Kathy Coffey

(Mk. 10: 46-52, Mk. 8:22-26)

This weekend, some will hear the story of healing blind Bartimaeus. Let’s look at it from his wife’s viewpoint.

I was so embarrassed, I started the shushing. Right there in front of everyone, my husband bellowed to some fool preacher called Jesus. Where Mark later said, “many rebuked him,” I was first. I must have told him twenty times to hush, but that only made it worse. The ridiculous man just kept broadcasting his need. Why couldn’t he hide it politely, as all the rest of us had learned to do? I for one knew how to keep needs bundled, almost smothered. It was startling when Jesus stood still. How, in all the tumult and noise, had he heard one lone voice of one unimportant person on the fringe?

I must admit my outrage when some idiot in the crowd whispered, “take courage; get up, he is calling you” (Mk. 10: 49). Now I was Doomed. History. Toast. I couldn’t look when he eagerly threw aside his cloak to “spring up.” The man hasn’t sprung in twenty years. The last coil of energy I remember was during our courtship. Before his accident, he was springy—but now he was old and awkward, so he probably “lurched.” Was this a pathetic effort to recapture an earlier happiness? Was he crazy to think this guy might help him? And how did he ever find his way to that voice? After he impetuously tossed the cloak, did some homing instinct lead to what he needed most?

It seemed so futile and heart-breaking, I started trudging home. On the way I worried about him being shamed and disappointed in front of the crowd. How would I endure their nasty gossip afterwards? In a place the size of Jericho, word gets around faster than the flip of a bird’s wing. So I guess I missed the healing.

But I got the story second-hand: all the neighbors chattering eagerly at once, then ol’ Bart himself, appearing at the door. He rushed right for me, elated, fairly leaping. For a second I hoped he’d forgotten how much better I looked the last time he saw me. What if he noticed the weight I’d gained? The stress of those years took its toll on my body. I knew I was more stooped, more grey, more wrinkled. But he drew me into his arms as though I were his bride. Kissing my hair, he told me how beautiful I was. Well, I won’t lie. I relished that—what woman doesn’t want to drink the youth potion?

But soon the neighbors went home, the excitement died down, and I faced harsh realities. Daily I worried: He made a fair living as a beggar; I didn’t want to lose it. Sighted, he’d get no sympathy. Now what would we do? Was he expecting me to start some lucrative career? Even deeper bubbled a dark thought. For all those years, I had been his eyes. Sighted now, would he still need me? We had a system for coping then; now he’d wrecked it. Sometimes he stares at me so intently I want to scream.

Bit by bit, I’m growing used to Bartimaeus’ wild enthusiasm for everything he can see. He’ll run in from the garden, balancing vegetables in one hand and flowers in the other. “Look!” he’ll cry with a child’s delight. He never misses a sunrise, which has interrupted my sleep and made me even more crabby. Aglow himself, he watches the dawn stroke the treetops and hillsides. A walk to the market takes forever. He stops, astonished, at every bend in the road. Connecting voices with faces is another exercise in sheer glee.

When he says he’s following “on the way,” what does that mean? Does it have something to do with this new-found awe and praise? I feel left behind. Even the things I take for granted stun him. He gets eloquent about a lake glazed with the silver mesh of sun, or buds curled tight as fists. To him, every annoying insect is a marvelous toy. My husband has become curious as my infant grandson, examining the intricacies of his own hands and toes with painstaking attention.

And don’t get him started on stars, or the patterns in clouds! Please—I’ve got dishes to wash and a porch to sweep! Part of me wishes he’d shut up, but another part wants to see everything as freshly as he does—like taking that first stroll through paradise in Genesis. Every day he’s intrigued as Adam. When do I get the chance to take his hand and look out like Eve? It sounds crazy, but I’m almost tempted to echo his words, “Master, I want to see.”

Excerpt from More Hidden Women of the Gospels by Kathy Coffey. Orbis Press, 800-258-5838, orbisbooks.com.

What unique paths people take to navigate the geography of grief.

