Occasionally, I have written stories, mostly fictional, but based on the smallest of facts. I have long since given up trying to sell them to some journal or paper. I have never sold the few I did submit. Perhaps I am not good enough. Perhaps I am, but not lucky in this respect. Either way, with the passage of time, it no longer worries me and I have this outlet, the blog.
I ran into this story I wrote some years ago and had buried in a folder. I like it because the heroine, though living much as I have all these years, reacted in a way I never would have in so risky a situation.
DELIGHTFUL TRESPASS
"Nothing exciting ever happens to me," said Jen to her companions as she exited the car. They had been talking of mutual, and unlike us, married friends who, late in life picked up and moved to Australia.
"I love you guys," Jen continued, "but once it might be nice if my Saturday night was about more than watching a long dead movie star in a black and white film at the Egyptian and you two mocking the other movie goers. And it doesn't have to be a sixteen hour trip. Me, and someone who 'gets' me."
"Tell it to your therapist!" the driving member of the two college friends chided, flashing an "I've heard this before" smile, as he restarted his motor.
"I did, and then he died". Jen paused. "No connection, I hope!". Jen's tone was light, keys rattling as she approached her vestibule. She knew these lovely men saw her through the prism of their long friendship, a solid one, but carefully constructed not to delve much into the emotional depths among them. The single thing her therapist ha made both gloriously and painfully clear was that relationships should be a lot deeper than those to which she had been long accustomed, even sought out. Losing her therapist had been a blow, and the depth of that rare experience was something she had never been able to repeat for "real". She had lots of insight, but the will to change had remained recalcitrant. Still life was basically good. She really had not complaints.
"So to Facebook, then to lament are we?" queried the bemused passenger out the window. She remembered a little sadly that he had once compared their relationships to a "three legged stool.". Ugh.
Jen waved and bowed. "I shall recount that a most pleasant tie was had by all."
She watched as they drove off, took a deep jasmine filled breath and looked up at the few stars she could see. This was the life she had composed. Deal with it.
The four unit building was completely empty. Two neighbors were out. Twenty years her junior, the were always somewhere far later than she, that's when they were in town, since they traveled hither and yon for their respective businesses. The remaining apartment, across from hers was awaiting a new tenant willing to pay market prices for what was becoming finally a trendy-ish area. Jen reaped the benefit of long term residency and rent stabilization. No doubt they would take her out "feet first" when the time came, hunkered down New Yorker in Los Angeles to the end.
She went into her rooms and poured herself a night cap, Protect, a current favorite. She abandoned herself to her deep leather chair and looked into the night from her ground floor window. Crickets and the occasional passing car punctuated the quiet post midnight.
And then she heard the water whoosh of the shower in the supposed to be vacant apartment.
She got up. "Maybe I'm hearing things. The delusional spinster."
Jen went to the utility porch and opened her back door closer to the side on which the bathroom of the apparently temporarily occupied apartment was located. Yes, definitely the shower.
And then the sound stopped with the squeak, squeak of the handles. She saw that the bedroom window was open. Not broken, just open.
Jen went back through her place to the front hall doorway. She opened the door, a crack. And then, despite herself she walked across the hall, paused and knocked. It was reflexive, a surprise even to her. She did not run, although she angled away from the door, just in case.
He was at ease.
The door pulled open. A man gazed at her sideways, his straight black hair glancing his forehead. He brushed it back with his left hand, and finger glanced his graying mustache. He was at ease. He had dressed, old jeans and an old jean shirt of a slightly darker color, rumpled but clean. Had she not known better, she could have believed that this was someone who had every right to the apartment. He looked at her unflaggingly, but with a most disarming kindness, "Hello, I'm Damien."
Despite a passing thought of Ted Bundy, she maintained his gaze, pointing to herself. "Jen."
He waved her in, opening the door a bit wider, revealing on the otherwise bare floor a blanket with paper plates of bread, cheese and a bottle of a serviceable, but inexpensive red wine. The room was lit subtlety by three or four votive candles. His straight hair, she noticed, was still wet.
"I planned for the occasions, a respite, if you will," he said in a quiet, pleasant voice. "But I didn't plan on a companion in it. An odd request, perhaps, but would you join me Jen?".
The way he said her name touched her very center. She felt totally safe. How could any of this be safe? He was a stranger. He was a stranger and a burglar. But all he had done was to cleanse himself and to seek an indoor meal, how could that be dangerous? How was it even wrong? Despite herself, Jen went inside.
They sat on the floor, across from one another, the blanket and food between them. He had small paper cups and he poured the wine as if once his life had included such social intimacies.
