says Sister Camilla as she walks into our homeroom one morning.

It's Tinkerbell, Sister.

Tinkerbell, Tinkerbell.  She is barely dressed.

She is a fairy, Sister.  She is a Disney character.

Humph.  You - in the third seat in front - go to the art department and get some crayons.

It's Letitia, Sister - Letitia (it was January of the school year)

Well, how am I supposed to remember your name - you keep changing your seat.

I love Friday masses in my parish.  There are the usual old, infirm, courageous village elders, a smattering of men and women on their way to work - some with briefcases, some with lunchboxes.  And - there are the grade school children from the Catholic School.  Every week there are two separate grades.  This morning it was the second grade and the eighth grade.    

Today we celebrate the feast day/name day of St. Joseph.  this year, because it falls in Easter Week, the church formally celebrated it earlier.

St. Joseph, patron of carpenters, husbands, and a good hedge for a "happy death" - husband of Mary, earthly father of Jesus.  Nice resume to be sure.  

I'm sitting at a scarred large wooden oak table covered with an oilcloth.  The oilcloth has cherries and dancing senioritas.  I'm coloring a Raggedy Ann book while my mother and her widowed sister, Sia Theresa (aka Tre) are talking and drinking coffee.  My aunt is smoking in the usual manner, flicking ashes into her left hand as she inhales with her right.  Auntie, it hurts you, stop.  No - it doesn't hurt.  I'm tough.

I read so often this comment on the blogs:  As a recovering Catholic (or Christian) - but I'm not insulted - let's face it, I am a drunkard at the Communion rail.  And to this point, may never enter rehab.  Nor will my family hold an intervention.  A good friend of mine, since passed, an agnostic, once said to me when I was having a crisis of faith:  Oh, I don't want you to stop believing please.  It's okay for me but I need you to believe.

At Monday's Mass, the gospel was the Centurian story.  You know the one where the Centurian has a sick servant and asks Jesus to cure the servant.  Lordy, how many times have I heard this gospel -- many, many times.  Yet at this hearing, I was struck strongly by the story as though it was the first I've heard of it.