The Friday Five

1) Favorite Halloween Candy
Mad nostalgic affection for candy corn.

2) Least Favorite Halloween Candy
Anything "fun-size". "Fun-size" should be big, not small!

3) Best Costume Ever
My family didn't celebrate Halloween. We did get All Saints' Day candy, but we didn't necessarily dress up. So my Best Costume Ever is from college and the "Screw Your Roommate" dance when you get set up by your friends. Everyone met their dates by dressing up, wandering around the cafeteria, and looking for the person who matched.

Junior year, I was told to dress up like the Virgin Mary and find my Joseph. Remembering far too many Serious Christmas Pageants when I was a kid, I subverted the dominant paradigm by pinning a blue sheet to my head, wrapping myself in red velvet, and stuffing enough pillows up the velvet to look 9 months pregnant. And then I shouted for Joseph all through the cafeteria, saying I needed to ride his ass all the way to Bethlehem.

4) Worst Costume Ever
N/A

5) A Saint I Treasure
My deacon growing up, Jeannine Mahon. She was kind and warm and ministered to everybody in a church and community that didn't always want to do that. Whenever I came home from college, we'd have breakfast and talk about life and God and the church. I talked to her about being a priest and shared my worry about the fact that my parents don't think women should be priests. She listened, nodded, and then said "Oh, honey, when you're ordained, that won't matter. They will be so proud of you." (She also told a visiting bishop I was going to be a bishop one day!)

I'd never known someone so encouraging, genuine, and obviously loving to everyone. She died quite suddenly one summer. It was the first time someone close to me had died. I was so glad to be home, though, and to sing with the choir at her funeral. Even now, when I sing "Abide With Me", "How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place" or "I Sat Down Under His Shadow" (Bairstow), I think about her funeral, and then about Jeannine and how blessed I was by knowing her.