"It matters to me what you think about how I got these provisions we're sharing. While perhaps not quite an honest day's work, it was an honest day asking for the good will of others at La Cienega and San Vicente. You'd be surprise how far twenty dollars goes.".
She took the cup had he slowly withdrew his hand, his gaze once again steady.
"The wine, a Barefoot red, $6.99, the cheese, cheddar cubes, just under 3, the bread, a mere $1.50, the cups less than that. The blanket I had.". He broke he bread. He handed her a piece. What she was feeling was not logical. A line for an old movie, "Wuthering Heights" burst into her head. It was what Cathy said of the brooding Heathcliff, "He is more myself than I am."
Tentatively, she asked of him how he came to be homeless. "A kaleidoscope of reasons, accidents, fearful interactions, but misty bad choices for which only I am responsible. I'd love to blame someone. But this is the life I have composed."
Jen's stomach jumped hearing those words, which she had thought only a short while before, considering the tides and eddies and choices in her life.
Damien, seeing her slightly sad reverie interrupted it, "Jen? Where have you gone?". Breathing out expansively back to the moment, Jen confessed, perhaps for the first time admitting to herself, "that's how I have come to be alone, accidents, fearful interactions, but mostly bad choic3s for which only I am responsible. She glanced at him; in the candlelight it seemed as if his eyes were beginning tears. Instead of running from her words in favor of his own, he sat silent with her.
"So, what's next Damien?" she finally broke the moment.
"Well, I think" said Damien, "that maybe I am just about to turn a corner. I am hopeful.". At that, there was a sudden flapping sound, and a flash of swirling light, which both of them at once realized was a police helicopter. It's proximity to Jen's building could be no accident. Someone had heard him, them, and called the police.
They got up beyond quickly. He dislodged the blanket from the stuff on top of it, like a magician.
"You have to go Jen. Now.". He took her hand for an instant and kissed her on the cheek with a gentleness Jen could never forget. And then he was gone, out the back window into which he come.
Jen sprinted back to her placed. And listened to her pounding heart.
Then she heard the heavy steps of police and the sound of radio calls. And then one of them knocked. She answered with as fake a calm as she could muster.
"Ma'am. We. Got a call about someone breaking into the apartment next door. Looks like someone was in there. Did you hear anything?"
Jen was no saint and like any human being she had lied in her life. But never as willfully as this, "No officer, I was in the back in my bedroom.
It never would have occurred to him that she had aided and abetted a trespass, and had enjoyed it.
"Thank you ma'am.". And he was gone.
When Damien did turn the corner, it was her devout wish she'd see him do it.
And maybe she'd turn a corner of her own.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Monday, June 9, 2014
Pentecost in West Hollywood
Yesterday was the official end of the Easter season. Pentecost, the celebration of the day on which the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and other disciples in the upper room, where all of them cowered after the death, and despite the Resurrection of Christ, was no different at St. Victor than at any other parish in the world.
It was, maybe, harder to get to the Church here in West Hollywood than anywhere else, at least in the United States, because the Holy Day coincided with the yearly Pride parade. Over the 30 or so years since gay pride has been marked, the city staff and we Weho dwellers have gotten good at managing the traffic, the helicopters and the crowds spending a festive day, but still getting to a scheduled Sunday service smack in the middle of it all remains a daunting effort. That is, if you take a car. I happily live within about a mile, and so I figured I'd enjoy the walk in the late morning sunshine.
We didn't have our usual complement of servers. And the number of attendees in our already small parish was only about 40. But the guest priest made it in less time than he had anticipated, and though we did not have enough servers to process in with Crucifix and candles because of street diversions and traffic, the moment the entrance hymn played, "Come Holy Ghost", it was as always, a short 45 minutes to hear about God's revelation to us out of His relentless love.
I think, aside from the story of Thomas insisting on seeing the resurrected Christ and His wounds, the story of the Descent of the Holy Spirit on those timid, terrorized followers, is a favorite., because I am a timid follower. Peter, who denied Him emphatically and repeatedly. The rest of the apostles, except for John, no where to be found near the Cross. They would never have left that room but for those tongues of fire from the breath of the Spirit.
God gave His physical and spiritual signs of Crucifixion, and Resurrection, and when that still did not make his disciples willing to risk their lives, He sent His Third Person to inspire with a Force we can never understand in this world, and which made them brave for the rest of their earthly existences.
And on that day, we too receive the Spirit, so that we can hear His "Peace be with you" and his soothing "Be not afraid."
It was a quiet service, much like the daily one, which is rarely attended by more than 25 people, but it was an Infusion, perhaps not as dramatic as the one 2000 years ago, but just as certain. I may not yet be ready to leave the upper room, but at least after the service I was praying one day I might.