When Susan Swetnam is widowed and childless at age 54, she enters a labyrinth of grieving, and through her skillful writing brings the reader along every step of the way. She begins by explaining that “the angel of disturbing circumstance” can be loss of marriage, job or home, health concerns, career or financial challenges, failures of every sort, any interruption of the trajectory we expected for our lives. How do we endure these shocks? Some will never really get over them, and everyone will bear some scars.

Swetnam leads us to imagine how God can use things which first seem disastrous to serve God’s unfolding purposes. The essential hinge: framing “life’s disruptions as annunciations,” saying “yes” as Mary did, despite our fear or bitterness. Fortunately, Swetnam spares us the pieties and shows how Mary too is initially shocked, resistant and confused by the angel’s message.

To move forward when her concept of the future is shattered, Swetnam reflects on six Renaissance paintings that depict the Annunciation, the ultimate “yes” to an unknown script. They show the whole range of emotions Luke reports Mary feeling. Her steppingstones to acceptance give readers permission to be human as they too reconcile to the divine will.

Swetnam’s intensely personal experience offers hope to many who endure incalculable loss. The author is brutally honest about natural, futile attempts to cope: depression, addiction, denial, magical thinking, suicidal ideas, and luminously clear about how Mary’s path might better accompany. She alerts readers to “Gabriel surrogates” and reaches the delightful point of saying to Mary, “Oh girlfriend, I get what you’re feeling.”

Over a 20-year process, details discovered in the paintings and shifts in Swetnam’s life experience lead her to see how “Yes comes in many forms… and adapts to many timetables.” Eventually, tragedy turns to treasure and desert to garden. Lucky the reader who gets to come along for the transformation.

Teresa was the first female doctor of the church, named in 1970. A non-ordained woman was a departure from tradition, but Pope Paul VI said she exercised the priesthood of all the baptized. Thirty-five years earlier, under Inquisition scrutiny, the papal nuncio called her “a restless gadabout, a disobedient and contumacious woman who invented wicked doctrines.” Teresa seemed to inspire extreme responses.

Context

The Influence of the Italian renaissance on Spain produced a golden age of literature, and the Bible translated into the vernacular. Study groups led by women were like the Vatican II renewal. But the challenge to the clerical monopoly on God incensed the Inquisition, which became a doctrinal watchdog, forbade women teachers, and destroyed vernacular Bibles.

In a rigid hierarchy and dangerous climate of suspicion and fear, Teresa danced nimbly around her critics. She became expert with coy disclaimers that she didn’t know what she was talking about. How could others condemn when she beat them to it?

Biography (1515 – 1582)

Teresa’s grandpa was a Jew, forced to convert to Christianity. Punished and humiliated in Toledo, Spain, he moved the family to Avila and became successful again.

Her youth was frivolous and flirtatious and she deeply regretted 20 years of indifference. But they were a “happy fault”—giving reason to praise God’s infinite mercies. In convents then, the wealthy had freedom to come and go, an entourage of family, friends, and servants, good wine, food and social life. Illness brought Teresa to deeper spirituality and by 1562, she founded her first reformed convent.  Despite lawsuits, she established 17 convents separated by muddy roads and terrible traveling conditions. These may have prompted her metaphor: “Whoever truly loves you, my God, travels by a broad and a royal road.”

Themes

At the time, prayer meant rote formulas; Teresa shifted it to intimate conversation with a friend. She introduced metaphors like the spiritual life as garden. We work hard at watering, but grace brings rain. One of her most popular books The Interior Castle shows Christ within, the soul’s radiant light. She reminded her sisters, “We are not hollow inside.” “The soul’s amplitude cannot be exaggerated.”

Among her endearing sayings: “From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, good Lord deliver us!” She learned to avoid scruples, and once digging into a feast, chortled, “there is a time for fasting and a time for partridge. THIS is the time for partridge!” Brisk, practical and fun, she admitted she was a sucker for affection: “I could be bought for a herring.”

From “Extraordinary Influencers” by Kathy Coffey, Liguorian.org, Oct. ’22, p. 13.

