Jill Domschot

The weekend began with a storm. It was the first of Roswell Night Skies’* Movie in the Park; we were showing Lilo & Stitch, and when I arrived on scene, the crew that had been enlisted to set up the screen were battling heavy winds. They were determined, however, and the nonprofit board’s president did not want to cancel the first event of the season. We made it about halfway through before the wind and slanting rain drove our audience away. It was fun while it lasted. To the positive, the venue this year is Roswell’s Cielo Grande Events Area, which has a natural slope that is perfect for an audience. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate this Friday, when we will be showing The Iron Giant. Be there at dusk and bring a blanket or lawn chairs. There will be concessions.

After the storm, my weekend never lost its turbulence. I had numerous stacked events on my schedule, including the Corpus Christi procession on Sunday. Corpus Christi is generally at the start of June, which is the hottest month in Roswell. The internet says it’s July, but the average high is the same. In my experience, it can top 100 on multiple days in June, but what do I know? The point being the Corpus Christi procession is a hot one, done at fake high noon**.

There are much longer and more elaborate processions around the world than ours; we have four altars to place the monstrance on around the parish campus, each with its own Bible reading and prayer. The choir chants, and the various groups carry their banners and wear their matching uniforms, and the altar servers carry the cross and incense. The priest carries Christ’s eucharistic presence in the monstrance.

As an Altar and Rosary member, I helped carry flowers from altar to altar. A few years ago, a priest that used to be with our parish asked us to scatter flower petals along the path; apparently that was what they did in his native land of Nigeria. The bookkeeper balked at the price of petals from the flowershop and asked why I didn’t pluck them from the rosebushes out front. For my part, I questioned if stripping the church roses of petals was part of my secretarial duties. Calling a flowershop, yes. I can pick up a phone. Making the elderly people cry over decimated rosebushes–not really part of my job description. Since then, we have carried red and white bouquets and skipped the petals.

How ever we decorate the altars, we have a fairly big campus and have never yet sought city approval to process up the street chanting, let alone scatrering petals–although, when I went to the grocery store near the a parish after this year’s procession, I could smell the incense that had drifted there on the wind. We didn’t get approval for that either!

My weekend ended with dessert and lemonade shared with a friend indoors, which was pleasant and cool. Thank God for these summer relief strategies.

Now that it’s Monday again, I’m wondering why life is so difficult. Not my job per se, although I do plan funerals as a regular course of events and sometimes step in to sing a capella in funerals, quinceañeras, or weddings when there are no musicians. Well, that is not quite true. Every time I’ve been asked to sing at these Masses a capella, I’ve found other people to sing with me. But, no, it’s not the difficulties of my job or the increasing busyness of the office that makes everything a tangle of problems, despite that I’m exhausted.

My friend was telling me yesterday, after we’d been talking for a few hours, that she had nothing to speak about except negative subjects. She’s experienced more than her fair share of trauma and recently went through a breakup, which has forced her to start life over.

Regarding having nothing else to speak about, I both agreed and disagreed with her. Trauma can put people in that position, where the nervous system is on edge. Talking through the negatives can help us heal. Sometimes, we need to talk through the negatives. Forcing positivity can be counterproductive to the nervous system just as ignoring clunking sounds in your car’s engine can cause further damage. There is no sense in whistling while your house is burning down, either. On the other hand, making small steps forward and acknowledging successes are also part of the process of healing, and there is always something to be proud of or grateful for, no matter how small. For my friend, she has a new place to live, a new job, and she loves artwork: creating it and looking at it. All positives.

My positives would include dragonflies and accordions, of course.

But no worries if your sight is clouded temporarily by how bad everything is. The storm we experienced while trying to run the movie on Friday seemed to dissipate after we’d packed up the equipment. We couldn’t see that while our screen was blowing down or the rain pelting the sound mixer. Nor was it wise to continue with the movie, not knowing what Roswell would throw at us next.

A last relevant point: in the Corpus Christi homily, our priest spoke about following Christ, how his presence has been given to us in the Eucharist–it is very real and personal. And the procession is an embodiment of this concept. When life gets difficult, sometimes all we have is the presence of Christ. That is no small thing. It is the biggest thing. It is vital.

*Roswell Night Skies is not a Catholic organization, despite that I talk about Catholicism in this post. I’m just writing about my life in Roswell.

**Under daylight savings time, high noon is actually 1 p.m. We’ve been distorted by a false sense of time!