Lent's Progress

Lent began for many Christians (our Eastern Orthodox brethren are about a week later) last Wednesday. I have a cacophony of thoughts about the season, about us, meaning the human race, and me, the individual subset.. Let's see what emerges, and hope that it has some reasonable narrative.


Ash Wednesday did not begin very well. My left arm has been bothering me (yes, I do have an appointment with the doctor!) which I think is about how I roll about at night in bed trying to sleep, and I awoke with it aching, yet again, enough to restrict a little of my motion. At the same time, the cats jumped onto the bed demanding their morning meal, and I uttered the first word of the day, "Sh-t!".  This was not the word I had intended, which might better have been "Amen" or some such spiritual fare, but alas, it was the one that popped out.


I have been re-reading a large portion of a journal I have kept for much of my adult life. While I would like that it had been defined as a place of dreamy musings combined with world historical reflection, it has largely been a repository for my whiny complaints about places and people, including myself. Oh, though it has a few thoughtful segments, even well written ones--well so I'd like to think, it really seems that I have rather embarrassingly missed the essence of being a Catholic Christian. 


Now, I shall take this paragraph to say, really, it's not all my fault! Although I was raised on the Baltimore Catechism and a healthy dose of "offer it up" when things went awry, I somehow got the idea in the middle of getting old enough for school age, going through school, getting grades, working hard, acquiring degrees, finally finding a good job as a lawyer doing what the only thing I was meant to do AS a lawyer,  that I could control some of the obstacles of life. I am not sure how exactly that occurred and in writing about it now, I am not sure I can quite explain it. I indulged in a kind of magical thinking about my life, even though I experienced the trauma of it relatively early, when my mother developed and died of a cancer (I was 18 when she was diagnosed, and 20 when she died). I seemed to have illogically concluded that if I got over A,B, and C hurdles, then it would all be smooth sailing. I suppose every kid thinks that becoming an adult is a solution to being subject to all sorts of indignities, but in truth as we learn, becoming an adult is often just the beginning. And while some may lead a charmed life, most of us don't, and even those who SEEM to lead a charmed life, often don't. Be that as it may, with the Fall of Adam and Eve, came the "troubles" of life. But think about it, don't many of us, nay, most of us, get a little over the top when we hit our finger with a hammer, when the dog gets out, when we can't untangle a chain, mere inconveniences, let alone the more serious things that we see in the news every day and the ones that touch us personally, like a car accident, or a friend dying way too young.

Here's a meditation in The Magnificat (a little booklet with prayers and encouragements for Catholics that is very popular) that seemed particularly on point on the subject of our rebellious way of being:

"This important truth about life is often completely disregarded. As a rule, no sooner do we meet with contradictions and reverses that we utter nothing but complaints and murmurings.  We find that this illness has come upon us when there is much to be done; that something indispensable is denied us; that someone is depriving us of the necessary means, or placing insurmountable obstacles in our way as regards the good we must accomplish or the apostolate to which we have devoted ourselves."  (Fr. Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange)


Suffice it to say, that the way I have whined over the years, both before my journal and since it, indicates that I just have not gotten the reality of life, in the here and now, and in the eternal wings. When my classmate in the second grade (was it?) got a grade just a few hundreths of a point better than me such that SHE got the model of a Viking ship as a reward, (I did not want the ship of course, it was the validation it represented), the universe had conspired against me. Oh, it was earlier than that! When all the other kids were throwing rocks at the little metal storage building next to the kindergarten schoolhouse, I joined in half heartedly and I was the only one that got caught!  I have examples that span the years up to and including the moments up to this very one, the puniest to the biggest (from my perspective) of how I was not adequately valued, appreciated, or how the fates just did not make things easy, and occasionally threw a real monkey wrench into the proceedings. 

Even M. Scott Peck, who wrote that great pop psychology book on the "Road Less Travelled" and started the book with the idea that "life is difficult" and once we get that, life actually becomes a little easier--well turns out like so many gurus, he found it hard to accept his own maxims. I guess that's another part of the Fall--we know what is true but we darn well keep resisting it! I mean, can you really keep arguing that things should be easier when you go to Mass and in the middle of the service, you get a cross marked onto your head to the words, "Remember man that you are dust and unto dust you shall return"?   Alas, apparently so. 