The Grace of Grandparenting

A Day of Prayer for those who Nurture

Let’s celebrate what grandparents do naturally—love the grandkids with God’s own free-from-judgment love, and mirror their beauty. We’ll explore the spirituality that underlies that miraculous process.

Oct. 21—9 to 3

$50 includes lunch

Villa Maria del Mar, Santa Cruz CA

To register: www.vmdm.retreatportal.com

More info: Sister Michelle, vmdm.retreats@snjmuson.org, 204-688-1785

900,000 kinds of insects, 10,000 species of birds, 73,000 tree species: This Creator loves variety!

Consider any first grade class: one asks for more Math while another dances pencils and erasers like dolls. A freckled, sandy-haired Dennis the Menace grins wickedly besides a solemn girl with dark eyes and hair cascading down her back. One wants to be a paleontologist; another a garbage collector. Truly God who “formed my inmost being; … knit me in my mother’s womb” did so with exquisite care, intending uniqueness. 

It’s no different for Martha and Mary. If we look at the sisters dualistically, one’s right, one’s wrong, one’s good, one’s bad. But Jesus delights in each, seeing them contemplatively, without judging. In Martha he smiles at the four-year old snitch: Why can’t she address Mary directly? When we’re honest, we admit there’s much we don’t know about scripture. In this case, we don’t know Jesus’ tone of voice when he seems to rebuke Martha. Nor do we know if he chopped the onions afterwards…

Martha’s turn will come: she’s not defined by her blunt outburst. The sisters’ personalities remain consistent in Luke and John 11. Before he raises Lazarus, Jesus enjoys Martha’s intelligence, one of the few who recognizes his identity, who can discuss the theology of resurrection. Mary at her brother’s tomb says little, but weeps; Jesus weeps with her. He instinctively gives each woman exactly what she needs without labeling or analyzing: “With all [their] ways you are familiar.”

All of us, then: “fearfully, wonderfully made.”

 “Calling Each by Name,” from the October 2024 issue of Give Us This Day giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2024). Used with permission.

The Grace of Grandparenting

A Day of Prayer for those who Nurture

Led by Kathy Coffey

Let’s celebrate what grandparents do naturally—love the grandkids with God’s own free-from-judgment love, and mirror their beauty. We’ll explore the spirituality that underlies that miraculous process.

Oct. 21—9 to 3

$50 includes lunch

Villa Maria del Mar, Santa Cruz CA

To register: www.vmdm.retreatportal.com

More info: Sister Michelle, vmdm.retreats@snjmuson.org, 204-688-1785

Some themes seem to recur in a lifetime of writing: in this case, sacramentality and Thomas Merton. The first means seeing the Creator’s imprint everywhere—not only some water and oil is holy; but all creation shines with divine presence. When everything is an icon of God, then as Carl McColman says, “life becomes a shimmering adventure.”

Reading When the Trees Say Nothing, a compilation of Thomas Merton’s writings on nature edited by Kathleen Deignan, I notice how he always starts with the concrete, then moves to the spiritual insight. For instance, “Crows swear pleasantly in the distance, and in the depths of my soul sits God.” A clunkier writer starts with the abstraction, giving us no basis to believe it: for instance, incessant yammering about “God loves you,” without solid proof. Despite years of fidelity to the Trappists, Merton could look larger than customary religious observance: “Watching birds was a food for meditation or a mystical reading. Perhaps better…” 

Again, Merton first sets the stage in the specific: “seeing the multitude of stars above the bare branches of the wood, I was suddenly hit, as it were, with the whole package of meaning of everything: that the immense mercy of God was upon me, that the Lord in infinite kindness had looked down on me…” Human creatures who rely on our five senses, we are naturally sacramental: initially attracted by the scent of flowers or candles, the sound of a lovely hymn, the beauty of stained glass, the taste of bread and wine, the touch of hands at the exchange of a peace sign—all leading into the mysteries revealed in story and symbol.

