Thanksgiving Thoughts

Did you know that George Washington, the first president and father of our country established the Thanksgiving holiday? I didn't until I happened to hear a rerun program of one of my favorite thinkers and talk show hosts, Dennis Prager. Yes, he is a conservative. But he also posits clarity in the service of truth as his mission. Clarity does not mean that "we agree." Some things are whether you and I agree. And, I guess, here's one such opportunity for us to disagree. I am not trying to convince anyone. Only evidence can convince, and frankly, I am not sure, as this society is wending its way toward self-destruction, even evidence is enough. You read. You decide as you will, or as an agenda may require. I imagine a bumper sticker. "George W. was a right winger!" Who are we talking about? I digress.

Thanksgiving isn't just a day or two off and an opportunity to gorge on tryptophan laden turkey topped off by a nap and further gorging on popcorn and beer while football teams run and tackle. The proclamation that established the holiday exhorts the people of the United States, now terrified of any mention of religion or tradition, to give prayerful thanks to-----gulp, God.

Historical reality.

This does not mean that those who do not believe in God have no place in this society. Au contraire. Because of a belief of a founding people in a Divine Will that helped bring about this still young country, which we take for granted, those who prefer to be agnostic, or unbelieving, or of a philosphy or faith which does not include God, share the table of thanks, without restriction. Separation of Church and State means not that the essence of this country's founding, a Judeo-Christian building block, and the God of Abraham, be abolished and unmentioned in some revisionist compulsion, but that there be no established religion that by its nature forbids the freedom of belief of others. The belief in God of these progenitors made possible the pluralistic society under the banner "In God We Trust". The benefit is everyone's alike. It would be lovely if that protective banner of In God We Trust be used as something to celebrate still rather than something to be chiselled off the Halls of the Senate and Congress.

Abandon Hope and All that Jazz

I was over at "The Grove" after Church today. Tonight is to be the tree lighting for what I understand is the second biggest "holiday" (to be politically correct, which agitates me) tree after the one in Rockefeller Center in New York. I did ot realize that when I was looking for elusive parking.

I made my way to Barnes and Noble and picked up some DVD's one a to be present for a friend. I had my lunch at Patsy D'Amore, two slices, and a coke, and read Entertainment Weekly (I am not offended by the adaptation of Sherlock Holmes in the movie to open December 25; I eagerly await it). I ran a few other errands. The elevator coming down to the main level when I arrived, in one of the smaller, I thought, less known banks, had be empty; I hoped for the same going back.

It looked like I was in luck but I had to go to the machine downstairs to see what I owed, which turned out to be nothing. Turning around, the bank was still empty and an elevator was open, a man or two having just gotten in. It was a few feet only and all either man had to do was put his hand in the still fairly wide open door. I yelled "hold the elevator" and met the eye of one of the men. He looked at me steadily and I at him, as he let the door close before I could quite get to it.

My first thought, yes, it was my first, well maybe the second after an expletive. . . .was "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" a well quoted line from Dante's Divine Comedy, specifially the part where there is a tour of hell, where sinners reap the punishment of their less than stellar existences on earth. I try not to feel this way, and for most of the week, I resisted it, but we live in an all but hopeless world and society. Usually you see it in big things, the politics of the day, the loss of the idea of America as a society founded on a premise of Divinely inspired right and responsibility, but when you see it right in your shopping center, in a small uncivil exchange, it becomes surprisingly intolerable.

Not that I am so stellar myself. I have far to go to be a passable human being, but I cannot imagine that if someone was looking me in the eye and asking me to hold an elevator while he or she took a few more steps toward it I would disregard the plea so readily. This chills me almost as much as something that happened to me many years ago, in a supermarket. I had just walked in when I saw a man pulling a cereal box from a bunch of stacked ones. One fell to the ground and he started to walk away without picking it up and replacing it. I happened to notice and when he saw me watching him, he went back to the box and with what a remember as a defiant look in his eye (as opposed to the indifferent one from "elevator guy" today) he kicked the box with an angry fervor. Perhaps he thought I had disapproved of his unwillingness to pick up the box. Perhaps I did. But that my silent remonstration would cause him to act in what was an undisquised moment of violence, fortunately against the inanimate box rather than me, caused the hair to rise on the back of my neck then, and now, in recalling it.

