The Monastery, the Law, and the Djinn

The last year has been one of exploration with much more, exploration, and years (I hope) to come.


This last week was an example of variety and contrasts. On Monday, I did what I have been fairly frequently, I attended Mass at my parish and gave Holy Communion to someone sick immediately thereafter, and I did my recording for Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic), reading a particularly laughable book on how parents can be encouraged by schools to "volunteer". To me, it was a "It Takes a Village" sort of book gone wild, and if I were a teacher, I would resent having the job of parents being entirely placed on my shoulder, including getting parents interested in what happens at their kids' school. But this would be a subject for a Djinn diatribe. As the guy on that insurance commercial says, "Moving on". 


Tuesday was a monthly appointment for hair color and cut and a delightful visit with a former colleague and friend six months into her liberation from the structured work world. We ate by the water in Long Beach (plug here for Parker's Lighthouse) and delighted in our ability to be exactly where we wanted at lunchtime, without having to rush back to anywhere. And so we walked and sat by water and dock and I looked at her pictures from her trip to Spain and together we counted our blessings.


On Wednesday I made my second visit to St. Andrew's Abbey in Valerymo, California to pick up a friend and return him to the city, and also to spend much of the day in prayer, meditation in the stable turned chapel and the monk and oblate cemetery upon a hill overlooking mountains, tumbleweed, sagebrush, and cacti  I shared a community lunch in the refectory with retirements and monks. I bought several books on Benedictine Spirituality, with which I have found myself to be entranced by its simplicity and moderation in its particular way of communing with God.  If anything this last year has been a change of direction that begs the question of His intent for me (see the entry God's Whisper) and what response I will or will not make. I shall not hie myself to a nunnery, but the idea of being attached to a monastery and living a form of community life in prayer and in my secular existence has enormous appeal.  So I may hie to a retreat or two as July comes upon me, to hear the still Voice, which should be pretty easy given how quiet it is in the desert at night, or in the day time for that matter!  The listening will be more difficult, no doubt. Something, Someone seems, I say, seems, to be calling me in that direction.

Phone booth in the desert monastery. Fascinating. Cell phones don't work well. 

And then there was Thursday and Friday. 

I was back in the earthbound, and given the general unhappiness of lawyers, the chained and bound. As most states do, California mandates continuing education. I had only a couple of previously attended classes at the Office of the Chief Trial Counsel and I need the quota of 25 by Feb. 1, 2013. So finding a place where I could do a bunch of classes was welcome, well as welcome as anything involving the "law" is to me anymore. Lawyers have tied themselves into knots and it is their own fault, largely. Nothing is simple these days.. Everything can lead to a a lawsuit (they call it "cutting edge"; I call it another opportunity to blame someone for what happens in life because we're frail and mortal and we want to pretend that if we die it isn't fate, it's liability.) You can't write a quick will anymore because there are all sorts of linquistic nooks and crannies into which you will potentially fall and frustrate the deceased's intent. And it is true in every part of practice. And watch out for all those electronic things you have to use to be competitive, because someone is watching and you might just violate your obligations by using them, although you HAVE to use them. I knew about a lot of this, as a prosecutor, already, the ambiguity in distinguishing mistake from malpractice to misconduct. All I could think as I ran into a couple of colleagues and watched a class taught by one of the two individuals who ushered me into "retirement" from my job (a complete accident as I had selected to take the class off the net and saw no teacher names and frankly I happen to like the guy) was "poor poor souls these lawyers". Oh, and then there was the consequent thought, "I think I'd rather be praying in a monastery". And the third thought, "I'd rather be praying in a monastery for all of us poor poor lawyer souls."   As long as I remain active, and people keep asking me legal questions I am entitled to (but don't always because I know how easy it is to get into trouble with claims of malpractice--particularly when the potential client says, "Don't worry, it'll be easy.") answer, I still have a foot in that sad profession which has caused humanity to fear things like "dodge ball" and "hot coffee". But as I stood, now, truly an "outsider", in the colorful lobbies outside the rooms for presentations of the type I used to make as part of my job, work that I mistakenly thought built professional equity and appreciation with my organization, I saw that as ny ego heals or, better, as I learn to rid myself of it (no easy thing as I often also write in these pages), there was some purpose in all that toil, but it was my wish to be rewarded for it that was folly. There is a purpose to come, and I hope against hope, pray in my usual distracted way, that I will embrace it, without expectation of validation (which rarely comes or lasts if it does) and with charity stripped of all my pretenses and neediness.


I have a few more legal conferences to attend and tapes to listen to in order to meet the obligations of an active license for 2012, but as 2013 comes upon me, I see that part of life becoming more "inactive" in favor of some new part which remains to be seen. And for all I know may shift regularly.

First Draft

Finally, I have it!  I have it on a memory stick. And, I have it printed out in semi-book style so I can touch all 417 pages of it and show myself that the foundation has poured out of me.


"What?" you may ask. Well, please ask, "What?".  (A momentary pause).

The first completed draft of a non-fiction, personal tale. I may not actually be able to call it a memoir, because I am told that the literary form should be well shorter than 417 pages. But, whatever it is, or will become, I am proud that I said I would do it, and I did it.


It has been an inconsistent effort. I have worked as much as 8 or more hours in one day, and then not worked for days, in favor of whatever else falls before me. I have worked for minutes, or not at all. It was a great effort to go through some 20 years of journals and decide what got put into the draft and what did not. I had to be ruthless with that decision, as I will have to be ruthless when I sculpt the second draft, and perhaps the third. . . .I am afraid I might have made a mistake and left something "important" out.. Making those choices actually changes the story, and makes the truth interpretive and I have never been comfortable with that..


Be that as it may, I can now, officially give a nod to the cliche, "I hate writing, but I love having written."
It is truly not easy to commit to the action. By nature I am peripatetic. I am restless. I have a hard time being quiet, although I will say this year I have learned a bit more about t,hat, merely by being alone so much, while others work their regular jobs.


And boy, are there ever interruptions, even when you don't go to an office!  Well part of it is that I haven't quite figured out the schedule for a day. In fact, nearly a year into my release from the work world, I find that where months ago, it worried me NOT to have a structure, I kind of like it now. For now, or has it been always, I stay up  late. And for now, and kind of a new thing I can get up really really late if I want, and then decide what's next. My volunteer work is done more in the early or late afternoon.


I just haven't been in the mood to say, "up at 8, write for three or four hours" and THEN see what the day brings. Nope. I haven't. And, here's the truly terrific thing. I don't have to! What I have come to is that all the work I did in my life in traditional jobs and career--what did one of my friends say?  "That was then, this is now."  Then gave me the opportunity for now, although I did not realize it in that 30 plus year window in which I was furiously fretting about things that turned out no one cared about as much as I did or if they did care about it, it was a fiction, legal or otherwise, that I was really necessary to the process. Probably I give myself too much credit on the former theory and the latter one, well that was the humbling factor.


And what I am discovering?  As I learn humility, I become freer. I was wrong--all that grasping and what I grasped at was nothing more than ephemera.


What I have learned from the writing of my first draft is that whoever I was for that 20 years, while the core of the true self is still there, the crud I wrapped around that core and imprisoned it, seems to have been razored off or exploded off.  Or maybe it was shed because it was no longer useful.

I look at that first draft. It is rougher than rough. Wordy and repetitive. I wouldn't call myself a writer, just yet, but if someone asks me henceforward about what I do, for now, I think I'll say, "I write.".

It may all end up in my sock drawer, but so be it. Grist for the Mill--which by the way is the present title of the book.