Hello, and Farewell Kenneth DiPalma

I think I have noticed when moments of Grace have come my way. Sometimes. But not always.

I have begun to think, particularly in these last 18 months since I was thrown on my metaphorical keister job wise that not only was that "meant" to be, but that I have been pointed toward a very different life in whatever time I have left, short or long.  I am still working out what that all is and I am trying to listen to the Direction being given. But one thing I think that I need to pay more attention to-- those moments of Grace that come my way. I think they are part of the Direction, the Guidance, as it were of my God.

I wasn't really in the mood to serve Mass today, but we are short again of servers, the most regular one of whom was a fragile man, a recovering alcoholic, who was ill treated, however much without intention, by another parishioner, and has left, at least for now. So, I went just early enough to be sure the candles were lit and things were set for the daily service.

When I came in, one of the men who helps keep the Church facility clean and stocked told me to tell the priest that although there was an urn present with the cremains of a man, it wasn't exactly a funeral Mass that was to proceed. I didn't quite comprehend. With the remains there, what would it otherwise be but a funeral Mass?  In my context-less rule bound days, I might have worried about the propriety of a Mass that wasn't orchestrated as a properly prepared funeral one. Or how can you have a Mass with an urn there and have it not be an offical funeral service?  My job? To serve.  To do whatever the priest presiding asked of me for the benefit of the soul, who turned out to be in a small box (rather than an urn of urn shape) on a little table just inisde the sanctuary by the altar rail.

It was Fr. Lopez, a gentlemanly older priest who is also easy going by nature, who arrived. He had been intercepted and given the news of this deceased person, whose ashes had been brought to our parish by three individuals I had never seen before. They did not exactly look like they were related, different not only in their sizes and ages but in ethnic background. Yet, everyone was calling them, "family". There was no one else accompanying them as there would be at a traditional funeral, or at least ones I have attended.

Fr. asked me if I knew when the man, by now I knew his name, Kenneth DiPalma, had died. I knew nothing other than he was there, and that the three people in the front row had brought him.

Fr. said, "We'll go witih the flow."  He asked to look at a booklet for priests for the Funeral Rite. I found one in the antique kneeler in the sacristy. He would do a version of it, a quieter version. He told me that as we went out to bow at the Lord in the Tabernacle, he would turn and go to talk quickly to the "family", greeting them. 

And so he did. We began. He told the gathered, perhaps a bit more than 20, the average of a Daily Mass, that we were memorializing this man, Kenneth DiPalma. When it came to the readings, Fr. motioned me. I quietly crossed to his side of the sanctuary from mine and he instructed me to read those passages in the booklet that more accorded with the occasion of a soul being handed off to God than the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas which it was today. I found myself wanting to read well for this man I never met, about life, death and Resurrection, and about the Walk in the Valley of Death that leads to Eternal Life. "The Lord is my Shepard, I shall not want. . ." 

Although Fr. did not know Kenneth the words he spoke, I wish I could now remember them, managed to be intensely personal as if he had. General, but personal; how did he manage that? I felt more from his words than I ever had from those of the priest who said my own mother's funeral mass, that poor priest I have never let off the hook for his staccato prayer and sermon, so many years ago.

Communion. The three members of the family couldn't  decide whether to receive or not. And then two did.

As Father purified the vessels after Communion, he asked me if there was any holy water. I knew he was thinking of a prayer and blessing over the wooden box containing Kenneth. I ran into the sacristy and found the aspergillum, the instrument used to sprinkle the water, which seemed empty. I ran to the small font, which was close to empty itself, and tried to dunk the aspergillum, but it was too large. I then poured a bit from the bowl next to it into the instrument, and ran out. Whether it sprinkled or not the process, the blessing, would still be meaningful, that with this water there was the reminder of baptism, of salvation and of new life.

And so there we stood, the priest and me, the server, as he prayed for this man we did not know but who is part with us in the communion of saints. "Eternal rest grant unto Kenneth, O Lord. and may Eternal Light shine upon him." 

What little I could find out later is that Kenneth lived in Palm Springs and was at one time a parishioner of my church. When he died, he had no family, apparently, and these three lovely people, friends, took it upon themselves to acquire his ashes, when finally they were released by the coronor, and seek some service in the place to which they had been directed, here, this 12:10 Mass on January 28, 2013.

