Mary Karr's Ending

I began my preparation for this Lenten season early – last summer to be exact.  This was when I worked my way through Mary Karr's searing and ultimately redemptive memoir, Lit.  Author of The Liars' Club and Cherry, Karr concludes her reflections with these words:

"Every now and then we enter the presence of the numinous and deduce for an instant how we're formed, in what detail the force that infuses every petal might specifically run through us, wishing only to lure us into our full potential. Usually, the closest we get is when we love, or when some beloved beams back, which can galvanize you like steel and make resilient what had heretofore only been soft flesh. . . It can start you singing as the lion pads over to you, its jaws hinging open, its hot breath on you. Even unto death."

Below these words, at the end of her memoir, there is the following: Mary Karr  2009 Pax Christi.   It is the right way to frame a memoir and a life – by claiming our name, our anchorage in time, and our rest in the "peace of Christ."

For the journey,
Stephen