There’s been much ado in the news the past couple of days about the pregnancy of Bristol Palin, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, presumptive Republican nominee for vice-president.

Reports are that  “family values” delegates and supporters of Senator John McCain are taking the revelation well, noting that out-of-wedlock pregnancies are among the things that happen in real families and that everyone makes mistakes, and applauding the fact that Bristol is going to give birth to her baby rather than have an abortion.

Bravo, I say, to this family that is rallying around their daughter and sister and promising her their ongoing love and support. They are offering the country a model of a truly pro-life response by preparing to welcome new life into their hearts.

I am a little concerned, however, about the other half of the announcement that always follows immediately on the news of Bristol’s baby: “and she’s going to marry the father.”

If “legitimizing” the child is a key element for the family values folks—and its invariable inclusion in the announcements by people connected to the campaign makes me think that the campaigners at least think it’s important—then I have a problem with them.

There is, after all, no such thing as an illegitimate child. Every child is a priceless gift from God—a premise Sarah Palin upheld when she bore her own infant son knowing he has Down syndrome. 

So why is everyone so pleased that this pregnant teenager is getting married?

We haven’t been told much about the baby’s father, and that’s appropriate enough—this family is dealing with a tough situation with little enough privacy. But I wonder how old he is, and, if he’s near Bristol’s age, how ready either of them is to take on the lifetime commitment of marriage and childrearing. I hope for their sakes that they’re among the lucky few who are ready to become instant adults. I hope that what looks to me like an old-fashioned shotgun wedding is instead the decision of two young people with their eyes wide open to freely choose each other as life companions.

If the Palins were to ask my advice—something most unlikely to happen—I would encourage them continue to be supportive of their daughter, but to postpone the wedding. Let them let Bristol know that they love her outrageously and unconditionally—she’s going to need love more than anything else during these next months—and let her have her baby, bring him or her home, and take significant responsibility for his or her care. Let them help her continue her education, but help her also to know that she now has the primary duty of nurturing a new life. Let the baby’s father help her, if he’s willing, and let him continue to woo her if he wants her. Let him find out some of the realities of parenting, including that a baby’s needs have to come first, and that for responsible parents teenage pleasures run a distant third, after education or perhaps a steady job. Let them both change some diapers. Don’t buy them a condo and a new car.

Then, maybe, talk about a wedding. If they’re both still interested, he may have proved himself good enough for a beloved daughter. If not, he wasn’t worth having in the first place. For Bristol, being an unmarried mother will be hard (I’m sure it already has been hard for her), but not nearly so hard as being a young mother stuck in a bad marriage. Her baby’s father may be the right man for her—but should she really be deciding that at seventeen?

I haven’t been feeling very prayerful lately. The running conversation with God that makes up my informal prayer life is full of grumbling.

There are hundreds of things large and small for me to be thankful for, and I do know enough to put myself in an attitude of thanksgiving and remember them. When I settle myself down to pray, I have no trouble finding a list of them to run through, and I don’t minimize the importance of that.

But just now there are a couple of sizeable issues in my life that are distressing, and several of those average pebble-in-my-shoe, “What am I going to do?” topics that are distracting me. Instead of singing, “How can I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me?” I find myself grousing, “Could you give me a break here?”

Pessimism is my natural state of mind, although I struggle against it. I’ve read that pessimists make more accurate assessments of what’s going on around them, but optimists have a lot more fun along the way. So I try to see that the glass is half-full. But God already knows I’m a pessimist, so I can admit my fears and worries to him. I know he’s not going to decide I’m too negative to hang out with. Nevertheless, as surely as I know God wants me to be honest with him, part of me thinks he’s going to get tired of my constant complaining.

Much of my self-inflicted aggravation comes from not living in the moment, from worrying about what’s going to happen next. That covers everything from whether I’m going to find a parking spot to whether my retirement fund will ever be adequate. Telling myself that most people in the world don’t have cars or savings accounts is somehow not comforting. I’m sometimes knocked back on my heels by the magnitude of the differences between my life and the lives of the poor, but I never find that comforting—just sad, like the rich young man in the gospel.

I could, I suppose, cultivate detachment from the things of this world. I’m too attached to having things go according to my plan, and so I fret that they may not. I want things to fit my design, and I grumble when they don’t. I want my body to work as well as it did twenty years ago, and I grouse about my arthritic knees. Very few of the things that trouble me are important in an objective sense. Most are things over which I have little or no control.

