Religious signs are everywhere

I went to Minneapolis this past weekend to the Edge Life Expo 2003. It was at the Minneapolis Convention Center and was a gathering of healing body, mind and soul.

The Edge is a magazine filled with articles on alternative healing and how to empower oneself. The convention center was filled with more than 700 booths on alternative health. There were booths where you could get a massage, purchase homemade lotions and soaps, stones and one section of the convention center had booths filled with psychic readers.

I was at the Expo with my sister Kate and daughter Bridget. I asked Bridget if she was interested in having a psychic reading. Bridget looked around at all the booths to find the most cost-effective one. The readings at this booth were advertised at $20 for a half an hour. We went up to the woman that was promoting this psychic reader. She enthusiastically told us that the half-hour reading would have the psychic speaking to Bridget's angels, spiritual guides and any relatives that have passed through to the other side that wanted to visit.

"My goodness, that's a lot of spirits showing up in half an hour, especially with so much activity going on in this big place. There doesn't seem room for all those spirits to be able to come into this place that has so much activity and so many people around. How is the reader able to concentrate with all this activity?" I asked.

The young woman gushed, "Oh she's really good. The spirits that are your relatives that have passed over will only come through if they want to. The reader can't guarantee that they will show up. If you sign up for a reading, I can schedule you for three hours from now."

We didn't want to wait around for three hours and we said no thanks. Bridget said she wasn't interested in hearing from her dead relatives anyway and she wasn't sure that she had any spiritual guides or angels hanging around her.

When I was growing up and went to Catholic school, the nuns stressed that each person had a guardian angel. My mother had a light switch in our house that had two children on it with a large angel standing behind the children with out-stretched arms, protecting them. This image frightened me whenever I took a walk by myself, as I knew that I was never alone and that my angel was always behind me. I would whip around quickly to see if I could get a glimpse of my angel. My 10-year-old son Timmy attends Catholic school and he brought home a picture of the same image as my mother's light switch.

It has a prayer to his guardian angel on it and he loves the picture and prayer. He asked me what I thought of the picture and I told him it frightened me when I was a little girl, thinking that this huge angel was always hovering over me. Timmy laughed when I told him this.

"You are weird," he said.

My mother had other religious images and icons in every room of her house.

I was frightened of all the religious paraphernalia when I was young. I felt that the painted eyes on the statues and pictures were looking right at me and could read the bad thoughts that went through my mind. I had nightmares about the images and would be afraid to go into some rooms of the house by myself, especially where the images appeared sterner. I asked my mother why she had so many statues and pictures of saints all over the house and she told me that they were there to protect us. This was no comfort, as they frightened me so much.

Now that I am older, I am no longer afraid of all the religious paraphernalia and icons that were part of my life growing up. I understand that mom had these images in her house to protect her home and family. I hope I have a guardian angel to protect and guide me; I can use all the help I can get.

Volunteers do a great service
By Sheila Donnelly/Austin Daily Herald

I had one message left on my phone last week from a woman who said she was a subscriber to the Herald. The woman stated that my piece on the Blooming Prairie Lutefisk Supper was audacious and she wanted a retraction. I have no retraction, as I only wrote about the reaction my brother and husband had from eating lutefisk. I would never say anything against the dedicated women and men that put in long hours to pull these events off year after year.

I have the highest respect to all women and men who work at any church event. Churchwomen are the toughest and hardest workers around and I would never want to tangle with any of them.

I have volunteered for years for several different organizations. When I was 18, I moved to Boston and lived at a Catholic Worker House called Hayley House located on Boyleston Street. Hayley House was a free soup kitchen that was open daily for homeless men. I lived at Hayley House with my sister, Kate, a nurse named Pat and a musician named Jim. Four men that had been homeless were permanent residents of Hayley House. All four were alcoholics and could live at Hayley House as long as they were sober. If they became drunk, they had to turn in their key to the director of Hayley House who lived across the street with her husband and children. I lived at Hayley House for five months. Kate, Pat, Jim and I took turns, along with the director, of manning the door of the soup kitchen every morning.

The doors opened at 6 a.m. and two of the former homeless men who lived in the house, would already have a large urn of coffee ready along with day old bread, bagels and peanut butter to serve for breakfast. Coffee was served again at 9:30 a.m. and soup and bread was served at noon. Fifty men at a time could be in the room where a television, tables and chairs were set up.

