God's Whisper--Maybe

It is very nearly a year since my job was lost to me.


A song occurs to me, "What's it all about Alfie?" with appropriate substitutions of name, c'est moi, the Djinn. "What's it all about, Djin-n?" In these pages and in other fora, I have offered some thoughts along the way, from the early days, in July 2011, right after the fourth of July, through each month.


I almost became a legal denizen of the transit system and its traffic court. I wrote about my first ride on the Los Angeles City trains in preparation for that role. But then I realized that I did not want to step immediately back into the realities of bureaucracy, public, or private. I was grateful to my friend for connecting me to the possibility of that job of reviewing decisions of the new hearing officers, and I felt some remorse at having let her down by deciding not to pursue it after some initial training. She said she understood, that my mind and heart were not in it right then. I hope she did.


Over the year I took three voice over courses and I was considered for one little radio commercial through an on line audition, although I never heard from them so I assume after the consideration I was not chosen. I have an on line profile on Voice123, with a kind of makeshift demo, pending the professional one that I will need to pay some bucks for, which bucks have been diverted to the renovation of my father's condominium into which I shall probably move.

I have written a rambly presently 380 page nearly finished first draft of a memoir about my life before, during and after therapy, (and one individual who I felt graced to know who led me to other individuals I remain graced to know) that probably will never see the light of day but has been on my list of things to do since I can remember. I read for the blind and dyslexic and I enjoy ever single 15 to 20 pages I do of various books each week. I plan on increasing my donation of time to this enterprise.

I almost went inactive, but decided that I had worked so hard for two law licenses, one here, and the other in New York, that I was not quite ready to relinquish the moniker, Attorney at Law.  So I am still active and dues paying. Whether I want them to or not, people I know call me when they have a legal problem. Sometimes I say I can't help. Other times, I'll take a look. And who knows, even now, perhaps something long term in that arena,will turn up that will be as good a fit as the Bar. Maybe this time I won't be in a 25 year rollercoaster ending in a big personal crash by virtue of circumstances outside of my control. I should say that my first contact with a bunch of laweyrs in ten months was at a lovely bit of spiritual direction at a local retreat house led by a professor at St. John's Seminary. It no longer stung to admit that I was one of the "top prosecutors fired by the State Bar". There were four of us. Since that time, two others have retired from the organization after helping the new leaders to take the lay of the land, and another was "let go", leaving an entirely new management team in place. I wish them at least as long as I had as a manager, a not uncommendable ten years. Was it worth it? Yes, it was. I wouldn't change a thing, even the things that made me crazy and hurt like hell.

More and more it has occurred to me that God is telling me something, but I am still not sure what it is. Or I am but I am resisting what I am hearing. Not resisting, exactly, but it is true, really true, that there is a big tug of war between spiritual development and "the world" which, as tragic and often malevolent as it often is, also has delights that I do not seem willing to give up the potentiality of, even if I were never to take advantage of them. You have read, those of you who are reading, surprisingly in places like Russia and France (not many but more than I would expect) of my increased attendance at Mass, my volunteer Eucharistic Ministry. I am trying to pray more than ever I have even the rosary which I always found difficult in its repetitions, because I cannot sit still. I am doing some morning and evening prayer now, with moderate consistency.

Is there a "holy roller" in the offing?  Well, I guess it depends on how you define the term. If it is that I am trying to say "yes" to eternal life by looking to the Trinity, that I believe Christ is the Center, that I am a sinner and that my life is not about me (in Fr. Robert Barron's paraphrased words), then I guess I am. But to be "holy" is to be truly other and allowing God His conversion, His very Divinization of human nature, so that I become transfigured, as all men and women are invited to do, to be truly "other", well, I am a long long way off and may not get there by journey's end.  But even lawyers can become saints, look at Thomas More!

I am often puzzled at the ease of dismissal of the idea of God's expectation of us to let us love Him, even as I know that letting love out or in of me from a human perspective has always been nearly impossible for me. Sometimes it is more than dismissal it is a rebellious willingness to be separated from Him, which is what Hell really is. It is perhaps the most simplistic reason why I believe, that if it IS true, then I have gained enormously, and if it is not, then I won't know about it. But it sure makes more sense to me than telling God He is a fictional putz and taking my chance on having condemned myself in the process. Seems a potentailly costly mistake, if it turns out it is one, as something deep within me tells me it would be. But I digress, as usual.

Will my efforts take? I have no idea. I have lapsed before and I am not going to swear that I won't again. I can only go moment by moment.


On more earthbound subjects, I have renewed my passport and after the condo is renovated and my renewed fear of flying is hypnotized out of me or otherwise goes on hiatus as it sometimes does, I want to see the places that formed my genetic national self, Ireland and Greece (before it goes kaput completely). I have seen Italy but maybe since I loved it so much I might go back. We shall see.

 I have always been a creature of habit. But with my entire prior personal world exploded and being reborn, I am having to consider a different response. All the usual markers are gone.