And then I walked back toward my apartment, stopping on the way for a salad at Gelson's. Shared a table briefly with a young woman on her Facebook page, and read about Malibu in one of those freebie magazines. I marveled at the focus and dexterity of the city workers who dismantled the various barricades and cleaned the streets of confetti from the now winding down parade and concessions, and reopened the streets to traffic. I turned toward the uphill portion of my walk.
It was, maybe, harder to get to the Church here in West Hollywood than anywhere else, at least in the United States, because the Holy Day coincided with the yearly Pride parade. Over the 30 or so years since gay pride has been marked, the city staff and we Weho dwellers have gotten good at managing the traffic, the helicopters and the crowds spending a festive day, but still getting to a scheduled Sunday service smack in the middle of it all remains a daunting effort. That is, if you take a car. I happily live within about a mile, and so I figured I'd enjoy the walk in the late morning sunshine.
We didn't have our usual complement of servers. And the number of attendees in our already small parish was only about 40. But the guest priest made it in less time than he had anticipated, and though we did not have enough servers to process in with Crucifix and candles because of street diversions and traffic, the moment the entrance hymn played, "Come Holy Ghost", it was as always, a short 45 minutes to hear about God's revelation to us out of His relentless love.
I think, aside from the story of Thomas insisting on seeing the resurrected Christ and His wounds, the story of the Descent of the Holy Spirit on those timid, terrorized followers, is a favorite., because I am a timid follower. Peter, who denied Him emphatically and repeatedly. The rest of the apostles, except for John, no where to be found near the Cross. They would never have left that room but for those tongues of fire from the breath of the Spirit.
God gave His physical and spiritual signs of Crucifixion, and Resurrection, and when that still did not make his disciples willing to risk their lives, He sent His Third Person to inspire with a Force we can never understand in this world, and which made them brave for the rest of their earthly existences.
And on that day, we too receive the Spirit, so that we can hear His "Peace be with you" and his soothing "Be not afraid."
It was a quiet service, much like the daily one, which is rarely attended by more than 25 people, but it was an Infusion, perhaps not as dramatic as the one 2000 years ago, but just as certain. I may not yet be ready to leave the upper room, but at least after the service I was praying one day I might.
And then I walked back toward my apartment, stopping on the way for a salad at Gelson's. Shared a table briefly with a young woman on her Facebook page, and read about Malibu in one of those freebie magazines. I marveled at the focus and dexterity of the city workers who dismantled the various barricades and cleaned the streets of confetti from the now winding down parade and concessions, and reopened the streets to traffic. I turned toward the uphill portion of my walk.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Small Great Pleasures
For the better part of a year, maybe more, in the fifteen minutes before the noon mass at St. Victor, I go outside into a little non-public patio to watch the plants, and the birds. The mockingbirds make nests in the bougainvillea and steadfastly chase any creature that intrudes on the space around the bushes. Sparrows pop onto the grass and into the trees. Hummingbirds take their nectar from all the other colorful plants.
In those few minutes my belief in God cannot be shaken. And I breathe the air of paradise. And wish I could stay there henceforth. Of course, that is not to be, yet anyway.
All of this activity is going on in the city amid our bustle. Ever notice when you are at a stoplight that the sparrows have made nests in the openings of poles holding electric wires? Outside the office window right now, a bevy of bees are hovering over leaves as the kids on the other side of the bushes play an idle game of basketball. Peaceful co-existence.
At any rate, I almost need that little prayerful space outside the Church every day, as much as I need moments before the Blessed Sacrament inside the Church. I have always been let's say, "high-strung" and of late various tasks that have come to me in "retirement" have triggered all my fears and anxieties. So those moments of whistling birds and wispy breezes close to the noon hour are indispensable to my body and soul.
Prayer comes easy while observing the markings on a sparrow, or the iridescent tiny neck of the hummingbird.
Hmmm, just now I went out into the afternoon sun to get the parish mail. And I noticed that a cloud looked a great deal like a sleeping German shepherd. That really brightened the day!
I was thinking that perhaps the best way to approach life, and it is no new idea, is to recognize that daily life is just plain hard, and every so often it is interspersed with these brief experiences of what our lives ought to have been, had we not been willfully grasping at becoming gods ourselves. People say, rationalizing, that it would be boring, this everyday a paradise. Really? I don't think we would know what boredom is because our lives would be entire, whole, infused with Divinity. What a mess we made.
But at least there are these small great pleasures that remind us to hang in because it has been recovered for us, this paradise, if we persevere now, here, in that daily grind. At this moment I am willing. I know that in an hour or less I could be in a lamentable lamenting state.