A long line of men stretched outside and wound around the block, especially on cold days. When one man left, another would be let in. Twice a week, a hatch door that was in the floor of the kitchen was lifted up for the men to go down narrow steps and get free clothes. Tabs were kept on who took what so that a man wouldn't try to take more than his share and sell it later for booze.

Besides working at Hayley House, Kate and I drove a van filled with homeless men to detoxification at the Bridgewater, Mass. State Hospital twice a week. The men would stay at the hospital for 10 weeks to dry out. Some would line up to go to the hospital every month after they had spent their social security checks on booze and had no where else to go. The same men took the trip every month. We never drove alone when we took the men to the hospital, another man, named Whitey who was tough and wiry, drove along and beat on anyone that got out of line.

Working with the street men 30 years ago when alcohol was the drug of choice, it was safer than it would be today. Now the drugs of choice are heroin, crack, cocaine and others. Hayley House is still in operation today.

No longer do any of the homeless men live at the house, as most are addicts and cannot stay off drugs. It is still a safe place for men to stop in and warm themselves and get a meal. No questions are asked of the men, and no judgments are made. It was not depressing work for me, even though the men chose to not better themselves. I never knew why they settled for where they were in their lives. I saw goodness in each of the men. I learned to not make harsh judgments or assume anything from this experience and to accept people for who they are.

Lutefisk can give you hot flashes
By Sheila Donnelly/Austin Daily Herald

This is the time of year that I see notices in the grocery stores and other venues advertising lutefisk and meatball suppers.

The First Lutheran Church in Blooming Prairie had its annual supper two weeks ago. This week, Little Cedar Lutheran Church in Adams is having theirs. Almost every Lutheran Church that was settled by Norwegian immigrants in this area must be having a lutefisk and meatball supper. I never attended one of these traditional suppers until 10 years ago. Friends of ours asked Tom and I if we would like to go to the Blooming Prairie Lutheran Church Lutefisk and Meatball Supper with them. I said sure. Tom was not sure, as he didn't know what lutefisk was.

I said, "I've never eaten it, but I have heard people say that there are lots of other things to eat at these suppers, like meatballs, potatoes, a vegetable and lefse."

Tom knew what lefse was, as our neighbor, Viv, made lefse every Christmas.

She demonstrated to me once how she rolled out her dough of mashed potato and flour to make the thin lefse layers. Then she heated the delicate layers on a flat electric lefse skillet. Tom and I liked lefse with butter and jam.

I didn't know much about traditional Norwegian food, only what I had heard from friends at school when I was growing up. My friends talked about how great lefse and krumkake tasted. Lutefisk, I had heard, tasted good with loads of melted butter on it. So with this bit of knowledge about traditional Norwegian food, I went to my first lutefisk and meatball supper.

My brother, Kevin, who lives in Ireland, was back for a visit and he went with Tom and I to the First Lutheran Church in Blooming Prairie. Kevin is a fisherman and is a colorful character and was regaling us and our friends and the people they brought along with tales of the deep sea, as we waited in line for an hour to be seated. We were all hungry when we were finally seated in the church dining hall. The women of the church set bowls of meatballs, mashed potatoes with melted butter, vegetables, lefse, bread rolls and of course lutefisk in front of us. The food was quickly passed family style around the table and each person loaded up his or her plate. When Kevin was passed the lutefisk, he got a look of total disgust on his face and proclaimed very loudly, "What the hell did they do to this fish?"

A gentleman was sitting next to Kevin and he chuckled softly. He told Kevin that he was originally from Norway. The man said that he had never eaten lutefisk in Norway. The man told Kevin that the fish had been soaked in lye.

Tom was listening to this conversation and had taken a couple of bites out of the lutefisk. He turned to me horrified and said, "Lye? Did he say lye? That's why I am so hot. As soon as I ate this fish, I got hot all over."

I looked at Tom, and sure enough his face was all flushed and he was perspiring.

"Waves of heat are coming all over me from this fish. I'm not eating anymore," said Tom.

Meanwhile Kevin was still ranting and raving about the lutefisk to the gentleman from Norway.

"I lived in Norway too," said Kevin. "I never ate fish prepared like this. This type of fish wouldn't ever be allowed on the fishing boats anywhere. This fish is disgusting."

Everyone was glancing at our table and I suggested to Kevin that he try the meatballs. He told me he wasn't eating red meat. Kevin didn't like the krumkake that was served for dessert either, as he doesn't eat sweets.

We did have a nice time with the company that we went to the supper with, but we have never been to a Lutefisk and Meatball Supper since. Tom doesn't care for foods that give him hot flashes and Kevin won't eat fish that has been dead more than one day.