♪ How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? ♪

"She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee, her dress has got a tear She waltzes on her way to mass and whistles on the stairsAnd underneath her wimple she has curlers in her hairI've even heard her singing in the abbey She's always late for chapel but her penitence is real She's always late for everything except for every meal...I hate to have to say it but I very firmly feel: Maria's not an asset to the abbey.
I'd like to say a word in her behalf-- then say it, Sister Margaretta -- Maria makes me laugh.

How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you find a word that means Maria? A flibbety-gibbet, a will'o'the'wisp, a clown? Many a thing you know you'd like to tell her, many a thing she ought to understand...but how do you make her stay? And listen to all you say? How do you keep a wave upon the sand? Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?"

Lyricist and songwriting team Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote these lilting notes to describe a novice Catholic nun living in Salzburg, Austria, in the late 1930's. ( My mother probably had no idea that these would fit her second daughter to a tee, as exasperated as she would become, and has  remained, regarding my unconventional Calamity Jane self. Sorry Mom. Least I can sing. ) As we all know, the orphaned Maria became governess to Captain Georg Von Trapp's seven children and they eventually married  -- their remarkable tale crafted into the R & H musical, "The Sound of Music".

I've always been a lot like Maria Von Trapp. Always late, always singing, always hoping for the best but fairly hapless in achieving the best, always judged by others as just not quite acceptable,  loved and cherished as long as I'm making everybody laugh and am a sparkly pretty party favor who follows the rules without question.

I AM a lot like Maria in the fact that despite all that, I am loved and in love with a man who has several slightly incorrigible children who need to be loved. :-)

I'm pretty sure that's also where my interest in Catholicism began, all those years ago, listening to the Nonnberg nuns sing praises to God.

I'm also pretty sure my year's journey into Catholicism has run its' course.

I just returned/escaped from a morning at a Catholic "retreat".

Convinced by peers and associates that it was not Catholic but Christian and a "faith-building" weekend, I reluctantly went, hoping to be blessed by camaraderie and fellowship and time to pray and reflect. I was supposed to stay until tomorrow night. I lasted from 6:30 am for four hours, after being herded to and fro by a team that Captain Von Trapp would have been proud of.

All they needed were ship's whistles.

A team that snapped at me when I wanted to step outside for some fresh air. ( YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO GO OUTSIDE). Huh?

A team that did not allow anything but water to be brought into the upstairs meeting room, even though they'd stated several  times that we were to make ourselves at home and ask for anything we needed. (Don't ask Catholic ladies on a planning team for coffee. Not a good idea. They're on a schedule.)

A retreat without cell phones is one thing. A chance to reflect, to pray, to be away from everyday life, yes, that's what I reluctantly agreed to.

A rigorously scheduled PROGRAM, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. at night, that the parish priest won't make time to come in to bless, one which does not allow one to reflect, to pray, or to relax, is not a retreat.

It's an in-service.

After being banned from the coffee three times, banned from the outdoors-- to the extreme of cardboard over all the windows--  and desperately trying to keep my claustrophobic self from freaking out in a small room crammed with fifty women, I asked to speak to one of the team in private -- and even THAT had to be approved. By someone else.

" Do you know her? Let me see if it's okay." Really???

We finally got to go outside. GASP -- the horror.

I told her that the crux of my dilemma was that one of the team leaders happened to be the aunt of the girl that my former husband had denied knowing. Denied seeing someone else, denied getting engaged when I saw them together WITH their engagement pictures, and denied being STILL MARRIED TO ME after I called the pastor who married THEM. While WE were still married.  Yep. That's what we call bigamy, folks. And that's what my lawyer told him  -- and my former Hurricane Husband promptly sent the divorce fees, got a divorce from me four months AFTER marrying this lady's niece.

I wasn't mad at that niece's aunt-lady. She didn't marry him. Lucky for her.

I'm not mad at the niece. She was lied to, just like I was when the serial groom married me after abandoning his first marriage.

But because of all that, I couldn't concentrate fully in the room crammed with fifty women and no window to look out of ,when I wanted to ask her if she liked my furniture which he took from me when he left, if the big screen TV I paid for had a good picture for the Super Bowl last week at her niece's house.

 I know. Get over it. Yep. Move on. Thank you.

Same thing people tell my dear friend who lost her first-born four years ago.
"You've got to move on."

We do, dammit. We move on because it will kill us too if we stay there, but we'd rather lay down and die. We keep moving on. Until we find a baby shoe in a drawer, or until we see someone who knows the someone that we loved, even if it was the wrong thing to love them.

Sometimes it's too much, especially when leaders of a retreat see you crying and still make snide remarks, and get irritated with you for disrupting THEIR PLANS EVEN THOUGH THEY SAID THEY WERE THERE TO SERVE, just like the nuns in the Abbey in Salzburg.

I was in a corner, FINALLY with coffee in my hand, trying to collect my sad self in the corner before rejoining the group with the little dignity I had left.

Another Team lady walked past me, looked over at me, and said, " Let's hope she's done talking...".

I thanked them for their 'hospitality', grabbed my stuff, and headed home.

Problem solved for the Captain Von Trapp Team leaders. Now they can stick to their schedule.

TWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETTTT.

I'm at home, and in seclusion, just like Maria at one point.

The Catholic Church has run just fine, yep, sho' has, for two thousand years without me, and it can keep on going that way. I love the antiquity of the Church, the traceable continuity to people who KNEW Jesus, who ate with Him, and walked with Him.

A 2,000 year-old-faith, built on the message of the Messiah who never snapped at anyone except money-changers defiling the Temple, unfortunately still remains in the clutches of power-mad peeps. I do not love the rigid order of things that is explained  vaguely as " there have to be rules...". No duh.

That's what the Ten Commandments are for.

I AM like Maria. I sure as hell don't fit in the Abbey.

I do not fit, anywhere -- except in a room full of young children.

Funny, that's what one of the staff told me one day, that I had skills and talents that worked well in that room, and that's where I should stay. I'll do just that, until my own 'Captain' comes home and whistles for me.

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? With care and awe. It doesn't stay long...