And then I hope I can abandon myself into God's Hands--just long enough to get back on track in anticipation of eternity.
In those few minutes my belief in God cannot be shaken. And I breathe the air of paradise. And wish I could stay there henceforth. Of course, that is not to be, yet anyway.
All of this activity is going on in the city amid our bustle. Ever notice when you are at a stoplight that the sparrows have made nests in the openings of poles holding electric wires? Outside the office window right now, a bevy of bees are hovering over leaves as the kids on the other side of the bushes play an idle game of basketball. Peaceful co-existence.
At any rate, I almost need that little prayerful space outside the Church every day, as much as I need moments before the Blessed Sacrament inside the Church. I have always been let's say, "high-strung" and of late various tasks that have come to me in "retirement" have triggered all my fears and anxieties. So those moments of whistling birds and wispy breezes close to the noon hour are indispensable to my body and soul.
Prayer comes easy while observing the markings on a sparrow, or the iridescent tiny neck of the hummingbird.
Hmmm, just now I went out into the afternoon sun to get the parish mail. And I noticed that a cloud looked a great deal like a sleeping German shepherd. That really brightened the day!
I was thinking that perhaps the best way to approach life, and it is no new idea, is to recognize that daily life is just plain hard, and every so often it is interspersed with these brief experiences of what our lives ought to have been, had we not been willfully grasping at becoming gods ourselves. People say, rationalizing, that it would be boring, this everyday a paradise. Really? I don't think we would know what boredom is because our lives would be entire, whole, infused with Divinity. What a mess we made.
But at least there are these small great pleasures that remind us to hang in because it has been recovered for us, this paradise, if we persevere now, here, in that daily grind. At this moment I am willing. I know that in an hour or less I could be in a lamentable lamenting state.
And then I hope I can abandon myself into God's Hands--just long enough to get back on track in anticipation of eternity.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Billy Joel: Fifty Years, You ARE kidding me?
At his Hollywood Bowl concert last night Billy Joel said he'd been in the music business for fifty years.
I would have fallen off my bench, except I was cemented in by those surrounding me all of us shoulder to shoulder.
It's not that I can't believe it has been fifty years. I mean, Billy is jowly and sleepy eyed, and that curly hair of yore has long gone down the proverbial drain. And after all, almost every song he sang was a cut from albums I was spinning in the 1970s at WFUV back in da Bronx from whence I never fail to mention I sprung. That's nearly 40 years all by itself.
It's just that I sat there thinking, "How did it happen? And so fast?" The entry before this talked about the breath that is life. Last night was another sealer of the reality of the deal. I have my own incipient (or not so incipient) jowls. You should see me when I try to exercise my jaw and neck in a futile effort to stretch and firm. So, Billy, there was no critique on you because of yours and that white beard thing that makes you look vaguely like a Sopranos' cast member. And you don't jump around like you used to (just read today that he had double hip replacement). But who among us does? But those hands, they still swirl on the keyboard and the voice was as solid as on any of my favorites, "Piano Man", "Uptown Girl", "Allentown", you name it. Billy said he is more baritone than tenor these days, but it didn't matter. Terrific he was as a tenor. Terrific he remains as a baritone. And backed up by some amazing musicians, and an eye catching backdrop of electronic photos and light, I felt transported back to my twenties, full of the idea that I'd somehow be in the entertainment business (even if I go ahead with law school) or something equally amazing--and lucrative would be nice too. When he sang "We Didn't Start the Fire" I realized just how much my days have gone through intense rapid fire history. It's amazing any of us are still here standing, it's been of such enormity. And yet, here many of us were, as one tee shirt wearer trumpeted in print, "First Generation Piano Man Fan".
You want to see a little of the concert--just check your Facebook page. I am guessing that one of the people on your Friends list was there. Everybody was recording snippets or more than snippets. I did.
I teared up a little, truth be told, aware of the spinning away of time, in general, and mine in particular.
It wasn't sadness really. A little annoyance maybe that I haven't been paying enough attention to the rhythms and spacing of my own life. And then I see someone like Billy at a concert that brings back very specific memories of times long gone by and I swear to myself that I am not going to waste another moment. Of course, then I waste the next one. "I wasted time and now doth time waste me," said Shakespeare in Richard II.
"Stop it!" I cry. At least I surely can say that it was no waste to spend a couple of hours listening to Billy Joel. And maybe tonight I might as well. Last night, and today, I find myself in a "New York State of Mind" and subject perhaps of another entry down the road (we shall see where the mood takes me), I was happy last night in Hollywood to "Say Goodbye to Hollywood". With the passage of time comes a change of perspective about where you came from. . . .and where you should be now.