I was just talking to a friend about a mutual sick friend, a priest, as it happens, who was a man of great brilliance and need for control. He has had some strokes that mostly have affected his memory and have left him partially lucid and partially confused. It is likely that he will not be able to go back to his rectory home, at least not right away. His control is being taken from him. The trick is, I think, for good and spiritual reasons, to let go of the control, not only before it is taken from us, but because there is a freedom in knowing it is inevitable. If we do it ourselves and for the reason of, as Father Garrigou-LaGrange goes on to say in his meditation, the acceptance and doing of the Will of God from day to day, then what a blessing it could and would be.

I have also been reading a little book on Benedictine spirituality "Seeking God" by Esther de Waal, and it speaks to this very point of what Lent is about, what this whole journey may be about, "stability"--a spiritual stability to be prayed for and for which we must aim and practice, "persevering with patience. . .in the original sense of a readiness to accept suffering, even to death" (de Waal, page 58).

Why?  If we Christians really believe that we die with Christ and rise with Him on the third day of Easter, then we must go through our version (each and all of us) of His suffering. To seek to avoid the suffering would be to seek to avoid Redemption itself.  You don't get to Resurrection without the Suffering. That's the deal. It's kind of what Joy Lewis says to C.S. Lewis in the movie "Shadowlands".  You cannot escape the pain when you seek the joy. 

So as I wrote this segment, how did I do?  When that friend called, and I seriously considered not answering, because he simply is not capable of a short conversation, and saying, "I can't talk long" just doesn't provide a sufficient prompt. it drives me crazy. The timing is usually always bad--I am on my way out, or just on my way in, or resting in the restroom, or doing something from which (like this entry) I don't want to be distracted.  I started to "complain and murmur" in my head--a lot. I mean, a lot. And then I remembered what I was writing about here.

And thus becomes the practice of Lent.

Lily Tomlin at Lunch

Lily is Fourth from left being regaled over lunch

I did video the thank you speech made by Ms. Tomlin at the Pioneer Broadcaster's. I was able to get it to work on Quicktime. I was unable, however, to upload it here and I lost the last version of this blog as a result of my technical frailty.  So, think of the photograph above as you might of the refurbished Lost Horizon, and imagine the lost scene!

So, let me back up. How did I even end up here? Well, as you who peruse these pages know, I have embarked at ever so snail's a pace on two new careers, one as a writer and the other as a voice over artist. In conjunction with the latter endeavor, I have been taken under the wing of a love comedienne "Nooch" Egidio ("Her Noochness") who has given me advice and introduced me to her friends. She has invited me to various functions and this was one.

I have great respect for Ms. Tomlin from my young days in the Bronx watching "Laugh-In" and more recent days having seen her live in "Signs of Intelligent Life. . ." and so the idea of a more informal formal venue to see her appealed to me. Now, a couple of my friends declined to go because these types of industry gatherings at places like the well used Sportsmen's Lodge in Studion City, tend to be full of, shall we say, people of a certain advanced age, averaging probably around 75 with a good number in their 80s, and it really isn't an opporunity to see the object of their affection in a gala sort of way and they don't usually say much as they might in a performance. Since I am on the cusp of, if not in what Erik Erikson called the "generativity" phase of life, myself, who am I to shy away from old age?

And, what I like about events like this is the collision of real life with entertainment history. And what I thought, not for the first time, in watching the old timers on the dais and the ones in the audience, is that they are examples of never giving up the chance of "making it" or "making it again". They remain not only engaged in life, but full of goals, immediate and long term.  They have been in a profession which one might argue is even more cutthroat than the one of which I once was a part, the law, where rejection is regular and cruel and they have persevered in what they love. 

So there I was, at overflow table no. 43, way way way in the back eating my late served (if Nooch hadn't talked to the floor manager, our table would have been bereft of the main course) cold, but appetizing, sliced sirloin, part of the crowd applauding a many years' creative woman and nodding with enjoyment as her friends and co-performers, George Schlatter, Leslie Jordan (you'd know who he is if you watched Laugh-In--very short and a great delivery), Sally Kellerman, JoAnne Worley, Allee Willis (really quirky songwriter), Bruce Vilanch, celebrating her.

Sometimes, I become a little pessimistic that at this stage in the game of life I can begin at ground zero in entirely new endeavors. I suppose if I am thinking only of being lauded and sought after, my pessimism may be well founded, but if I think about the process in doing things that I love, like these people, both known and unknown, and of a certain age, then my pessimism is slowly transformed into an uncharacteristic optimism.