I seem to be feeling apocalyptic today. Oh well, I hope, when the time comes I have not to answer for too many such moments in my life. I realize that it is possible there have been some. I hope not, of course, but we rarely see our own faults, sins, if you will. But, if there have been such moments, I hope one of those friends will tell me. And forgive me.

MJ, You Have a New Fan

My friend, Len, of Len Speaks wrote an entry a week or mor ago about seeing This is It, the compilation of the rehearsals for Michael Jackson's comeback tour, aborted by his untimely death. I hoped to see it, as I have had a long time grudging admiration for the man (grudging because of the well publicized eccentricities and swirling accusations), but I had no sense that I would ever write about it, if I saw it. Taking a few days off, I have interspersed meditative thoughfulness (or what passes for that in my impatience) with shopping, and now movie going. I happened to hit the theatre just before a showing of This is It, yesterday afternoon. So, why not?

It was apparently Mr. Jackson's routine to have his rehearsals documented, to watch later, to mark the preparation of performances. I wonder if he had some prescience also about his early death. Maybe it wasn't prescience, because he knew what abuse he had to know what abuse he was heaping on his body with the obsessive plastic surgery and the drugs. Watching him in rare quiet moments working with the musicians, it was clear he couldn't stay still, his hands moving always. And for the most part, even in a darkened theatre he wore sunglasses. Perhaps his handlers were thinking ahead, just in case, which, as it turned out was the case. He'd never do this tour, but we have its essence now for posterity.

Once he was dancing, you'd never know that he had any impairment. He seemed indestructible. And twice or more the age of probably all of dancers backing him up, he moved with an ease that rivalled theirs. I was mesmerized. I could not take my eyes off him. They were mesmerized, even giddy watching him during their breaks. He could conjure what he wanted the performers and himself to do in tandem with an uncanny precision. His timing was transcendent, where to put a beat, where to hold, where to have silence, when to have a startling note. His life was whole here, while it was in shambles everywhere else. And it was a visual truth projected into the theatre.

All I could think of was, this film is a treasure. Yes, AEG and the Jackson Estate is making money. Their motivations are clearly not altruistic, for if altruistic, they would simply give the documentary to the world without remuneration. But it doesn't matter. It's here. This is not everybody's kind of music, I know, but the spark of genius is visible as much here as I imagine it was in its time for a Mozart. I have this odd feeling that in many ways these men have similarities in their inner lives. All is poured into this one thing. Music. And everything else is effectively damned. It's a drive, like a salmon going upstream. Does it allow for forgiveness of responsibility? Maybe not. But all things being equal, what is left behind, this one true thing, is a pearl of great price.

Confiteor

It is Veteran's Day, and a day off from work for me. Actually, it has generated my taking several more days' off. I have a large number of hours and am about to hit the cap I am allowed to bank. My idea is to take the time, not only to rest from a stressful work interval, but to consider possible future directions. It's unlikely I'll come up with anything, but that's all right, no worries, there is no deadline nor requirement that I do so.

Slept in, which is always a pleasure for me, but thought that maybe I would go to a daily Mass. The idea of moving from my cocoon apartment, cluttered and comfortable, caused resistance, but I placed the contact lenses and applied quick makeup, sweater and sweat pants and went.

It was pretty empty at the Church. There is never a huge crowd at a daily Mass, but usually a few more people are praying in the pews. It's early though, 20 minutes before the celebration.

This is the former pastor's to celebrate. He is nearly 83 and debiltated by the damage of a benign tumor taken from his spine years ago. Even with a walker, though, he manages to command any space in which he appears, and this, the Church, is his life's stage. This is the thing he will fight to continue, the celebration of the Eucharist. All else he is willing, even content, to forego. Belief gives him the energy, the persistence, the mission and the reason to continue.