I would have fallen off my bench, except I was cemented in by those surrounding me all of us shoulder to shoulder.
It's not that I can't believe it has been fifty years. I mean, Billy is jowly and sleepy eyed, and that curly hair of yore has long gone down the proverbial drain. And after all, almost every song he sang was a cut from albums I was spinning in the 1970s at WFUV back in da Bronx from whence I never fail to mention I sprung. That's nearly 40 years all by itself.
It's just that I sat there thinking, "How did it happen? And so fast?" The entry before this talked about the breath that is life. Last night was another sealer of the reality of the deal. I have my own incipient (or not so incipient) jowls. You should see me when I try to exercise my jaw and neck in a futile effort to stretch and firm. So, Billy, there was no critique on you because of yours and that white beard thing that makes you look vaguely like a Sopranos' cast member. And you don't jump around like you used to (just read today that he had double hip replacement). But who among us does? But those hands, they still swirl on the keyboard and the voice was as solid as on any of my favorites, "Piano Man", "Uptown Girl", "Allentown", you name it. Billy said he is more baritone than tenor these days, but it didn't matter. Terrific he was as a tenor. Terrific he remains as a baritone. And backed up by some amazing musicians, and an eye catching backdrop of electronic photos and light, I felt transported back to my twenties, full of the idea that I'd somehow be in the entertainment business (even if I go ahead with law school) or something equally amazing--and lucrative would be nice too. When he sang "We Didn't Start the Fire" I realized just how much my days have gone through intense rapid fire history. It's amazing any of us are still here standing, it's been of such enormity. And yet, here many of us were, as one tee shirt wearer trumpeted in print, "First Generation Piano Man Fan".
You want to see a little of the concert--just check your Facebook page. I am guessing that one of the people on your Friends list was there. Everybody was recording snippets or more than snippets. I did.
I teared up a little, truth be told, aware of the spinning away of time, in general, and mine in particular.
It wasn't sadness really. A little annoyance maybe that I haven't been paying enough attention to the rhythms and spacing of my own life. And then I see someone like Billy at a concert that brings back very specific memories of times long gone by and I swear to myself that I am not going to waste another moment. Of course, then I waste the next one. "I wasted time and now doth time waste me," said Shakespeare in Richard II.
"Stop it!" I cry. At least I surely can say that it was no waste to spend a couple of hours listening to Billy Joel. And maybe tonight I might as well. Last night, and today, I find myself in a "New York State of Mind" and subject perhaps of another entry down the road (we shall see where the mood takes me), I was happy last night in Hollywood to "Say Goodbye to Hollywood". With the passage of time comes a change of perspective about where you came from. . . .and where you should be now.
So many faces in and out of my life
Some will last
Some will just be now and then
Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes
I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye my baby
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye my baby
Some will last
Some will just be now and then
Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes
I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye my baby
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye my baby
Billy Joel hasn't written a song in two decades. He lives an "ordinary" life in Sag Harbor. Thank you for coming to see us at the Bowl. I hope this isn't the last time we'll cross paths and reminisce, me with you, and you with a crowd, and not all Baby Boomers. There is a generation after mine that is following you. Another fifty years?
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Joyful, and Wistful, Reminders that Life is Just A Breath
Twenty-two years ago Bill Tilden showed me a first studio portrait of his daughter, Caitriona.
Ten years ago Bill died when she was only twelve, and her brother, Charlie, only ten. Their mother, Janey, moved them forward through a bog of unanticipated loss and grief. They struggled but they prospered on a new road.
On May 18, Cait, a confident, long-legged beautiful co-ed in what looked like four inch heels, graduated from a University on the cliffs of the Atlantic, in Rhode Island. She goes on to complete her Master's in Applied Behavioral Analysis, a new amalgamation of cognitive behavioral psychology that didn't exist twenty years ago when I was studying to be a therapist (I didn't finish the dissertation and orals). I got to be there, proud and mystified by the passage of time--her life just beginning, mine, oh, with a goodly number of years to go, but definitely on a very different slope.
A lot of personal history rumbled through my mind--the eccentric miracle of how I even came to know this family--a story for my yet to be radically revised memoir. She is off to Greece shortly, her mother's graduation gift. I am in awe of her adventurous soul, a like soul that heretofore, I have not possessed. She is fearless already. She makes me hopeful not only for her future, but oddly, for my own. She radiates possibility and a never give up drive.
