THE PERFECT OFFERING

(and how I got it all wrong)

by Kelly Clark — the lady in the pew — February 7, 2003

My friend prefers to go to a church other than my parish church on Sundays. Frankly, I never understood why. After all, my church is absolutely beautiful — “majestic” even! We usually are blessed with at least two concelebrants, often more, at least one deacon, superb altar servers, and incredible music, including an amazing choir, three heavenly organs, a renowned music director, and, if that’s not enough, an occasional brass and percussion ensemble thrown in! If I do say so myself — and I frequently do say so — my parish’s Sunday liturgies are definitely Something to Write Home About.

Anyway, awhile back, I decided to humor my friend by accompanying her to Sunday Mass at the church she likes so much.

It was okay, I guess.

The church was pretty small. The music was, well — they used one of those small, electronic-type organs and a couple of folks led the singing. A single priest presided, with no altar servers or deacons at all. I snuck a peek at my friend during the celebration and saw her face shining — absolutely aglow! — with, I don’t know, exactly. Passion? Enthusiasm?

I didn’t quite get it. The whole celebration seemed on the lackluster side.

After Mass, I picked up a bulletin, noting that the “liturgy group” worked “tirelessly and enthusiastically to help our Sunday celebrations build up the Body of Christ.”

In a rare burst of prudence, I refrained from remarking to my friend that, from what I saw and heard, “tireless and enthusiastic” work didn’t always achieve the optimum results.

Which reminds me of what happened when I was seven-and-a-half years old:

Two weeks before Mother’s Day, my younger sister Buzzy (she was five) and I discussed our gift options. To my chagrin, Buzzy had actually saved her “chore money” for the past few weeks, amassing the princely sum of fifty cents. Mine, alas, had gone to the local candy store man.

But I had a glorious plan up my sleeve! You see, a few days earlier, I heard my mom lavishly admiring a glass ashtray at our neighbor’s house. (I found out later that it was, in fact, a “crystal” ashtray — then, as now, my definition of “crystal” is “glass, only more expensive.”)

Broke as I was, I was still determined to give my mom an ashtray that would be a zillion times more beautiful than Mrs. O’Reilly’s glass (okay, “crystal”) number. And I had the wherewithal to make it happen.

Two whole cans of Play-Doh!!!!

(For any head scratchers out there, “Play-Doh” was, and probably still is, a modeling compound kids used to use, and I hope still do, to make stuff.)

So, Buzzy and I went to work. She, to con my dad into taking her to every store in the neighborhood and beyond to decide exactly how to spend her stored-up wealth.

Me? I headed for the basement to craft my amazing creation.

It wasn’t easy!

First, I had to make sure nobody intruded on what I decided to call my “workshop.” This entailed the making of elaborate cardboard signs bearing legends such as:

KEEP OUT!

GET LOST!

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!

And, my personal favorite:

SCRAM! (ARTIST AT WORK)

Having assured my privacy, I was confronted with another problem:

What does an ashtray look like?

Oh, I had a vague idea. But the ashtrays around my house were, for the most part, little, dinky affairs. I needed — as any artiste would — inspiration!

So I made up an excuse to visit Mrs. O’Reilly’s house.

It was a rather ingenious, one, I thought. Boldly, I strode over the O’Reilly house, rang the bell, and, when Mrs. O’Reilly answered the door, proclaimed:

“My mom wants to borrow a cup of sugar.” And I stuck out a coffee mug I’d filched from my mom’s cupboard as proof.

As that worthy matron disappeared into her kitchen, I darted into her living room. There it was, on the coffee table. The biggest, most elaborate ashtray I’d ever seen! What struck me the most was how it sparkled in the sunlight! Those sparkles were, I figured, the reason my mom admired it so much.

When Mrs. O’Reilly, sugar in hand, found me gazing at her sparkling objet d’art, she made reference to the fact that my mother had admired her ashtray very much. (Like I didn’t already know that, sheesh.) Then, she lifted the ashtray, turned it over, and showed me some letters carved on the bottom. At seven-and- a-half, my reading was pretty good, but these letters were fancy and hard to decipher. Obligingly, the lady translated them:

“To Mary, with love.”

Oh, boy.

As I slowly made my way home — Mrs. O’Reilly had to remind me to take the sugar — I realized I was facing the greatest challenge of my life. Somehow, I had to make a gigantic ashtray that sparkled. With letters, yet! And all I had were two cans of Play-Doh.

In search of sparkle.

Fortunately for me, my mom was out as I dashed into the kitchen to stick the not-at-all-needed sugar in the appropriate canister, which was situated among my mom’s baking stuff. Just as I was about to close the cupboard door, I noticed — miracles of miracles — cake glitter!!!! Two whole tubes of that gunk my mom used to sprinkle on cookies and cake to make them — you guessed it — sparkle!

Quick as a wink, I copped a tube and headed back down to my “workshop.”

Let the labor begin!

The good thing about Play-Doh is, if you make a mistake — and I made plenty! — you can just mush it all up and start over again. And that’s just what I did. For days and days. My after-school afternoons were filled with mushing-it-up-and-starting-all-over-again activities. It was tedious. It was frustrating. More than once I was tempted to bag the whole project. But then, I’d imagine my mom’s face when she opened what — please, God! — would be the most beautiful creation the world has ever seen, and I’d keep on going.

Finally, I’d created a very large, flat, bowl-shaped thing. I was on my way!

Solving the snags.

