All Mortal Flesh

You know it’s a bad sign when the theme song from Titanic describes your relationship.

She wondered what it said about her spiritual fitness that her clearest messages from the Almighty seemed to come from the alternative rock station.

Through the snowy silver maple trees, he could see the gray stone stronghold of St. Alban’s. She was in there, behind one of the diamond-paned windows, a block away and as far out of reach as the moon. On his CD player, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks was crooning, Without you, I’m not okay, and without you, I’ve lost my way… If he lived through this mess, he was never listening to country music again.

At the rectory, she debated acknowledging she was back on the job by wearing clericals, versus pissing the new deacon off by meeting her in her civvies. She compromised by wearing a black blouse, dog collar, and subdued black cardigan over a pair of old undress-green fatigues. “Interesting look,” Lois said when Clare checked in for a report on the past week. “It’s a clerical mullet,” Clare said. “Business on the top, party on the bottom.

If I start bad-mouthing his wife, who is it fixing to get hurt when they get back together?” [Margy, Russ’s mum] “You think they’re going to get back together?” [Janet, Russ’s sister] “I’d like to think . . .” Her voice trailed off. Even with the last turn of the stairs and the living room between them, Russ could hear his mother sigh. “Your brother is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a real-life Horton the Elephant. He meant what he said and he said what he meant . . .” “An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent,” Janet finished the quote. Great. His entire personality could be summed up by Dr. Seuss.

There are moments in life that are between: between the blow and the pain, between the phone ringing and the answer, between the misstep and the fall. One that comes to everyone is a moment, or three, or five, between sleeping and waking, when the past has not yet been re-created out of memory and the present has made no impression. It is a moment of great mercy; disorienting, like all brushes with grace, but a gift nonetheless.

[Father Aberforth]: “...Have you figured out what you’re going to do with this married man of yours?” ... “I’m not here to judge you, girl. You think you’re the first sheep to wander out of the fold because greener pastures beckon?” He reached for his tea. “At least you show some originality. Most priests who dabble in adultery go for the music director or one of the warden’s wives. The town’s chief of police—that’s novel. Not too bright, but novel.

The old Confession was written by men who knew what it felt like to have done bad things: “We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable.” Indeed.

he were a young man, he might believe he would never forget her skin, or her smile, or the strength of her. But he had learned that the mind didn’t always hold on to what the heart demanded. Remember, he told his hands. Remember this.