It’s probably better for me to grumble at God than at the people around me (although I wonder how many of them think of me as a grumbler). It would probably be good discipline to work on grumbling less, though, and at least think about being optimistic. And it wouldn’t kill me to send God fewer petitions and more praise, and trust that he’ll give me all I need. But I suspect the prescription sounds easier than it may be to follow. We’ll see. 

Everyone seems to be gearing up for the summer Olympic games in China. Beijing seems intent on showcasing the country as a contender in a bigger arena—as a fully ranked player in the field of developed nations.

Questions abound, however. Will athletes be able to compete at their best, given the expected heat and China’s notorious air pollution? Will some even choose not to subject their bodies to the threat of toxic fumes?

Will the games be marred—or enlightened—by demonstrators protesting China’s human rights abuses, its suppression of Tibetan culture and nationalism, its treatment of religious dissidents? Talk of boycotting the games altogether didn’t seem to last long (I don’t recall it doing much good when the games were held in the former Soviet Union) and our president and first lady are going to the opening ceremonies.

The ideals of the Olympics, of a time when nations put down their weapons of war and take up competition in sports instead, don’t seem very practical. I’d like to see us “study war no more,” but a time-out has no more connection to reality than the notion that countries don’t compete to bring home the greatest number of medals.

For some years a while back I tried to boycott Chinese goods because of their human rights abuses, particularly with regard to forced abortion and slave labor, and I encouraged others to do the same.  I finally gave up for two reasons: a Chinese-born priest of my diocese visited me with the goal of convincing me that ordinary Chinese were benefiting more from international trade than the government was; and it became harder and harder to find consumer goods, particularly reasonably priced clothes, that were not made in China. So my boycott fizzled.

I’m still aware of the origins of the things I buy, and given a choice will buy something made in the USA or Europe, or, better, on the occasions when it’s possible, from a fair-trade business or cooperative. Given the recent problems with toxic substances found in Chinese-made products and the lack of safety standards, practical concerns may be more effective than ideological ones in deterring people from purchasing products of China. But those arguments limp when the alternatives are made in Malaysia or India or Vietnam—from what I hear and read, quality control and working conditions are not great in any developing nations.

I won’t be glued to the television when the Olympics are on: I may watch the gymnasts, or the foot races, but my knowledge of team sports other than baseball is so limited that watching is no fun, and many of the other events strike me as about as exciting as watching paint dry. I hope the games go off without a hitch, that no one is injured, that demonstrators who show up are treated with respect. I hope they’re good for the people of China and that welcoming guests from around the world helps them to feel respected and part of the family of peace-loving nations. 

I’ve just finished a book by Anne Lamott, one of my favorite authors. It’s Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (Riverhead Books/Penguin, 2005), and is a series of short essays about her life, particularly her life with God. 

Lamott’s faith is nourished by a variety of sources—from the Christian church which she said in an earlier book (Operating Instructions) took her in and loved her back to health when she was drunk and addicted to drugs and then helped support her during her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, to friendly and intimate conversations with Jesus, Mary, and God the Father, to a Jesuit friend she describes as “a scruffy Birkenstock type,” to Zen Buddhism, to communing with nature. She has a conviction that “all the good religions” emphasize caring for those in need and recognizing that all of humanity are our brothers and sisters. Her philosophy doesn’t always resonate with mine, but it does so often, and she is so small-s sacramental that part of me can’t understand why she isn’t Catholic. But I’m so Catholic that I sometimes can’t understand why everyone doesn’t see the light and join up (then I remember some of the itchy parts).

Lamott’s writing is richly textured and full of apt one-liners. In her book about writing, Bird by Bird, she admits to always carrying an index card and a pencil so that she can write down a felicitous phrase whenever it comes to her. In Plan B she notes that one of the reasons we can survive as a society is that not all of the members of our tribe are insane at the same time. She says that laughter is “carbonated holiness.” Of living with a teenage son while going through menopause, she writes that there is wisdom in the advice to have children while you’re young, so that either the parent or the child is hormonally stable at all times, and she muses about what kind of a thirteen-year-old Jesus was: “If we really believe in the Incarnation…”

She writes about going skiing with a terminally ill friend, about a peace march, about a cruise ship, about helping her son meet his biological father and much older half-brother, about teaching prisoners storytelling, about starting a Sunday school at her church. She writes a lot about trying to trust God, and about how much better her life is when she does that, and when she tries to do what God wants her to do even when she doesn’t think it will work. She’s smart and funny and insightful and she shares the courage it takes to trust that God has a plan—maybe even a plan B if I foul up plan A.

