August 30: Dripping Wet, Julianna Baggott, "Jesus in the Mail," New Cartoon

The next day was foggy.  Everything on the farm was dripping wet.  The grass looked like a magic carpet.  The asparagus patch looked like a silver forest.

I love that description of a foggy morning from E. B. White.  It has a simple, fairy tale quality, especially the silver forest of asparagus.  It almost makes me want to eat asparagus.  Almost.

I woke to fog and rain this morning in my little corner of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  The fog eventually lifted, but it has been pretty much misting/drizzling/pouring rain all day long.  It was a good day to stay inside and read a book.  Which is exactly what I didn't do.

I spent some time at church, practicing on the pipe organ for a church service at which I have to play tomorrow morning.  Then I also practiced wedding music for my niece's upcoming nuptials in September.  Two-and-a-half hours' worth of organ time.  (Please keep your minds out of the gutter.)

I cleaned a house for some money after that, and then I attended the 4:30 p.m. mass at the local Catholic church.  Dinner.  Bath for my son.  A load of laundry.  And now I'm on my couch, ready to pass out.  I read about one paragraph of my current book.  Have I mentioned that I'm a little sick right now?  My head is pounding, eyes are watering, nose is running.  I'm a mess.

My last offering from Julianna Baggott is one of my favorites.  She has a way of cutting through the bullshit and getting to a clean, beating heart in her lines.  She takes the simplest, everyday moments and transforms them into resurrection.

At the moment, I can hear rain tapping on the window behind me.  The clothes dryer is humming in the kitchen.  Lawrence Welk is on the TV.  It's quiet, relaxed.  Soon, I'll retire to my bedroom with my book and a glass of water.  Maybe some potato chips or raisins.

It's not exciting, but it's Saint Marty's life.

Jesus in the Mail

by:  Julianna Baggott

Someone at the Shrine of Divine Mercy
knows I'm a lapsed Catholic;
a card comes in the mail, a chapelful of nuns
(I'd prefer a nun full of chapels)

is offering the perpetual novena, celebrated daily.
There's a checklist of spiritual ailments.
I pause over lukewarm souls and those
who separated themselves from His body.

I didn't know the soul was temperate,
made of water; and his body, I'd never thought
of myself as attached.  And yet now
both seem right, and I imagine

the soul poured into the unknotted ribs,
that we are bodies of water, and I hope
that death, when it comes, will feel like
what it was to be a girl back-floating on a lake,

pulling down armfuls, then gliding,
arms outstretched and rowing
like Christ coming out of his own body,
flying from the heavy cross.

Confessions of Saint Marty