Usually, when I come in I can hear him chatting with the server who will assist, but today, there is silence. It is clear he, or some priest is in the sacristy, because the candles are lit. But no one comes out to arrange the altar and it is close to the time to begin. I cannot serve. Yes, in today's society women often act as acolytes. But my former pastor, and my friend, limits such engagement, still believing that the role is a subcategory of priesthood, and priesthood is only for men, as Jesus was a Man, and founded his Church naming 12 males as His apostles. Acolyte is a minor order which is bestowed upon a priest in training. I can hear some reader saying, "Why don't you leave that parish?" because so many women have deeper involvement in other parishes, or "Become an Anglican/Episcopalian" where they allow women priests, let alone other ministries. Here's the thing, my membership in the Catholic Faith is not about the "right" to become a priest, or to have some more intensive minstry, like deacon, or server. It is about the Center, the Eucharist Himself, the Really Present Lord, before me, in my hand as I receive. Although human beings imperfectly guide the Church, they guide it with this Essence at its center, and I will leave it to the Holy Spirit to direct what, if any, ultimate change there is in individual parishes or in the Church at large. Meanwhile, this erstwhile pastor is also my friend and has been good to me, and, has even allowed some inroads into his resistance to a woman on the altar, when there has been a lack of servers. I have stood by him as he receives the "gifts", the bread and wine before the transformative miracle. I have held the book as he reads the gospel. I have told him that the rarity of my being able to do this makes me appreciate it even more.

Nonetheless, knowing that he would be loath to use my help beyond these moments, I went into the sacristy to see what help might be needed since no other server was yet there.

I expected him to be sitting in a chair, given the difficulty he has in standing for any period of time. But when I came in, his back was to me. He was fully robed, and leaning over a platform reading. There was something startling about the figure, with the markings of his role on the back of the vestment, the sign of the Good Shepherd. In that brief moment, I had the the feeling, not just the intellectual comprehension of, In Representio Christi. I almost hated to interrupt him. Seeing me, he said he had been reading the order of the Latin Mass. I had noticed the old lectionary on Sunday. He suggested it would be hard for him to celebrate the Mass in Latin. I noticed the heading of one of the prayers, "Confiteor", "I Confess", the one in which we together profess our sinfulness to our Lord. I asked him if he needed whatever help he would allow. He said, "A woman?" but in that way that has always been a friendly and humorous exchange between us. I said, "Can't do anything about that. But I will do whatever you will allow." He said that it was likely that someone would come at the last minute, but he did want me to place the unconsecrated water and wine, the Book, and the Chalice onto the altar. I had never done that. This is the sacred work of the acolyte. He noted my informal dress but said nothing to inhibit me. I placed each item, sneakers squeaking, one at a time, onto the altar. I wanted to put the key into the Tabernacle but the lock was not obvious to me close up, as often as I have seen it from something more of a distance, so I did not. I placed each item, first bowing to the Tabernacle where He is, and then again as I went for the next item.

I returned to the sacristy to tell him I would be about if he needed me. He did not. A minute or so before Mass the server arrived.

The homily was about transformative moments of two or three saints, the moments before the complete giving over of themselves to God, in which their paths were set. For Martin of Tours, while still a soldier, there was tearing his cloak in two to give half to a cold pauper. For St. Francis of Assisi, it was giving a coin to a man consumed with sores, and then going back to take his hands and kiss them. For Damien, the priest of the lepers at Molokai, it was (he speculated because no one really knows) it might have been the day he discovered the first sore on his body that said he was one of them. What was ours? Will we have one? I wondered. I wonder now. When or will I have a moment of such transformation. Helping today, was that such a moment--when belief becomes something more transcendent? Did the saints mark that moment? Perhaps the essence of the moment is not to be aware of it and to proceed steadfastly on the road, believing and confessing and thanking God for His forgiveness and Grace praying for that moment, but not grasping it as something owed to us.

Thoughts on All Saints' Day

Everyone revels in Halloween. I haven't really liked that holiday much, if holiday it be, since I was a child. I cannot quite get why people want to decorate their lawns with fake graves out of which fake skeleltons protrude. It is quite enough to spend life preparing for the real, and very unglamorous real thing. As for me, in case I haven't mentioned to you, my friends, or written it down somewhere, I would like to be cremated, not buried. The idea of decaying slowly somehow is less appealing than being quickly reduced to quasi-ash. I had not intended to go down this rather gloomy road. In fact, actually, I am not feeling gloomy at all about death today, if only because I have the faith that my body and soul each are in the hands of a loving God. It's the after death part that is the real celebration, of course, assuming the judgment part goes well. I shall not speculate on myself in that regard in these pages.

