{"id":5115,"date":"2005-07-20T11:35:06","date_gmt":"2005-07-20T11:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/beyond-words.html"},"modified":"2005-07-20T11:35:06","modified_gmt":"2005-07-20T11:35:06","slug":"beyond-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/beyond-words.html","title":{"rendered":"Beyond words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, beyond the words we often write here. This, I think, is a great example of the power of narrative to reveal. It’s from a short story called, "Weightlifting for Catholics" by Mark Jacobs<\/a> in the most recent issue of The Atlantic.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Eagan had never liked this propserous suburban church, especially now, when the parking lot filled up every Sunday with SUVs and minivans and luxury sedans. He saw something martial in the way so many scrubbed families filed in to mass as if to an outing to the mall. At communion they consumed the body of Christ as if it were on sale and they knew a bargain whe they felt one disintigrate on their tongue. Unfair? Okay, he’d be unfair. He and Cathy and brought the kids to mass here for years. They hadn’t wanted their kids to grow up and become video clods, and the kids hadn’t. But Saint Mary’s had never been Eagan’s curch. His was darker, allowing a person to appreciate such light as made its way in. In Eagan’s church a mass was always going on, the same one and only sacrament perpetually looping, full of grace. The trick was showing up.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the story really doesn’t live up, as a whole, to this passage. But I still really liked this passage. Because there’s truth in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, beyond the words we often write here. This, I think, is a great example of the power of narrative to reveal. It’s from a short story called, "Weightlifting for Catholics" by Mark Jacobs in the most recent issue of The Atlantic. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}