Ms. Tomlin was at ease and relaxed in her humor. She told us that she had once lived at the Sportsmen's Lodge, in early days. She acknowledged everyone on that dais for their parts in her life's road to here, a road that she is still running down with a palpable joy. Maybe one day I'll figure how to download or upload the video so you can hear it. Maybe I'll try to get it on my Facebook page separately, so you can share the moment with me. But if not, trust me, ain't nothing like being in Hollywood (or in this case the Valley) with performers of long standing.



Long Beach and Lasher's

So, where have I been the last few days? I've been around, and one place I was around was in the beautiful city of Long Beach, California, for a birthday dinner celebration.

I might have mentioned this before, but a couple of my friends and I have this tradition of many years. For each of our birthdays, we pick a Zagat rated place to wine and dine in acknowledgment of another year successfully negotiated. Last weekend, it was Lasher's.

Yes, it is in a Craftsman home. The owner said that it was zoned for business before he came along, by a lawyer, Lord help us! But it meant that it was easy for Mr. Lasher to set up shop in the space, which is intimate at about 20 tables and a little back room for larger parties. I had the BEST double cut pork chop and it felt just as if I were having dinner at a friend's. This little discovery of ours has been there for 15 years!

That's the thing about Long Beach, California. In the last 25 years it has developed into something splendid. It was not always so. I took the Bar three times in California (though I passed the first time in NY) and the second of these attempts occurred at the old Long Beach Convention Center, circa 1982. Long Beach was how shall I say, seedy. Gloomy and seedy, showing the wear of its maritime industry, and not particularly safe, even by the Convention Center. The idea that this location could ever be either hip or trendy would never have occurred to me as I wandered Ocean Avenue in search of a decent eatery in between sessions. That diner, the name of which escapes me, is still there, but everything around it now positively glows, and the glow is reflected even onto this still unremarkable establishment.

It was probably 18 or 19 years before I ventured there again. One reason was business, the State Bar Convention was held in the then new Long Beach Convention Center, an building intermixing glass and light, circa 1998. I was teaching Ethics in those days and I was a presenter, so down I went to discover a new world that just made me feel like I had gone on a vacation somewhere quite far away, when in reality it is only 34 miles from my door. Pine Avenue was revving up, all sorts of eateries and bars were making good. And the marina had been developed into a nice combination of neighborhood boats and touristy, but really pleasant stores and places to eat. A big hotel was attached to the Convention Center. Seedy had turned into sensational.

At about the same time, my then therapist had moved his counselling activities to Long Beach where he already lived and while termination was in sight, it was still not arrived at, so I began to attend Saturday sessions there weekly. Whatever the fruits of a particular session, I always treated the day as a kind of mini-holiday, going down to Second Street, grabbing a bite at a variety of enterprises, finally discovering Claire's on the Beach in the Long Beach Museum along Ocean as the hands down best place to watch the ocean and have breakfast locale. The sea and glint of the sun almost always enhanced the day.

I found a new hairdresser in Long Beach, at Effie and Company, the most excellent Rosendo, when I was in between hair professionals. As I walked along Second Street and saw my unruly hair in a window I walked into the place some place along 1998 and never left. Therapy long over since 1999, I now make the same jaunt, monthly to see Rose and get that dye and cut that has its part in my mini-vacation rejuvenation.

So, I guess, that little craftsman and that kind Ray Lasher who told us the story of his restaurant and conveyed his love for his work, just raised my fondness quotient a little higher. Broadway is not quite as trendy yet as other parts of Long Beach and I like that too, because it remains more of a neighborhood--too much glitz takes you on a road downward--and among friends I felt content.

I think I have a hair appointment coming up in a couple of weeks!  I look forward to it. Unfortunately, Lasher's doesn't do lunch, but that's ok, I plan to go back there for dinner as I shall sing the praises to other friends.

The Enabler's Hiatus

When I first came to California lo eons ago, I became friends with a woman in the small law office in which I was working as a secretary while I arranged to sit for the California Bar. I should have known that, under the circumstances in which we first fully conversed, that I was signing up for a rollercoaster friendship in which her crises and my responding to them were its measure.


When we met, she had lost her keys and had deep concerns about something or another related to her apartment. What did I do, idiot that I was? I invited her to stay on the couch of my new one bedroom apartment until she got things sorted out. For some ten years after that, my various couches were her life rafts in between the good points of her life, mostly when she had a man in it, and her bad points, when she did not have a man in it.