Some may wonder what a monk living in a Kentucky hermitage, writing from the mid-40s ‘til the mid-60s might have to offer today. That’s where the imagination comes in, translating to our realities. Hearing quails whistling in a field after they’d been gone for weeks, Merton writes, “there they are! Signs of life, of gentleness, of helplessness, of providence, of love.”

It’s not too much of a stretch to see similar signs as parents drop off their children for the start of elementary school: adjusting backpacks, applying sunscreen to frail, exposed necks, checking “got your snack?,” turning trustingly to the teacher, giving the last goodbye hug. From the small and specific, we move to the vast wonders. No ego need intrude: observing deer, their “deerness” sacred and marvelous, Merton “saw again how perfect a situation this is, how real, how far beyond my need of comment or justification.”

“The deer reveals to me something essential in myself! Something beyond the trivialities of my everyday being and my individuality.” May we all see nature through such a broad, insightful, generous lens.

The Grace of Grandparenting

A Day of Prayer for those who Nurture

Led by Kathy Coffey

Let’s celebrate what grandparents do naturally—love the grandkids with God’s own free-from-judgment love, and mirror their beauty. We’ll explore the spirituality that underlies that miraculous process.

Oct. 21—9 to 3

$50 includes lunch

Villa Maria del Mar, Santa Cruz CA

To register: www.vmdm.retreatportal.com

More info: Sister Michelle, vmdm.retreats@snjmuson.org, 204-688-1785

On this day in 1996, Henri Nouwen died. Many of us probably read his books when they first appeared, but it’s splendid to revisit them years later. Probably the most popular are Return of the Prodigal Son and Life of the Beloved, but the focus today is on Reaching Out. (Page numbers in parentheses will refer to it.)

It is notable for some of Nouwen’s perennial, enduring themes. First and perhaps most striking is his own woundedness. He is boldly honest about his physical and mental health concerns, and the book was written as he recovered from a breakdown.

In it, he gives a welcoming and inclusive view of God rare for 1975, when it was first published. In contrast to the prevailing thought that we had to earn nearness to God by not sinning, Jesus gives “a union [with God] so total and full, there’s not the slightest place for the experience of absence or separation.” (94) It’s like eating a nourishing, delicious dinner to read that Jesus never says, “I’ll know Spirit fully and you’ll know a bit” or “I can do great things in God and you can do maybe a few.” Instead it’s “you can have the same experience of knowing Love that I do—and do greater things.” (95)

Another theme is the importance of our personal stories; what a loss it is to be people without narratives. For “in telling our stories, we befriend our past” (69) and interweave them with the parables of Jesus. Through our histories, God molds us as the sculptor molds the clay. Our response is a careful attentiveness to the loving hands on our shoulders, sculpting and guiding. All that happens then becomes part of our contemplation and meditation, inviting a free and fearless response (28). Rather than prayer being a drudgery or obligation, Nouwen sees at as “a great adventure, because God defies all our calculations and predictions” (95).

A bonus is a second section, titled Glimpse Beyond the Mirror, in which Nouwen recounts a serious car accident. He was hit by the mirror of a passing van while walking an icy road in winter. He then underwent surgery for a ruptured spleen and was not expected to recover. I’ve always admired how fluently he writes in English, when his native language was Dutch. Here, he makes marvelous use of metaphor, where the mirror and near-death experience give him a new look at himself and life.  

Awakening from the operation, surprised to be alive, he felt sent to make God’s love known, as it is freely given, not as it must be earned or deserved. Surely that rock-firm assurance undergirds the two popular books named in the first paragraph. For them Nouwen drew on his recent experience of living in eternity while remaining in time. “I can let the experience of belonging to God be the place from which I can live the human pain of homelessness and estrangement.” So too, Jesus’ ministry sprang “from his deep experience of being unconditionally loved and was in no way motivated by a personal need for affirmation and acceptance.” (161) Thus, in another familiar theme, Nouwen can say that we’re “at Home while still on the way.” If we’re feeling lost, discouraged, angry or floundering anywhere else on the deeply human spectrum, it may be just the message we need to hear.

