Looking Down the Road

The air, last night, was cool enough to deserve a sweater after days of swelter. I savored it, and the last of our attendances at the Bowl celebrating, joyously, the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein. The voices of the late and great echoed through the hills, accompanied by a live orchestra that captured every nuance of the strings and woodwinds and horns. Gordon McCrae, Shirley Jones, Dick Haymes, Julie Andrews, Nancy Kwan. I cried at "If I Loved You" as if hearing it for the first time. The moon was full. And a lighted cross oversaw us all, punctuating the preciousness of this moment of our lives.

I thought a lot about "the Cross" yesterday, even before we shared our last hurrah at one of the wonderful sites in Los Angeles at summer's unofficial end of the summer. Some Christians call it "The Royal Road of the Cross". Many of us, of all faiths, and no faith, simply do not accept its reality, as if our subjective denial negates fact.

Julie Andrews' whose pristine tones animated audience after audience lost her voice to a surgery some 15 or 20 years ago. Gordon McCrae, young, strong, virile, on the screen forever, has been dead for many years. I seem to remember very public struggles that corroded the talent. They, as we, have walked down that road, struggling with each day, finding moments of connection, losing them again, watching the very physicality they, and we, take for granted, dissipate.

I have been attending the same Church for over 25 years. For much of that time, I have lectored, and as lector, I sit in the sanctuary during the service. Year upon year, someone sits in the same pew, giving to me the impression of invulnerability. And then, gone. Sometimes it has been sudden. Other times, their illnesses have been palpable, as they struggled to walk the aisle to their usual seats. Their names go on the sick prayer list. I wonder if that fact alerts them to the fact that they may never come off the list and move to the prayers for the dead.

In some ways, this process from robust and new to frail and old which, if we live long enough, is the inevitable for all of us, has been, for me, emphasized, by watching the brave decline of my former pastor. I remember how he used to glide down the middle aisle, straight and strong in his black cassock, stopping at the side of his elderly mother, in her regular pew, third from the front, to greet her, to kiss her on the head. She has been gone since 1999, well into her 90s. He is only in his 80s, but a medical ailment of many years passed has worked itself fully into his being, and for some time he has used a walker. But he has steadfastly continued to celebrate Mass, truly as if his life depends on it. I think perhaps it does. Back to service from his latest medical crisis and hospitalization, he struggled even more assiduously, with assistance, to the altar, where, by permission of the hierarchy, he is allowed to sit to celebrate. I want him to be there, doing that, for as long as is possible, even as I know what is possible is likely limited. For his struggle is mine. I am watching a version of myself, if I should make those years. He labors under the watchful eye of the crucified Christ, literally, as a large Cross hangs above his head. I look out into the gathered, and I remember many of those gone long before, Charles Gremillion, Paco DeLa Rosa, my own father, Ed Sullivan (not THE Ed Sullivan, but an individual who should not be forgotten just the same), the Ricardo Montalban, the Vincent Price, the Audrey Meadows, the Danny Thomas, Sonney Ottey, Eleanor, whose last name I cannot spell, Rosalie, the pastor's mother, Chris Hewitt, Ed and Ernie---I remember how their heels would click as they came into the Church. Faces fade and others replace them. In time, my face, sitting in the sanctuary will fade and hopefully, it will remain in someone's mind's eye. We are all experiencing the Cross. And joining in the suffering which leads to Resurrection. It may not be proper theology but I believe that we join in that suffering, to our spiritual benefit, whether we are in full communion with a particular faith or not. The phrase, "No one comes to the Father, except through Me" is about God's power, not our puny efforts at belief or our reluctance to do so.

I am looking down that road now, closer and closer to the kind of suffering I fear and resist, that which so many before me have already experienced. All I can do is ask the Progenitor, the Second Person who suffered in a way I hope He spares me, to keep me in His Care, and good enough, as neither prayer nor piety comes easily to me, to hear, "Well done, my good and faithful servant!"