Plan B is a book for grown-ups: Lamott is earthy and sometimes uses words we don’t associate with spiritual writing. But I think it is a holy book, and I think Lamott is holy in the way that all of us who are trying to do God’s will are holy despite our imperfections. And it made me laugh, and made me want to torture my friends by reading bits of it aloud to them. It’s spiritual reading for those willing to venture off the beaten path. Go for it.

My suburban backyard has a variety of trees and bushes: the previous owners had a hot tub (alas, they took it with them when they moved) and planted bamboo in the corner near it for privacy. The bamboo, supposedly lucky but actually given to spreading where it isn’t necessarily wanted, has since grown up to mix its branches with what I think is a neighbor’s ash tree and those of a fruit tree of some kind. I am not the gardener in the family; I used to say the farmer gene skipped me, until I realized that wasn’t a skip at all—my father came to New York from Ireland at least partly because he didn’t want to be a farmer. I can’t identify the fruit tree even by its small hard bounty (round and reddish and as big as a grape). But I appreciate the trees and vines and general peaceful greenery. 

The birds in the area also appreciate the mix of leaves and branches and make their nests in it. This year we had nesting pairs of cardinals and robins, and in late spring were constantly seeing the parents flit back and forth on feeding runs, just flashes of red, and then on rare occasions in the summer we’d see the half-grown offspring.

We also have the usual sparrows and starlings, some of which come to bathe in a small ornamental pond. A couple of big old oak trees, one in the front of the house and one in back, and a crabapple are the prime attraction for fat gray squirrels who think they own the place and that we humans are the intruders. But I think my favorite is the mockingbird.

Because the mockingbird imitates other birdsongs, and because I can’t really tell one bird’s call from another’s, it’s easy not to realize at first that he’s giving one of his concerts—my first reaction is usually to think there are a lot of birds out vocalizing. But once I notice a long string of different calls, I know it’s the mocker.

A spoilsport once told me that mockingbirds did their thing to entice other birds into giving away the locations of their nests, but I looked up the facts and that isn’t so. Other birds, it seems, aren’t fooled by the imitation calls, and in any case mockingbirds don’t rob nests the way owls and other major predators will. They eat bugs and snails and small lizards and such. The males do most of the loud singing (are we surprised?) and bird specialists think it’s primarily to attract females and secondarily to announce the boundaries of their territories. They have a distress call if their nests are being attacked, and other mockingbirds will sometimes come to help them.

For whatever reason the mockingbird sings, his song is delightful and sometimes funny, and though he may just be showing off my sense is that he is singing for the sheer joy of singing. And I can’t help thinking what a wonderful thing God thought up when he created such a small creature, one that would delight not only in a particular song but in all the songs of the birds he hears around him.

I am not an outdoorsy sort of person: give me a good book and an air-conditioned room and it will beat out a mountain hike any time you ask my preference. But I am awed by the big and small things of nature. I cannot be around mountains without being aware of the greatness of God, or near the ocean and not be aware of my insignificance. I cannot hear a mockingbird without taking pleasure in his song and thinking that God had no reason to think up such a creature except to give pleasure to humanity. He could just as easily have made only a few species of birds, and given them raucous calls instead of tuneful songs. He didn’t need to make the trees turn gold and red in autumn before they drop their leaves. He didn’t need to make the world beautiful, but because he is the God he is, it is his nature to create beautiful and wonderful things.

We are stewards of that creation, troubled now by our failure to maintain the perfect balance God intended. I can’t, in this brief post, even consider the ways in which human activity has upset and destroyed what God has created, nor is that my purpose.

And I don’t want to give the impression that I live in a secluded park somewhere: ours is a typical suburban lot with a backyard perhaps a little bigger than average for Long Island because we have no garage or carport. I am blessed because the previous owner—and perhaps whoever preceded him—had a green thumb, and because my sister fortunately did get a farmer gene from somewhere and does like to garden, and our varied flora attract everything from butterflies and squirrels and lightning bugs to rabbits and cardinals and mockingbirds.

