This Catholic Life / Commentary
MAY 10, 2012 • THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT
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Studio as sanctuary: A place of ‘delight and rest’ rother Mickey O’Neill McGrath can’t help but grin when he talks about his art studio. It’s been a long time coming for the 55-year-old Oblate of St. Francis de Sales who grew up drawing but wasn’t able to commit to a full-time art career until 1994. When the award-winning painter first visited the row house beside Sacred Heart Church in South Camden, N.J., three years ago, it was gutted. But Brother Mickey had a vision for what it could become, and so did the pastor of Sacred Heart. Soon lumber was arriving and electricians were wiring. “From day one,” Brother Mickey said, “it felt like home.” Now the first level is his gallery and the second level, his beloved studio. The tiled floor is checkered, black and white, and the walls are stacked with baskets of acrylic paint and buckets of paintbrushes. His desk is arranged around the window, where northern sunlight streams in, illuminating his canvas. He paints in the morning, standing up, working in silence or to the hum of NPR. From his perch he can see Sacred Heart — watch the comings and goings of parish life, admire the bronze Our Lady of Camden statue and the wide-eyed bloom of hyacinth. “It’s my perfect little place,” Brother Mickey told me. “This is like a little piece of heaven on earth for
dition of the Visitation, the second joyful mystery of the rosary, whose feast we mark May 31. In it we see young, pregnant Mary embrace her pregnant older cousin, Elizabeth, arms intertwined, bellies touching. To their left Brother Mickey painted a quote from St. Jane de Chantal, who co-founded the Visitation order of nuns with St. Francis de Sales: “This is the place of our delight and rest.”
B Twenty Something Christina Capecchi
One of the gifts of my 20s has been an appreciation for solitude and the spaces that nurture it
Special place
“The Windsock Visitation” by Brother Michael O'Neill McGrath, WWW.BEESTILL.ORG.
me. It’s a studio; it’s a sanctuary.”
Offering special solace Part of the perfection comes from the absence of Internet. “A lot of people are afraid of silence,” Brother Mickey said. “We can’t hear the voice of God unless we’re silent. With all our texting and email and blah blah blah, we’re constantly doing and fussing. I find it’s such a blessing if I leave my house and realize I’ve forgotten my cell phone. It’s, ‘Thank you, Jesus!’ ” The images that flow from Brother Mickey’s paintbrush are full of
whimsy and joy: mysteries of the rosary, scenes with saints, darkskinned Marys. “All the big saints prayed before black Madonnas,” he explained to me, “including St. Francis de Sales. They’ve always been associated with healing and new life. . . the blackness of conception, creativity, fertile soil, seeds growing underground.” For centuries, he said, images of black Madonnas have offered special solace to those struggling to conceive and to those in need of a fresh start. Brother Mickey’s first black Madonna remains his favorite: a ren-
The painting, titled “The Windsock Visitation,” hangs above the mantel in a North Minneapolis home occupied by Visitation sisters. They hang a windsock on their front porch to invite neighborhood kids over, a refuge in an impoverished area uprooted by a tornado last May. What is your “perfect little place,” your go-to getaway? A screened-in porch? An open balcony? The corner of a coffee shop? One of the gifts of my 20s has been an appreciation for solitude and the spaces that nurture it. Each of us needs a place to pray and play, to design and dream. A place to recite ancient prayers or utter something spontaneous. A place to think deeply or let your mind go blank. Delight and rest. Christina Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights. She can be reached at WWW.READCHRISTINA.COM.
How to choose: Fishing opener or Mother’s Day? o fish. Or not to fish. That is the question at least a few men will be asking themselves concerning Saturday’s fishing opener. And, the answer to that question may not hinge on weather forecasts or hunches about a walleye’s appetite. For men devoted to their wives, they will have this important fact to consider when weighing their angling options: Sunday is Mother’s Day. Like most years, it falls on the weekend of the fishing opener. So, at least a few men will be torn as they ponder these two choices — wet a line or pamper their wife.
T The Outdoors Dave Hrbacek
There are ways men can work through this tough issue
Making the right call There are a select few guys whose wives love to fish and are happy to celebrate Mother’s Day in a boat. The rest of us have to agonize over what to do. I have wrestled with the issue myself over the years, with one compromise being that I fish on Saturday, then come home Sunday to celebrate Mother’s Day with my wife. More recently, I have abandoned the opener and chosen to fish later in May or June. But that hasn’t gotten me off the hook because one of the reasons I did so was to go turkey hunting, another spring ritual for a lot of men (and, some women, too). Several times in recent years, my turkey season has taken place over Mother’s Day. The most I have done is hunt for a few hours in the morning, then come home. The one ex-
ception came about eight years ago, and it did not end well. When you call your wife on the way home around dinner time, and you hear crying on the other end, you know you’ve really blown it. And, you tell yourself that this must never happen again. But is there a constructive way to navigate this conflict? I think so. Some informal research helped me come up with some tips. Perhaps the easiest one is to celebrate the event on a different day, preferably before Mother’s Day. And, if you can give your wife a nice gift, so much the better.
Early present this year One of the best examples of this I’ve ever seen happened before the month of April even ended this year. On the last Friday of the month, I met Kalley Yanta of Holy Family in St. Louis Park in a parking lot on University Avenue, where she showed me the early Mother’s Day gift she received from her husband, Jon. This mother of six has dealt with the fishing-hunting-Mother’s Day issue for more than a decade, though more related to Jon’s passion for bow hunting than his fishing habits. The fishing opener is not an issue for the Yantas, who live on a lake and don’t need to travel to make a cast. Bow hunting, however, is another matter. “If hunting opener came up on Mother’s Day, that would be a shoo-
Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit
Kalley Yanta of Holy Family in St. Louis Park received a unique Mother’s Day present from her husband, Jon — the billboard behind her that he had put up on University Avenue. The billboard advertises a pro-life video she posted on YouTube that she hopes pregnant women considering abortion will see.
in for a few arguments,” she said. But, these days, it’s all good between Kalley and Jon — thanks to the large billboard he had erected April 15 on University Avenue, just around the corner from Planned Parenthood’s new facility. It advertises a pro-life video she made called URWORTHIT, which she hopes women will see, especially pregnant women contemplating abortion. The smile on her face as she stands in front of the billboard and poses for a picture makes it clear that Jon hit a
home run on this one. However, Kalley made it clear that spending $2,000 on a billboard is not necessary for keeping the peace in a fishing household on Mother’s Day. “I think a nice compromise would be to go fishing every other year on the opener and be with your family the alternate years,” she said. “My husband has had to do that with hunting when I had a baby in the fall.” PLEASE TURN TO MOTHER’S ON PAGE 14A