Dear Maggie —

I have a granddaughter at school, and I have to admit that when I heard about the upcoming Mass in the Grass event, my mind didn’t immediately go to a parish picnic!  I did my fair of experimenting back in college (but didn’t inhale 😬) – after all, it was the 60’s and I was a liberal arts major – so I wasn’t ruffled by it, but I was quite perplexed that the parish was sponsoring such a thing. Eventually, my wife explained that it’s actually not what I was secretly hoping it would be thinking of, and in any case, we did RSVP the whole family for it.  Even though my designs on the event have gone up in smoke (haha!), I’m sure it will be great and I’m looking forward to meeting some new people from both school and parish, and so are my kids. Maybe it’s because we’re new to the school this year and don’t know the background, but with all of my confusion, it got me wondering – how did this event come about?  Has it been going on for a long time? And are you going?

— Toking Titus 

Dear Toking —

All I can say is that there currently isn’t a Saint Snoop Dogg – but there is a St. Fiacre, and he’s the patron saint of gardening, so he might just be your kind of guy 😜.  I should also mention that he is also the patron saint of hemorrhoids, too. I don’t think there’s a connection between those two things, but do what you wish with that piece of information…

Now that I have given you some fun facts, I’d like to give you a history lesson 👩‍🏫.  Fr. John used to have an outdoor Mass in the park when he was at St. Pius, and he loved it so much that he decided he wanted to bring the tradition to St Margaret of Scotland.  Being that this year is the 125th Anniversary (or the Quasquicentennial Anniversary as Fr. John loves to say), he thought this was the perfect opportunity to introduce our community to this tradition. The Parish & School Picnic has been held in the Spring the past few years, but it just made sense then to move it to the Fall this year (in place of the usual Fall school picnic).  So, think of it as the Back to School Picnic 2.0. I for one think it’s going to be a real banger!

I’ve always loved this kind of event!  When I was a younger Queen I was the committee chair for our local kind of event like this – and it had many iterations over the years.  Of course, everything we did back then was connected to the Church, so the Mass part was just a given.  Our first one was called “Meet in the Peat”, but it turned out there were more bog bodies than people in attendance (if you don’t count the sheep!).  That didn’t exactly foster a sense of community – and neither did the smell 😬. Then we tried “Get Together In The Heather”, but everyone was sneezing so much that no one could socialize!  We finally settled on the Highland Games and that’s what we did for many centuries. It made me so happy when SMOS used that tradition as the theme it’s fundraising dinner, the Highlander, for a long time. Man, I, like many of you SMOS old-timers, miss that event… I should put a bug in someone’s ear to bring that Scottish tradition back.  Anyone have Carey Morgan’s number?? 

I’ve gone on long enough reminiscing. But before I let you go, I should remind you to bring chairs, blankets, your own drinks – and your assigned-by-last-name item.  And just to be perfectly clear, the only “pot” you will find is the POT-luck that every family will bring.  And it’s held in the Stone Shelter – not the Stoned Shelter!  

Oh yeah, to answer your question, I’ll certainly see you there, but you may or may not see ME 😵‍💫! 

— Maggie