The Gifts of Blogging

As I've mentioned here before, I first began this blog as an on-line diary when I was trying to work through my grief after repeated miscarriages, and to generally make sense of the enormous changes in my life that had come crowding in upon each other in a small space of time -- conversion, marriage, motherhood, move to the Bronx.  I invited four friends to read it and, before long, as these things do, its readership snowballed, and the number of readers with whom I had a personal relationship was dwarved by those I did not know.  Then I began getting the sort of reader whose presence is strongly felt on the Catholic interwebs -- the orthodoxy-policing, mote-in-your-eye sort of reader who believes he understands your motives and knows your soul.  At the same time, I acquired readers of great sensitivity, kindness, and thoughtfulness, some of whom, though I've never met them, have become true friends.

Around the time that we left New York, one real-life friend of mine, who I did not know was a reader here, misunderstood something I'd written, and sent me a personal email repudiating me and rejecting my friendship on the grounds that I was dangerous to his spiritual well-being.  He accused me of having no talent for music (though he'd attended some public performances of mine and had subsequently asked me to sing at his father's wake and funeral), marriage (though he'd previously asked me to marry him), or motherhood (I have no idea on what he based this opinion, though he seemed to glean from this blog that I blamed motherhood for the fact that I didn't have a high-powered opera career, something I can't imagine ever having written since it's not something I actually believe).  Moreover, he suggested that, although I seemed to see myself as a "magdalene," I was actually more like one of the Gadarene horde (I'm guessing that he thought I equated myself with the Magdalene because my doctoral dissertation was about the reappearance of Magdalenian imagery in the visual culture of mid-nineteenth-century Britain, in paintings that also used music symbolism, and because I used the email address newmagda1en - at - gmail.com, a reference to an 1873 novel by Wilkie Collins, The New Magdalen, which was one of the sources for my dissertation research).  I believe that this same friend had some of his acquaintances leave remarks in the combox making similar arguments.  I cried over this for months, and went to confession about it seven or eight times.  My first confession after the fact was at a monastery near my new city, where the priest suggested that I stop writing my blog because it might be the fruit of vanity.  I thought about that, but decided that he was wrong.  For not only is this blog anonymous; since it became public, early on, I have only hoped and prayed that it would be a means of some solace or consolation to those who, like me, are penitents, and who, like me, mourn and struggle on our way to Christ, Whom we nevertheless love above all else.  Besides, this blog is about the mote -- or rather the beam -- in my own eye.

In the past day, I have seen a remarkable work come about through the agency of this blog that I can only attribute to the Holy Spirit.  One of the wonderful friends I've made here, whom I've never met in person, responded to my request for prayers for my friend N., the homeless, undocumented immigrant who lives in a shelter in Queens with her four-year-old, by sending me a sizable check to give to her.  This check is going to be converted to a money order for N. and sent to her immediately.  I am overwhelmed with gratitude, and so happy to note once again that God makes His will known using even the frailest of instruments -- us sinful men, and the etheric clouds through which we transmit our fleeting thoughts.