Kenneth was blessed by these people who helped to send him on his journey. I was blessed to be there.

Hello, and Farewell, Kenneth DiPalma. I will pray for you henceforward. Pray for me. 

The Members Fail, but Truth Prevails (I Pray and Believe)

When I prosecuted attorneys who failed to comply witht the Rules of Professional Conduct, it was not for "mistakes", the kind of human error all professionals make. So for example, blowing a statute of limitations because he or she miscalculated might be malpractice, but it would not be something that the Bar investigated. But blowing the statute because he or she never paid any attention to the case of the client from the moment the retainer was signed or hiding the fact that he or she blew the statute, that was indeed actionable by the Bar. Depending on how serious the knowing or intentional failure, in the latter case, was the effect on the lawyer's license.

My colleagues and I heard many a tale, many protestations if not of innocence, of "misunderstanding" the rules, and a not so little annoyance at the rest of us for requesting that they adhere to it. After all, they were "lawyers" who had taken an oath of their profession, not casually signed onto the trade association that goverened it. And when called on their, shall we call it, "BS?", they became very self righteous indeed and annoyed at the reality of the rules to which they had, purportedly, agreed. 

These all too human behaviors and rationalizations came painfully to mind when I read the released records of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (of which I am a part as an active Catholic) detailing how the then Cardinal and his administration handled the well supported accusations against priests of abhorrent sexual behavior against children. Let me take a little digression here--it seems to me a bit of anti-Catholicism to pretend, as I believe the press does, that pedophilia exists more in this corner of the human universe than it does anywhere else. Simply it does not. So as I write here, I am aware of the agendas on all sides of man made politics. That said, as I read the so called "apology" and explanations of the hierarchy, whose direction often seems less spiritual than Machiavellian in the best tradition of medieval and Renaissance administrations, I remembered my days as a prosecutor of lawyers and the near identity of the BS that seeks to evade rather than to confront wrongdoing. Oh, do I think I'd do it any better? No, I know I would not, but still I am insulted by the lack of recognition of the depth of their own failure.  After all, they tell us what to do, and remonstrate with us when we fail.

There are those, Catholic and otherwise, who would call into question the faith itself because of the boundless failure of these shepherds present and past. I have been one of them in my time. I was a lapsi for many years between 1970 and 1983, rationalizing my own difficulties as somehow the fault of the Church in which I had been reared educationally. So, I understand the feeling. Who are these, well, the word that comes to mind in the throes of anger is, "bastards", who exhort me, a single (and likely life long single) middle aged woman, to a life of chastity in the name of a theology that the world finds laughable, while they are accessories to the behavior and sometimes (for example, the bishop in California who had two teenage children by his WIFE, a wife that he presumably was not to have as a celibate) that they wink wink away?  Only when they are caught is there sorrow. Or so it seems to the person in the pew agonizing over his or her struggle with sin. To many they aren't walking the walk enjoined on us with authority that is not to be questioned. The authority of course is not theirs. They are intended only as teachers of the Words of the Authority, even if they often confuse themselves with Him and then justify their bad behavior as if somehow they are dispensed from the essences of the faith.

Perhaps in days gone by, when I was younger, and had not yet spent time in reading the Church Fathers or about them, or treatise upon treatise (I say read, but given how complicated some of it is, more, gloss over) I would have rejected my faith after reading about these walking contradictions and the nonsensical purveyors of explanations for bad behavior.  But I have read, and while relationship (which I have never been good at) is part of what the Lord wishes us to have, and that relationship includes the best and worst of the people of God, the essence of my faith as a Catholic does not reside with these men, or women to the extent women have engaged in their versions of these failures.

I remembered a quote from a favorite writer about things Catholic, although to read her fiction you would not immediately realize it, the long late (she died in 1964 or 5) Flannery O'Connor.

“You have to suffer as much from the church as for it,” she said. “The only thing that makes the church endurable is that somehow it is the body of Christ, and on this we are fed.”

“The operation of the church is entirely set up for the sake of the sinner, which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.”