Her brother is only two years away from his own college graduation--he a little more serious, taking a different trajectory into business and finance. He would discuss matters of the market better than a cable show, and then make me laugh with a final point, "But what do I know, I'm only a twenty year old." Brother and sister are blessed with a gift of attracting others to them-and both have significant others that see their depths--at least for now; hopefully for their lifetimes.
They were just children a moment ago. We were all children a moment ago.
I've wasted a lot of time. Watching them reminded me there is little we can afford to waste.
Life is just a breath. Godspeed to Cait and Charlie as they whirl down their roads. I am fortunate to have spent some part of my walk with them.
Ten years ago Bill died when she was only twelve, and her brother, Charlie, only ten. Their mother, Janey, moved them forward through a bog of unanticipated loss and grief. They struggled but they prospered on a new road.
On May 18, Cait, a confident, long-legged beautiful co-ed in what looked like four inch heels, graduated from a University on the cliffs of the Atlantic, in Rhode Island. She goes on to complete her Master's in Applied Behavioral Analysis, a new amalgamation of cognitive behavioral psychology that didn't exist twenty years ago when I was studying to be a therapist (I didn't finish the dissertation and orals). I got to be there, proud and mystified by the passage of time--her life just beginning, mine, oh, with a goodly number of years to go, but definitely on a very different slope.
A lot of personal history rumbled through my mind--the eccentric miracle of how I even came to know this family--a story for my yet to be radically revised memoir. She is off to Greece shortly, her mother's graduation gift. I am in awe of her adventurous soul, a like soul that heretofore, I have not possessed. She is fearless already. She makes me hopeful not only for her future, but oddly, for my own. She radiates possibility and a never give up drive.
Her brother is only two years away from his own college graduation--he a little more serious, taking a different trajectory into business and finance. He would discuss matters of the market better than a cable show, and then make me laugh with a final point, "But what do I know, I'm only a twenty year old." Brother and sister are blessed with a gift of attracting others to them-and both have significant others that see their depths--at least for now; hopefully for their lifetimes.
They were just children a moment ago. We were all children a moment ago.
I've wasted a lot of time. Watching them reminded me there is little we can afford to waste.
Life is just a breath. Godspeed to Cait and Charlie as they whirl down their roads. I am fortunate to have spent some part of my walk with them.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
My Saint--Maybe
I am in the Church office as I write. There are two levels of intensity in this role in which I volunteer, on Wednesdays only--relentlessly quiet or relentlessly busy. Perhaps it is that it is just a few days after Easter and Christians are still on some spring break. It has been the quiet so far today as the early afternoon becomes middling. The birds are chirping outside the window on a day that was supposed to be cloudy, but is sun and breeze. The Pacific Hills kids are playing leisurely basketball on the other side of the trees, and I have tired of reading bits of the Early Church Fathers, and other on line treatises.
I am mulling some of what I have read about various individuals, a few already pronounced saints, those about to be saints, like John XXIII and John Paul II, and those not quite as far along the line, though they have been dead far longer, like Servants of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Father Patrick Peyton and Elizabeth Leseur,
and Blessed John Henry Newman.
There is no rule that says I have to pick one intercessor. And more than one could guide me in my spiritual journey. Yet instead of integrating them all, so far, I jump from one to the other.
Part of the reason for my jumping should be a reason for my loyalty--the reality of each person's, for a saint was just as much born in original sin and engaged in personal sin, particular frailty which sometimes, and likely unfairly, turns me "off". An example. From and after his funeral in 2005 I was wildly emotional about John Paul II and delighted about his upcoming canonization.
As the wind turned the pages on the Roman Missal on his wooden casket, I felt something of his connection to the Transcendent. Then I heard from someone who was present at a large audience at which he became testy at the crowd and shouted, "The Pope is Speaking!". I have been around priests who suffer from a rather demeaning clericalism in which no lay person ,male or female, regardless of education and vocation is more than an errant child.. This is a failure to me of the consecration to service. Then I have read more about his iron clad resistances to any challenge on his operational and daily authority (not the Dogma of Infallibility). I understand PR. We cannot help but cover over the chinks in the armor of family, friends and the famous after they have left the earth. But in the designation of saints one wonders whether the stories of martyrdom and heroic virtue are more fiction than fact. I have become suspicious. He is John Paul the Great for all time, but is that perhaps unfair both to him and to us? He probably was John Paul the Sometimes Great. Maybe that sometimes is more than enough. He still compels me, as do all those saints who were complex in the expressions of their sanctity.
