Imagine

At first glance, it may seem odd that I have connected John Lennon and Kim Jong Un in a single thought.


So, just after a call from an old friend having more terrible troubles in every arena of her/his life, I went onto AOL to see what is what and hope for, silly me, happier news. And there, peering through binoculars at a table, surrounded by his retinue, was Kim Jong Un, friend of Dennis Rodman engaging in what did the article say in the Huffington Post, "bellicose rhetoric."  He is threatening air strikes against the U.S in response to the U.S. presence this week of B-52s with nuclear capability in his, and I do mean, his alone (in his own mind) air space. Now, I know, maybe about half the country blames the U.S. for any concern about this dictator developing nuclear force. Or pooh pooh's it. Surely, Kim wouldn't USE it to start a war? No one is that crazy?

Remember Hitler? He only wanted Poland. And the smart politicians of the day thought that would be enough. This is merely a preamble, for I know the objections and counter objections that the liberal and conservative (my inclination) would lob at one another and that is not precisely how John Lennon got into all this, although he'd be on the liberal side of this debate, probably more distinctly left f it.

No, the quick thought I had as I looked at the AOL snap was of the song "Imagine", by Mr. Lennon, whose musical abilities I admired enormously. I even like the song. I have found myself singing along in the car until I realize that I don't buy a word of it.

According to the song, which has become a kind of anthem to many, without religion, the world would be a much better place. We'd would not covet and war.

Correct me, if I am wrong, but Kim Jung Un presides over an atheistic country and society. He is absolute ruler and tyrant of that place and if he had nuclear weapons, he'd lob 'em freely. He would not have the kind of conscience that afflicted Truman and company when they used ours to ST\OP  a war, and being the only ones with that horrible weapon, DID NOT use it to take over the world (as we are so often pictured trying to do), but rather sought to help to rebuild the war destroyed places of the former enemy.

So, imagine, if you would if Hitler had the bomb before we did. Or imagine Kim if he did.

Yes, lots of things were done horribly in the name of religion, by humans who took the name of religion in vain, abominating its ideals. But take away the ideals and there is nothing, no structure of mind, or philosophy, to stop a single man or woman with power from TAKING it all, and damn the destruction.

Quick thoughts on a Good Friday. More to come perhaps, I hope, of a more hopeful nature.

No Exit, Also Known as Jury Duty

It is a white, windowless room, (you know maybe there were windows but I don't remember any natural light) with unframed posters, and prohibitive notices. With all the people slumping in chairs, it is hot and a bit ripe. If you don't show up, you will be found, and punished. When you do show up, you cannot leave without permission. It is not clear when permission might be given.

Welcome to jury duty.  

Then they show a video. About the glories of service in this government of the people, by the people and for the people. I have been a believer. But something about the reality does not accord with the beautiful principles flashed before us psychically and virtually physically imprisoned Winston Smiths.

We have been exhorted to arrive at 8:30 a.m.  We are greeted by whited out closed windows, nary a bureaucrat to be found.  Somewhat after nine a rumpled man appears. He is a judge of the court and he is "welcoming" us and thanking us for our "commitment". And then he is gone, replaced by lovely twenty somethings trying to make the best of their role as our keepers for the day, or the week, or the month, whatever is to be our lot.

And then we wait. And wait. The magazines are relatively new, from 2008. Well used by the looks of the ripped covers. Those who know me can imagine my physical tics as I am constrained to wait, not minutes, as we do at the movies, but hours. We are allowed to stray to the hallway, old washed out marble, several courtrooms locked and unused, the only remnant old masking tape left behind when the signs were taken away; old phone booths bereft of their seats and small counters; locked windows (there was one accidentally open or broken through which the air from the parking lots sifted in, with etched in graffiti.

I have been on two juries in the past. After thirty years being a lawyer myself and seeing truth battered mercilessly and cynically, I have come to the conclusion that the system is broken. I know it took me longer than most. I am annoyed at my colleagues who are on other floors engaged in endless settlement maneuvers that are holding us caged creatures in stasis. There needs to be a limit on the cyclical discussions. When a judge says "trial is at 9:30 tomorrow" that needs to be it, no more hemming and hawing, and "But, your Honor.  The game of looking for the sympathetic juror has to stop. If its about truth, let us see it all, nt only what the chess game provides. But it isn't about truth, yeah, that's right, that's what I said.