Here's the thing though. I am a little afraid to say it. With all my anxieties, and they remain legion, I find that I am one thing more often than I have been in the past. I am happier. Maybe that is part of God's Whisper.

Hollywood: Dreams and Memories of a Once Young Djin

The other day I was driving along Fairfax Avenue, just shy of CBS Television City, where often you will see lots of folks queued up for their turn in the spotlight on "The Price Is Right". I was behind one of the open air touring vans--there are a million companies--filled, given the beautiful weather we have been having, with first time visitors to Hollywood.


I could almost reproduce though 35 years in time past, my early visits to the land of oranges and palm trees, and of course, Pinks (the hot dog stand where on Oscar night the stars are known to have a bite after the show) that feeling of adventure and hopefulness I had in 1977 and then again in 1978 when I first experienced the dry warmth and bright colors of Los Angeles.


I had just begun law school then but I harbored the dream of being in the industry, joining mine to the countless others of the young and yet untried who came before me. I had written some scripts "on spec" with my then partner, Len Speaks and while I might have to have a "real job" for a while, I really wanted to be a sitcom writer.


Los Angeles, then so friendly and clean, was a revelation to me. The Bronx was as foreign from this place to me as any exotic place on the other side of the world. What the Los Angeleans hated--the spread out nature of the communities--I loved. It was bright and vast and full of promise to a kid who never considered she'd ever get outside of the Bronx. But then I had that first glimpse of the nearest thing to paradise.The City of Angels. The first time, when I had not yet learned to drive, I was taken to the beach by Dennis, then a fellow at USC, emerging from the tunnel that divided the 10 from the Coast Highway to a spot on view of the glittering ocean, I was not only dazzled but infused with a magical sense of freedom.


When I came back a second time in 1978, Len Speaks made the trip as well and we two aspiring not long out of college types tooled around (I still did not drive but he did) from downtown to Westwood, the college community adjacent to that sprawling UCLA campus, to the, yes, Hills of Beverly!

Upper left a 1978 shot of an intersection; upper right me in front of what was then Casey's Bar
Lower left, a house we stopped at in the hills, not because it was particularly gorgeous but because of
the sign, I could pretend I was rich and famous; bottom right, Len Speaks in a most mellow condition at Casey's (I think it's now a Mexican Restaurant)

Still in school, surviving the "Paper Chase" and passing the Bar and getting any job, never mind fame and fortune ,was uppermost in my mind. One thing I did know, I had to live in Los Angeles--how it would ever be possible I had no idea, but I told it to myself regularly so that somehow idea would translate one day into action.  In my case, risk aversive as I was, and remain, it seemed unlikely I would make the escape from the land of "Car 54" to the land of "Chips" (which I saw filmed in Beverly Hills on the second visit).  But the dream sure didn't hurt and it kept me motivated.

I made the move in 1981, after completing my education and working a bit in the mad bureaucracy of the New York City government as well as in the frenetic offices of the lawyer friend of a friend of my Aunt Kathleen. I found a job as essentially the secretarial "Girl Friday" (there was no title called "Administrative Assistant" in those ancient days)  in a law office that was as frenetic as the one I had left in New York, while I awaited the passing of the California Bar. The dream of being a Hollywood writer took a back seat to paying bills. Len Speaks found a new partner and in 1995 they moved to Los Angeles.

The dream, really dreams, because aside from writing I always wanted to do something with my voice, radio, voice-overs, also remote in a town of many clamoring and talented voices, did not depart--they only faded a little. I guess I used my speaking skills as a trial lawyer and ethics instructor (I know, I know, the idea of an ethical lawyer is an oxymoron; you know what? shhhhh. . .I agree with you), staying in one place for 25 years until, as an "at will" employee it became somebody's will to dispense with me and a significant number of the management team. "Thems the breaks" as they say.

Yes, there has been an adjustment, but here's the thing, the dreams are coming back into focus, and as I waited at the light behind that tour van, I felt a little of the sense of freedom that had first been triggered by the ocean blue of Santa Monica and the wide-eyed visits to the sites.  Sometimes as I drive around (yes, I did learn in anticipation of my hoped for move after I came back from my early visits) it all feels new to me again! 

It is a little different now, in this:  I am holding out no expectations of fame and fortune. I am learning to enjoy the ride and maybe create a little bit of something instead of controlling, regulating, giving orders, or taking them, except of course from the Divine Lord--and there I also have some work to do!

I used to love that UCLA shirt (me circa 1978, at age 24,  stunned by the wonders of California, in my Uncle Steve and Aunt Mary's apartment--I have been living just across the street for nearly 32 years). I think I need a new one to go along with my rekindled dreams!