I’m just thinking that the mockingbird sings in his own key, a key different from any of the birds he imitates. That’s how God made him, and how God made us, each to borrow, perhaps, from each other, but to sing in a key just a little different from anyone else’s.

I wear my mother’s perfume every day.

 That is to say, I don’t wear her perfume—she’s not around, having gone home to her reward nearly 20 years ago—but I wear the perfume she liked best. Actually, it’s “eau de toilette,” lighter than the full-strength version that would probably qualify as “French perfume that rocks the room” per Annie Get Your Gun.

 Anyway, I wear hardly any makeup except on state occasions and I always have a kind of wash-and-wear hairstyle, but nearly every morning I take the few seconds to dab on a little of the hard-to-find, flowery, feminine scent.

 Everyone knows that smells are evocative, calling up memories instantly. Kids’ wet woolen coats in a classroom; the first whiff of ocean when you’re driving to the beach; incense at the Easter vigil (and wondering why the coughers who don’t like it don’t have the sense to sit in the back); anything baking in the oven on a morning when you get to sleep late; bacon (remember before cholesterol when everyone could eat bacon?); the disastrous smell that means you’ve let the garbage sit too long; shoe polish; the awful smell when a dentist is drilling, even now that it’s painless—I’d bet nearly every one of those sets off some reaction in most people.

 Mom’s perfume is commonplace for me now, just a kind of automatic self-indulgence, but every now and then I get a flash of her coming, happily dressed up and perfumed, to kiss me before she and my father went on a rare evening out. All was right with the world.

 I feel blessed to have memories like that. My childhood wasn’t all idyllic, but my parents loved each other until death parted them, and even afterward. My father would buy the special perfume for Christmas or Mom’s birthday (that was after she had him trained, of course: the year he bought her a pressure cooker for Christmas is the stuff of family legend). He never left the dinner table without thanking and/or complimenting her. Whatever else was going on—and the first five kids were close enough together that there were usually several things going on—she’d take a minute to tidy her hair if not the living room before he got home. They were Mom and Dad, but they were also sweethearts. It’s said the best gift parents can give their children is to love each other.

Families are different from the way they were fifty years ago. We are configured in so many different ways, but we are still families. And maybe we still can give our children and each other the gift of great memories. Smells are optional.

Yesterday the mail brought me two copies of a brochure from the Knights of Columbus. The cover photo is a tight shot of the face of a beautiful, sleeping infant with one of his or her chubby hands reaching back to touch an ear and the other seeming to support his or her chin.

I realize there’s a redundancy in that last sentence: all babies, certainly all healthy babies, are beautiful, and there are few things more calming, I find, than just sitting and watching one sleep. (Holding one is even better.)

Across the photo, as one begins to open the brochure, is a line reading, “A people of life…and for life.”

The rest of the brochure describes, in very positive terms, the K of C’s commitment to life issues, and their advocacy of a consistent pro-life message. It says they are “pro-woman and pro-life,” seeking to support women “who are driven to abortion” as much as they seek “to defend the defenseless in our society.”

The other issues they mention are euthanasia, human cloning, and embryonic research. I wish they included in their definition of a consistent ethic of life opposition to the death penalty and the loss of life caused by war, but I’ll take what I can get. I presume that many Knights agree that those things also are part of the culture of death, but sometimes in trying to move people in a given direction one has to narrow the discussion, and the brochure is primarily focused on abortion.

What I like so much about it is its affirming tone. In proposing action steps, number one is “Volunteer—Your valuable time can save precious lives. Contact a local pro-life pregnancy center to find out how you can help women choose life and turn away from abortion. You can also support programs that work with women who have been physically and emotionally wounded by abortion.” It also proposes education, advocacy, donating funds, and prayer.

On the same block as the building where I work there is a large Planned Parenthood facility. In fact, the corner of Bleecker and Mott Streets, which I cross each time I walk from the subway to the office, is designated “Margaret Sanger Square.” (I nearly freaked when I first saw the sign.) I’m usually passing there before they open, but sometimes I see a young woman headed for the door and I wonder why she’s going in, and send a quick, silent prayer her way; once or twice I’ve overheard a man and woman who seem to be still trying to decide what to do about a pregnancy and done the same for them.

For a while there were pro-life demonstrators on the corner several days a week, and a Planned Parenthood guard in an orange vest designated to escort women past them.