We have impressed so much crap around our Founding Fathers' principles that the principles are lost to us. There is an old poster of Judge Ito (remember him, OJ circa 1990 somthing?) telling me how wonderful it is for me to be here, cause once he was. I don't think Thomas Jefferson would agree, but then he has no credibility in this society being a dead European with flaws which of course no one in this modern day with all our special knowledge has.

Can I be fair? Yes. I have, and I would be again. I would listen to the rules that they foist upon me that make no sense at all, that were the stuff of my classroom at law school and 25 years of seeing how the prosecutor is held to a completely different standard than the defense such that the playing field is not only not level, but of Sisyphean proportions for the ones with the burden of proof.

I will always do my duty. It was how I was trained, from my mother, to my parochial education, to my Church whose leadership fails to follow what it preaches in the most grandiose of manners, to my old career, where politics began to govern more than the ethics purportedly purveyed, to follow the rules set before me.

But each tour of duty leading to those dank rooms has become more and more like torture. I had planned on telling the questioning counsel and the judge as much as they would allow of these things, on voir dire, and as to that they would likely not have allowed me a soapbox.

But wonder of wonders, at about three o'clock in the afternoon (I shall refrain from speculation about the fact that this is Holy Week, and Passover), after an earlier group of my brethren were sent to a courtroom, we were freed, at least for a year from our commitment. No doubt lawyers and judges and even defendants were on vacation so they really didn't need us. I am grateful . I really could use the rest of the week for prayer and meditation. For me, this time, there was an exit.

And the Keys of The Kingdom Pass again: To Francis I

I started to write about the election of the new Pope the day it happened. But then, personal life got in the way, tooth pain and root canal, and an infected finger, the result, sigh, of my having bitten my thumb nail to a nub such that it actually hurt to type. So, I get in on the commentary late in time.




I had hoped, also, to give focused, rapt attention to the moment of the white smoke and the presentation on the balcony of the new Vicar of Christ. Like others I did not expect it to happen quite so soon. But I had to be at my own church for Mass and was unable to wait for the bands and cardinals to gather and for the curtains to part. I was serving the 12:15 when a note was given to our pastor. Our pastor's prayer joined legions of those that had already wafted to the heavens on behalf of the man who will fill the "Shoes of the Fisherman", that of the first human custodian of the Divinely Inspired institution, the Catholic Church.

Oh, I know, folks will disagree that there is anything Divine in that mess that is being made by the Church's caretakers. But here is how I see it, Catholic that I am---anything that has survived for 2,000 years given the muck we creatures make of everything, has to be in the Hands of God Himself. Or, as someone famous once said, I believe because it is absurd to do so. When, if you have read here before, I pare it all down, the Center of our Church is Christ in the form of a consecrated piece of bread, fully present as if He stepped out of the tabernacle (there was a famous painting showing precisely that) to stand with us, to hold us up despite our most intense efforts to send ourselves to hell--which is merely separation for eternity from Him. Fire optional. Ok, I'm joking about the last part.

So, this man, and he is a man, Francis, has a heavy beam upon him, which he has accepted. So far, he impresses with his ease and simplicity. His selection of name has sent me back to looking at St. Francis and his secular order after much attention to St. Benedict and his.

St. Francis it was who advised his fraternity to preach, without words. It is the action of the man (or woman) who most models the faith, by acts of good or ill. Pope Francis has so far eschewed the most ostentatious of the regalia of his role which mostly hails from the Middle Ages. Don't get me wrong. I like a lot of that. We are tactile creatures. We need the pomp to get our attention. And to remind us of the need to hold the Lord in our mouths and hands in awe. But we don't need it to show off to one another or to others. We need the example of the newest fisher of men to evangelize about the Gift of Salvation in which we are asked to participate so that we can see God freely and fully.

It is going to take Grace for this new Pope to root out the narcissistic human greed that may permeate the Curia because we are weak vessels who need His constant watchfulness and herding.

For David Letterman it may all be quite the joke; for the 1.3 billion Catholics and maybe for humanity itself, it may well be a last chance to utter, "Yes, Lord, I come to do your Will."