It dawned on my that the ashtrays I’d seen had “grooves” in them to hold cigarettes and cigars. How to make those grooves? I mean, they had to be big enough to hold my grandpa’s cigars, but not so big that a cigarette would slip out. I finally solved this knotty problem by “borrowing” a rather slim cigar my grandpa had left behind. I used it to create six, perfectly shaped grooves in the sides of the bowl. It took me two afternoons to get it right, but I did! Better and better!

Then I carefully turned the bowl upside down, and moistened the bottom surface a little bit. (With Play-Doh, moistening plays a major role.) Using a dried-up ballpoint pen, I oh-so-carefully chiseled the words:

“To Marie, with love.” (My mom’s name was “Marie.”)

Time was running short!

It was the Friday before Mother’s Day and I still wasn’t finished. Finally, the bottom, with its words, had dried enough so I could set the bowl-turned-ashtray upright. I then covered most of it with a thin layer of Elmer’s Glue. Then, grabbing the cake glitter, I sprinkled the stuff liberally on every square inch of my creation. I was stunned — stunned, I tell you! — at the gorgeous effect I’d created.

All I had to do was to wait for my folks to go out — which they did, regularly, on Saturdays to run errands and such — to finalize my masterpiece by baking it in the oven.

At last, after two solid weeks of back-breaking, frustrating, and sometimes even tearful effort, I had my Mother’s Day gift. With utmost care and pride, I carried it into the bedroom I shared with Buzzy.

Buzzy was proud of her uh, “gift,” too.

Before I even had a chance to show off my ashtray, my little sister thrust something in my face, crying: “Look what I got for Mom!”

It was a huge spool of white thread. A spool of thread! As I listened to Buzzy chattering away at how long it had taken her to decide on the “perfect gift,” and how many stores she and my dad had visited, and all the other lesser offerings she’d considered and discarded, I shook my head. All that time and effort to produce a spool of thread? Sheesh. Anyway, I borrowed some pretty wrapping paper from my sister — hey, she had extra, and anyway, she had fifty cents to spend and I had zilch — and wrapped up my magnum opus.

The big day!

After Mass, my family gathered in the living room to watch my mom open her gifts. First, mine! I was so excited I had to visit the bathroom first before she opened it. And when my mom carefully extracted my ashtray from its wrappings — ah! Her reaction was everything I’d dreamed about and more! She couldn’t admire it enough! To this day, I’d be hard put to remember when I felt more pleased with myself.

It was, as if, she was giving me a gift!

‘Course, she lavishly praised Buzzy’s spool of thread, too. I remember pondering to myself the mysteries of maternal love. A spool of thread! C’mon!

Flash forward to 1999

My dear mom died on Epiphany Sunday, 1999. After the funeral, I helped my sister go through the odds and ends she’d saved over the years. Tucked away in a bureau drawer, carefully wrapped with a silky-like cloth, were two items of interest to us.

A spool of thread.

And the tackiest looking ashtray I’d ever seen in my life! I looked at it, laughing a little through my tears. Turning it over, I discovered I’d spelled my mom’s name wrong.

“To Maurie, with love.”

Sheesh.

“Uh, Kelly? We know there’s a point here, somewhere. Right?”

You betcha! The point is, I missed the point when I was seven-and-a-half, and missed it again when I visited my friend’s church.

As a child, I could (perhaps) be forgiven for discounting Buzzy’s hard-won efforts at producing a spool of thread. My mom loved it — and loved what turned out to be a really lame ashtray — not for what they were, but for whom they came from: her beloved children.

As an adult, my snobbish attitude toward the liturgy at my friend’s church was not only Really Bad Form — it revealed, once again, my ignorance of the Almighty Love of Almighty God. To say nothing of the real purpose of liturgy!

Liturgy — the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in particular — isn’t about me making a really cool present for God. It is, as my friend’s church bulletin stated (and which I fluffed off) about “building up the Body of Christ.”

It’s for ME! It’s to help make ME holy.

“You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift. Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness, but makes us grow in your grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Preface for weekdays IV)

I pray that I never forget — or, if I do, that somebody kicks me in the rear end — that God has no need for our gifts. Our desire to please Him is His gift to us!

We try our best because we love our God. That’s true.

But I need to keep it in perspective.

Liturgy isn’t perfected by “glitter.” It’s already perfect for one, mind-smashing reason: the offering of Jesus Christ to the Father.

Thank you for coming along with me on this ride into my past. And I beg you to pray that I never again lose sight of what the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is all about.

One more question and I’ll let you go:

How come I can remember the most minute details of an ashtray I made when I was seven-and-a-half — but can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning?

Sheesh.

And now for the fine print:

Kelly Clark is your basic nobody. She serves on no parish councils, belongs to none of the myriad of designer-chic "Catholic" groups, or any Catholic group, for that matter, other than the Roman Catholic Church. Holding no theology degrees, she has no desire to see herself or any of her sex wearing a clerical collar. She figures Jesus knew what He was doing when He established His Church, and also figures that it’s His Church, not hers, and not yours. She’s an ordinary parishioner of Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston.

Use the links on the left to e-mail Kelly, to visit her parish, read past columns, and check out other cool stuff. (If you don’t see any links on the left, you’ve probably been directed here by a search engine. Just point your browser to http://www.pewlady.com to get to the main site.)

Copyright: Kelly Clark, 2003. I don’t care if you share this stuff with others. In fact, I hope you do! Only I’d appreciate it if you’d link me, or print it off as it is. In other words, don’t change anything. Thanks.

“The Lady in the Pew” column is updated weekly, God willing. To be notified of updates, please e-mail me. The link’s on the left.

“Mary, Mother of God, pray for us. Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.”