Questioning One's Ministry

When I became, shall we say, circumstantially retired, I knew that I would no longer practice law in any formal sense. There is the occasional question from a relative or friend, which I avoid like the plague because of the dangers, alas learned in my time as an ethics regulator, of accidentally forming an attorney-client relationship. That is a story for another time. >p>

I have been in a sense gestating these last nine months about to be ten, trying on different things, a major project, renovating my condo, which remains in anxiety producing progress as I write-- BIG task, like it or not, and then weekly or daily projects, like reading for the blind and dyslexic, working with a couple of charities, here and there, and acting as a Eucharistic Minister for the sick at a local hospital.

Oh, as you know, I was already occasionally distributing Communion at Church, and even that remains a bit new to me. But there, surrounded by the ritual and parish accouterments, I feel in sync with the act of saying to the recipient, "Body of Christ" and the awesome nature of the giving and the receiving. But then, as I believe I may have written somewhere in these pages, about six or more weeks ago, one of my friends, already volunteering at the hospital down the road from me, asked me to join her, as the second of two ministers in that place, which has no chaplain. I was a bit reluctant, because the hospital in our parish has a cadre of ministers, and this hospital is not otherwise served formally by any parish and for whatever reason, none seemed eager. But she asked me with earnestness, and I said yes.

I am the Thursday volunteer. I receive a copy of the "census" with the names of the Catholic patients both in regular rooms and ICU (intensive care), and now, with all appropriate authority, I go to each of these patients asking if he or she would like to receive the Eucharist. If they are unable to do so for some medical reason for example, "NPO" which is the Latin abbreviation for "nothing by mouth", or because they are asleep or medically otherwise indisposed, if he or she is interested in a prayer, we will briefly pray and I always try to engage the personal so that there is some connection to the normalcy outside of bandaged and twisted limbs. Because it is a small hospital, at most, so far, there have been 20 Catholic patients at any given time, with the least about 7. After my rounds, I dispose of the census in the shredder in the medical records department, a requirement of HYPPA (confidentiality of patients) and the only record I keep is the room number, the bed and whether or not the person received.  I therefore have no retroactive idea who was in the room or the bed, which revolves weekly in any case.


What I have learned, and perhaps not something which should have eluded me intellectually, is that most people in hospital are not really disposed to either prayer or reception of God in the form and substance of the Eucharist. They are sleepy. They have just recently eaten or drank, which means that the hour "fast" has not been kept. As to that, one might and has, made exception, for the circumstances that these patients find themselves in--incapacitated or rehabilitating physically.  Allow this digression--that is a key problem--for although I was "trained" as a minister a long time ago, since I am not part of a group doing this within the hospital, when I have an immediate question, there is no one to whom I can turn. In those cases, I simply take the most conservative route, to the best I can assess it.


Or they are watching television, and oddly it rarely occurs to people to shut the volume unless you instruct them to do so. Or, as in one case, upon announcing that I was the Eucharistic Minister from the Catholic Church, the man stayed on his telephone conversation. I told him I would come back. When I did, he was still fully immersed in the conversation. I made the decision that he was not inclined toward reception. I did not return.


Oh, to be sure, there have been a couple of people, who upon seeing me and having my introduction as a representative of ministry, have become reverent immediately; one woman cried as we prayed and she received. There were one or two others like that. And although I only bring about two or three Hosts with me, and break them up if there are many recipients, there simply are rarely a number. I have been left with a host or two, and once three. My co-volunteer admitted to me that she keeps Our Lord in her car if she does not distribute them all. Alas, I have been taught that outside of the Tabernacle, if all Hosts are not consumed, the minister must consume them. So, I go to the Serenity Room, a pleasant non-denominational spot on the third floor transformed into a Church by His Presence around my neck in the pyx. And I pray and realize that I am not worthy to receive even one of these Hosts let alone more than one.

Don't get me wrong, this is an important ministry,even if all we do is pray a little or I pray, when they do not speak, or cannot speak. It is not strictly about those to whom I minister. It is about me, about my losing the sense of Mystery, of Divinity, because I am even less disposed than those receiving. That which I do only occasionally keeps me aware of the profound Nature of He Whose Sacrifice brought us the choice to follow. Something about me, something about the atmosphere, the context in that hospital, in any hospital, somehow I lose it, I lose Him. I lose Him.  He does not lose me.


So, I continue this ministry, but I realize that it may not be my niche as a Christian Catholic or as a volunteer in any sense. I continue because right now, my co-volunteer is on leave while she cares for her very sick sister, at least until June.


I guess one might say, that divested of all the things which I had once considered important, a career, authority of a sort, a self-anointed gravitas, I am discerning my place in the tapestry that is God's Will for each of us. I am presently doing a haphazard job. But that's ok. As I am also learning to live in the present, rather than in the past or the future.


What is the cliche? "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans". 
 

Remembering the Fall

This is the only picture I have of my mother when she was "older" if 48 is "older".  This picture was taken a month before she died, October 1974, the last public event she attended, the wedding of the sister of my friend Ginny Rohan.

