The action continues from yesterday about paradoxes.
When we come back from commercial, you jump out of the car and say, “Suzanne, is that you?” and I say, “Debbie? Could it be my long lost hairdresser?” and we embrace and make up and set an appointment for next Thursday at 3:15. A paradox because just seconds before you were hell-bent on trying to kill me.
Speaking of hell, on Sunday, with my raffle tickets clutched in my hopeful hand, I was wishing for two things: that I would get my luck back and win a raffle for the first time in a coon’s age, and that I’d win a pie, preferably a tasty pie like peach or blackberry or strawberry rhubarb.
Lo and behold, the first raffle number called was mine! I broke my long dry spell of no raffle prizes! I could just taste that flaky piecrust. Then they announced my prize.
A visit from the priest to bless my house.
Lord have mercy!
(a) My husband is an atheist. Not an agnostic / on the fence kind of believer who’s just not sure. He is absolutely positive there is no God and people like me are simply deceiving ourselves, and basically not right in the head.
(2) I’m a Catholic who likes to go to church on Sunday because I feel good about it, but I arrive a little late and don’t hang around after Mass. I slip in and slip out like a, well, like a Catholic late for church who has doesn’t want to hang around when it’s over. I’ve never even met this new priest and I HIGHLY suspect he doesn’t appreciate it when, ten minutes into his service, he hears the side door creak open and sees me slink in and duck into the first empty pew.
When my raffle number was called, the priest came over and shook my hand. “Call the office and we’ll get this scheduled,” he said.
Get what scheduled? Should I have him over for dinner? Lunch? Dessert? Coffee? Cocktails?
When I told my husband about my prize he said, “I don’t need to be here for that.” No telling what he’d say to this priest. For me, it’s not that the man is a priest, it’s more that he’s a perfect stranger.
However, I believe things don’t happen by coincidence. I won that raffle for a reason. My quandary is more, “What kind of hospitality do I extend to this gentleman coming to bless my house?” But I’m also thinking, “Holy moly, what the heck are we going to talk about?”
The last time I talked to a priest was at a party. I’d just come back from Italy and started blabbering about the Vatican. “It was beautiful but kindof creepy the way they had all those old Popes in coffins all over the place and there was that embalmed Pope in a glass coffin that gave me the heebie jeebies. What’s up with that?”
The priest excused himself immediately and went to talk with an ancient woman who, apparently, offered better opportunity for sparkling conversation than the likes of me.
As you can see, talking to priests is not my forte, hence my shyness about how to handle this visit to my home, though Lord knows this place could use a blessing, and a good cleaning, for that matter. Which is another stumbling block – I’d have to clean. Maybe I could have him come just before Thanksgiving, when I’m going to have to buckle down and get the vacuum out anyway.
The paradox here is that this blessing is not really a blessing, or is it?
Oh well, there are many considerations for me to consider. I will leave with one final paradox, apropos to these most recent events: Be careful what you wish for because it may come true.
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