Fencing Bear at Prayer

  Sugar is a drug.   This observation will not come as news to long-time readers of this blog. I used to harp on it regularly , back in the day when I discovered Atkins and was cutting the carbs to lose weight . I can happily report that I have kept myself on a relatively low-carb diet since (ten years, woohoo!), but this past year and half were challenging, especially the six weeks in autumn 2020 that I spent with my mother while my step-father was dying. The house was full  of cookies and chocolates and more cookies made by her friends from church, and I ate all of them.  I tried resisting, but it just didn’t seem worth it. My step-father was dying; my brother and I were there to comfort our mother; and resisting the sugar seemed so pointless. Why not give in and get fat?  Except that somehow I knew, deep down, it wasn’t about getting fat.  It was about feeding the demons.  Have I told you about the year I spent eating frozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts when I was in elementary school

We have all felt the effects these past two years of not having access to our usual (older; now lost?) communities. “Two weeks to flatten the curve” turned into month after month of uncertainty, not being able to engage with each other in person. Conferences were cancelled , classes were thrown into Zoom rooms , and church services were streamed into our smart phones . It has been easy to fall into despair. What use could literature, particularly poetry, be in such a time, when what we want is a shield from the plague?  Surely we would have been better off spending our time in lockdown learning how to fight viruses and boost our immune system. Writing poetry is better left to times when we can relax and contemplate, not when we are in the thick of battle against economic collapse (Famine), political dysfunction (War), and disease (Plague). You see where I am going already, I am sure.  Intrigued?! Join me and the children of St. John Cantius for an hour of story telling in the Christian