Dallas Devotion

I am a big Dallas fan. TOS (The Original Series). And now, the revamped just as campy version. There is a little connection to personal history, besides. When I was in law school in the late 1970's, I was naturally studying a lot. I went into the living room one day, and flipped on the first episode of this new show. It was about this family, the Ewings, a Texas oil family loyal to one another when it came to the outside world, but conniving and mean to one another, when not mix and matching romantically. Oh, and engaged in this running feud with another family, headed by Cliff Barnes. The hook in large part was the one of the Ewing boys, Bobby was in love with the pretty sister of Cliff. Ok. Close enough to Shakespeare for me. I started to watch, and found the perfect law school reading break. Except that one night Patrick Duffy was on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and saying that the show was 62 in the ratings. He was expecting another cancellation, just like his prior show, one I didn't much fancy, "The Man from Atlantis."  So I told my friends to watch it, including Len of Len Speaks, who, at first was skeptical and recalcitrant. In a year or two a bunch of us were at Casa Klatt, Sr.'s kvelling over the "Who Shot J.R." episode. Thirteen years later, in 1991, the series went off the air, except for a couple of ill produced specials better forgotten.

Flash forward some thirty years from that first viewing of mine. It never occurred to me there could be this dynamic reboot. I mean a grab you and keep you at the 42 inch screen (as opposed to the SONY Trinitron I first saw it on) reboot. The career I was beginning when I first saw the show is essentially concluded as I have moved onto other, shall we say, endeavors. Back at the ranch, Jock died in Season Three of the original show, Miss Ellie some years later, Bobby got remarried, J.R. is still divorced from Sue Ellen, who kicked the bottle and runs for governor. And the second generation of Ewings and Barnes cavorting just like the old days, but with more skin showing. Now, the Ewings have added methane as something to fight over. And poor Christopher, Bobby's offspring, just couldn't help doing what daddy did--heck, he married a Barnes, Rebecca, well, really Pamela Rebecca. But he didn't know it. You get the picture, I hope. Intrigue, with tongue firmly in cheek. And it worked.

But the man behind J.R., Larry Hagman, had old health problems come back as the series went into production, and by this second season, he died, with a story arc pretty much up in the air. The three old timers had managed to be the linchpins of the reboot, getting you interested in what happened to the young uns. And maybe willing to watch scenes where only the young folk were feuding and fussing.

Well, somehow, as in Hollywood it often happens, the legend of J.R. and the legendary way that the actor played him, kind of merged. Losing the actor meant having to lose the character, while keeping him firmly implanted in whatever future plans the writers had for the fictional family. And well, those of us who knew Mr. Hagman from his eccentric characterizations on TV and in real life, we felt we sort of knew him and it was a surprising loss for us, the fans (gulp, I have to admit it, I am a fan!).

Len Speaks is a member of the Paley center that has been preserving television programs old and new for future generations, and so, when he said that the cast and the main writer, Cynthia Cidre, would be on a panel for the show, the day before the new "Who Shot J.R." story line was to fully enfold on TNT, I was well, THERE.  And in another example of life imitating art, or art imitating life, I was in tears as the cast on screen, and sitting on the stage, said goodbye to Larry/J.R.

It just doesn't get better than when the now pretty aged Cliff Barnes breaks into the Omni Hotel in Dallas and tells the grieving family that he is delighted J.R. is dead as the proverbial door nail and caint, I mean CAINT, do no more harm to him and now he's going to take down the damn Ewings once and for all.

But there were also moments of the undercurrent of family loyalty, that J.R. really did still love Sue Ellen, and that every so often, J.R. could give uncle like advice to other family members he was bating and battling in business.

When we all stood to give Patrick and Linda standing ovations, we probably were also standing up for ourselves (also of a certain age) for getting through a whole bunch of years, each of us still squarely on our own feet, with lives we built behind us and dreams still for the future. Cue the Dallas theme, please! Da dah da dah da dah dah dah dah.                                                                          

"Kelly" Palmer: A Farewell

It has become pretty clear to me that many people die without family available or even around at all to arrange a funeral.  I wrote recently about the impromptu funeral for a man at my parish, arranged by several of his friends. Within the last month, a fellow parishioner who found a long time friend dead in his apartment, guarded by his labrador, asked me to help her interact witht the Coroner's Office and Public Administrator in hopes that there might be some instrucitons for his disposition and someone named to handle it. So far, in the latter case, no luck and frankly, the bureaucracy is not rushing to assess. As of this writing, it is more than three weeks since that man's death and his apartment is still sealed awaiting investigation of whatever he migiht have left behind.

