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Stories about Mary
From:
Elaine Johnston--on Easter
Dearest Elaine,
Good Easter Day to you and your family,
I have this secret delight in Easter Sundays from my childhood - it is a secret present I look at every Easter morning and know that I will rediscover forgotten treasures.
My father held Easter dear to his heart above all other holy days. His energy and love was a powerful but quiet event on Easter Sunday morning and especially after Mass. We kiddos were carried along by it as if we were in some enchanted carriage taking us to the heart of all Life and we were hoping to catch a glimpse of this unknown force, mysterious but tangible.
Michael Hartigan MacDougall was so sure of this Life and the Lifegiver that, as I look back, I realize I never doubted God nor looked for evidence of the Existence of God, and therefore, my quest in adulthood was but to see if there were places where God was not. Although I was assured by others that there were many places God simply did not go, I never found such a place. I never met a person who did not in some way mirror God into our world.
I am still carried along in that chariot my Father drove.....sure that the destination is close by and within reach at all times.....I only falter at that old fear of not being 'enough' - really, what a terrible wall to put between oneself and God, that we decide we are not 'enough' for God. There are no roadblocks to God save the ones we build ourselves, and we all have become good roadblock builders of some sort or another. It is rather late in life for me to think about driving a chariot with absolute surety of my place in God's heart; I counted on my father to be the driver for so long that I never considered it would ever fall to me to carry myself on into that journey home. Steady at the wheel was his strength, never mine, but steady in the knowledge of God's open door will be always be dear to my heart.
I also have this secret pain on Easter Sunday, until just recently,
I know that it was your mother that carried you through childhood and I always yearned to hear more about that back in our days in Gainesville. My mother did come through for all of us in her 60's - she became the Tower of Surety in God's ever present and deep love for us. She would say that we have all the Love we will ever need or that we are ever going to get and that we simply allow it......you get the Love you allow, to put it succinctly. I was really mad at her for coming to me with that message after convincing me for years that I was completely unlovable, unredeem-able, and pitifully incompetent in everything. But she kept at me, and I did hear truth from her, although I never quite cleaned up the anger, even now I can be so churlishly pouty about it. But the heart is expert at hearing Truth whether we listen and implement it or not. Recently, I found myself in a situation where I was challenged to forgive mom for our really horrible relationship, and I was afraid that I had passed from anger into hatred against her, and I didn't want to be the last person on earth to forgive her and release both of us from my unwillingness to forgive, and I wanted to forgive her even if I couldn't feel that, and I did it.....I just did it, (but I couldn't do it alone, I had help from a complete stranger.) Then I pulled back and waited it out for several days to see if it really 'took' and it did! And I felt that thaw I've read about, and I kept thinking that something I might never understand caused her to take out her fears on me but that I still wanted my mommy, even if she couldn't apologize even once, I still wanted her not to suffer from anything I held back from her.
So, I have quite an Easter to consider today, now that I can say the Our Father without that verse about "as we forgive those who trespass against us" tripping me up. I have been saying the prayer often now still amazed at how much easier it is to say, and realizing how many more forgiving episodes I still need to clear the list I keep. The Our Father covers all the Ground of being human we will ever need.
Easter people forgive other Easter people or we don't really get Easter. Really basic stuff that I couldn't get to on my own.
Still growing up,
Love,
Mary
From:
Elaine Johnston--on Sacramental Heritage
Dear Elaine,
I have come to love the solitude of a quiet home. The lifestyle of my son Mike's family is so fast moving and high energy that I am exhausted just watching it. Last night I wrote to explain why I hadn't answered your email and now that I re-read that explanation it sounds like I was in zombie mode. Sorry. So today the baby is with his other grandparents and I have the day to myself.
First, I will resend the MyFamily site invitation with this additional bit of information; the name referenced is Mary MacDougall, which is my maiden name.
I see that our family site is not up to date regarding pictures of the new baby. Dan has become our family photographer but he posts the pictures on one of those photo websites that you have to sign in for and I can't download those pictures into the MyFamily site. I see I have some homework to do to bring our site up to current events, however, there are still the wedding pictures of Joey and Polly, the photos of new babies, and the odd pics that folks download now and then. My brother Mark is also on our site as well and he is nicknamed Dark MacDougall because he is full of life and adventure with a healthy dose of dark humor. I have many recent pictures loaded on my blackberry and have to download them onto the computer in order to upload them to the MyFamily site. My inner google can see all these pictures so clearly because they are all in my heart cache but my inner tekkie hasn't taken the time to put them into share mode. I can think of no greater benefit to my children's website than the voice of their godmother.