Today, Christians remember the saints in heaven, the ones in purgatory, and the rest on earth. Our friends and family who have trod the road before us.

We pray for them and for their intervention with the God to whom they are now closer than we. We remember the part they had in our lives for which we are grateful throughout the time that remains to us.

I thought of two of those individuals in my life today. This morning I woke up to the music of the 40s. It seemed odd because I listen to a talk radio station that as far as I know has no music, except for the bumpers between subject segments and commercials. Tommy Dorsey, Ray Anthony, Gene Krupa, the Andrews Sisters. I was familiar with so many of the songs of the Big Bands, not because I was there then. I was about ten to fifteen years away from the heyday. I could remember them from my childhood in the Bronx, watching my parents and aunts and uncles dancing in tiny living rooms at holiday parties. My dad was a particularly good dancer. It turned out that I had hit the FM button sometime in the night and the channel was 88.1, a jazz station, revisiting the decade between 1940 and 1950. I did not stir for forty or more minutes to keep the connection to dad. I have been surprised at how much I miss him. I trusted him with the fullness of my ups and downs that he never failed to try to solve. Ah, yes, friends have seen some of it, and I am grateful for their tolerance, but they would run away screaming if they had complete and untempered exposure. If I could run away from me at those times, I would. And he was my biggest fan, the one who would tape all of my utterings on college radio for as he would would say, perhaps a bit with tongue in cheek, but not much, "posterity". I don't know about any posterity, but it is sometimes nice to see his handwriting on the back of the cassettes he so painstakingly dubbed from his reel to reel. Is he keeping an eye on me? Sometimes I think yes, very strongly. I hope so. Dad, I am not quite getting the message about a couple of things. Was it you who caused me to lock myself out of your old apartment, the one I still have, empty, one year and eight months after you left it for the last time? I thought so, at first, telling me not to spend money for some California Closet renovation right now. He was a bit of a skeptic about religion, even after he joined Catholicism when he was 85. I wonder. What was it like for him to find out that there is someplace after, for real? I wonder. It is my faith that he did, I mean find out that there was someplace after. I would like to hear, somehow, how that has impacted him. But I guess if he could do that, he'd be giving away the fact of faith, and it wouldn't be faith, if I had his unequivocal message confirming it. His name went first on the souls to pray for today, one of the saints. The other was someone I met in my late 30's, a man in whom I trusted the fullness of my thoughts, hopes and fears, and what secrets I have borne about my deepest self. It was a platonic relationship for me of the deepest level-- the best description of which I have only read by a 17th or 18th century writer, DeMontaigne. I was one of many people who had that experience of him I would discover and that in no way diminished it. When he died, the line went out the funeral home in rain to pay respects. I remember one who had not seen him in 20 years and credited him with her choice of career. His daughter said to me that when she has tried to describe him, people did not quite believe her. He was kind, and whole. He made it to the other side of his obstacles and found and gave love. He reveled in his wife and family. He was grateful for every moment he had, which was lucky because he died so young. He would laugh to hear me call him a saint. But he too now has the evidence of whatever is the manifestation of heaven in union with Him of which he, like my father, was skeptical. They were only two of those who were part of my prayers and the prayers of the gathered today on this day of saints. What a celebration to have them with us today!