The demonstrators were two men and two women, the men and one woman past middle age, the second woman perhaps in her late thirties. Only the younger woman looked friendly; the older seemed perpetually angry. One of the men wore a sandwich board plastered with pictures of bloody, aborted babies, with the caption “They are all babies”; the other man had a stack of leaflets.

I began to make a point of smiling and saying “Good morning” to them, but I wanted to argue with them. I thought their approach was all wrong, unlikely to have a positive effect even on a woman wavering in her decision to abort, more likely to drive her quickly into the building.

I never worked up the nerve, but I had my speech all prepared. “I’m on your side,” I’d say, “I’ve been pro-life since I was a teenager.” But if the man wants to wear a sandwich board, why not have a big picture of a beautiful infant and a caption reading, “Please let us help you have your baby”? Could they say, “Abortion isn’t your only option”? Could they use the quote the Knights of Columbus picked up from a U.S. bishops’ ad campaign, “Women deserve better than abortion”?

I never spoke with them because I’ve tangled with some pro-life advocates before. They—some, not all by any means—think I’m a wimp because I don’t think pictures of mutilated infants change anyone’s mind. They question my bona fides because I’ve never prayed the rosary on the sidewalk in front of an abortion facility. In fact I’ve written thousands—probably hundreds of thousands—of words in support of the pro-life cause, and arranged to publish my contender for the picture worth 10,000 words: the one where the infant being operated on in utero for spina bifida is grasping the surgeon’s finger with his tiny hand. That, I think, is a picture that might change someone’s mind.

We all have different gifts, and different callings. I think I’m more effective with a word-processor than a picket sign. I think we need to look at the factors that drive women to think abortion is their only option, to believe that that their futures will become dead ends if they have their babies. Once a woman conceives a child, her life is changed forever, but abortion is never her only option and it is never the best option. We need to work to make sure that is true and is communicated to the women who need to hear it.

I think the Knights of Columbus are on the right track with their new campaign. Bravo.

On a Friday afternoon about ten days ago I sprained my ankle badly: such a mundane injury! And I had no one and nothing to blame for it. I was walking along on a dry flat surface, wearing athletic shoes, and just somehow put my foot wrong and saw stars. Eager to get home, I kept walking, down the stairs to the subway, on to Pennsylvania Station for the Long Island Railroad. There I was faced with the phenomenon of the stopped escalator; the moving stairways that bring people up from the platform to the concourse in the morning are almost always stopped in the evening and people are expected to walk down them—generally in a mob, once it’s announced which track one’s train will be on. The escalator stairs are slightly uneven and I don’t like them in the best of times, and that evening I twisted something in the same foot again, and heard a distinct snap.

Anyway, I made it home, did the rest-ice-compression-elevation trick, and on Saturday morning went not to my grandson’s birthday party but to the local emergency room (my orthopedist is good in emergencies but keeps bankers’ hours) where I was x-rayed and told there was no fracture (maybe a problem with a ligament or tendon, but nothing they could see or do anything about). The staff there gave me crutches and a lesson on using them, and sent me home with instructions to take Motrin, use ice and ACE bandages, and keep off it.

That wasn’t too painful a prescription. My sister, with whom I’ve shared a home for decades, is a nurse, now retired. She wraps a compression bandage with long-practiced skill and has various nursely tricks for keeping a patient comfortable. I had work I could do at home, and plenty to read; the weather was comfortably warm, and I had my choice of breezy rooms to sit in. CHURCH’s office is in an old building with lots of stairs to climb, so I was going to have to stay home until I was able to manage them. My sister suggested it was God’s way of making me take some time off for needed rest.

What drove me crazy was that even after I become proficient on the crutches, there was so little I could do for myself. If I wanted a glass of water I had to ask her to get it for me, and I usually drink a lot of water. If I dropped something, I generally couldn’t pick it up. I could ride in the car to the doctor’s office, but she had to pull it to a spot where I could get into the passenger seat, then get out and come and put the crutches in the back for me, and reverse the process when we got to our destination. She did all those things with, as we say, a heart-and-a-half, with never a hint of complaint, but I still hated being dependent.

That’s the key, of course: we all—the majority of us, anyway—prefer to be independent, able to do things for ourselves and those we love. Being waited on and pampered a little is fine for about twenty-four hours, but after that I start to feel like a pain in the neck.