For a brief, free, daily meditation, also in Spanish, excerpted from Nouwen’s work, subscribe to: email-list@henrinouwensociety.ccsend.com.

The Grace of Grandparenting

A Day of Prayer for those who Nurture

Led by Kathy Coffey

Let’s celebrate what grandparents do naturally—love the grandkids with God’s own free-from-judgment love, and mirror their beauty. We’ll explore the spirituality that underlies that miraculous process.

Oct. 21—9 to 3

$50 includes lunch

Villa Maria del Mar, Santa Cruz CA

To register: www.vmdm.retreatportal.com

More info: Sister Michelle, vmdm.retreats@snjmuson.org, 204-688-1785

Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179)

Germany’s greatest mystic, scientist, and doctor, Hildegard was influential in theology, nature, medicine, cosmology, the human condition and the world-at-large. She also assumed ground-breaking roles for a woman of her time: artist, author, composer, mystic, pharmacist, poet, preacher, theologian, scientist, doctor, and political critic. Named a saint and doctor of the church in 2012, she believed passionately in God’s presence and activity in creation, as well as being a life force within. One of her guiding concepts was “viriditas,” the greening power of God, a word which combines the Latin for “green” and “truth,” with connotations of vigor and freshness. While we can observe it in gardens and forests, Hildegard believed we could also cultivate it in our souls.[i]

During her seventies, Hildegard completed two medical texts, which catalogued over 280 plants, cross-referenced with their healing uses. She saw humans as “living sparks” of God’s love, coming from God as daylight comes from the sun. A poet and composer, Hildegard collected 77 of her lyric poems, each with a musical setting she composed in Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum. Her numerous other writings include lives of saints; two treatises on medicine and natural history, reflecting a quality of scientific observation rare at that period; and extensive correspondence, in which are to be found further prophecies and allegorical treatises. She also for amusement contrived her own language.

Despite her vows of enclosure—which, in theory, restricted her to the cloister—she managed to remain very much in touch with the outside world. After approval of her book Scivias by Pope Eugenius in 1147, she began to receive visits from and correspond with hundreds of people throughout Europe, including Henry II of England, Louis VII of France, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the empress of Byzantium

Hildegard  thought connection with nature brings people a “primordial joy.” More than eight hundred years after her death, her message rings so true that she could well be considered patroness of environmental awareness. Although she would’ve been appalled by the destruction to the planet, she would’ve cheered robustly for efforts to save it.

Excerpt from More Hidden Women of the Gospels by Kathy Coffey, Orbis, OrbisBooks.com, 800-258-5838.

[i] https://www.healthyhildegard.com/hildegards-viriditas

The Grace of Grandparenting

A Day of Prayer for those who Nurture

Led by Kathy Coffey

Let’s celebrate what grandparents do naturally—love the grandkids with God’s own free-from-judgment love, and mirror their beauty. We’ll explore the spirituality that underlies that miraculous process.

Oct. 21—9 to 3

$50 includes lunch

Villa Maria del Mar, Santa Cruz CA

To register: www.vmdm.retreatportal.com

More info: Sister Michelle, vmdm.retreats@snjmuson.org, 204-688-1785

Someday it may seem mild, but a priest who openly admitted being alcoholic and gay, then went rollerblading in his sixties was pushing the narrowly defined boundaries of priesthood in the seventies and eighties.

At one time, Mychal Judge drank so heavily he had blackouts. The drinking began in the seminary with little sips of altar wine. By 1976, “his alcoholism had become so serious that it became both crisis and opportunity.” After joining AA, Judge later attended as many of its meetings as he could. Some thought he was more familiar with the AA book than with the Bible.

The risk was dramatic at a time when “if a friar had drinking problem, it was hushed up or he was sent away for therapy.” So too for his second frontier: being gay. Judge was open about his gender preference even at a time when Archbishop O ‘Connor was quoted in the  New York Post as saying, “I would close all my orphanages rather than employ one gay person.” At first hesitant to march in New York’s first inclusive St. Patrick’s Day parade in 2000, Judge received wild acclaim from the crowd—and nervous disapproval from the church.