An Augustinian Life After Death for Me

I was talking to a friend about a half hour ago. She told me about the interview of a priest on EWTN (a Catholic Religious Network, 370 if you have DirecTV) discussing the nature of our eternal life. This priest, James T. O'Connor, teacher and former theologian at St. Joseph Seminary in Dunwoodie, New York and now a pastor in a parish in Medford, Massachusetts, favors the more realistic idea of life after death, the Augustinian view rather than that of Thomas Aquinas, a more beatific, "bald" as it was described. For this commentator/priest, our time in heaven will be active, and much like the best things of life on earth, with water, trees, sky, land, and animals, with God a consistent part of that eternity, and in a perfection not possible during this sinful life. It is (at least to our humanity limited minds) preferable, perhaps only because we have a frame of reference that we do not have for a more Thomist view, so absorbed in our participation with God that there is nothing else, a kind of quiet and perpetual absorption that shoud be enough indeed, but missing the interactions , seeming for me essential, with the ocean, the shimmering ocean or with others say, in the happy moment of a dinner with wine and conversation. My very preference of the Augustinian view seems incongruous for whatever heaven is, the closeness to God, however it is achieved, will be sufficient, and devoutly to be wished (pardon to Hamlet). But silly though it may seem, I want to see some people again. And if God with whom we are encouraged to have relationship wants us on earth to see Him in relationship with others, I like to think that the Augustinian view makes more sense., although we are assured that either way, we won't be bored.

Anyway, after I spoke with her, I looked on the net for this interview, and found a podcast, to which I am now listening; hence I have some ability to write a little of the above to explain the differences between the Thomist v. Augustinian views of resurrection of the body.

Sillier still, I want my cats, and my little beagle, given back to Bide A Wee, when my mother developed an allergy, to be there with us all. (Therein lies another debate, whether animals have souls and will be with us in heaven; that's my hope!). I went on line and just bought a book, out of print, by this priest, called "Land of the Living" so I can read more about his theory which gives me such immediate comfort. Perhaps it is because today I made my monthly hegira to Long Beach to get my hair dyed and cut and the weather was pristine as well as the water which glimmered and rippled in the sun and that always feels as close to heaven as anything possible on earth.

It's nice to think of heaven. It is getting close to dark, but there is still some warmth and light to garner. I am going to back to my backyard for a few moments on this Saturday in which I shall remain home to nurse an incipient cold, to watch the sun set and the hummingbirds swift by in preparation for their night.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Shambala Redux

Shambala Resident

Reagan Memorial Site

Air Force One

There are some ordinary experiences that are just so pleasing that you want to share them. Which brings me, at least temporarily, out of hiatus status.

Clearly, the Reagan Library and Shambala have nothing in common, except for the pure joy both locations provided to and for me.

I was backing out of my parking space at 6:58 on Friday morning, a not unusual time in and of itself, but for me to be doing anything other than rolling over in my bed, even on a workday. I signed up for a continuing education seminar some month or two ago, in part because while so many continuing education classes are lengthy, and boring, this particular group usually puts on a good one, where the professionals can take something new and useful away for future application. But another reason was where it was being held, the Reagan Library. A couple of years ago I visited the JFK Library in Boston, and it still remains one of the most gratifying locations and tours. A modern edifice right on Massachusetts Bay, the architecture uses light to a most effective degree, such that the inside feels liberating, and increases the sense of nostalgia and history in some way I cannot quite explain. I was curious about this West Coast Republican version not only because I admired and admire Ronald Reagan but because I was hoping for a similar experience, this time smack in the desert of Simi Valley.

The sun was just coming up as I traversed the highway on the still moist air morn. I am given to listening to the radio on car trips, but decided that the sound of my tires and the occasional bird as I watched the bubble like shadow of my car and the changing hills, some smooth, some rocky from the 170 to the 5 to the 118. How is it that I so easily reject this fresh time of the day in favor of sleep? What a fool? Or was I appreciating this cool early sunshine because I so seldom awaken early enough to consume it? The traffic was contstant but not oppressive, and I was at the Library just before 8 a.m. I got out of my car and walked toward the manicured front of the adobe building, typically Californian, so distinct from the East Coast style under which I was introduced to a Presidential Library. As I walked over a little "bridge" of sorts I noticed that the cool air was merging with the warmer air that would soon replace it, and a chime interspersed the greeting of the birds twittering as they darted from tree to tree. The mountains in the distance were all smooth light and darker crevices. I could see a bench overlooking a vista and wished I could stop and sit there rather than go to a room where I would be listening to a cacophany of expert lawyers for six hours-- what I must do before the 4 p.m. tour of this lovely place. Such courses are fairly expensive, even with discounts. I was there. Ethics is my trade, so I dutifully followed the signs. Fortunately, the room turned out to have large windows, several of which were covered to allow for projection if necessary, but still enough of them to allow a relaxed gaze toward the mountains when the need arose, without loss of attention.