People with permanent or long-term disabilities live with this issue all the time. And sometimes their caregivers get burnt out or impatient—not necessarily with the big issues, but with the constant stream of small needs that must be met. My almost-over period of dependence (I’m back to work with just a cane and being very careful) has given me a new appreciation of the day-by-day way that people who are dependent must practice humility.

Before she retired from hospital nursing, my sister worked for about 15 years at a hospital devoted to the care of patients with end-stage cancer. Then, when her own medical condition forced her to take early retirement from hospital nursing, she went back to school and became a certified chaplain and ministered to hospice patients, primarily in their homes. For them as for the patients in the hospital, she said, the pain of their illness might be bad, but could almost always be taken care of by the palliative measures employed by specially trained physicians and nurses. The pain that couldn’t be taken away was the pain of being dependent, the pain of not wanting to be a bother, the minor but frequent irritation of having to wait for something until a caregiver could get to it, the struggle to cause as little trouble as possible.

The irony, of course, is that the most self-sufficient of us is not independent. We all depend on others in various ways, and those unwilling to accept help with some measure of grace generally wind up miserable and lonely. Some of us may rarely need physical help, but everyone needs people with whom to share joys and sorrows. It is said to be more blessed, and is for most of us more pleasant, to give than to receive. Many of us—married couples, close friends, people in situations like my sister’s and mine—are in positions where giving and receiving are mutual, and the balance increases our comfort level.

But the proper response to a gift, however large or small, is gratitude. St. Francis de Sales is quoted saying, “The measure of love is to give without measure.” The converse of that, I think, is that when we are in need we should receive without worrying how we are going to make a return for the gift; we should receive with simple, unmeasurable gratitude. And we should strive to be grateful, also, for the times when we are able to give of ourselves in loving ways, mindful that sometimes the least of Christ’s brethren include our families and friends.

I’ve been writing my whole life, earning my bread and butter this way since a part-time job that paid the rent during my last two years of college. For most of that time I worked hard at trying to attain reportorial objectivity, sticking to the facts and keeping my opinions to myself except for an occasional editorial. Then about 15 years ago my boss, editor of the diocesan newspaper where I toiled, told me I was going to become a columnist.

My reply was definite. No, I said, I’m not a columnist—what would I write about? Do you mean you want me to tell people what I think? Sure, he said; he’d been looking all over for a good woman columnist for our mostly male op-ed section, and had just realized he had one right on staff, and the column wouldn’t cost the paper anything extra. It wasn’t my decision to make. So I became a columnist. And now I’m a blogger.

When I succeeded my mentor as editor my column became a weekly feature. Allowing for some vacations and some weeks when I bumped myself in favor of something more important, a little fast math tells me I churned out at least 600 columns over 14 years. I’d rate their quality on a bell curve: a few excellent, a few pretty terrible, most somewhere on the curve between the two extremes. I wrote about my life, about books I was reading, about what was happening in the world. I came to love the connection that the column created with readers; in my first year as a columnist I got more reader feedback—by mail, phone, in person—than I’d had in 20 years as a reporter. Not all the feedback was positive, of course, but I was glad to know that readers felt comfortable talking back. I’m hoping this format will also encourage that kind of exchange.

I expect to post at least once a week, and I’m happy to be back on that schedule again. Although I have enjoyed and will continue writing the quarterly “Amen” essay for CHURCH, there’s a whole different rhythm to writing weekly and, oddly, less pressure. As a veteran writer told me when I went from a monthly to a weekly schedule, when you write weekly you know that not every piece is going to be a prize-winner; you pray for inspiration and do the best you can and don’t agonize over polishing and re-polishing the writing, as is the tendency when writing less frequently. There’s far less temptation to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good: you keep striving for excellence, but know that sometimes “good” has to be good enough. (That’s also why writers need deadlines!)

I’m going to use again the overall title of “A Different Key” for a number of the same reasons I first chose it, and for some reasons that grew as I used it. I love to sing, and I play the guitar a little; I’m a soprano, so when friends or family sing together with me there’s usually a complaint that I’m going too high and I’m always trying to find the pitch that will suit everyone. That leads me to say, “OK, should we try this in a different key?” As a religion reporter I participated in church events where I’d be the only woman or one of a few, and I’d think of myself as listening and seeing as well as singing and speaking in a different key from the men in the room. Looking at another kind of key, I’ve spent my life pounding on keys, typewriter keys for the first half of my career and more recently computer keys. I also think of the keys that solve puzzles, of keys that open mysterious doors or the welcoming door of one’s home, the tiny key of a silver bank I got as a gift when I was a child; of the keystone of an arch, of the key that brings disparate elements together, the key to one’s heart. And when I write this blog, I will be looking out as always for a different key, a different angle of the prism, that will turn my mundane thoughts into something different, a key that will help open the gates it’s so easy to put up between everyday life and the places we meet God.

