I was doing some stuff shifting. Amazing that I have only been in this apartment for just under two years, but I have managed already to forget where I have things, or I notice a box, and wonder what I put in it. I found in one box a reflection from November 1982. The wondering was about why I ever became a lawyer in New York and why having moved to California I was working to take the California Bar and be admitted on the West Coast as well. Lots of things hadn't happened for me yet. I hadn't returned to the Catholic Church yet. I was by then 12 years lapsed. I hadn't found a niche for myself, as an attorney in New York and a potential one in Los Angeles, and I was then pining and vaguely working (clearly not hard enough) to become a television writer. I was working in a very small law office as a secretary pending passage of the Bar, and doing some research and lots of client handholding. I had already discovered both in New York and in California that the pontifications about THE LAW writ large, just like the pontifications about pretty much any institution or activity, just did not accord with the reality. I was looking for the pure--which would become a large subject of therapy when I began it in 1990--and in not finding it, I was becoming very anxious. Or should I say, I was becoming more anxious than usual.
So here were my thoughts at the tender age of 28.
(My boss) asked me today why I had decided to become an attorney. It's a question which I have never liked because I've honestly had no answer--not even one for myself. It probably had something to do with my parents egging me on (my mother really) to things educational, philosophical, analytical, and linguistic. While the reason was never articulable, it was always a definite unswerving goal. Even unswerving when I thought I might also like to be in the entertainment industry.
(The boss) went on to confirm verbally what I've come to know and be disturbed about--that to survive in this law business, it is necessary to "stretch" one's ethics. A disquieting reality which is more disquieting once reiterated by yet another long practicing attorney.
It jolts me, makes me afraid, and insecure, and guilty. In my soul I know I cannot continue in this field. Intellectually, and once again, realistically, I also know I may have no real choice. This, as they say, is all that I am prepared for. The finding of options is never easy. The taking of options even less so. Poor Pollyanna! I'm not really a Pollyana but I cannot deny my gut feeling that if I pursue what I feel is wrong it will wither me early on. It would be a case of not being true to oneself and a defiance of Polonius' best advice.
My father believes me to be a fool to spend so much time to become something and then have the desire to give it up. Wasn't that something I should have investigated before I invested time? You cannot investigate in advance what the practice of law will be like. College does not prepare you for it. Law school is strictly, in my opinion, an academic exercise that minimizes what it should maximize, the clinical, the stark reality of day to day paperwork, filing, nasty clients, nastier adversaries, deadlines, lies, delays. The law in any substantive sense takes a back seat.
Given my background and attitudes I could not know this before I began the pursuit. I've said it before. I don't regret the decision to study the law. It will always be a part of my make up, my intellectuality, if you will, and I probably can use it somewhere, but I might regret staying with its official practice. Becoming an integral member of this club might cost me dearly. A denial of myself. A denial of what I have believed in.
And what do I believe in? Pinning that down itself becomes less easy as the years pass and as the incongruities loom large and answers are nowhere to be found--or worse, when the answers are there but I have no time to look for them.
I was raised, at least nominally, a Catholic. I went to Catholic School. I was drilled in dogma. I tried to go to Church. And I believed in a basic morality. There were good things to do. And bad things you didn't do. You didn't cheat. You didn't lie. You didn't steal. You listened to the teachers. And you believed in God. The Catholic God.
I've been out of Catholic school a long time. My parents had no specific religious conviction so there was no pressure for me to follow the institutional line once I left high school. I cannot really remember the dogma, other than "Who created me?" God created me. I still have the residual influence though, a strong residual influence, that peculiarly I don't want to fade. There are good things to do. And bad things that you don't do. You don't cheat. You don't Either lose yourself in a rigid, artificially constructed institutional religion, waiting for the world to destroy itself and taking no responsibility for events and people, or you reject God, man, right, wrong, anything, and act according to worst possible instincts. I don't want to float. I don't want to be controlled. Leaving another question. What do I want?
People are so willing to disprove the existence of God. I still want to find Him. The Bible, say every religious group in every shape and variety and translation and interpretation--He's in there somewhere. Looking to places, religions and words--these to not seem to be where God would bother to be.
I wanted and still want to believe that the law allows for morality. But I've read much that says morality has no place in the law. I have never agreed with this. The law ostensibly protects rights. Rights cannot exist without reason, in a vacuum. A person has rights because of some basic premise. Protection of a society is a reason, but hardly the reason to defend one man unto death, or through every court. It's a basic sense of a Must. A feeling of THIS MUST BE.
What upsets me about myself is that while I have beliefs, I don't have conviction. I can be swayed. By fear. By pressure of opinion. My father often say that I was raised wrong, that I should have been taught to play poker. He means that literal and in a way to deal with people, to be able to play hard ball. Tough minded in the ways of the world. Understanding how to wheel and deal.
I respect my father. And I understand his thought. After all I'm in a profession where these attitudes go without saying. On the other hand I recall that he behaved I less than nasty ways when he dealt wit others. It's just not built into either of us. He's not happy about it. I am. I just wish I could follow through. Wanting to be ethical is not a weakness. It's just looked upon as one.
I'm not quite ethical. I want to be more ethical. And I certainly don't want to be less so. And as I travel the path that I have thus far, I fear the chances for maintaining ethics lessen daily. It disturbs me. Saps my strength.
I started to write more after this, but something must have interrupted me, and I did not complete the further thought.
