For me, rain is an invitation for reflection, contemplation, to travel into the past. This is perhaps more common in the days of the coronavirus pandemic. The water has been falling continuously since early this morning, collecting in puddles in the empty streets and hammering the asphalt in slanted sheets. A cool wind sometimes picks up, slithering its way under doors and lashing the rain against the glass. The storm woke me up before dawn this morning, pelting away at the concrete as it filtered its way through the lightwell. I listened to it fall against the background of Franky’s even breaths. The entire world seemed to be asleep, except for me.
Read MoreNearly every memory I have of church involves attending Mass with my mother. While my father and siblings slept in on Sunday mornings—he still rose at dawn to work at the mechanic shop downtown; my younger brother and sister still shared a bed—my mother would wake me up bright and early to go to St. Elizabeth’s. I was ten or perhaps eleven, and while most kids that age would have complained about having to wake up at 7:00 to go to church, I actually looked forward to going. Like most other Latino kids my age, religion was important in my household: God wasn’t an abstract concept to us; God was instead a very real presence capable of unimaginable blessings or of completely upending our lives.
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