This past weekend was my “birthday weekend.” It was so nice! We did “dinner and a movie.” Somewhat due to my 15-year-old grandson Henry being one of the viewers, I chose the movie, “Blinded by the Light.” Based on the memoir, “Greetings from Bury Park,” the book follows “the experience of Sarfraz Manzoor, a young Pakistani boy growing up in Britain in the 1970s. From the book jacket: Sarfraz was two years old when, in 1974, he emigrated from Pakistan to Britain with his mother, brother, and sister. He spent his teenage years in a constant battle, trying to reconcile being both British and Muslim, trying to fit in at school and at home.  Until he found “everything,” everything he was feeling, in Bruce Springsteen’s music, the music of the working class. 

My husband Donny, who was making dinner, wandered in and out. I mentioned that the movie would remind him of the experience of our grandparents, his from Lebanon (exclusively), mine, of a grandpa from Italy. They were “foreigners.” They were not considered “white.” Memories arose and were briefly spoken of. I loved it. It just “happened” and became a natural way for Henry to hear a little of our history in the context of the true story being shared in the movie.

This morning I looked for Springsteen on-line and discovered, belatedly, that there is a book made of conversations between him and President Obama, conversation, Springsteen writes, about “who we are and who we want to become.” 

https://brucespringsteen.net/news/2021/renegades-born-in-the-usa-2

From Springsteen’s introduction to the book:

“There were serious conversations about the fate of the country, the fortune of its citizens, and the destructive, ugly, corrupt forces at play that would like to take it all down. This is a time of vigilance when who we are is being seriously tested. Hard conversations about who we are and who we want to become can perhaps serve as a small guiding map for some of our fellow citizens. . . . This is a time for serious consideration of who we want to be and what kind of country we will leave our children. Will we let slip through our hands the best of us or will we turn united to face the fire?” 

 “Will we turn united to face the fire,” reminded me of “the fire” in “Mirari” and now “Memoria.” 

President Obama wrote of “Looking for a way to connect our own individual searches for meaning and truth and community with the larger story of America,” and how we might tell a “more unifying story.” 

I like to believe that all of our unifying stories work together. Mother Mary and I continue it in our way in “Memoria:” 

What you do not welcome, whether masculine or feminine, is what you will not receive. Welcome the divine masculine in yourselves, my daughters of light. Welcome the divine feminine in yourselves, my sons of fire. Embrace together the glow of the new flame. 

Memoria: The Way of the Marys

is finally on its way to the printer!