As I go through various of my writings, I have been appending some of them here. What follows I wrote probably 15 to 20 years ago, maybe I was seeking to send it somewhere--I don't remember. It was, ostensibly, about a fall my mother took a few months, probably before she died. My guess is that the cancer that was ravaging her had spread to her brain and caused the blackout. I think part of my motivation for these entries is that I am painfully aware I am the last in my family line--an only child without spouse or issue--and I am searching for a way and I see these writings as that way, to memorialize the immediate members of my family, and likely myself as well, on this earth.  It is both a pleasant experience and a bit of a sad one--preservation of a past that is theirs and mine, both.

_____________________

My mother was talking to me while she vacuumed the hallway outside of my bedroom.  She turned the vacuum on; she turned it off.  She teased me, the college kid on a day off still in bed.

"Ok, I'll get up in a little while" I promised.

She went back to her cleaning and then turned off the machine again.  I don't remember how long it was after the diagnosis of breast cancer or how soon before her death. It was though one of those moments in which she seemed truly fine physically and something added that seemed before her illness to elude her--a little bit of happiness.  I could have convinced myself that she wasn't sick at all as she pushed and pulled the machine energetically.

She was in a very good mood and at absolute ease, which was lovely, as generally she did not seem comfortable with her body.  Of course, when I knew her, except towards the end of her life when she became frighteningly thin, she was Rubenesque, a tendency I have inherited, along with much of her discomfort about my physical self.  She was dying, but she was in an ebullient frame of mind. It was some kind of paradox, but I wasn't analyzing it. Maybe it was because the doctors never told her she had cancer and she was dying. She was fighting.  She had some kind of implicit elusive hope.

Of course she was dying.  It was just a matter of how soon.  She had to know it.  After she died, a found a few Inquirer type articles about miracle cancer cures she kept in a little journal in which she recorded the medications she had been taking. Maybe as long as nobody spoke the dispositive words, she could hang on.  Whatever the reason at this moment, there was a respite.

Dad was at work.

Mom's vacuuming was concluded. She was turning around maybe to go to the kitchen to pour the tea she always drank from a large brown oval bottomed Russell Wright cup.  The kettle was on, barely whistling. She seemed to be making a deliberate movement, except it was not. She fell suddenly and hit the wall hard.  It was a split second. I jumped out of bed. Her head was next to the door frame of my parents' bedroom. There was a cut over her right eyebrow. She was gurgling. I ran to the phone. Called 911.  Called the family doctor. Called my father's office. I remember hanging up on somehow who needed more information in my panic.  There is no future or past in such moments.  And little detail. It is an indescribable suspension in which somehow movement still occurs.

I don't know what I did between the calls and the arrival of the paramedics.  I don't remember the time between.  The paramedics were simply there. And police officers, one, two, who knows, all crowded into a narrow hallway between my bedroom and my parents' with my mother mumbling as she lay on the floor.

She had not wanted to move into this apartment building near the Jerome Reservoir. It was still the Bronx. She wanted something more than the Bronx. She wanted a place with a doorman. My father was finally making enough money in 1970 for a nice apartment.  But a place with a doorman with the kind of inexhaustible and perfect space she wanted that she could mold to the designs she would get my father to implement, she had to know he did not make enough for that.

She also did not like the location of the closets.  My mother did not like visible closet doors. In our old place, their bedroom which became mine when they took to a Castro Convertible in the living room, had one smallish closet. She had my father cordon off the back of the room with drapes that hid shelves he built for her against the wall next to that closet.  She had him do the same thing to the kitchenette which simply lined the front of the living room.  When there was nobody around but us, the drapes were open revealing a refrigerator, sink, small gas stove that had to be lit with a match for every use, and a kind of counter in which the black and white television was inserted.  When visitors came the drapes were drawn and the room was recast into a Bronx nightclub.  The living room was all dark and light and browns and reds.  The bulbs were amber.  A library covered an entire wall with a built in mirror in n the center that covered the dumbwaiter no one used anymore.  A bar that my father built for my mother was in front of the drapes that hid the kitchen. Even the roaches, which infested the building, cooperated by absence during parties.  The international music was the final touch of magic. Rumbas, cha-chas, mambos, all danced in a room less than 25 feet long.  At about 4 or 5 a.m. during a family party, Uncle Frank evoked a toast in a series of oles.  I could not help even at a young age, be amazed at the force of will that could transform the place. 

Still, nothing in the late 1960s could hide the failings of the 175th Street adjacent building. The grass islands were replaced by concrete.  The ornate iron wrought fences were removed. The building became prone to mysterious fires. Someone said the landlord was trying to collect insurance money. Long time neighbors were moving away. My mother grudgingly conceded to our new apartment, two large bedrooms and a massive living room--as long as dad minimized those ugly closets with bookshelves.  The color of these walls were brighter than our last abode, but this place too was like a nightclub, more mirrored if that were possible, a more plush brown carpet, a custom made bar in the large corner near the door.

