Secularly Spiritual

Riverside is not a place I normally go to. It is about an hour and a half away. You have to go through Roubidoux, as Steinbeck or Faulkner seedy as can be, with nearly falling wooden homes and dust all about. Today I had to go. I did not want to. But I had to, in connection with my work. That part is really irrelevant, except for the part I HAD to go.

I got there. I did my job. And I was hungry. And in Riverside, there is one place I knew to go, The Mission Inn. It's been seven plus years, probably since I was last there, with a good friend, now residing in Missouri (the friend that is), to redeem a brunch I had won, for two. I still recall that afternoon, a lazy afternoon, having lunch in an outdoor patio with a European flair, and one of those figures actually move around. I don't know much about the Inn except that it took years to build and it was in the 19th century, positively old for California

I made a B line for the outside patio restaurant. It was nearly empty and I figured I had missed lunch time service. I hadn't and I picked among the many empty tables for the place I could best observe the bouganvilla, the birds, the fountain, the stone walls and balconies. The few that had been there left and I was alone. I could imagine this was my home, my courtyard in which I was having this leisurely salad lunch and lemonade, feeding the birds crumbs of bread and comfortable in a space of utter suspension from responsibility and trouble.

There are a few other places I have felt this exquisite peace. I believe, perhaps it is silly, but I do, that it is God showing us a little bit of what Paradise is like. One is in the Bronx. Really. It is called the Cloisters and is just on the edge of the Hudson. It is an art museum but it is styled after a monastery. In fact, art and actual pieces of a monastery that Thomas Merton used to visit, when it was in France, is now there. It is not a religious space, per se, but it feels ethereal. In Joshua Tree, some years ago, I was in the middle of the National Park sitting on a smooth large boulder and I felt it. A complete sense of safety, as if nothing bad could happen. As if I was touching Something of God. Certainly, in some ways, I am touching His Creation, in these moments, even if the stone was laid by man, man himself is a creation of His Hand.

So, I may have resisted today's hegira to Riverside, but it provided a priceless opportunity. I did not have to try to be meditative. I was, by the very act of sitting in that space, having that lunch, being meditative. I said I was reading the work of this monk, named McNamara. He talks of the Earthy Mystic. I don't know that this is a bit of what I experienced, but it's nice to think so.

"You Better Not Ask for Seltzer!"

As I returned to LA city proper after a sojourn in Costa Mesa today to give a lecture to incoming law students, it was well after 4 p.m. and I decided it made no sense to go to the office. I hadn't had lunch, and I was hungry and figured I'd hit The Farmer's Market on Third. It was a nice respite. It always is. Me. My food. My entertainment magazine (there really IS nothing much coming out I want to see this Fall).

On the way out of one of the gates walking back to my car I passed the usual tourists wending their way to the gastronomical stalls, and a short, balding man with an unmistakable borough of New York accent (sounded more Bronx than Brooklyn) was exhorting his wife, presumably about the beverage she could choose to accompany her feast---and he seemed very insistent--"You Better Not Ask for Seltzer!" I could have followed to hear the full context for the husbandly remonstration, but I didn't. I was going one way. They, the other. But as I continued on, I wondered why she was prohibited to ask for seltzer. I thought about the things that families make important, almost make moral imperatives, that really are not. I could imagine him saying, "You always ask for seltzer, Mona, (don't know if that is her name, but it fits the image of the two of them), don't you get tired of seltzer; I get tired of your asking for seltzer. Get a coke." Or maybe he really had a moral adjacent reason, maybe seltzer makes her unwell. I say unwell, but I mean that maybe it makes her, you know, burp, uncomfortably. For her. For everyone else. Maybe he worries that it will unsettle her stomach and ill affect their week vacation. I know what his words reminded me of, things that a parent said to a kid when I was young. "You betta not go into the water, you just ate" which meant that if you go into the water to swim after you eat, you'll drown. Not true, but I believed it till I was 40. Ok. I'm kidding. Or, "you betta go the the bathroom before we leave".

I don't know. Something about that flash of an exchange made me smile. There was an innocence about it. I bet she asked for Seltzer.

Finding a Direction

This weekend I saw the movie "Julie and Julia". I liked it. I liked both halves which merged to me into a happy whole. I would like to say that the movie inspired me to cook. It did not. I need no inspiration to eat, alas. But it did inspire otherwise. You see, Julie, the 2002 woman who cooks her way through Julia Child's famous book on French fare, decides to blog about each recipe and the day in which the recipe bloomed.

