YEAH, THAT’S ANOTHER LIFE LONG GOAL TO CHECK OFF…

I actually made it into an article in the November 2004 issue of Elle magazine.

[Good Lord! A fashion magazine!]

They have a feature running this month on Barbara Hall called “Heaven Can’t Wait” – or something like that. It’s primarily about Barb’s spiritual journey, and so the reporter interviewed me as the person who had met with Barb for RCIA.

The piece isn’t bad. It isn’t great either. They are desperately trying to make Barbara Hall someone they can live with in the story. They got her to own up to being a Democrat, and then insinuated that she is pro-choice and pro-gay rights by citing her saying ‘The Church has to evolve.”

[the rolling of eyeballs]

Everyone over the last 2,000 years who has said the Church needs to “evolve” is now dead. And the Church rolls on somehow….But in three years of knowing her, I’ve never heard Barbara make that kind of comment. It made me mad because she’s much more circumspect than that, and putting those words in that context makes her come off as one more blue-state Hollywood cliche. And she’s really not. So, I’m officially taking a little bit of umbrage for my friend.

After the story was written, the editorial fact-checker called me and wanted to be sure that Barbara and I were actually in fact Roman Catholics. She said (paraphrase) “The editors were confused because of your emphasis on encouraging spiritual and intellectual questioning. That didn’t seem to match with the Catholic Church as they have ever experienced it.”

[good grief….oh, did I say that already?….Sheesh!]

I suggested that maybe they needed to expand their experience.

The best part of the piece from my standpoint, was not anything I said, but rather something that was said to me, that I was happy to pass on. On the day she was received into the Church, when Barbara went up to receive her first Communion, her ten year old daughter, faith leaned over to me and said, ‘This is making her very happy.”

I thought that was so neat. Here was a woman who runs television shows, with immense cultural power and influence, who has more money than she can ever spend, with talent to burn in several art forms, and who is on the receiving end of much of the best things the world has to give, but, it was God who was making her really happy.

Lovely.