That continued when he was reported to the diocese for not wearing vestments at firehouse Masses. Judge told the young clerical bureaucrat who called him on the carpet: “if I’ve ever hurt the church I’ve served and loved so dearly for 40 years, I want to be burned at the stake on 5^th Ave., at the front doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.” “No matter how many robes Cardinal [O’Connor] put on or how much power he tried to exert, he still could not… quash Mychal Judge.”

The story of his death is well known: Judge rushed to the World Trade Center to be with the firefighters responding to the disaster. Some speculate that he removed his helmet to pray the last rites over a dying firefighter, was struck on the head by debris and died. Five rescue workers carried him out through the rubble; Shannon Stapleton’s photo of them was widely published. (His friends joked that even in death, Mychal still loved a photo-op.) Firefighters laid Judge’s body before the altar in a nearby church, covering it with a sheet, his stole and badge. His eulogist pointed out how appropriate it was that Judge died first; then he’d be in heaven to meet over 400 first responders who arrived later.

Judge’s biographer comments on the impromptu ritual of two cops praying over his body at Ground Zero. It’s not only OK for laity to give last rites in an emergency. It “was, in fact, entirely in keeping with Father Mychal’s own sacramental theology of hallowing the moment and was typical of the way ordinary people generated light in the darkness of that day.” The overflow crowd outside Judge’s funeral proved what his eulogist said: “When he was talking with you, you were the only person on the face of the earth.. . . We come to bury his heart but not his love. Never his love.”

Excerpt from When the Saints Came Marching In by Kathy Coffey, Liturgical Press, 800-858-5450

The Grace of Grandparenting

A Day of Prayer for those who Nurture

Led by Kathy Coffey

Let’s celebrate what grandparents do naturally—love the grandkids with God’s own free-from-judgment love, and mirror their beauty. We’ll explore the spirituality that underlies that miraculous process.

Oct. 21—9 to 3

$50 includes lunch

Villa Maria del Mar, Santa Cruz CA

To register: www.vmdm.retreatportal.com

More info: Sister Michelle, vmdm.retreats@snjmuson.org, 204-688-1785

(Romans 16:1-2)

Phoebe speaks:

I simply did what needed doing.

My dear friend Paul commended me for my deacon’s work in the church of Cenchreae, the one mention of me that’s endured. But we had none of the titles that must’ve evolved later. I wanted to bear witness to Jesus, to follow him, and to do his work. You might say he captured my imagination; he became my great happiness.

Anyone who heard about him for more than a day or two knew his focus on letting go of non-essentials. To him, those “fields shining white for the harvest” were more compelling than any synagogue authorities. After all, the man was baptized in a river by a fellow who ate locusts! No formal ritual in the temple for his initiation rite. None of the trappings of tribalism for him! Did he ever ask anyone for a marriage license or a baptismal certificate before he cured them? Did he check up on what church they attended or quiz them on purity codes before they had a conversation?

We tried to shape our priorities like Jesus’. I was Paul’s co-worker and we had much to do. (Even if some of my influence was reining in his large ego and toning down his zeal!) I didn’t even object to his description of me: “a benefactor of many and of myself as well” (16: 1).

My home, Cenchreae was Corinth’s eastern seaport, a place of cross-currents where cultures meet and stories spread. Good place to be!  I had managed a household, raised a family and welcomed friends to my home. It seemed a natural step to host Christian communities. Why would I suddenly take a lesser role? Paul certainly wasn’t threatened by me; indeed he welcomed and appreciated all the gifts everyone brought to his magnificent enterprise.[i] We may have been small groups of only forty or so, but we knew we could make tremendous change in the ego-driven, power-hungry, slave-holding society where we lived.

All that may explain why, when Paul asked me to carry his letter, I said, “of course.” I had the means and the wit; I liked adventure and liked carrying good news—why not? What an honor to read his message aloud for the first time.

