Thankful Thursday, One Day Late

Hey, where’s the party?

I am a day late and a dollar short for both Thankful Thursday and the feast of my much-loved adopted patron, St. Margaret of Scotland. No matter! I am going to jump in where I am, which in my case is always slighty behind and fairly off-center.

What is an “adopted patron saint” you say? For me this means that though my parents named me after St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (the French nun who received the apparitions of the Sacred Heart), I later “adopted” Queen Margaret of Scotland as my secondary patron. She was a wife, a mother of 8, and a queen. 🙂 I love both Margarets!

It’s funny. Growing up, the only other people named Margaret that I knew lived in a nursing home. Seriously. I worked in one in high school and there were at least 3 residents with that name. Today, however, I am happy to know many little girls who share my name and more importantly, the name of these two great intercessors.

And so, without further adieu and using St. Margaret of Scotland’s recent feast day as my excuse, here is my list of ten things for which I am grateful:

• With all my talk of things Parisian, who would have thought that it is Scotland that was my first love? It’s true. And so I am very thankful for my parents, who prayerfully and with a collective sigh indulged their daughter’s need to spend three summers in a row visiting this country. Och, aye! It was my first time flying and the first time this little gal from North Dakota saw the ocean.

• I am thankful for my husband, who must indulge my many nostalgic stories (told in a makeshift Scottish burr, no less) and who got saddled with my student loan payments when he married me! He has since reduced my spending, (another sigh), but we do dream of traveling back to these beautiful bonny lands together.

• I am thankful for the Glasgow School of Art and its instructors. I am thankful for my introduction to Scottish art in general and in particular, to the art of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife…Margaret.

• The name Margaret means “pearl.” I am thankful for having an excuse to wear them.

• I am thankful for making the acquaintance of this young man, who influenced me with both his quirky, fun-filled outlook and his faith. I was an impressionable 20-year-old who needed the exposure to other young adults who were far less “worldly” than myself. His art:

Quiet Evangelical by Joseph Davie

And his letters both played a part in my conversion two years later. Who couldn’t benefit from reading things like the following:

“Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking, partly ‘cos my thoughts have been out of line. I’ve been looking at thinking as being related to tuning in on a radio and wavelengths and things. It’s got to do with what Pascal, I suppose, calls ‘inner dialogue’. In Pascal I read ‘Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it. By telling himself so often enough he convinces himself, because when he is alone he carries on an inner dialogue with himself which is important to keep under control.” Pascal goes on tosay that we should evangelize ourselves, talk about God, and who we are in this inner dialogue. It may sound pretty obvious stuff but what with the way I was thinking at the time it hit me like a ton of bricks.”

• I am thankful for the Scottish Highlands—the amazingly green mountains, the sheep and the woolen mills, the sea. I am also thankful for the Glenlivet that we would drink on our return from the many cold & misty outings.

• I am not thankful for haggis.

• I am thankful for the Scottish accent, which is one of my favorites and took me one full day to finally understand.

• I am thankful for the movie Braveheart, one of the few movies I can watch again and again and again because it is an epic tale of valour, love and integrity. And because it stars Mel Gibson. 😉

• I am thankful for having had the chance to visit Edinburgh castle and to see St. Margaret’s chapel. I myself do not have a private chapel, but I have my home, which is my domestic church and which can be made to be every bit as serene as St. Margaret’s.

• And finally, I am very thankful for St. Margaret of Scotland. I am thankful for the way she won over her husband, King Malcolm III. He was a rough-and-tumble savage of a man when she married him—an illiterate warrior who (dare I imply it?) probably smelled badly. She did not set out to refine him; rather, she won him over with her gentle ways and prayerful humility. I love how he used to steal away her prayer books and return them encrusted with jewels. Isn’t that just sweet? I love the fact that her eight children clearly adored her (in the figurative sense). And finally, I love the way she served the poor and the sick. St. Margaret is known for her charity, and goodness knows, I hope to be.

Have a blessed day, everyone!

*Special love & thanks to my mother-in-law Cathy, who with her husband “Grandpa Doug” recently returned from a visit to Scotland and who helped me set the tone for this post with her reflections.