Sainthood   And then there’s sainthood, but the bar is high — you have to be holy, of course, and that’s not the half of it, since you have to die, perhaps as a martyr, eaten by cats in the Colosseum, or peppered with arrows, or burned at the stake with your faith still intact, and then you have to answer prayers (at least two) with miracles — say, a village spared from plague, a bullet stopped midflight — a mere apparition won’t cut it, you must intercede somehow, set something right, deliver the mystical goods. And who, you may be wondering, will get to make the final call and fit you for your halo? There’s a committee to weed out fakes, a panel of scholarly souls (all male) to scrutinize your application, which, by definition, you don’t care about — not if you’re really a saint. So now picture this — you’re in, feast day and everything, stained-glass windows, the works — and the eternal presence of God, for God’s sake! The Kingdom of Heaven! And down below, they’re burning candles in your name . . . until they don’t . . . until a new committee reconsiders, deems you not holy enough, and they won’t renew your license — whatever you did doesn’t cut it anymore, and maybe you didn’t even exist. So goodbye, Saint Nicholas! Godspeed, Saint Philomena! We’ll try to be good before we die.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont August 2023