I’m not a professional theologian; my degree is in journalism, but I’ve always been interested in things religious and recently someone kindly informed me that I am an autodidact in matters theological. Whether that’s accurate or not, I know that I have had an excellent seat for the past several decades from which to observe developments in this church of ours. I write as a Catholic who cares passionately about the church, one who feels blessed to be a Catholic even as I am keenly aware of the human failings of this communion of the human and the divine.

I hope readers will find A Different Key different from other reading material, and that it will be a key that provides a way into new corridors through and around the ordinary stuff of our lives.

An article by Adam Liptak in the June 12 issue of the New York Times discusses the difference between how freedom of speech is treated under the American First Amendment as opposed to laws in Canada and much of the rest of the world—even other countries where speech is relatively free.

A lawyer for a Canadian magazine on trial for “hate speech” is quoted complaining, “Innocent intent is not a defense. Nor is truth. Nor is fair comment on true facts. Publication in the public interest and for the public benefit is not a defense. Opinion expressed in good faith is not a defense.”

In the United States, on the other hand, the Supreme Court has ruled that there is only one justification for making even speech that tends to incite violence a criminal offence: the likelihood that violence will immediately take place. The old example of not shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater would fall under the same rubric: the shouter would be putting people in immediate physical danger. (The only exception I can think of is child pornography.) That makes almost all published words, and even most fiery words spoken at a rally or a demonstration, immune from government sanction. The protection holds no matter how noxious or even false the words may be (there may be civil suits brought for libel or slander, but the news media have some protections even against those).

The article is one in a series about how the U.S. legal and justice systems are different from those in the rest of what we used to call the free world. Most other democratic countries have more restraints on freedom of speech and of the press than does the U.S. Some of those interviewed for the article believe the United States should follow their examples.

As a journalist, I consider those freedoms particularly important and hold them close to my heart. I hate to see them nibbled away by political correctness or excessive fear of giving offense to some person or group. I believe that even hateful speech should be protected if we are to be able to continue to say, “Hey, it’s a free country.”

Yes, there is speech (and in the category of speech I include artistic and symbolic expressions of various sorts) which offends me deeply. But my response is to speak against it, not to want the government to censor it. I don’t, for example, like it when self-described artists abuse Christian symbols, but my impulse is first to boycott their work and avoid giving it undeserved attention, and then, if appropriate, to explain why I am offended to those who might not understand or share my feelings.

Civility is a key virtue in a democracy (see Father Jim Keenan’s column in the current issue of CHURCH) and civil speech is an important element holding our culture together. But I don’t believe that civility can or should be legislated, and I believe it’s a mistake to try to do so. It’s too slippery a slope.

As a writer and editor I’ve always had my own standards of civility. In addition, I make decisions all the time about what is or is not appropriate for my publication based on policies that have been established by the publisher and by the board of directors to whom he reports. Ink-stained reporters and editors learn early in their careers that freedom of the press belongs to the person who owns the press. I have many unpublished thoughts (most of them civil). But if I didn’t choose to work for a salary, I could start my own publication and publish whatever I wished. The Internet makes it possible for almost anyone to write a blog and disseminate an opinion. There’s plenty of hateful, mythological, and just plain dumb stuff around on the Web, and on the airwaves, and printed in ink on paper as well. But I believe in a free market when it comes to ideas. Maybe I’m naïve to believe that what is good and true will eventually prevail.

We wouldn’t need a First Amendment if everyone agreed. People who think we don’t need all those First Amendment freedoms are free to say so, and I am free to strongly disagree with them.

In our rapidly changing world, the way we receive and share information is changing, perhaps even more rapidly than everything else. I am very wary of letting anyone, especially any government functionary, decide what I may read, write, hear, see, or say. Let the Canadians and Europeans strive for greater harmony; maybe they have the right idea. I’d rather be able to say, “Hey, it’s a free country.”