I was in court yesterday with a kid. As I argued against his being locked up in punishment for too many attendance issues--a month ago he was locked up for nine days for missing too many classes, go figure that logic--I told everyone in the room, essentially, what I already knew so well. That I knew this kid better than those recommending judgment. And for longer. That I knew him this year as the last when I pursued him down labyrinthine ways, the smalltime hound of a Passionate God. That his approach to study this year was 100% more productive than last year. And, besides, why is there this enormous need to punish and much smaller one to affirm?

Actually, some of this went by email to his case worker. I suggested that the boy is making progression incrementally. You know, like we ALL do...when something good happens.

I have heard all the 'As soon as I get out, I'm changing my ways,' 'I'm born-again,' etc. There is NO FINER substance to growth than the slow, self-indulged, repentative thing we call one day at a time.

Anyway, it brought me back to some recent thinking as I prayed the Salve Regina at the end of a rosary.

We Catholics take a stronger alliance with the first of the two creation stories in Genesis. Therefore we believe that we are made in some Fine Image and not despoiled from birth (regardless of the doctrine that also tells us that there is heaps of control issues out there). There is a theology out that that believes the opposite.

Happily I am not of the same. As Marian prayers go, we recognize the desperation of the world--hell, the social gospel is at the heart of Catholicism despite the petty preoccupations of some elders in our day who would mime the religious right--and we call upon the Mother of God to journey with us, accompany us along our incremental journeys to Her Son.

That all takes patience and I'm cool with THAT virtuous need, too.

As I am with tracking and walking with the boy in court yesterday. And his many peers.