I have comfortably attended services over the years of friends and family who are not Catholic. I see much of what I treasure in those faiths; much like my faith, but each lacks the central thing, the Eucharist in which Christ becomes not merely symbolically present, but really, truly, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. As I take Him within me in the form of Bread, the Substance is Him. If I leave the Church, I am not merely smugly leaving behind (as if I were in any way better than the most horrible of sinners) those who failed to model well for me, but the operation of Christ becoming Present to me every time I go to Mass, which these days is more often.  That would seem at best self-defeating, at worst, downright spiritual suicide, given the Light I have been given by whatever working of God's Will that brought me to the faith by two parents who were not practicing religion at the time I was born, and well thereafter.

I am reminded of another O'Connor moment. Mary McCarthy (sister of the actor Kevin, you know "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", the original), a rather contentedly retired Catholic in her time, had a dinner party at which Flannery was invited. O'Connor was reputed to be fairly retiring in company and she sat through the dinner in which part of the conversation included the Catholic Church and its quaint ideas that have lasted over 2,000 years--with many catacylsmic struggles.  Among the quaint ideas over which McCarthy expressed a bemused tolerance was that of the Eucharist, a nice little symbol for this and other Christian religions. O'Connor interrupted the fine dinner conversation with the statement, "If it's just a symbol, then the hell with it!" 

I am enraged at and disappointed at the clerics in control who tried to hide, knowingly and intentionally, the abuse being carried on by some, I say some, of our priests. This was not naivete, given the statements they made in independent (meaning not the LA Times interpretation) documents. I am enraged at their claim of having dealt with the problem, which is by forcing parishioners and volunteers, who were not subject of these investigations in the first instance, into this insurance based program called Virtus, or be restricted from service in ministries which are already short volunteers under the best of circumstances. This includes fingerprinting of all of us, lectors, acolytes, whether, despite the language of their own requirements, or not, the person has contact with children.  My attitude is that the training is laughable and only causes good people to fear to be around kids, as I am. A real pedophile will be able to circumvent the rules and the red flags. I am for punishing the bad guys (and ladies), not for punishing those who haven't done anything--always a problem with the knee jerk reaction to evil done by those among us.

That all said, I am a Catholic because I believe that Jesus Christ Himself founded my Church--with all of its human elements mixed in with the Purity of  His teaching, which ultimately, "Oh happy fault" transcends our profoundest weakness. I believe that if I walked away I'd walk away from Heaven (which is unity with God) and to Hell (which is not fire, but merely, and this is a horrendous merely, separation from God).  I wouldn't have been able to say this as a child, because as a child, and into teen years, the Transcendence simply did not get communicated. The glory of my having "come back" to Catholicism is that I could look at it with the eyes of an adult, not the prism of  babyhood. 

When I was looking for the quote from O'Connor on the net rather than rummaging through my library, the first thing I came upon was an article from the Most Reverend George Niederauer, formerly the Bishop of Utah and Archbishop of San Francisco. He is a Flannery fan, as I remembered from my days knowing him as Monsignor Niederauer at my parish, and an expert in her writing. It was his article that popped first and it seeming vaguely Providential that this happened, I include his article, which I think expands on the general subject.

http://americamagazine.org/issue/639/article/flannery-oconnors-religious-vision

Will I ever walk away? I pray not, but I know that the Deceiver is very talented and I am very weak. And being a Catholic is many things, but it never has been easy. I can only pray that in the Crucible, however that manifests itself to me in the future, the Grace of His Walk with me in the Eucharist, day after day (and the Grace of Reconciliation) will keep me strong enough to stay.

Les Miserables: Bringing it Home Indeed

   Hugh Jackman apparently practicing amid the electronic equipment.

I have to admit that were it not for the fact this movie was so well nominated for Academy Awards, I probably wouldn't have rushed to see it. Len Speaks tells me we saw a version of the play at the Hollywood Bowl, but to tell the truth I don't remember that.

I don't know. There are some books and movies that I avoid and then when finally I run into them, I wonder why the resistance. That's the case with Les Miserables. I never read the Victor Hugo novel. I figured I had done enough reading about the time around the time (here a bit after) the French Revolution by reading a Tale of Two Cities. Maybe something about the incredible darkness of the time frame, not that there haven't been and won't be darker times and places in history. Also, I like musicals all right, but I prefer them to be with bright and cheery scripts as their context.

But it was between Amour and Les Miz when Len called and I decided, ok, time, go see Les Miz. Suck it up. Maybe it won't be that bad. 