One day, instead of being what she viewed as the supportive listening kleenex providing friend, when I had issues of my own (and like everyone out there I have them all the time, but I try with only few exceptions I have regretted, to keep them away from others), I was abrupt with her. This sent her into a roil. I had slapped her in the face. I had failed to be whatever perfect thing I was projected to be. She threatened suicide in the walk in closet off my living room, and when I said that I would feel terrible about that, she said that it upset her that it was "all about me." She was outta here. Except she did not leave. She stayed until the next day after a good night's sleep and a shower.

Her therapist, she reported, told her that I had issues, and I "must have gotten something out of the relationship." Both were true, in their way, but wow, talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Naturally, if she were telling the story, I would be the villain of the piece. And for a long time that bothered me because I was hung up on objective truth back then. Still am, but now I have decided that my perceptions are at least as valid as anyone else's.  And, if they are invalid? Well, so what? Truth has little meaning so I can create my own reality just like everyone else does.

I can tell you this though, you will always lose in the reality of that person out there who consumes you and then spits you out. The trick then is to avoid such people like a plague. Not always easy because other suckers introduce you to them and say, "She or he is such a nice person" and then you discover that while they may have this good heart buried in there somewhere, they wreak havoc on you in every conversation, in every encounter.

I have gotten better at spotting and avoiding such characters, but not inerrant and my desire to who knows what--ego boost?--the Djinn saves those whom others cannot--I do not truly know, except I know saying "no" to people has always been hard. Another priest I know who I have taken lectures from said that his mother used to say, "If you can't say something nice about someone, be vague." I know from my time being a trainee therapist that if someone is not ready to hear the difficult things about his or her responsibility for what is happening, nothing you can say will break that wall and allow logic in, so in order to deflect what you have to be is "hard". And I don't like being hard, which is another one of the contradictions of my life given I spent 25 years telling lawyers what I thought they had done "wrong" and prosecuting some of them. I really don't care what people do or don't do personally, although I do care about the mass destruction they reap and to my dying day I do think there is a right and a wrong objectively and situationally, despite my flippancy in earlier paragraphs. I have selected areas of life where I had to be the one to say, "you can't do this or you should do this" because I truly believe it to be so, but not because I relish the idea of telling anyone anything. In fact, I could easily be a hermit and avoid ever encountering anyone who asks for advice or doesn't  ask but wants me to agree with them whatever they say.

I used to think that trying to "help" such souls was part of being a Christian--you know something I heard once, "seeing Christ in His most distressing disguises", but recently I heard a priest who is also an expert on twelve step say that this is NOT charity and that we are NOT doing good for such people when we allow this.

This issue has sort of popped up in my life again, ever so recently, and so it's been back on my mind and pours out here  Hopefully, one day I will learn the difference between helping and enabling--and me with a law degree, years of experience with manipulative lawyers and complainants--lawyers who stole oodles of money and countered with "This is not a Bar matter" and  the oldie but goodie "you are engaging in prosecutorial misconduct", and two years as a trainee therapist, and several unpleasant interactions in which I ALWAYS ended up the bad guy.

Perhaps apropos of nothing, I have also been distracted by animal related crises. I took my little old Elwood cat to the vet's for official diagnosis at 500 plus dollars of hyperthroidism or cancer or cardio myopathy or some such. At least after having his ears cleaned out he is back here seemingly content while I await the test results. And it really is all about him--and he deserves it!

Back to the subject du jour, in closing. We live and we learn, and as I write a memoir that I may or may not publish, I realize how much I too have looked to the external world as the source of my crises of days long gone by, when so much was my own doing. I think I am ahead of the game realizing that finally.  Of course there is no doubt someone out there who will say, "Really?  Doesn't she know that she's still a big pain in the a--?" Geez, I hope I'm not. And I guess I'll never know the objective truth of it. Oh, well.

"The Artist" Spoke to Me

I resisted, and mightily, going to see "The Artist".  While I have always had an intellectual appreciation for silent films that inaugarated the movie industry and have seen most of them, from "The Kiss", to the "Musketeers of Pig Alley", "The Great Train Robbery", you name it, I just prefer it when folks talk in my entertainment.


