Sometime in an April fall day in Buenos Aires I remember sitting opposite the tiger cage of the Buenos Aires Zoo with a copy of Time’s famous issue “Is God dead?” I also read the latest statistics on how many Phantom jets had shot down North Vietnamese MiGs in the Vietnam war.

In those years, Time Magazine was influential and I would buy it every week except when the Argentine government would take it off the stands because of some bit of reporting that they found offensive.

As a born and raised Roman Catholic the Time essay was shocking.  On the other hand it wasn’t until I returned to Mexico City in 1967 when I went to Mass and suddenly during it, a perfect stranger next to me wanted to hug me. I was really shocked. Somehow the changes suggested by a Vatican Council had escaped my knowledge.

While I believe that my personal religious beliefs are not to be paraded here in this blog I do have this belief in the idea of the beauty of the  laying of hands. Whenever I run into a priest I ask him to bless me.

That of course could not happen in these days of social distancing.

It was a few years ago when  I was in Austin, Texas with my Rosemary and two granddaughters at my former Catholic boarding school that I spotted the university chaplain, Father Rick Wilkinson, C.S.C. and  asked him to bless the two girls. Rebecca, my older granddaughter ran to use Brother Edwin’s computer so only Lauren was blessed. The chaplain somehow put two fingers over her eyes and another on her head and said some beautiful words.

These days I see picture of people in bed with lovely views outside the window or something similar on a beach and they write, “I am blessed.”

I find it difficult to understand the idea of being blessed in what is really a godless world (Time said that was the case!).

This all brings me to the justification for posting this particular photograph that I took of Katheryn in room 615 of the Marble Arch Hotel so many years ago,

Over and over I come back to this image and I glory at its sensuality. I remember that the dress was bright red. I have little memory of how it was that I took it or what might have been said.

But I can ascertain here that I am blessed and doubly so because Katheryn was there to provide me with a moment of time that I will not forget.