I have not been entirely happy with this blog. It has lacked direction, a center around which all the entries revolve. Last night, reading a book by the hermit monk William McNamara, The Human Adventure, I realized that much of my daily concern is taken up with trying to take steps to be in a good spiritual place when my time comes to shuffle off this mortal coil. Let me offer this image as an example of how I think about it. I don't want the last thing I do on this earth to be say, yelling at somebody on the highway who cut me off, or using one of my regrettably favorite curse words. I have heard, and I may have even written here at some point in the past, that the last word that people often say before they die is "Sh--!" Nope. I don't want that. And without a lot of work, it is a real danger.

So it occurred to me that my daily struggle is worth writing about, at least for me, and maybe for the odd reader. It's not going to be a holy blog. I am just not holy. I'd like to be. And that's the essence of the change of direction in this blog. Trying to be holy and failing more often than not. Trying to be holy doesn't mean boring. I promise. Well, I'll try not to be boring while I am trying to be holy. But this approach will help me in my writing. Yeah, just like there are a million pundits about politics, I know there are a million sites focusing on religion or some version of spiritual growth. And I am no spiritual guide, that's true. Maybe that's what will be different, who knows? That I am just this djinn from the Bronx, long dwelling in Los Angeles, who just like a whole lot of people is trying to find meaning, just mine happens to be as a practicing Catholic aiming toward the saint's friendship with God.

If today was any measure, it is indeed going to be a long and bumpy dark night of the soul. But then things of value do tend to come at a high price!

Tuesday's Tune

As my large white cat attacks the Hollywood Bowl schedule with his front paws, I stop to consider the idea of a secular withdrawal from the world, which if I were to get very lucky, and touched by an enormous wad of Divine Grace (that's what it would take) would lead me into some form of religious monastic lifestyle. I wonder if I could bring my cats?

Note to KC if you happen to read this----I am NOT depressed. Been there, done that. But not now. This is something else. . . .well, time finally to figure where I fit in before it's too late stuff.

Perhaps it is the result of finally selling my dad's condo--what a late education I have gotten in the world of real property! About to give the keys to a stranger, through his realtor, also a stranger, I close the door, literally and figuratively, on my father's passing, and leave his life, and thus part of mine. A little twinge twist in my chest accompanies my writing this.

Simplicity. That's it. No debates, professional or private. I intrude on no one's thoughts or opinions. They do not intrude on mine. Then I begin to see that proverbial "big picture" and I walk toward it and become part of it, leaving behind all things that buzz technological, and the babel that is generated by our societal self obsession, to which, alas I contribute, frequently in likely misperceived self-defense.

You have no idea what I am talking about. That's ok. No need. Maybe I'd continue with the Legacy blog about my dad. But all else would fade into unimportance.

A Biel Surprise

As my friend, Len Speaks, points out, this Hollywood Bowl season has been wildly uneven. I never care, as long as I have the setting sun, the breeze, the mountains in view, followed by the twinkling stars. But it is nice, beyond wonderful, when the show is good. I had high expectations that a "Guys and Dolls" with Scott Bakula and Brian Stokes Mitchell would be good. I have seen both these actors, cum singers, in other presentations and I know that they have singing, theatric skills. I did, however, wonder whether Jessica Biel, the young woman formerly of Seventh Heaven and fodder for ever tabloid based upon her current dating habits, could compete witht those performers. I am a bit ashamed to admit my bias, that is, I thought she could not, and that she probably been allowed to join the cast in some Hollywood low brow deal, and took quickie voice lessons so that she would not be entirely embarrassed.

Perhaps the extreme pleasure of the evening was that she is a singer, one that could match Stokes Mitchell well and truly. In fact, I could have sworn, by how the two of them intermixed on stage that they actually liked each other, in character. Funny how this young woman I do not know, never will know, I found myself proud of as if I were her very mother. Look what Jessica can do! She's not just a TV actress, or a bit of fluff. She has entertainment substance.

I was smiling at the stage and the big screen every time she came on stage. I wish her the best, and the fullest career. Of course that means she'll make lots more money than me, and she'll be the object of love and interest, and I won't. But even though that is the case, good for her!