Meantime a born story teller, poet, and all around gallant named Peter Gallaher pulled in his email one day and found some 200 messages in his box from something called CINLit (CIN Literature, Philosophy and Culture email discussion list).   "Who are you people and what are you doing in my box?" he wrote back to us.  And as he tells the story, a Mariellen Howell was the first to answer him. It was some kind of curious divine "accident."

Without ever intending to subscribe, without even quite knowing what an email list is, Peter had entered a very active CIN list to which I then belonged.  Curiously, he was home a lot with time to "play" at the computer because his wife Sheila was home too, in the final year of a fourteen year bout with breast cancer.  Only a few months before, at age 57, Peter had accepted mandatory retirement from his 34 year career as a federal agent.

Now what was really interesting about this divine coincidence is that Peter had "fallen in" with a group of people uniquely able to stand with him during the coming months' ordeal.  CINLit's founding moderator had died of breast cancer after a long battle only two months before.  Carrie remained a vibrant OneList presence until a week or two before her death. CINLit's co-moderator and now moderator had also just lost his beloved wife Linda to breast cancer a mere few weeks earlier!   Bob was still very present to the list when Peter arrived on scene, though of course at intervals he did draw back and take for himself needed personal space. Not at all surprisingly, Peter fit right in.

Quick-witted, highly literate, deeply devout, staunchly Catholic, and very very articulate in print, he was quickly dubbed Sir Peter the Gallant (by me, he says, again!) and made a knight of the realm.  He'd be there still, I have no doubt, if it were not for the fact that I fell out of favor there and was never readmitted. At the time of my fall from grace Peter stayed with CINLit, however.  I went my way but we kept in touch every so often.  I prayed for him, for the kids, and for Sheila ...  With her permission he sent me a photo of her -- one which she chose, he tells me now with tears in his eyes, because, as she put it, "YOU look so good in that one."  She looked lovely too!  It was their son Andrew's wedding five years back.

Anyway, when I started my first list I sent Peter an invitation to join but he was very taken up with Sheila's needs and declined it.  As her suffering increased I wrote less often, but read Peter's broad-span emailed bulletins with absorbing interest.  Sheila was a very private person, Peter said, so meeting her would not be possible even if I happened to be back east at a time when she felt up to it.  He always told her of my inquiries, though, and he and I joked about my invisible presence there in prayer, perched on the arm of the couch.

When she died I didn't know what to say but remained concerned about Peter and the kids.  I wrote to Jeanne, Peter's daughter, whom I had also "met" in CINLit very shortly before my exit, asking for news and explaining that I didn't know what to say to her Dad.  "Just say 'hi'!"  she advised.  So I did. Peter and Jeanne both ended up joining SCI-scripture shortly after this and it was on account of my desire to welcome in particular Jeanne's very pleasantly gregarious nature that the second list, SCI-world, was created. Then when I went home to visit my family in New England during January 2000 Peter suggested that we get together for coffee.  I ignored this.  He persisted, even sending me a message via our cyber and my "real life" friend Barbara, who lives in the town I grew up in!  "Why not go?'  Barbara said to me, laughing.  And so I did.

For the rest of the story of our courtship and God's many surprises for us ever since, the reader may reference the pauperspennyworth archive.  It will suffice to say, here, that the day we were ecclesially married Peter chose also to pronounce my private vows of unity, poverty, and stability.  We understand our marriage to be about serving others as a more spiritually fruitful unit than either of us could have been in attempting to serve God on our own. I had long felt called to be a religious, you see.  And Peter had thought very seriously of becoming a priest after Sheila left him alone and, therefore, free.

Sometimes we wonder together whether the form of community which tends to come into being as a result of loving self-investment on email lists like these may in fact be the sort of "fruit" God chiefly means our life together to yield.

GO BACK

February 12, 2004