to be named after
Catherine is talking on the phone with a friend of hers, Dana, who just had a baby. The baby's name is Catherine; I said jestingly, "Oh, hey! They named her after you!"
She said, "Yep." They really did? "Yep."
When I was up at Baylor the other week, I stopped by the statue dedicated to Robert Browning's closet drama Pippa Passes. The play pictures several sets of people in various dire, sinful, or ugly situations of their own making. Pippa is a girl who, as the title suggests, merely passes by, singing her song. But even that passing creates transformed lives. It's a dramatization of the moral butterfly effect.
I've often thought that Catherine was one of the Pippas of the world; not a guru or a lecturer or a maneuverer but simply a woman whose mere presence seems to leave the air perfumed with grace. This friend, Dana, isn't on a daily stay-in-touch basis with Catherine. They don't live in the same town; they rarely see each other. And yet Catherine has been such a presence in Dana's consciousness that Dana has named her daughter for her.
Surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses!
She said, "Yep." They really did? "Yep."
When I was up at Baylor the other week, I stopped by the statue dedicated to Robert Browning's closet drama Pippa Passes. The play pictures several sets of people in various dire, sinful, or ugly situations of their own making. Pippa is a girl who, as the title suggests, merely passes by, singing her song. But even that passing creates transformed lives. It's a dramatization of the moral butterfly effect.
I've often thought that Catherine was one of the Pippas of the world; not a guru or a lecturer or a maneuverer but simply a woman whose mere presence seems to leave the air perfumed with grace. This friend, Dana, isn't on a daily stay-in-touch basis with Catherine. They don't live in the same town; they rarely see each other. And yet Catherine has been such a presence in Dana's consciousness that Dana has named her daughter for her.
Surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses!
Comments