Photo courtesy Flickr

52 kids lived on Lennon, and the undisputed god of that street was my next-door neighbor, Rick Caruolo. Rick would hold court on his front steps, playing the guitar. He always drew a crowd — teenaged girls mesmerized by his movie-star good looks, his football buddies and old-timers, too. Little kids like me loved him because he’d read “Peanuts” to us, explaining the comic strip, frame by frame. “Do you get it now?” he’d ask. Sometimes, he’d break up a fight, and afterwards you’d see him, arm around the beaten kid, coaching and consoling. He was our paperboy. His peers called him Elvis, because he was cool — cooler than the King, cooler even than James Dean. But not too cool to miss the neighborhood Christmas party. He never missed that.

In 1966, three weeks short of his 22nd birthday, Rick was killed in Vietnam, one of the first Rhode Islanders to die in that war. He died a hero, shot when he crawled out to help a fellow wounded Marine. Almost 40 years later, when I decided to tell Rick’s story in my book, Monuments, the Caruolo family shared with me the most precious thing they owned — the letter Rick’s soldier-brother Wayne Burwell wrote to them after Rick died in his arms. As those who have lost a beloved child to war know, not all monuments are made of stone.

When Monuments came out, I gave a copy to Rick’s sister. Seeing her cradle it in her arms tenderly, as though she was holding her brother himself, made me realize once more (as if I needed convincing!) that books are a most exquisite and irreplaceable art form. A few days later, a woman contacted me, introducing herself as Dale Burwell, Wayne’s wife. She wanted to surprise her husband with an inscribed copy. Although they lived in New Jersey, I urged them to make the trek to Rhode Island — my sister was having a Christmas party to celebrate the book, and Rick’s family would be coming.

“We’ll try,” she said.

What a party! It seemed everyone I had ever known was there, including dozens of the original Lennon Street gang. Gathering around the glistening Christmas tree, we talked, ate and laughed. With every carol we sang — “Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to us once more” — the years fell away.

Then the doorbell rang — it was Dale and Wayne Burwell. The entire Caruolo family circled around Wayne. The hugs and tears lasted a long time. Until that moment, I hadn’t known that the Caruolos had never actually met Wayne. After the war, he disappeared, and they couldn’t find him. In one of those graced moments that life serves up unexpectedly, the story came full circle. Wayne — who had loved Rick as much as we had loved him, who had held him last, giving back to Rick the love he had shared with so many — was with us. And so was Rick. Christmas was as we remembered it: shining, hopeful, complete.

Epilogue: To this day, perfect strangers write to me, saying Rick’s story was the story of their brother, uncle, father, friend. They have shared their most intimate memories of those they loved and lost. So many people contacted me about that particular story that I was emboldened to take my own leap of faith and write from the heart in my new book, Full of Grace. Rick’s spirit, the Christmas spirit, lives on in Full of Grace, which tells stories about love, loss and hope — and the invincible nature of the human heart.

—Judith Dupré

This blog appeared on Bookreporter on Dec. 23, 2010, and was adapted from Monuments (2007)

Photo (c) Google Maps

From south to far north of the US-Mexico border, she is beloved by gang members, conservative Christians, artists, and day laborers. Today on her feast day streets from Key West to East L.A. fill with processions honoring her.

Of Mary’s myriad cultural identities, none has captured the popular imagination as has that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, easily the most venerated icon of the Virgin Mary today. How did this holy figure become a symbol of commerce, gangsters, and right-to-lifers?

Almost five hundred years ago, Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to the “Indio” peasant Juan Diego on a hill northwest of what is now Mexico City and once the far margin of the known world. Ten years earlier, conquistador Herman Cortés had conquered Mexico in a bloody war that left those who survived oppressed by the Spanish colonials. The dark-skinned Guadalupe who appeared to Juan Diego was encoded with Aztec symbols—sun, moon, and serpent—and spoke to him in his native language, Nahuatl. Calling him “my son,” she asked him to ask the bishop to build her a church. When the bishop needed proof, she gave Juan Diego roses, blooming impossibly in winter, and her own image, miraculously imprinted on Juan’s tilma, or cloak.

It wasn’t long before Our Lady of Guadalupe subsumed and eclipsed other Marian figurations in the Americas and those of pre-Hispanic deities such as Tonantzin, the mother goddess of compassion. The Spaniards capitalized on her Aztec roots to colonize Mexico. But the indigenous people claimed her too, seeing themselves in her dark eyes.  Eventually, she effected a cultural understanding that allowed Mexican outsiders and insiders to construct a blended, altogether new identity.

The first hint of how Guadalupe emerged from the church and into the streets can be gleaned from the distinctive religious practices of American Latinos—the largest, youngest, and fastest growing sector of Catholicism. Many are evangelicals, eager to broadcast, in word or on tee shirts, their beliefs. But, believers or not, more than half pray to the Virgin Mary during difficult moments in their lives. Latinos identify with family—whether immediate, extended, or celestial. In their homes, religion is handed down by the mother and home altars are common, further blurring the boundaries between familial and institutional worship. Guadalupe, eyes cast down and arms outstretched, is a family member, the kind you can count on.