I cannot get out of my head, for another example, what my late pastor told me about his ever so brief encounter with Archbishop Sheen. My former pastor was a young priest when he happened to be in a location where the Archbishop was giving one of his lectures or homilies to a gathered group of Catholics. Although Sheen was renowned for his exegesis, as the once young priest recounted, it wasn't all that spectacular, and then he added that asked to bring something to the famous cleric in his hotel room, the reception was as cold as it was short. So, what am I expecting? Sheen was by this time fairly old, and probably wildly tired.
And Newman.
I have read many of his homilies given both before and after his reception into the Catholic Church. Anglicans and Catholics alike criticized him for his sincerity. What I read seems a torturous sincere search for truth. (Read, for example, "Passion for Truth" by Fr. Juan Velez). At Littlemore, alone in his chapel, I felt certain he was my intercessor for life. But then he is co-opted by progressive thinkers on his appeal to "conscience" mistaken to be private conscience when his context was underlying objective and Divine Truth, not human relativism or uncontrolled feeling as foundation. But what did he do to make his case so easily twisted? And what do I not know about the real Newman, the day to day Newman. I began to read a book that was critical of him, but I became afraid of finding another hero or heroine with clay feet.
Stop. Stop, Djinn. What are you doing? Are you looking for a saint, which we are all called to be, with all the warts and incompetency of spirit? They sought to follow Christ; they weren't Christ, without sin. I keep forgetting. I want the pure. And the pure exists only in Paradise. These people, just people, point to the pure. They remind me to persevere--to avoid the temptation of something else I have been reading about, acedia, an "I don't care" form of despair, a detached "contemptus mundi".
The men and women who are considered for public sainthood (there are many who will never be knownas the saints they were). They are just models of people who loved God who were doing their imperfect best to be with Him after performing their mission--which Newman famously said none of us may ever know when we live. And telling us to do the same now that they have left us and are in a position to give us an ear and have God's ear and cheer us on.
So maybe they are all my saints. Each has something to teach me as I stumble along the road.
I am mulling some of what I have read about various individuals, a few already pronounced saints, those about to be saints, like John XXIII and John Paul II, and those not quite as far along the line, though they have been dead far longer, like Servants of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Father Patrick Peyton and Elizabeth Leseur,
and Blessed John Henry Newman.
There is no rule that says I have to pick one intercessor. And more than one could guide me in my spiritual journey. Yet instead of integrating them all, so far, I jump from one to the other.
Part of the reason for my jumping should be a reason for my loyalty--the reality of each person's, for a saint was just as much born in original sin and engaged in personal sin, particular frailty which sometimes, and likely unfairly, turns me "off". An example. From and after his funeral in 2005 I was wildly emotional about John Paul II and delighted about his upcoming canonization.
As the wind turned the pages on the Roman Missal on his wooden casket, I felt something of his connection to the Transcendent. Then I heard from someone who was present at a large audience at which he became testy at the crowd and shouted, "The Pope is Speaking!". I have been around priests who suffer from a rather demeaning clericalism in which no lay person ,male or female, regardless of education and vocation is more than an errant child.. This is a failure to me of the consecration to service. Then I have read more about his iron clad resistances to any challenge on his operational and daily authority (not the Dogma of Infallibility). I understand PR. We cannot help but cover over the chinks in the armor of family, friends and the famous after they have left the earth. But in the designation of saints one wonders whether the stories of martyrdom and heroic virtue are more fiction than fact. I have become suspicious. He is John Paul the Great for all time, but is that perhaps unfair both to him and to us? He probably was John Paul the Sometimes Great. Maybe that sometimes is more than enough. He still compels me, as do all those saints who were complex in the expressions of their sanctity.
I cannot get out of my head, for another example, what my late pastor told me about his ever so brief encounter with Archbishop Sheen. My former pastor was a young priest when he happened to be in a location where the Archbishop was giving one of his lectures or homilies to a gathered group of Catholics. Although Sheen was renowned for his exegesis, as the once young priest recounted, it wasn't all that spectacular, and then he added that asked to bring something to the famous cleric in his hotel room, the reception was as cold as it was short. So, what am I expecting? Sheen was by this time fairly old, and probably wildly tired.
And Newman.
I have read many of his homilies given both before and after his reception into the Catholic Church. Anglicans and Catholics alike criticized him for his sincerity. What I read seems a torturous sincere search for truth. (Read, for example, "Passion for Truth" by Fr. Juan Velez). At Littlemore, alone in his chapel, I felt certain he was my intercessor for life. But then he is co-opted by progressive thinkers on his appeal to "conscience" mistaken to be private conscience when his context was underlying objective and Divine Truth, not human relativism or uncontrolled feeling as foundation. But what did he do to make his case so easily twisted? And what do I not know about the real Newman, the day to day Newman. I began to read a book that was critical of him, but I became afraid of finding another hero or heroine with clay feet.