As my mother lay on the floor, she wasn't conscious, exactly.  The officers insisted though that she was. She was reaching her hand out. Long red nails pointed toward my parents' bed.  "Buddy" she said. "Where's Buddy?"  Buddy was the nickname for my father that she never used in public considering it too informal.  She preferred his given name, "Constantine" said with a long patrician "I" on the last syllable.
"He'll be at the hospital" I said as if she were really expecting an answer.

"We can't take her if she doesn't want to go" said the cops.  They seemed nearly bland. I convinced her to let them take her, somehow. She was in a wheelchair being carried to the ambulance.  People watched as we left the building. I saw only the inexorable motion. I had never been in an ambulance before, or since. Inside, she had some kind of major seizure. Arms. Legs. Body--all jerking in unison. She rattled.

"Is she dead, sir?" Sometimes when I get very excited and I am trying to control myself I get very formal.  He did not answer. The siren was muffled to someone inside an ambulance. It seemed we were going very slow and very far, although Montefiore was only a mile away. 

I was waiting there when dad came. He was angry. That she had been vacuuming. At not having control. At everything.  His anger made me angry.  I had never known what I was supposed to do.  Other than my father and myself, and her doctors, no one had been told she had cancer. People knew something serious was wrong, of course. She did not look well; after her diagnosis, she was jaundiced.  It was metastatic, so surgery was useless.  I understood that her doctor, Axelrod, told my father, and dad in turn told me not to tell anyone of my mother's condition, particularly her.  He felt that this was in her psychological best interest.  She took "the treatments" as she called them, and never asked or said what they were for.  I can remember one time being in the waiting room with her on one of her weekly day time outpatient visits. All the women, clearly sick, were wearing bandannas or wigs to hide the hair loss.  Not a word passed between my mother and me.

This is a part of our mutual experience that my father and I dispute.  He says that no one said she should not be told of her condition or that her family should not be told.  I remember and acted upon the mandate. I would not have had the independent idea to hide it..  I told only one person, the first boy to ask me out, because it was during the week she was in a coma before she died.  I was a sophomore in college, an incredibly late bloomer  Such memories cannot be false, can they?  My father and I are two peas in a pod in our need for absolute evidence of things.  I can't prove my memory.   He can't prove his.  All I know is that I had to keep her illness quiet.

I understood that I could never talk to my mother about what was happening to her.  I would like to say that I was a good daughter, that I took things well, that I wasn't selfish, but that would be untrue.  I did the best I could and it wasn't great.  My father let me know that, one time, cruelly, I always thought.  It is hard to give a parent room for his own distress even when you are a middle aged woman as I am today.  I had given my mother a rough time over something she wanted to do.  As my father and I were going down in our apartment elevator having observed my conduct, he said, "Don't worry, she'll be dead soon."  I knew then, and I know now, he did not mean it, but if I could not avoid my own anger, I would try to avoid his, at least.

My father disappears from memory after his arrival at the hospital.  Pretty much everything goes dark. She had some CAT scans to see what might have caused her to fall, as if there were any doubt--the cancer had spread to the brain.  She began taking anti-epileptics.

I have only one memory of my time at the hospital.  I don't know if it was she, or maybe a doctor who called me into one of those curtained cubicles.  She was still not fully conscious.  She did not say anything. But she did something that was surprising as was her call for my father-- as my mother was never overtly emotional.  She raised her hand for me to take it. I did. I squeezed it.  Maybe even comforted her. We never talked about that either.

I don't think she even remembered.

Maybe He Is or Isn't A Steiff, But I Love Him Just the Same

I wrote the following small piece for some publication called the Toy Shop Writers, in 2000. Never heard from them again. I kind of like the reminiscence about this little fellow. He is almost as old as me.

He was just sitting with my live long haired tabby cat (Trouble, since deceased in 2008) on my desk.  She just left his side for a view from the window as the sun sets.  He still waits for me to acknowledge him for all (or at least some) to hear (or read) after 38 years.  He sees me going to the computer as I cast a glance to him.  "Finally" I imagine he says to me, "I receive my due."  Indeed, my little Steiff tiger.

Well, I THINK he's a Steiff.  No matter, you are a Steiff to me and today, at least, I will not take you for granted.

It was the Concourse Plaza Hotel in the Bronx, New York, April 1962 that he was bestowed upon me.  My parents gave me a once in a life time birthday party with all 30 of my grade school classmates from the Academy of Mt. St. Ursula.  I remember the happy screeching of the girls (it was all girls at the Mt.), the pounding of the room's piano (which caused it to be turned to face the wall) and only two gifts of the many.  One was a popular board hockey game, with proportionate puck, and short sticks--the goals made by successfully ringing a large bell at either end. It was worn out within a year with all the slapping on and off the wood.  The other was the tiger.

He was one of a chosen few stuffed creatures to reside in my bed, along with Thumbelina, "Mrs. Chang", an angora cat toy, and later, "Ilya" (named for one of the Men from UNCLE, I am dating myself eh?), the leather dachshund.  The fact I never actually named him does not in this case demonstrate that I did not love him.  In a true revisionist's style I tell you that he was simply too special to name.