But I have now seen Jean Dujardin receive at least two awards and found him personally intriguing, as well as to see that his movie is in the running for Best Picture at the Oscars, so I figured, what's the worst that could happen? I went, I saw, I liked a lot.




First, Dujardin really makes you believe he is a silent film star. He has a face which at one angle is Fairbanks and another Gene Kelly. Both stars had wide smiles and Dujardin,well he fits the mold. And expressive eyes.


Silent star, making beaucoup bucks and idolized by his many fans is suddenly made irrelevant by the "talkies". Just because it's an old story, it isn't a boring one. It has a soupcon of a Star is Born, in so far as the character of George Valentin crosses paths with an up and comer, but they aren't "together" through most of the movie and each seems to have a separate trajectory of his down and her up. But she watches him from afar, admiring, and then feeling sadness and a touch of love that manifests clearly only at the end.


Like Norman Main, our hero becomes desperate but he is saved, maybe because he is ultimately more amenable to help than Main, and a lot less nasty; in fact, what George is, is always likeable, even when he nearly burns down his downsized living quarters by putting a match to his old films--except one, one in which he danced with the not yet discovered Peppy.


Lately, everything speaks to me about rising and falling "in the world". And being discarded by the "new" set of shakers and movers. This actor made lots of money for the studio and then he is as the John Goodman character reminds Peppy--a "nobody".  The problem is he begins to believe it too. But that belief is mixed with a fallen pride that prevents him from seeking a solution to his changed state in life.  Most of us don't have a Peppy (and I'd hope that our earth bound saviors would have a different name!) to come in and revive us. And many of us, even if we have someone, don't listen to them anyway about how to pick ourselves up and move on to some new place where we might be wanted.


Well, here in "The Artist" there is a happy ending. There is the likelihood of love (though it is not a complete denouement of romance) and a new angle in George's career where his French accent won't be heard in Hollywood. He dances too! He can become a Fred Astaire type, one supposes, and dance with his Ginger, er Peppy.


As someone reinventing my life--and some days are more optimistic than others, today not so much--I was buoyed by George and Peppy just enough to keep my head above the water. Bravo George. And your little dog too!

Crazy Lady Corner--No CFLs for Me!

I hereby swear that I shall not abide by this mandate. Up the incandescent!

It may turn out to be lost cause, but as Mr. Smith who once went to Washington said, "The lost causes are the ones worth fighting for!" And this little cause I think is emblematic of the bigger one, the interference in every corner of our lives by our government. Interference in the form of laws "for our own good." 


For reasons that remain a mystery to me this eye irritating (in my ways than one) curly cue bulb, the CFL, has been pushed as somehow more environmentally favorable, when in fact if the darn thing breaks, it releases mercury. But even if it were the perfect manifestation of light bulbness, what right has a government to forbid the making, selling and having (wait that is coming, or you won't be able to buy a lamp that will take the old bulb) of Thomas Edison's transformative invention? 


If the idea is to protect us with all these laws, as appears to be the case, from being hurt--bad news people, we'll still get hurt and we still will die. You cannot legislate everlasting protection. And if you could, then why live at all? We could all sit in protective bubbles in our homes and then do you really think that will end the danger? A few years ago a small plane fell into the 16 unit building down the block. A man in bed died because of the crash. So much for safe places and things.


As for me, although the CFL lobby and makers leave presents of the bulbs in little plastic bags (which by the way are problematic according to the environmental oracles) on my door knob with all manner of praise, I don't intend to use them. Disclaimer:  I bought a lovely lamp at Cost Plus and when I tried to put my incandescent in it, I found out that it was not allowed--the lamp was made ONLY for CFLs. I sitll have the lamp. I hardly ever use it now, because of it.


I started hoarding the old fashioned light bulb long before it caught on for talk show hosts to rant about doing the same thing. I haven't got endless room, but I have an entire section of kitchen space full of them, and I will continue buying them until they can be bought no more, which I hear is very soon.


When I run out of the bulbs, I am going to start using candles at night, along with the happy glow of my computer screen. I don't use much light anyway, at night, raised as I was in a night club like atmosphere of amber ambience.

Laugh if you will, and I know some will. But freedom isn't lost in one fell swoop. It's lost in the little things, like what light bulb you can use.  No one notices these little laws that get passed, and then one day, a whole society is tied into totalitarian knots, what we can do, how we can do it, what we can speak, and how we can speak it.