Stop. Stop, Djinn. What are you doing? Are you looking for a saint, which we are all called to be, with all the warts and incompetency of spirit? They sought to follow Christ; they weren't Christ, without sin. I keep forgetting. I want the pure. And the pure exists only in Paradise. These people, just people, point to the pure. They remind me to persevere--to avoid the temptation of something else I have been reading about, acedia, an "I don't care" form of despair, a detached "contemptus mundi".
The men and women who are considered for public sainthood (there are many who will never be knownas the saints they were). They are just models of people who loved God who were doing their imperfect best to be with Him after performing their mission--which Newman famously said none of us may ever know when we live. And telling us to do the same now that they have left us and are in a position to give us an ear and have God's ear and cheer us on.
So maybe they are all my saints. Each has something to teach me as I stumble along the road.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Sister Goldenhair and the Memories She Evokes
I was taking the short drive home from my Wednesday "job" as volunteer secretary at my parish. As I approached my block the soft rock station sequed into a favorite 1970s oldie of mine, "Sister Goldenhair" by America. Ahh, anything by America probably would have evoked the same wonderful sudden feeling I haven't had that much over the last years--a feeling of endless possibility. I felt as the 20 something I had been when I first spun an LP (gosh that seems positively antediluvian) at WFUV back in the Bronx from which I have long been an émigré.
California Djinn
I never tended toward being particularly happy or optimistic as a child or late teen life--but that particular part of my life, the year or so of my college life, I felt for the first time free-ish of soul.
It had been a hard early part of the decade losing a mother with whom I had a rather difficult relationship--until she became ill and all the self-protecting walls finally came down. She was gone. I missed her but there had been a resolution by implication in how much she softened before she died.
It was as if she gave me permission finally to enjoy myself, something that had seemed unpermitted in earlier days.
It was at college and in college radio that I became so much less shy that people who know me today think it was never possible I ever had been quiet and afraid to show myself. I seriously considered diving into the low pay arena of trying to be an on air performer--even if it meant going to some low watt station in the middle of nowhere. I loved the experience of being in that low lit little room surrounded by equipment and turntables and cassettes. There were people who heard me in whatever show I was privileged to do who called me, and wrote to me, and sent me the odd book or album in appreciation of what they thought was my verbal and tonal skill. And then I got to meet so many of the people who became a cadre of friends till this day. And I began to talk of moving to this sun kissed state.
The possibility of coming here to California probably got me through the entirety of law school, which I did not enjoy, but which gave me an intellectual foundation which has stood me in good stead for over 30 years. And then the adventure began when for the very first time in my life I did not overanalyze the bad things that could happen if I did not succeed in my move--the California Bar and job seeking.
I was 27 then, and more than half that time has passed since the adventure began.
I know, intellectually, that possibilities have narrowed, simply by virtue of those statistical realities of aging. BUT, in the moment, with the music playing from days long gone by, there was nothing that couldn't be achieved. And it was the best fleeting moment.
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The Wednesday parish secretary at rest on the church steps
California DjinnIt had been a hard early part of the decade losing a mother with whom I had a rather difficult relationship--until she became ill and all the self-protecting walls finally came down. She was gone. I missed her but there had been a resolution by implication in how much she softened before she died.
It was as if she gave me permission finally to enjoy myself, something that had seemed unpermitted in earlier days.
It was at college and in college radio that I became so much less shy that people who know me today think it was never possible I ever had been quiet and afraid to show myself. I seriously considered diving into the low pay arena of trying to be an on air performer--even if it meant going to some low watt station in the middle of nowhere. I loved the experience of being in that low lit little room surrounded by equipment and turntables and cassettes. There were people who heard me in whatever show I was privileged to do who called me, and wrote to me, and sent me the odd book or album in appreciation of what they thought was my verbal and tonal skill. And then I got to meet so many of the people who became a cadre of friends till this day. And I began to talk of moving to this sun kissed state.
The possibility of coming here to California probably got me through the entirety of law school, which I did not enjoy, but which gave me an intellectual foundation which has stood me in good stead for over 30 years. And then the adventure began when for the very first time in my life I did not overanalyze the bad things that could happen if I did not succeed in my move--the California Bar and job seeking.
I was 27 then, and more than half that time has passed since the adventure began.
I know, intellectually, that possibilities have narrowed, simply by virtue of those statistical realities of aging. BUT, in the moment, with the music playing from days long gone by, there was nothing that couldn't be achieved. And it was the best fleeting moment.
The Wednesday parish secretary at rest on the church steps
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