I discovered that his green eyes glowed in the dark after being subjected to the light bulb. His short "fur", coarse to the touch, never seemed to wear.  He seemed, more than the others, truly alive.  He was the mysterious, potentially ferocious (but never to me) protector of this only child.  I would cup my hands over his eyes in the night and we would stare at one another in mutual friendship.  I hugged him to me and breathed deep in relief for the safety he meant to me.

He managed to survive all my childhood toys.  He even managed to cross the country with me, forgotten in a box, when I came to California in the 1980s.  Sometimes he escaped to a shelf and I'd notice him, dirty and dusty from the years.  Perhaps I should finally throw him out?  But I couldn't.  One look at that face and the crooked sewn mouth. Then one day I wanted to do more for him.  I took a chance and put him in my washing machine.

All these years and he could be destroyed in moments by my act of nostalgic kindness.  I heard the thumping, the click of the glass eyes.  I should have taken them out, too late now!  Oh, no, I remembered one was always loose.  It would be lost and I would have a one eyed putative Steiff Tiger.

End of the cycle.  He lives!  he is pristine and he is whole as on the day he became my childhood companion.

Of course, IF he is a Steriff, then he lacks something, a designating button in his ear. Proof of his heritage.  He is without papers.

I have looked at photographs of collectible Steiff tigers and he looks like he might be part of the family, but I couldn't swear to it (he does).

But I don't have him because he might be a collectible. He was a gift.  He is a connection to a time past and a me that no longer exists, a pre-pubescent child with sandy brown hair, a little shy and a bit afraid of everything.  It's nice to know that he who would be a Steiff Tiger is here with me still.

You know what?  His eyes still glow. 

Observations during the Easter Season on My (Catholic) Lay Ministries

Most people observing the workings of the Catholic Church, whether from the inside, as a parishioner, or outside as someone with a relative keen interest would assume that it is readily permissible for a woman to serve in several ministerial roles (or certain of the minor orders as they are officially called) like reader, altar server and Eucharistic Minister both within the church service and in bringing viaticum to the sick in their homes or hospitals. They would assume that by the number of us, women, or girls as the case may be, that it is, in fact, a matter of routine.

As I understand the norms of Catholic ministry (and those of you who have more expertise than I are free to clarify), a woman, or girl, in a parish may serve on the altar in a Catholic Church as permitted by the local bishop, and also as I understand, only really if there are an insufficient number of men available for altar service. As to going to hospitals and homes, there is no restriction on whether the "minister" be male or female. 

In my particular parish, when first I arrived there in the 1980s, the then pastor was a strict adherent to the idea of the rarity of a woman doing other than reading, and even that was not particularly common. Even after, in the later 2000's, when he was still celebrating Mass I attended on Sundays and at which I had been vouchsafed to lector, any assistance with acolyte duties, helping to dress the altar, bring the gifts, or carry the gospel, were reserved tenaciously only for males. As the years passed, the celebrants at the other Masses and the more recent pastor allowed female servers other than as lectors, but in respect for my former pastor, I continued to do only that which he allowed. Just before he truly retired from celebrating the 12:15 he was allowing me a few of the tasks of the acolyte, but only if there were insufficient servers, as often there were at that Mass. 

Since Christmas 2011, after a call for more servers, which have for a time included other women at Masses I do not routinely attend during the weekend, I decided that I was going to be comfortable with an expanded role commensurate with theirs.  I abandoned my long worn choir robe, which distinguished me as only the reader, and began wearing the uniform of the rest of the altar servers--wearing the clothes of the altar does provide a certain gravitas that a simple choir robe did not. Deeper involvement meant paying closer attention to the particulars of the duties of assisting the priest, how to carry the candles upon entry into the church, how to hand the gifts to the priest which he consecrates thereafter, how to give out communion, or the Blood of Christ, if called upon as I might be now more frequently.

I did very little more than my usual lectoring activities during Christmas, but with Holy Thursday and today, Good Friday looming, (and since now not worried about making it on time from work or having to request the day off) I signed my name to assist at both, and of course, for the Easter Mass upcoming.  

I did not in any way influence the orchestrators of the duties of the various volunteers so that I did any particular task during the service. I was assigned to be one of the candlebearers, which I had done previously, but only in very limited part. On this occasion, not only did I kneel on the hard marble during the consecration before the altar, (which was less burdensome than I anticipated, and perhaps even thought deserved) next to the thurifer and the second candle bearer, but I also bore the candle as we processed to the side altar to expose the Blessed Sacrament for Adoration after the service. I was one of the ministers of the Blood of Christ. And through the Gloria which will not be heard again until Saturday's Easter Vigil, I ran the bells throughout, as they accompanied the singing to God. I can tell you this. If I am feeling arid, as so often I do in my faith, these experiences of walking, literally, with God down the aisle and handing a cup of Him to one of my fellow parishioners, can only, as they did last night, and again during the Good Friday services, restore my feeling, and generate the awe to which God is due always, but which only with prompting do I proffer.


