The line between religion and magic, I learned in school, isn’t clear. But many scholars of religion agree that one important division is that while magic is private and crisis-oriented, religion is public and its rituals have no specific, short-term, earthly goals.
As a Catholic, she explores ways to cope with sufferings through prayer and confessions.
But throughout this all she ponders over the medal with broken clasp. Fixing it was in the back of her mind but she never did.
I guess, the medal represents the magic part in this reflection.
For a while during the long, hot summer I entertained the superstitious idea that things would not look up for my family until I had the clasp of my medal repaired. I did not think I was being punished for breaking it, but I thought I had damaged some trust by doing that, and that I couldn’t fix it until I did some penance by way of cost and trouble.
She, at least, entertained some magical ways of coping, it seems.
Along the way, she's dealing with the question of "losing faith," too.
What does it mean to lose faith for a well-educated Catholic?
I guess she's dealing with this question against the backdrop of, possibly, postmodern situation.
In my dream, I wandered down the aisle of some kind of noisy, crowded theater. At the front, where a stage should have been, were confessionals. I went inside one to repent and there was no priest there, only a screen with the face of a priest. I said to him: “Father, I’ve lost my faith.”
All in all, Elizabeth gave us an interesting story to think about.
Thankfully, it's without much heavy theological discussion-though she's capable of doing that way if she so chooses.
Story-telling rather than theologizing. Isn't it more postmodern thing to do?
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