February 8, 2019
When I first set type any excuse would do. The simple fact of setting led type and then printing it was mesmerizing. So, at the workshop I attended we cut pieces out of the newspaper and re-set them as Dada poems. Knowing that I was safe doing so and that I would appear hip, I cut up into pieces a story on something about the Roman Catholic church. I titled the poem Rome Again. This was based upon the order in which I’d picked up the words cut from the article.
It was a long stretch from that pithy poem and my trivializing of the Roman Catholic Church to my current faith, including faith in the church herself. Only grace can account for it.
It began in 1978, on my drive home from the two-week intensive all-day group counseling in which I was engaged as I struggled to cope with being married to an active Alcoholic. Back then there were numerous facilities for people such as myself and the program I was in dramatically changed my life for the better. I was learning the basics of Alanon and was stuck on step three: "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him." This now baffles me, as I’d been raised in a practicing Christian home; apparently, I’d never considered that God could have an active hand in my life.
As I drove from New Richmond, WI, south on HWY 65, suddenly it came to me: “Nora, there is not going to be any light from heaven, this is simply going to take a lot of hard work.” Ironically, whenever I recall that moment, I recall a light coming into my car, from heaven.
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