Kelly Palmer was a sixty year member of our parish.  I was told that his funeral was Monday, February 18, at 10 a.m. and parishioners were being encouraged to attend.  Since that request was made of me, twice, although I could not conjure an image of the man that was described to me--it turns out that he usually attended the Saturday 5:30 services and I am a regular at the Sunday 12:15--we are a community of believers, a family in our own way, and I felt that I ought nt to turn down the invitation. Truth be told, I find these final services to be very life affirming in a paradoxical way, and they serve to enhearten my faith, which can always use a little enheartening in this often cruel world.  So, I went, meeting up with many familiar parishioners and hoping that I'd learn a little about another person I seem to have "met" only after he passed on.

There is a blood family, in Sacramento, but for some reason they could not be present. There was no explanation why and as we wended through the lovely, gentle service orchestrated by some long time friends of Kelly's, he clearly had love in his life, this man who made nearly 93 years on this earth.

I love these early picutres. Kelly was just a couple of years younger than my fasther (now dead nearly five years) and I got a little teary eyed at seeing the middle baby picture--the naked one on the rug--which could have been of my father, but for the fact that this little one had blonde hair in his infancy.

Look how quickly life passes; there he is a handsome young man, starting on his road of individuation and generativity. I learned during the eulogies that he worked for SAS, and loved to travel; later he seems to have run an American Express office and was beloved by those whom he hired and with whom he worked. He loved to dine out, with as many friends as he could. In his later life, ill health became a reality, till he was so bent over he could hardly walk. But always he was sustained by his faith and the community, our community, St. Victor's. 



Fr. Lopez was again the celebrant  amd again, though he did not know Kelly, his words spoke of the  deep friendship of the commonality of belief, a faith that we will all meet again in God's garden of pure love.

What a lovely handoff to the Lord was this service. And the reception was held right outside on our little veranda, finger sandwiches and deviled eggs and fruit and champagne. His friend Chuck, led the toast to a life well lived and well ended.

And Death shall have no dominion.

Lent at St. Victor's: "Will You Watch an Hour with Me?"

I remember that when I used to visit my dad, he'd often comment that I looked antsy, that I always seemed eager to be somewhere else. He took it as evidence of some reservation I had about our relationship. Perhaps so, and if so, the subject of a psychological analysis for another time. What was also, and I thought, primarily true, is that I am antsy, everywhere. It is hard for me to sit still anywhere, without a flash through my mind of things to be done, whether they need doing or not.

So, dad would often hear, "I gotta go" after I'd been at his place for a bit.



Lent began on Wednesday. Tonight, as I tried to sit for just one hour before the Blessed Sacrament, as Jesus wished his disciples to do without sleeping as he prayed in terror in Gethsemane for what He was about to experience on the Cross, I remembered how I was with dad. Sitting an hour with our Lord felt impossible. I closed my eyes. I prayed. I shifted my position in the pew endlessly. I had neither watch nor cell phone and it seemed that the minutes were an actual burden. I wanted to leave. All that kept me was the image of Our Lord, a "stone's throw" from his friends and unattended to by them, wrapped up in their images of what He should be.

I decided not to make any promises about what I will do during this Lent as demonstration of my willingness to flow in His footsteps, because truth be told, I'd rather be anywhere else than following in THOSE footsteps which lead to torment and death. But then, I remember, they lead to something beyond that, to transformation, to sanctification, of suffering itself. Follow. Yes, the pain will still be there. It is there whether you follow or not. But IF you follow, if you watch with Me, from the Cross emanates the Light. It is the Light of Paradise, once lost, now found again, because you, Djinn, trusted, just enough, so as not to walk away from Me and my ultimate sacrifice for you. You stayed, for an hour, at least.

Hello, and Farewell Kenneth DiPalma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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