Whoa. Tears streamed down my face more times than I can count as the protagonists sang their love and anguish about their personal worlds and the big world of rebellion and revolution.

I won't assume you know the story, other than the part where this tenacious and unforgiving letter of the law guy Inspector Javert chases down the poor man who had been imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a piece of bread for his dying relative after he "breaks parole", and well makes the former prisoner, well, miserable.

But it is about so much more. It is about sacrifice, and truth, betrayal and man's place in the world, individually and cosmically. It's about the Divine, and about His plan for us that so often seems random and arbirary, and even cruel, and about acceptance of it to triumph, even unto death itself.

It really pays to listen to the lyrics of the songs that are performed in a most passionate way by the cast. Javert is a man obsessed by the Truth and so obsessed that he misses it entirely. A man steals a loaf of bread for a loved one's very survival and Javert's world of judgment admits of no mitigation.

It is no wonder that Valjean is bitter until he comes across a Catholic priest who confirms Valjean's lie about having permission to take silver that he actually stole which could have cost him yet another 19 years servitude. Valjean thereafter devotes himself to his God. He becomes a man of means in the years after he breaks his parole, and adopts the daughter of a girl whom he was unable to save (the amazing Anne Hathaway; her I Dreamed a Dream was heart wrenching), raising her as his own. Over the years his path crosses with Javert, who still is determined to bring what he insists is an irretrievable human being to a justtice now really of his own tortured making. Valjean's adopted girl, Cosette, grows to woman hood and falls quickly in love (over one song; now there's true love!) with a well heeled young revolutinary whom Valjean nearly sacrifices himself to save for his foster child whom he loves humbly and unreservedly. And he spares the spy amid the barricades---Javert--from death at his hands. The act of charity, of compassion so varies his conclusion of the evil of Valjean that he actually kills himself in the throes of his cognitive dissonance that this man he has so brutally misjudged, was actually good.

Human nature, often distressingly ugly, and sometimes sublime. And for the good, the promise indeed of reward.

.

The Paradox of Loss

  The lobby card speaks of it. The co-existence of the wonders of our world and the immense, catastrophic loss that lurks all our days and sometimes explodes into them.

Sometimes, the things we fear happen. The movie opens with a family on holiday flying to a resort in Thailand (they live in Japan where the husband has a job). Mom and one of the kids uneasily tolerate the turbulence attendant to their landing. But all is well. They arrive and begin a fairy tale vacation amid palm trees, turquoise waters and balmy breezes. Nothing would seem able to intrude. But nature shifts violently and the entire area is ripped away by a tsunami that injures the mother severely and separates husband from wife, and youngest children from oldest boy, left to tend to a likely to die mother amid a disorganized, filthy hospital where vacant faces reflect the incomprehensibility of mass death and seemingly accidental survivals.  If we lay the survivals at the feet of Providence, then there comes the question, "Why do some die and some live?"  Many chalk it up to God's cruelty. Others assert that He allows nature made and man made evil to occur--a consequence of the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden, but something to be overcome by the promise of Resurrection because of the vindicating act of Christ on the Cross.

I may subscribe to the latter view, but I am not immune to resistance, even rebellion, at the paradox of beauty and destruction locked in this physical, philosophical, and theological battle in which we are either beneficiaries or victims. 

As I sat in the theatre, actually holdiing my breath while Naomi Watts was flung like flotsam through the streets of a former resort area, I wanted to fun home and do what? Prepare. You can put away supplied, Djinn. But will you be able to get to them?  Well, I don't have enough. I should get more. I need to have money around, because when something happens, there won't be access to ATMs. But then I am not sure in a catastrophe like the one in the movie or the ones we have seen in real life, money makes any difference. So relax Djinn.  I don't do relaxed.  And relaxed was out while watching this film.

They took you to an edge in the film and then normalcy peeked out and the characters and I grabbed onto it. The blonde boy, named Daniel, whom mother and Lucas rescued--they lost him briefly--but he found his father who flung him in the air amid the throngs of the injured, generating a toddler's laughter. In a kind of makeshift refugee camp in the mountains, the middle boy of the family talks to an old woman about the stars that shine peacefully above them--some alive, and some dead, but all still luminous. Death, and life, always together, or consequent one to the other.