I may get the press, but I wasn’t the only one. A tomb inscription in Cappadocia describes the less glorious work of more anonymous women: “Here lies the deacon Maria…who according to the words of the apostle raised children, sheltered guests, washed the feet of the saints, and shared her bread with the needy.”[ii] I’d be honored to stand as a representative of so many women, unnamed and unsung, who built that early church, pulled between arguments and grace.

And still they stand. In enlightened parishes this weekend, we’ll hear women’s voices raised. Their homilies are far too infrequent, but true to form, feisty Pheobe gives us the excuse…

[i] Florence Gillman. Women Who Knew Paul (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 41-42.

[ii] Phyllis Zagano, Holy Saturday (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 94.

Excerpt from More Hidden Women of the Gospels by Kathy Coffey, Orbis Press, 800-258-5838, or website: https://orbisbooks.com/

The Grace of Grandparenting

A Day of Prayer for those who Nurture

Led by Kathy Coffey

Let’s celebrate what grandparents do naturally—love the grandkids with God’s own free-from-judgment love, and mirror their beauty. We’ll explore the spirituality that underlies that miraculous process.

Oct. 21—9 to 3

$50 includes lunch

Villa Maria del Mar, Santa Cruz CA

To register: www.vmdm.retreatportal.com

More info: Sister Michelle, vmdm.retreats@snjmuson.org, 204-688-1785

I cried through most of “Daughters,” a documentary on Netflix. It tells of a dance arranged for incarcerated fathers with their young girls—“A Date with Dad.” Wisely focused on four of the girls, we watch, for instance, as Aubrey at five delights in her dad’s attention at the dance, and learns how seven rotations of the earth around the sun will constitute her dad’s sentence—7 years. It all began when a girl explained that her dad couldn’t come to the school dance because he was in jail. So community organizers said, “Let’s take the dance to them!”

For the fathers, the preparation is intense—10 weeks of a parenting course, followed by fittings for suits. The film shows them teaching each other how to tie ties, and one organizer’s 80-year old dad shines their dress shoes. Then the day arrives: other inmates wave goodbye as the dads leave for the dance. In perhaps the most dramatic moment, they sit, all dressed up, boutonnieres in their lapels, nervously and expectantly filling folding chairs along a sterile, institutional corridor of their D.C . jail. They lean forward tensely, all eyes on the door. When the first little girls appear in their best dresses, their hair done, the children’s excitement turns to a running plunge into dads’ arms. Some had worried they might not recognize each other, after absences of 3 to 5 years, but those concerns are quickly alleviated with hugs and tears all ‘round.  

They have the time of their lives at the dance, with party food, music, games, art projects, lots of dancing. It gives new meaning to the Carey Landry song, “And the Father will dance, as on a day of joy. He will exalt over you and renew you by his love.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYQLLpWR9Q0)

Then the sad part—the goodbyes. Everyone is weeping; no one knows when they’ll see each other again. Wisely, the girls’ moms comfort them, and the dads have a processing session together. What emerges is how widely they’d failed to understand their own importance in their daughters’ lives. As one dad admits, “I’m usually in and out of jail every six months. But I’m never coming back.” Impressively, 95% of the dads who participated in the project don’t return to jail.

The film follow-up continues for several years, and some dads leave prison, returning to their families. One 10-year old who’d assumed adult responsibilities because her mom had a new baby had rarely smiled before. But caught in the rain with her dad, she breaks into a radiant smile and giggles. Sadly, the older girls seem to grow more distant, and Aubrey’s dad unexpectedly has his sentence turn into 10 years. She becomes noticeably cooler, returning almost numb from one rare visit where a pane of glass separated them. The dad grieves: “I couldn’t hold her like I did at the dance.” Some dads mention being better role models for when their older girls start to date—this is the kind of guy to look for.

The film won many awards and a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But its ending may leave the viewer flummoxed: why was such a successful project not repeated, maybe as an annual event everyone could look forward to? Has it been replicated in other prisons? One review indicates that its success rate has led to its implementation elsewhere. Let’s hope so. Or–let’s make it happen?