{"id":822,"date":"2008-10-16T15:04:40","date_gmt":"2008-10-16T15:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/10\/thursday-scenery.html"},"modified":"2008-10-16T15:04:40","modified_gmt":"2008-10-16T15:04:40","slug":"thursday-scenery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/10\/thursday-scenery.html","title":{"rendered":"Thursday scenery"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Wal-Mart, it was the day of Buying A Lot of Stuff. One woman slid a case of red pepper sauce right off the shelf into her cart. As we were driving in, another woman was supervising workers who were stuffing huge plastic bags full of plastic pumpkin-shaped trick-or-treat baskets into the back of her station wagon – I assumed she was picking them up for a school or charity drive or some such.
\nBut the sight of the dozens of pumpkin baskets being claimed by one person clearly bothered Little Michael. He kept mentioning it while we shopped and at one point burst out with, “I think that was a bad <\/em>woman.” I kept telling him I’m sure there were some left in the store, but the simple task of providing proof was denied us because Michael, torn between his newfound terror of Halloween displays and his concern about the baskets, ultimately let the former win out.
\nAnd now, haunted by nightmares of pumpkin-hoarding Alabama women, he naps.
\nBut not before engaging me in some theological conversation on the way to pick up Joseph from school.
\n“Did God make us?”
\n“Yes.”
\n“How?”
\n(I think how to answer, but before I can…)
\n“Does he put us on a piece of paper and then make us?”
\n“Well, no..he spoke…”
\n“Smoke? <\/em>He make us from smoke?”<\/em>
\n“No – no (let’s try this again) – he makes us through our mommies and daddies.”
\n“How?”<\/em>
\n“Um…he just does.”
\nWell. He does. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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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. 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