Hi friends,
My family has a slew of birthdays in April, so the month is always a flurry of celebration. Which is good, but tiring! Also good but tiring is our newest canine family member, Hildegard. She came to us just this last week and we’re all smitten with her, despite her current insistence on peeing in the house. I’ve wanted a dog for a long time and have had a soft spot for staffordshire bull terriers for years so it’s safe to say that I’m obsessed. She has been and I’m sure will continue to be my constant companion.
In book news, last week I finished proofreading the typeset version of my book (the final proofread! I think!). Galleys should be arriving at the publisher’s offices soon and my publicist is gearing up for a summer of, well, publicizing. I like to keep people updated on what stages the book is in because, until I started the process of publishing The Contemplative Tarot, every aspect of publishing was a mystery to me. I think the timeline is interesting and I’m betting that at least some of you feel the same. Of course preorders are available; forgive me in advance for plugging this book for the next six months or so.
I feel like lately I’ve started most of my essays writing about a piece of art that I like, and while I don’t want to get stuck in a pattern, I am going to do it again this month. I want to tell you, in particular, about a painting of Joan of Arc that I like very much, because her feast day falls in May (the 30th, to be exact). The painting is this one at the Met, (I’ve also been feeling nostalgic about the Met lately, sorry) by a French artist named Jules Bastien-Lepage. It depicts the moment that Joan, before she became what she was destined to be, was visited by Saints Michael, Margaret, and Catherine in her parents’ garden. The saints tell her that she’s going to fight in the war, and Joan just looks shell shocked, flushed and tense, her toes digging into the dirt. The thing I love about this painting, and the thing that can’t be communicated outside of seeing it in person, is its sheer size. It’s eight feet tall and nine feet wide. It takes up an entire wall. The scale means that Joan appears larger than life – in the painting she stands about six feet tall, but she would have been only thirteen years old at the time of this vision and certainly not that tall in real life. But she always seemed, and still does seem, larger than she really is, and it’s that mythical quality of Joan of Arc that has always appealed to me.
I was confirmed into the Catholic Church when I was fourteen years old, which is the usual age for receiving this sacrament. Part of the process of confirmation is choosing a patron saint, and I chose Joan of Arc as my patron saint because she’s exactly the kind of saint I loved at fourteen. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, devouring myths and fairy tales and epics, and the story of a girl who also grew up in the middle of nowhere and somehow got to be a myth was immensely captivating to me. I wanted to have a life as exciting as Joan of Arc’s. I wanted visions and courage and a good fight. I had a big imagination without the life to match it, and Joan’s story of having a vision in her little garden in her little village and then running off to lead an army was electrifying to me.
Is that what I got? Not really, and certainly not if you’re just looking at the surface of things. I went to college, got married, had two kids. My life revolves around church and school pickups/dropoffs and chauffeuring my kids to their extracurriculars which are few but which still involve me spending a weirdly large amount of time in the car. I am, essentially, a stay at home mom who writes as a side gig because I think it’s interesting. My life is average, normal, boring. And I don’t dislike that! For a long time (like, most of my twenties) I desperately wanted a life that seemed interesting to other people. And then I realized that the life I myself want is a life that seems boring to other people, because what I really love doing–and what I think I’m best at–is taking care of people. I love the slow, quiet life I have now, but it looks like nothing as adventurous as Joan of Arc’s life. As a result, I spent years feeling disconnected from her, not sure how my patron saint was supposed to guide me in the life I found as an adult.
My husband came into the Catholic Church a few weeks ago, on Easter. (I won’t write about how much this means to me here because then this little essay would quickly become twice as long.) Because he was confirmed in the Church as an adult, he got to pick his patron saint as an adult. I’m not going to tell you who my husband’s saint is because he’s a private person and I don’t know that he wants hundreds of people to know. But it’s a good saint! It fits who he is and the guidance he needs as an adult. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little jealous. It’s not like I haven’t developed relationships with other saints through the years, but one’s patron saint feels more closely tied to one’s spiritual life than other saints do. Or at least, that’s how I see it. And my relationship with Joan of Arc has had many ups and downs, because who I was at fourteen is not who I am now.
If you’re subscribed to this substack, you surely know that I wrote a book about tarot and Christianity that’s being published this year. Despite it being five months out from publication, the book has already started picking up a little bad press among conservative Catholic news sites. (The speed with which they picked up on my book surprised me, though maybe it shouldn’t have – the topic is great clickbait.) I want to say that this doesn’t bother me, but it does, because I very much want everyone in the entire world to like me. But the silver lining of this bad press is that it’s started to bring me closer to Joan of Arc again. We do share some life experiences now! Even though the life experiences we now share are not pleasant ones, it’s nice to have a patron saint in one’s corner who was also falsely accused of both heresy and witchcraft.
More importantly than that, though, is this. In making space for Joan of Arc in my spiritual life again, I’m also remembering what I was like at fourteen. And I’m remembering that I like that version of myself. When I was fourteen, I was brave and imaginative and creative. I was in love with the idea of being in love. I was comfortable in myself. I didn’t worry as much as I worry now. I wasn’t having visions like Joan was, but I was spending a lot of time looking like Bastien-Lepage’s version of Joan: feet in the dirt, staring into space, thinking about God. Joan of Arc keeps me tied to that dreamy, imaginative girl, and I think that’s a good thing to hold onto.
One of my favorite things about Catholicism is that it gives me something with which to wrestle. I like how, in my faith, I can come back to things over and over again. I can spend my whole life dipping in and out of various aspects of the faith that move me at different points in my life. It feels rich in that way, in how I am always finding new things and revisiting old things. Joan of Arc is just one example of that. Like my faith in general, I am spiritually tied to Joan of Arc, for better or worse. Like Catholicism, I chose her and so I will always have her, a mythic young girl to keep me honest and to help me stay close to the versions of myself I love most.
I have always loved Joan of Arc! I had no idea she was your patron saint, or if I did, I forgot. But this is so lovely. I see it. Now I have an urge to read all things about Joan today.
Re. your comment on the conservative Catholic reception of your book - I want to let you know that here is one Catholic (of many, I'm sure) who has pre-ordered your book. I pulled a card this morning, the X of Wands. Very apt. It was like God was saying, Pam, read Matthew 11:28-30, and please try to relax. I am so looking forward to your book. I have only one tarot book by a Catholic author, the great Valentin Tomberg's Meditations on the Tarot. Hooray for Joan of Arc - I like what Fr. James Martin says about her influence on his life in My Life with the Saints. Keep up the good work!