Second, Sacramental Heritage. As you know, I began researching families for clients about 6 years ago. I've written up notebooks and legal albums full of information about early Virginia settlers and noted all the various social, military, and government positions achieved by these prominent folks. There are casual mentions of religious affiliation and the early wills always attribute to God's final say in a man's life, but the dearth of the day-to-day notes about living a Christian life in journals and letters seemed stark. I had always researched my own family background when I would have a moment or two but several years ago I began to wonder if one's heritage as a practicing Catholic was being written down sufficiently enough to be used by their descendants. Oh Elaine how I would have loved to read about my female ancestors thoughts and prayers as they struggled with tending their babies and households and how their experiences led to deeper faith in God and deeper understanding of their personhood. I would have loved to have my own copy of the book of family wisdom handed down for several generations telling of all the heartaches and disappointments but also all the joys and thrills of loved ones and friends.
So I started my first Sacramental Heritage album......I wanted to collect all the Sacramental events in my MacDougall siblings, then my aunts and uncles in both the MacDougall and Magdalinski lines, then keep going back from there. The churches are still in operation and the records available, although one is entirely in Polish. I wanted to ask my siblings and aunts and uncles to write something for this generational task to leave to our combined families.
But the search I started was not the search I ended up with......instead there emerged a larger understanding of what spiritual heritage contained. I was in a lovely church in the middle of Georgia several years ago.......I was there with Joe and we were alone for awhile. It was so quiet and the stained glass windows numbered in the hundreds and although small, their deep color, especially blue, created an effect of such spiritual embrace that I can still easily recall it. I looked slowly around at all the saints depicted in the many windows and simply slipped into the realization that my ancestors had achieved moments of clarity and union with God that merited passing on but was now lost to me in print, but not lost in experience. In my inner sanctuary shine the icons of my ancestors faces in those precious moments when they knew who they were in God's heart, and that fear left their countenance for those moments and I see the saints of my past in those windows. I knew finally that I could claim no new territory of spiritual endeavor that was not built on those lives and experiences. I agree with your use of the term genetic connection......after all, Who calls the genes to make us? There really is no end to the expressions of God's love that we are formed to present to the world, this world, God's world.
But my search did not end there. I recall a dinner in Gainesville, at Holly and Daves' apartment soon after they were married, with Father _______ , you, Mike and I and perhaps several others. Father prayed that one day we would see ourselves not as men or women but as persons - it would take me 30 years to understand what he meant. The search for spiritual heritage led me to see that gender as culturally defined is a huge block to seeing personhood. Ancestral research illuminates this more vividly because of the narrow roles women filled and the scarcity of records about their families. Virginians were better about it than most, simply because women were keys to successful careers especially if their father's had money or land to bequeath to the marriage. But the personhood of women was sorely tried in our past right up to our mother's experiences. I do think that my own lack of an understanding of personhood is what led me to suffer completely unnecessarily at the hands of equally clueless men about their personhood. So whadda we gonna do? I began writing stuff to my kids here and there and then everywhere; bits and pieces, long scripts, short fumes, but nothing pulled together yet.
Also, I began reading John Paul II at Joey's behest. I am not even close to reading enough, but I do feel a deep response to his call. I won't do him justice by trying to list it here, but my notes are pretty long on the areas of resonance with his points addressed to parents and children and training in the faith. My sons Mike and Joe bought the DVD of Naked without Shame and passed that around to everyone, and for awhile Mike was explaining that to anyone who would listen. It certainly strikes deep at the issue of personhood first!
Finally, I had to have that one encounter that I had been so afraid of. Posing the question to God, did women really not matter as much? and then finally opening just a bit of my heart to see what the answer would be......."YOU ARE A DAUGHTER OF GOD!"
And, Why don't I feel loved?.........."YOU HAVE THE LOVE YOU ALLOW" LOVE could hardly be forced. That one put me at the controls......who in me holds back on the love?
And, who is my essential self....... PERSON with no barriers to the SPIRIT
So Sacramental Heritage is still changing in my mind.......I did add the anniversaries of my kids Baptism and First Communion and Confirmation to the family website; a reminder goes out a week before the event to everyone on the site. Then I added the Baptism and First Communion of my mother and father. I think I added mine....hmm, maybe I didn't yet.
That's where it stands now, and I know I haven't covered everything, especially the drafts of how this looks in imagery......I like the look of most of them......symbol-rich, each generation embraced by the former, embraced by their former, etc., and always the Our Father written throughout.
I was in second grade at St. Julianna's Catholic church, on a Sunday that used incense as an opening ritual, and I am returning from communion and as I come to the end of aisle I pause for a moment in a golden shaft of light breaking through the haze of the incense, and I KNEW, that I was aware, I was alive, I belonged, and I was not alone. I also recall that I felt too small to contain that moment.
I do not feel too small now, but I know that is a dare I charge myself with, because sometimes I don't dare myself to accept that LOVE. I might break.
Mary
PS Joey began reading John Paul II and encouraged me to. I have all my notes on this at home in Cumming, but the gist of one of his works was the parent's right to implement their Catholic training for their children in the way best interpreted by the said parents.