at another place — a Village Inn, across the street back then.2
Reasonable Questions
I could describe the place, and the booth we sat in, but that part of Moorhead has changed over the decades. There’s a Snap Dragon Asian Buffet there now.3
What’s important, to me, is that we kept talking. A lot. About the movie, at first, but then she asked “how many children do you want?”
Many guys might have run, screaming, into the night at that point.
I don’t remember my exact words, but they were something very close to ‘four or five, I suppose, or whatever happens’. My tone was, assuming my memory’s accurate, calm and conversational.
My interior response was, if it had been expressed in words, something like ‘Schnortt! Dat’s my kinda woman!!’
We’ve discussed the questions she asked. She had a quite reasonable explanation for raising those issues.
She’d been very serious about another member of ‘the computer gang’, had gone through a Catholic pre-marriage course, and remembered the topics raised. To her, they were logical queries which seemed appropriate, given my apparent interest.
Which, of course, they were. My wife is eminently logical and practical. Me? I’m part-Irish.
More conversations, and movies, followed. Time passed.
And at last we reached one of those romantic milestones: our first kiss.
But first, I’d better explain something. I have no sense of smell.4 I can detect things like ammonia, but it’s not so much smelling the stuff as feeling it.
Okay, back to that romantic milestone.
It was a lovely summer night, on Moorhead’s north side.
We were walking under the stars, speaking of this and that.
When I asked my wife if it was okay to write about the experience, she agreed; and, looking back on that memorable moment, added — “you took me past the sewage plant”.
Allusion (“This article needs additional citations for verification….”) (Allusion’s meaning overlaps “connotation”, and that’s a can of worms I’ll leave for another time.)
Connotation (“…a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries….”)
“…In the United States, 3% of people aged over 40 are affected by anosmia.
“In 2012, smell was assessed in persons aged 40 years and older with rates of anosmia/severe hyposmia of 0.3% at age 40–49 rising to 14.1% at age 80+. Rates of hyposmia were much higher: 3.7% at age 40–49 and 25.9% at 80+….” (Anosmia, Epidemiology, Wikipedia)
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Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
