![](\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_dmDaLWNETzg\/SuhM32rkUpI\/AAAAAAAAAbY\/fIxPOKu9-5A\/s200\/HolySpirit\")
<\/a>Enough mystery: Yesterday morning, I was really down about it all\u2014loving the writing, hating much else about the process. I had sworn to at least one beloved person in my life: That\u2019s it! Final post! I\u2019ve had it. Then I received an e-mail from an American woman I will call Roberta.<\/p>\nRoberta wrote me a few weeks back about her struggles with the Church, which were effectively political. She loves the Church, but can\u2019t understand the attitudes of many within the Church. Yesterday morning, as I was writing my blogger\u2019s suicide note in my mind, Roberta wrote that she had begun attending daily mass again\u2014because of this blog. I was flabbergasted. Then I began blubbering.<\/p>\n
My poor daughter Martha: She and I had a 1 pm phone appointment to discuss a book project we are co-authoring, but the moment I said hello, she knew I was in trouble. By that time, sandbagged by Roberta and beset with memories of my father, together with missing my daughters, and so on and so on in a sort of emotional avalanche, I was a basket case. Fortunately, Martha understands her dad pretty well.<\/p>\n
But really: What do you call that force that sends that e-mail from Roberta just when it is most needed by a hysterical male blogger halfway across the country? I\u2019m just crazy enough, just Catholic enough to think that you call it the Holy Spirit, which in Hopkins\u2019s beautiful poem<\/p>\n
. . . Over the bent\u00a0<\/i> I was really, seriously thinking about throwing this blog overboard a couple of days ago. It\u2019s a long story, but I wrote the short form to a friend last night: I have been trying to navigate past shoals inner and outer. It is hard to avoid capsizing a tiny vessel like this. You want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.<\/i><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/6738513599344023043-2586850990451953419?l=yimcatholic.blogspot.com\")