Today, I was an intimate part of the veneration of the Cross, again a candle bearer and also holding one of the three small crucifixes for the faithful to kiss. I found myself nearly in tears watching each person kiss His feet. I wished my heart were the repository of more holiness given the honor of this service I was now performing more frequently. And I was delighted at the crowd of people who came during the day to be part of the three hour memorial.

And, it all came for me after a very hard week in which an accidental and frankly small spill of water from my being renovated bathroom went into the bathroom below me, generating all sorts of claims for damages that simply are not reasonable. The reminder to trust God with my suffering, and this mishap (although you can imagine, if you know me, how obsessive it has made me), which hardly bears even the soupcon of the gravity of the word "suffering", was let's say, timely. The services made me stop, not entirely forgetful of the things I fear in this life, in particular, last night the burgeoning fear, generated by a small life incident, of being bereft of everything as life's crises continue and alone, but enough to think of He who gave His all to heal our woundedness.

Today, I was very grateful for my faith. Dennis Prager, talking about religion today, called it an anchor. It is indeed.  Without it, I would float away on my anxieties.

A Paper from Another Life

As I enter the ninth month of my separation from the State Bar, while the sting of its denouement to my ego, which thought it deserved better, repeats--if I think about it--I think about it less and less. Concomitantly, I realize more and more that I have been liberated, through no action of my own, and given a splendid opportunity to let each day unfold and to savor it while my health allows.  I hope, of course, that it will be a goodly amount of time given to me. Because of a high risk of heart disease (family) and my own high blood pressure (made much better by both medication and a far less stress filled existence these days), my internist has me take stress echo cardiograms (there is at least one entry about that about a year or two ago) and today I had another, and well, "passed". I am not in good shape yet, still overweight, still not exercising


In a way, I guess, my "paring down" is spiritual as well as material.


I have begun posting some non-blog writing from pre-blog days, a kind of combination of the material and the spiritual  purgation. Re-organizing my old journals, I ran across a paper I wrote for some class I had now more than 13 years ago, when I was studying to be a psychologist. As many of you know, and some may not, I took evening and weekend classes for nearly six years, all but dissertation and final oral examinations. My reasons for stopping the pursuit and moving into management at the Bar instead may one day be the subject of another entry, but for now, I will reprint this paper. As both a client of therapy and a student of it, I needed to integrate my faith and the many variations of the "talking cure". I never liked the chasm between the two camps, those religious folk who distrusted psychology and those secular folk who distrusted and even discounted the need for religious belief. I saw them always as complements of one another, not adversaries. I wasn't original in that, but it was not a well known subject of advocacy. As a patient I did not want to be talked out of my religion. It was one reason I had delayed ever seeking a therapist. As a trainee therapist, I knew how indispensable the structure of religiosity was for a client who came with life issues for sorting out and how precious and I did not want to talk such a person out of it. It was part of our respective essences. So, in some class I presented this paper. I recall also another--on sexuality--in which I did a talk about the need for therapists to be cognizant and sympathetic and not dismissive of religious precepts that informed client function, and dysfunction in the arena of human intimacy. I don't think I wrote a formal paper there; if I did, it will turn up and I will consider posting it. But this one is present and accounted for and provided for whatever interest you might have in it.


It was called, "Points of Intersection in the Goals and Methods of Christian Mysticism and Psychotherapy".

Some months ago, I went to dinner with a long time friend who is profoundly suspicious of psychology and, what she calls its "false premises". We are both practicing Catholics. Her Catholicism is far more certain, publicly and privately, than is my own.  She is given to open reference to god, the Lord's Will, and to regular exhortations on the power of prayer.  I respect her and admire her faith. 


I am, however, more what Malcolm Muggeridge denominated the "fitful believer" (Muggeridge, 1988). I cannot, however much I might wish to do so, lay claim to belief, once and forever.

It would be comforting to be able to say, 'Now

I see!'  To recite with total satisfaction one of the

Church's venerable creeds:  'I believe in God, the

Father Almighty. . .'  To point to such a moment

of illumination when all became miraculously

clear.  To join with full identification in one

of the varieties of Christian worship. . .Comforting

but alas, it would not be true.  The one thing

above all others that You require of us, surely,

the Truth.  I have to confess, then, that I can only

fitfully believe, can believe no creed wholly,

have had no self-sufficing moment of illumination.

(Muggeridge, 1988)

My friend's words worried me, as had my own acquiescence to therapy when I sought it and found myself profoundly interested in both its theory and practice. I have harbored the incipient concern, despite an adequate academic and cognitive understanding to the contrary, that I might lose even my fitful belief as I explored the field of which Freud, considered anti-religious, is the most well known progenitor.  It has often occurred to me that I have lost that faith and may not have realized it.  I will not, however, accept or resign myself to that idea.  So, I have had something of a hero and heroine in Sts. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, and in one of their interpreters, Thomas Merton. 