But she is untethered from home too.  She herself has become a “place” for those who fall outside the norm. “Two cultures are reflected in her image, both indigenous and Spanish,” said Arturo Chavez of the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio, pointing out that her skin color “speaks to many people who are in a ‘no-person’s place, those who are not Indian or Spanish, but mestizo, a mixed race people.”  Chavez, who has interviewed dozens of men who have tattooed La Virgen on their bodies, understands these markings as her image “incarnated” in human flesh. Her tenderness, in this case, literal.  Once tattooed, the gangster is both sinner and saint, holding in visual tension the spectrum of human behaviors and hopes. Although Guadalupe’s image is also a practical means of gang identification, even this speaks to her compassion—gangs are often the only place where their members have felt a sense of belonging.

Gangsters aren’t the only ones who feel alienated. Every December, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels hosts “La Virgen de Guadalupe: Dios Inantzin,” an epic performance lush with feathered headdresses and mariachi music that typically draws thousands over two nights. Director Jose Luis Valenzuela says the story resonates with immigrants who feel ostracized by their new American neighbors and by relatives back home who feel betrayed by their having moved to the United States.

Guadalupe has gone global, mirroring back to everyone their own dreams and priorities, and in the process binding together unlikely bedfellows. Pregnant when she appeared to Juan Diego, as indicated by her black sash, Guadalupe has emerged as the patron of the unborn within the Catholic pro-life movement. Carl A. Anderson, CEO of the Knights of Columbus, the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization, dedicated his tenure as Supreme Knight to Our Lady of Guadalupe and co-wrote a book about her that debuted on the New York Times best-seller list in 2009. Poets and protestors have latched on too. In The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz called her “the shield of the weak, the help of the oppressed.” Marching under her banner, César Chávez sought justice for Californian migrant workers, leading the United Farm Workers in nonviolence protest–most notably the grape boycott of the 1970s, when, in solidarity, some 17 million Americans stopped buying grapes.

On the campaign trail, presidential candidate John McCain tried to woo Latin American voters by orchestrating a 2008 photo op with the miraculous cloak image at Mexico’s Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe that flashed around the globe. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, visiting the same Basilica in 2009, made a highly publicized gaffe when she asked who painted the famous picture. (Correct answer: God).  When Felix Sanchez, chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, lobbied for Sonia Sotomayor’s 2009 Supreme Court confirmation, he posted an online image of the tilma in which Sotomayor’s face was superimposed over Our Lady’s.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is the hardest working saint out there. Recently, this most Latin of Marys, champion of the outsider, the poor, and the oppressed, has been invoked by supporters of the Dream Act. Clearly, among her many qualities, the Virgin also has an fine sense of irony: this year, on December 9th, the feast day of the peasant Juan Diego, who did not look or speak like those in power, the U.S. Senate once again delayed legislation that would enable immigration reform.

Although La Virgen’s ubiquitous presence defies simple explanation, her ability to mediate contradictions—whether religious, political, ethnic, or economic—is undeniable. The proof is everywhere around us. That Guadalupe’s image is found on bottle caps as well as in basilicas is evidence of the wide faith in her perennial power to build bridges between people with different values. Let’s hope she makes an appearance soon on the Senate floor.

—This article first appeared in the Daily Beast, Dec. 12, 2010

—Photo: Retablo de la Virgen Indigena ©  J. Michael Walker, 1995

Naturally, with a new book out, I’m thinking about Oprah, about all those people who seem to hold its fate in their hands.  It is humbling, annoying, and incredibly time consuming to get the word out—my efforts feel like a tiny drop in the voracious media tide that roars in daily. Just how much of this should be turned over to God, I wonder, as I write yet another email. My thoughts go back and forth, a mental ping pong game, and somehow Jonathan Franzen’s head is the ball.  Do you think he’s begging friends to forward reviews of his latest “majestic sweep,” or post reviews on Amazon?  I doubt it.

Margaret Atwood, literary goddess, says writers need three things: “a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.”

So let me stop whining and instead contemplate, once again, the nature of surrender and patience.  There’s a lot to be said for surrender and opening to the grace that accompanies letting go of those things that are out of our control.  My hope, at least for today, is to celebrate this book, noticed or not, and rest content knowing that writing it has already enriched my life in profound ways.  Once more, I consider the rewards of patience: The gratification it provides may not be immediate, but rather is the ground from which a more rare happiness, like roses in winter, can bloom.

Photo ã Paulio Geordio

This article first appeared on Intent.com.  Follow my blog on Intent.com!

Building a bridge is a monumental undertaking, and there is something inherent in projects of this size and scope that makes people want to participate in their creation. In the case of the sleek, new I-35W crossing over the Mississippi that opened in Minneapolis this week, Twin City residents engaged in a day-long discussion that determined aspects of the bridge’s design, eighteen hundred schoolchildren made mosaic tiles that adorn the bridge, and thousands watched in wonder as this heroic ten-lane highway bridge rose, incredibly, in eleven short months. To celebrate the bridge and spirit of collaboration, FIGG, the bridge’s designer and engineer of record, has published Bridging the Mississippi: The New I-35W Bridge.  Rich with color photos, plans, and graphics, the book provides a step-by-step overview for the general reader of the bridge’s design, planning, and construction. All book proceeds will be donated to two Minneapolis organizations that further the cause of education.  For more information, and to order the book ($20 plus shipping), visit FIGG.