The course was all right. I am at an age now, where, while I certainly learn new things to better do my craft, the urgency just is no longer there, or is it the idealism? It matters not. Nothing seemed more perfect than being there, and learning was a good price.

The seats outside the actually well stocked cafeteria overlooked a second vista, and I sat with two colleagues in the umbrella'd shade wishing a lunch hour would not go quite so quickly. The still summer Valley breeze brushed us as we returned to our legal edification, but 4 p.m. was not far off. I noticed the tail of the F-14 on the grounds from my seat. I could not wait to take a look at a real Air Force One, which I knew was a long corridor away, the 707 that was in actual use from 1973 to 2001, as I would later hear. The Library closes at 5 and one of the presenters was about five minutes into the 4 o'clock hour as certainly he was permitted to do as a sitting Judge, but I was eager to bolt.

I did not get to savor as I would have liked, the story of this particular President, as I had when I was in Boston and it was JFK whose history I was exploring. Enough for a taste that will bring me back, perhaps one day soon, for a leisurely stroll in a history I remember well, for I was a young adult during it.

I suspect that I pictured an Air Force One of the 1990's movie with Harrison Ford (was it 1990's?), far larger than ANY plane could possibly be, full of wood and ornament. I have never seen the cockpit of a commercial style jet and seeing the volume of instrumentation was astounding. Happy that this plane, housed in a huge, windowed hanger where one side was entirely squared glass, was not going to take off I had no need for my usual fears about flying. It was, a plane, albeit one that had special sections cordoned off and cultivated with furniture of sorts, more than any plane that I have ever flown in provides, but still as with any plane, a bit claustrophobic. Yet, I'd look at a picture on the wall and the space, like the one where Mr. Reagan or any President during that period had his desk, and a kind of cot that opened out (with seat belts to be placed across the shoulder, the chest and the legs (if you were lying down, as on a gurney), for the President and in the next "room", for the First Lady. Somehow I couldn't imagine Mrs. Reagan taking a long trip and sleeping on such a cot. But she did. And there she was sitting on the closed "couch" in the photo, as I looked at the actual space today, years and years later. There were tables, plastic as in any plane, but significantly larger. A conference room with a big chair, with seatbelts. The one that the President sat in on the way, say to Berlin before the wall came down in 1989. There was something about this walk through history, cramped and small, but massive in the waves of the past.

So many glass cabinets to look at, videos, but i had one other thing to see before the 5 o'clock closing, the memorial site where the President is buried. I remembered still the day of his service, five years ago, nearly, isn't it? The view which the President sees now for eternity, in a sense. There were only a few people there, part of a family, and a guide, a veteran from the Korean War. The marker with a parenthesis of a wall and a favorite quote. I would have liked to sit there, with him, this stranger, but not a stranger. Not today. Another time, Mr. President.

On the way back, the sun was behind me again, going down. I watched another shadow bubble of my car and considered a day well spent. The next day, I travelled much the same road, but this time the 170 to the 5 to the 14 and Acton, California, and a second visit to Shambala, the Preserve started by Tippi Hedren to house, care for and love big cats, Tigers, Lions, Servals, and a Liger, improperly traded and mistreated sometimes, by people who foolishly buy them and keep them, or use them for things like small circuses. They cannot be released into the wild, so they live out their days there, protected. Saturday was an afternoon Membership Party, with raffles and sales of Big Cat related items, and a silent auction, and a buffet lunch amid the little lake and the long grass and the spacious enclosures of the friendly looking but insistently carnivorous residents. People say that Hedren is "not nice". For me, it is an irrelevancy, since I can appreciate what she has done for these creatures, including getting legislation passed that protects others of their kind, and I have no personal relationship to worry about. She is serving a purpose on this earth that many of us can properly envy. I hope I can one day join it, or one like it, when I take down my shingle. I left with contentment at the preservation of these animals, some nearly 20 years old, as well as my membership hat and tee, and some other parting gifts. I'll be back sooner than later. There is something to be said for a life less urban. And respites of the kind I experienced this Friday and Saturday, that like music itself, soothe the savage breast.