Your Heart His Home

When we met, Tammy had yet to reach her 25th birthday. It was her second stint in prison, this time on a charge of armed robbery. At home, she had two young children, whom Tammy’s father was raising. She rarely saw them. To say that there was sadness in her eyes is an understatement. They were overtaken by a profound vacancy and despair. Tammy barely knew her own mother, for she had been imprisoned by the time Tammy was 15 and was still in prison.

On a recent trip to Rome, I stayed, for the first time, in the Jewish quarter. I rented a little apartment not far from Teatro Marcello on a charming, crooked cobblestone street — the kind so characteristic of the Eternal City. Brilliant purple bougainvillea cascaded from terracotta planters set against the lovely earthen hues of the stucco buildings. An accordion player claimed a spot below my window, and in the evening he would mosey from restaurant to restaurant entertaining the tourists who sat down to a bowl of pasta, exhausted with the day’s exploring of so many glorious churches. It was a quintessential Roman holiday.

As a gift to my brother on the occasion of his ordination years ago, I told him that I would offer up all of my speaking engagements in thanksgiving for his vocation to the priesthood. This seemed an especially fitting and easy gift because I love speaking for groups, and talking about our faith always brings me great joy.

Some years ago, a woman told a lie about me that caused some serious harm and was tremendously painful to bear. After many months had passed, out of the blue, she sent me an email, something along the lines of, “If I hurt you, I’m sorry.” We’ve all gotten these: the non-apology apology. It was, I thought, cowardly, and did very little to repair the damage that had been done.

My friend — I’ll call her “Veronica” — goes for the spiritual jugular, so to speak. It’s almost as if she avails herself to God and says, “All right, Lord, give me the toughest assignment you’ve got. Spare me no challenge.”

When I was a child, I loved most the wise men of our nativity set for their grandeur and color and elegance, and for the numinous gifts they brought to the Infant King. They were mysterious royalty from a far-off land who somehow possessed secret knowledge of the Savior’s birth, and I was sure their lives were full of intrigue and adventure.

There’s a quote I keep in my office from Douglas Steere, the Quaker, and I read it before every meeting I have, especially with spiritual directees. He writes, “To ‘listen’ another’s soul into a condition of disclosure and discovery may be almost the greatest service that any human being ever performs for another.”

My first job out of university was working as a teller in a bank. I was singing a lot on the weekends and working on my writing, but I needed a regular income, too. My mom had suggested I apply at a bank. She thought it might be useful for me to learn a bit more about how money works, and to that end — bless her heart — she was right.