I began to investigate my faith again, not long afterward. I have changed perspectives on what is and is not the fullness of faith and I believe that Catholicism has it. I struggle still to separate the Message from the messengers. And I have the same tendency with everyone else to throw away the Message because the messenger is sometimes so foul in behavior. But I have also learned that being foul in behavior is something we all share from time to time, the result of our still fallen natures. Redemption restored a relationship, not our natures. And we must fight our natures daily. I must fight my nature daily. And it seems that God is giving me the Graces I need, sometimes despite my resistance and petulance.
I found a few years later the only thing I could do as an attorney, working for the State Bar as, you might have guessed or knew if you know me, as an ethics attorney. There are no accidents with God. On balance its lesser moments were much outweighed by the good work my colleagues and I did, but like everything else, it was tinged, tainted let's say, with egos abounding and a failure sometimes to do what was best in favor of doing what the voice du jour demanded. Or pretending to. When I was fired from that job, along with a number of other managers, in a "change of direction" I knew I would never practice law again. I keep the licenses active but only because I worked so darn hard to get them. An ethics attorney was what I was cut out to be if I were to remain an attorney, as I did. Been there. Done that.
I still don't know why I became an attorney, exactly. But it was meant to be, I am sure. What I will be henceforward is still in development. But attorney at law for me now is a past activity with a present nostalgic title.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Monday, July 7, 2014
Lubie was Loved
It is hard to find people to serve Mass on a weekday. Those devoted parishioners who help the priest in his celebration of the Mass on weekends are mostly working from Monday to Friday. Several of them make time for evening services, adoration, Novena Masses and the like, but most cannot be at St. Victor during a weekday.
My status as officially no longer part of the work force makes me available for morning or afternoon funerals, in addition to daily Mass, as one of the helpers at services. It is, as often I may have said here, an honor, both material and spiritual, to be present as a soul is lovingly committed to the Hands of Our mutual Maker. It might be a little odd indeed to say it, but I love funerals. More pointedly, I love the Catholic funeral service. In some ways, in the reflection of a life lived and now returned to the Creator, the experience is profoundly life giving, despite, maybe in a sense, because, of the loss. In that service is the manifestation of the connection, a gossamer one at that, between here and the Source of our very being. Our presider, Monsignor Murphy, said something again I have heard him say before, that Lubie's loved ones can talk to her, sit in silent meditation and talk to her in our minds, because she is in a place with no barriers. When my own father died, he said that our dead family and friends can be intercessors with Our Lord, because after all, they are in Eternity close to Him.
Lubie was a long time parishioner of St. Victor, as I have been. But as too often is the case, I did not know her. In this case, I don't think I ever saw her, though I am not sure, because while I attend the 12:15 on Sundays, I heard that she attended the 5:30 on Saturday, or the 5:15 on Sundays. But we were fellow sojourners at the same lovely spiritually nourishing place and so, in that I think of her as a friend.
What a blessing it seems to have known her! The place was packed with her many relatives. They so clearly loved her. And she was no passive aunt. She was active in the lives of her nieces and nephews and a bevy of friends. She was from Croatia originally from that place where one day a new apparition of Our Lady would become famous, Medjugorjie. But she had lived here in Los Angeles for many years. She was an animated person--the words used were personable and vivacious. Sounds like she said what she meant and meant what she said. You can tell all that from her photographs.
.jpg)
.jpg)
My status as officially no longer part of the work force makes me available for morning or afternoon funerals, in addition to daily Mass, as one of the helpers at services. It is, as often I may have said here, an honor, both material and spiritual, to be present as a soul is lovingly committed to the Hands of Our mutual Maker. It might be a little odd indeed to say it, but I love funerals. More pointedly, I love the Catholic funeral service. In some ways, in the reflection of a life lived and now returned to the Creator, the experience is profoundly life giving, despite, maybe in a sense, because, of the loss. In that service is the manifestation of the connection, a gossamer one at that, between here and the Source of our very being. Our presider, Monsignor Murphy, said something again I have heard him say before, that Lubie's loved ones can talk to her, sit in silent meditation and talk to her in our minds, because she is in a place with no barriers. When my own father died, he said that our dead family and friends can be intercessors with Our Lord, because after all, they are in Eternity close to Him.
Lubie was a long time parishioner of St. Victor, as I have been. But as too often is the case, I did not know her. In this case, I don't think I ever saw her, though I am not sure, because while I attend the 12:15 on Sundays, I heard that she attended the 5:30 on Saturday, or the 5:15 on Sundays. But we were fellow sojourners at the same lovely spiritually nourishing place and so, in that I think of her as a friend.
What a blessing it seems to have known her! The place was packed with her many relatives. They so clearly loved her. And she was no passive aunt. She was active in the lives of her nieces and nephews and a bevy of friends. She was from Croatia originally from that place where one day a new apparition of Our Lady would become famous, Medjugorjie. But she had lived here in Los Angeles for many years. She was an animated person--the words used were personable and vivacious. Sounds like she said what she meant and meant what she said. You can tell all that from her photographs.
A light like that does not go out.
As the casket was led outside, candle bearers and cross at the fore, white doves were released. I have never seen that before except on television, and it did seem as if the Spirit were present and guiding Lubie to her next destination.
I know. Lots of folks reading this may well feel that this faith is so much blather. But as a character in one of my favorite movies, "The Keys of the Kingdom" (and book by AJ Cronin) says to his dying atheist friend who still cannot believe, "Wouldn't it be nice, if by chance, we were to meet in heaven?"
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Delightful Trespass
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)