July 1: It’s time to take some time …

July has arrived and, with a kind of sadness I never expected to feel about this venture of mine here in this space, I have to bid you adieu. Until August.

The new book is calling, demanding, rightly, my full attention. I must attend to the muses and graces that want to have their thoughts put down on paper and/or pixels.

I’ll still be writing my weekly religion-and-popular-culture column, which you can find on Fridays in the Sun-Times. And twice monthly via Religion News Service. And occasionally in the cyber pages of the Huffington Post.

So, I’ll be back in a few weeks, when the blackberries are ripe, my tomatoes are hanging heavy on the vine, and Sin Boldy is on its way to being born.

I’ll leave you with a few words from the poet Mary Oliver and see you again in Lùghnasa.

Love and Grace,
Cathleen

After Arguing Against The Contention That Art Must Come From Discontent
By Mary Oliver

Whispering to each handhold, “I’ll be back,”
I go up the cliff in the dark. One place
I loosen a rock and listen a long time
till it hits, faint in the gulf, but the rush
of the torrent almost drowns it out, and the wind —
I almost forgot the wind: it tears at your side
or it waits and then buffets; you sag outward…

I remember they said it would be hard. I scramble
by luck into a little pocket out of
the wind and begin to beat on the stones
with my scratched numb hands, rocking back and forth
in silent laughter there in the dark–
“Made it again!” Oh how I love this climb!
— the whispering to the stones, the drag, the weight
as your muscles crack and ease on, working
right. They are back there, discontent,
waiting to be driven forth. I pound
on the earth, riding the earth past the stars:
“Made it again! Made it again!”