It has always seemed to me that therapy is a sibling or cousin to their purgative process with several points of intersection. 

It was quite pleasing in the course that has required this paper that their method was a precursor of modern psychotherapy.  To be sure, one has a theological Divine end, relationship with God, and the other a whole human relatedness, but both effect a cure of soul.  Perhaps it is to be said they have the same end and a complementary approach. In each, the end is true identity.  In each we can lay claim to disposing of false selves.  For the Christian mystic, that is sin. For the therapist, it is those perceptions, ideas, feelings, behaviors which get in our way, which distort our relationships, which are equally "an orientation to falsity, a basic lie concerning our own deepest reality." (Finley, 1988).  What if they are the same thing and we have simply not understood it to be so?

Both have methods which are at once detached and passionate.  The way of St. John and St. Theresa is one of detachment "from possessiveness in natural things."  (Kavanaugh and Larkin, 1987) And yet, St. John wrote what can only be described as sensual poetry about an unfettered, intimate relationship with God by removing layers of distraction and the inauthentic parts of our natures.  For example,

How gently and lovingly

You wake in my heart

Where in secret you dwell alone

And in your sweet breathing,

filled with good and glory.

How tenderly you swell in my heart with

love.

(Kavanaugh and Larkin, 1987)

In relationship is the cure and the restoration of the true self. The therapist has an odd human mystery. God has His cosmic Mystery. Relationship with God may not be so unlike relationship with a therapist.  Both peel away the distracting, the unnecessary, the wounding, the obstructive.

The mystic in progress reaches the top of the mountain by the road of "todo y nada"--"all and nothing." 

To reach satisfaction in all

desire its possession in nothing

To come to possess all

desire in the possession of nothing.

To arrive at being all

desire to be nothing.

To come to the knowledge of all

desire the knowledge of nothing.

To come to the pleasure you have not

you must go by the way in which you enjoy not.

To come to the knowledge you have not

you must go by a way in which you know not.

(John of the Cross, quoted by Kavanaugh and Larkin 1988)

It is a tumultuous process. At first there is fervor and a sense of relief, even power. But then, something nearly unmanageable settles into the soul.  A darkness, but more than that, for it includes futility, even a desire to move no further.  It is desolation. Utter absence.  But then, I am reminded that it is in absence that we understand presence, the presence of other, or the Other.

God brings these people into the way of

life by depriving them of the light and

the consolation which they seek, by impeding

their own efforts, by confusing and

depriving them of the satisfactions which

their own wishes, their self-esteem, their

presumption, their aggressivity and so on are

systematically humiliated.  What is

worse, they cannot understand how this

comes about!  They do not know what is

happening to them.  It is here that they

must decide whether to go on in the way

of prayer under the secret guidance

of grace in the night of pure faith or whether

they will go back to a form of existence

in which they can enjoy familiar routines

and retain an illusory sense of their perfect

autonomy in perfectly familiar realms, without

having to remain subject to the obedience of

faith in these trying and baffling circumstances

proper to the 'dark night'. (Finley 1988)

It is a tumultuous process as well in modern psychology. The therapist is exhorted by Bion to let go of memory, desire and understanding when approaching a session (Seinfeld, 1996). 

The client goes down a dangerous, unknown, not pleasurable road.  Failed for example, by a mother who was not 'good enough' the client develops a mask of compliance, creates a false sense of relationships, which might even appear to be real, abut are not. (Davis and Wallbridge, 1981).  It is familiar and preferable even if all relationships are rendered null by this way of being.  To unmask, and to examine the mask requires a period of darkness, of aridity, parallel to the 'dark night of the soul'. The client may experience at first a sense of relief and well being, often considered the 'transference' cure.  But then, it becomes more difficult as the client proceeds through the different levels of self and relationship. Some may leave the process, for it is too difficult, too painful, too long. The therapist will remind the patient, "I know of no other way".  Those who can endure the unknown will continue. Those who cannot, flee.  The desire to run is compelling. Therapy is not for the faint of heart.

While, as I have said, I admire my friend's faith, I cannot agree with her that psychology has false premises.  There are points of divergence to be sure from religion, from the truly mystical.  But in significant ways, there are the substantially similar goals and approaches. It can be no accident that the heroes and heroines of psychology have had as part of their psychic structures the religions of their youths and even, adulthood. Perhaps religionists would call them heretics.  Gassner. Jung. Even Freud, despite his protestations was a creature of the Judaic tradition which cultivated him.  It was compelling enough that he analyzed Moses himself.  For my part, I will not accept that therapy and the religious 'dark night of the soul' are other than kindred spirits.

I wish that some of these thoughts had come to mind that night in a Westside restaurant with my friend. Apolgia for faith in both religion and therapy. Here I am, Lord, devotee of John and Teresa and Freud and his psychoanalytic progeny.