The Impossible in this movie (and in the true life story it detailed with its fictional enhancements) was that this family left Thailand battered, but intact. And then the thought occurs to me, "Nothing is Impossible with God".  Even when it seems so. Especially when it seems so.

And still there is always the underlying why, even when we have the answer in our hands or think we do.

The movie had a "happy" ending for this family, though clearly not for many others. I thought I'd have a nightmare last night on the vagaries of life and death. I have been known to have them, nightmares, or night terrors, in my case. But maybe I am coming to leave things in the hand of God rather than to force an errant, and futile, show of control over the realities of the brief human iinhabitancy of the universe.  Including my own and those of the people I have cared about and do.

Somewhere I read, "Oh, to be alive, when I die."  Words to live by before loss interrupts, and even while it does.

Piquing the Curiosity and Energizing a Blog (I hope)

So, last night I was channel surfing and finally hit the right time for Charlie Rose on PBS. His guests always grab me, when I do catch him. I remember sitting, mesmerized, one half hour listening to a man talk about play writing, before I found out it was John Patrick Shanley of "Doubt" and "Moonstruck" fame. Another time I was enchanted by Gabriel Byrne--this time I knew who it was.

The second half of Charlie was what stopped me cold last night. Two guys from WNYC in New York (where, little digression, I worked as an intern back in 1975 or so, in the Municipal Building), have this program called "Radiolab". 

http://wnycradiolab.tumblr.com/

It is about stuff, like how things work, not only scientifically, but philosophically, historically, emotionally--if I understood it. It's talk radio on a mind blowing canvas--they go where things lead them and then try to explain it to the listener.

Sometimes I worry that there really is nothing to write about here. But then I listen to people like these and I find myself ready to explore--something I do with great resistance even though I love it when I actually do so. To hear them tell it,and I think it is true, there is nothing that isn't really interesting. Not in any moment in anyone's life. Or in the joining of lives and events.

It is about taking nothing for granted, really, isn't it?  Life, I mean. The things we hear and see and feel and think. Some song comes to mind, I think it is by John Cougar Mellencamp, "Your Time is Now."  He says something about some of us letting too much pass us. I am guilty of that, sticking to the safe, or perceived to be safe, which of course is not ultimately safe at all.

So, I had a curiosity infusion yesterday. Maybe I'll pass it along this year in my blog. And I think I'll try to get a podcast of these interesting guys I saw on Charlie Rose.

Just spent a moment considering my own consciousness. Ever done it? It gets kind of scary when you focus on yourself being conscious and thinking. Like you might fall into a hole. But then it could be a marvelous jaunt couldn't it?  What's to be afraid of?

Oops I need to come back to condo earth. There's an HOA meeting in a half hour! 

January 1, 2013 in the Djinn's Neighborhood

A quiet day in the neighborhood on the throes of what is likely to be another messy year, human beings being what we are. But for now, ease and enjoyment without any obligation for the whole day!  I love my block, don't you?

As I write I am watching an absolutely abysmal, and surprisingly pleasing movie on the Hallmark Channel. I have been to Mass, this I had forgotten a Holy Day of Obligation. The stores that are open are empty as are the parking places surrounding them, which makes it all the more splendid a day. Small graces.

 

Yesterday was busy, seeing a San Francisco based friend I used to work with for the first time in many months, lunch at Greenblatt's on the Strip and a lingering coffee next to the heater (it being unseasonably cold in Los Angeles) at Coffee Bean Tea and Leaf.  Then a calm dinner at a favorite locale, Della Terra with two different friends. I am sparing them being pictured here, so I picture only myself as proof of celebration.


Silly outfit, no?  I have sent the adjoining person's photo to her. She was pleased with the outcome. Me?  Not so much. I haven't taken a good picture since I was 20. I am long past 20. Seeing this pic reminded me of the resolution I did not make again this year, losing weight. But it would be nice if I could exercise will power, just once.

So, what do I wish for me, and for you?  There is no such thing as a worry-free life, or a life without difficulty, so that would be a foolish one. But I do wish that each of us remains patient and strong and as loving as we possibly can given what is thrown at us this year. I wish internal peace for each of us. I wish God's Grace to give us all the fuel we need from day to day.

Happy New Year!