Since I am a coward, no doubt when I feel real danger to myself, I will conform, but until then, don't tell me what light bulb I can use. And if candlelight was good enough for A.Lincoln, it's good enough for me. He managed to become president without a lightbulb in sight. And I still like him, even though he was a lawyer.

Better Late Than Never: Confession and Reconciliation

I am one of those Catholics who were in the cross over generation--the cross over from pre-Vatican and post-Vatican II.  The nuances of the changes were lost on those of us in the Bronx. We went from everything in Latin, big black spot on the soul, condemnation and judgment to every man, and woman, for himself on what is or is not dogma. I went from the Baltimore Catechism to Jesus Christ Superstar in one fell swoop, sometime between 1966 and 1968 as the ill communicated information came to us theologically untrained souls.  And the confusion this poor communication wrought caused a lot of young people to lapse or outrightly leave the Church.


I was already prone to obsessive compulsive thinking, which in the religious world is called "scrupolousity".  I had a parent, my mother, who demanded a perfection from me that no child can possibly provide, and, at the same time I was weaned, from kindergarten in about 1959 until 1965 and fifth grade, on a form of Thou Shalts and Thou Shalt Nots that tied me in knots. Some kids blew it off. But with a strict mother at home and strict (though never striking one of us) nuns at school the idea of rebellion simply never occurred to me. When the "ya ha" times came upon us, I was well formed in rule following out of pure fear. And while things might have gotten loosy goosy in places like the confessional, the things I struggled with as an adolescent seemed too large to bring to confession, where even then, you did not know who the priest might be and some of the things that you might need to discuss were well, just too much even to speak, well beyond, I fibbed or talked back to my mother (I did not talk back to my mother in early years and by the time I did, she was too weak with cancer to fight back, and frankly, whatever rule bound existence she had had before she got sick, she softened with her illness anyway.).  So, one day in 1970, at a retreat in Beacon, NY, I looked toward the confessional and felt so evil and unredeemable that I could not even approach the priest. I did not return to Catholicism until 1983. And while I found a more nuanced Church, I did not understand any of the the theology (theology in the 1970s in college was everything but Catholicism, more like a precursor to the New Age).  Even when I came back I did not trust what I would find in the confessional, by then, already renamed to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Priest after priest tried to tell me that it wasn't a star chamber, that I was harder on myself than God was on me, but I wasn't sure that they were, well, kosher in the explanation of either the faith or the Sacrament, and I remainded suspicious and unable to experience the celebration in the Sacrament for any extended period of time.


Nothing changed. But everything had.  It just had to catch up with me.


I went to a seminar on Reconciliation with a teacher from St. John's Seminary, Fr. Brennan. He said that so much opportunity was lost in the past with how the Sacrament of Reconciliation was adminstered because of a 17th century legalism run amok into the 20th century.

When Christ approached sinners, he never said anything much about the nature of their sins. He'd always say, "Peace be with you" and then only, "go and sin no more."  Forgiveness, not judgment. This is not to say that sin is not real nor that there is no requirement of repentance, only that the role of the priest was as instrument of the forgiving God, not the dispense of His Judgment.


What happened with this too much human legalism, is that everything became a sin and those of us who tried to address it were frozen in counting and in fear of not saying enough for the confession to be valid. Confession became an expression of human control rather than of the expansive love of God.


Thus the faithful either became rigid or rebelled. I became rigid in many ways, but felt like a fraud for knowing my own evilness and sins that I could not master. I even picked a career where I administered rules as if they could be neatly framed and implemented.

Father said that even when he had been ordained he had not heard the Good News of God. I almost wanted to cry as I heard him speak of my own experience. We ARE a church of sinners, but we were somehow left to believe that our sins were just too great and the judgment on us so hard that we gave up. I did. That was NEVER what was intended, in any form of the theology. Human nature seems to have tainted this most blessed of visible signs of Christ's presence.

It will take a while, Father said, for us to recover the nature of celebration that is the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We do fail to livew up to God's loving plan for us, but He knows that we will fail and He comes for us with reckless abandon anyway, and He gave us this gift of restoring our relationship with Him by simply saying, with true repentance,"Lord I am a sinner. Forgive me."  And He will. And the priests who are his mediators who say out loud the words of absolution, have learned a lot in the last 40 years.

If you have been away for a while, please think of coming back. There is nothing like the peace of absolution and the ability to receive Christ crucified and resurrected in the Eucharist.