Remembering George Parnassus One Year After His Death: Pray for Him Always

I would like to have written, "one year after his entrance into heaven", but that would annoy him ; he would have chastised me verbally, because he was most painfully aware of his recurring sins. He said he most definitely wasn't going directly to heaven. He believed that he would have to spend time in purgatory to be made pristine for his vision of God in heaven. In one homily he called it "Gym for the soul."  I, and others, have always felt that the suffering of his last two years, maybe more than that, was sufficient to purge him, on earth, such that he bypassed purgatory and is experiencing the fullness of God's endless, timeless love.

Sunday, August 17 there was a memorial Mass for our former pastor, my former mentor, friend and something of a father substitute after my own died in 2008. I know I was not alone in this experience of him.  The Mass was well attended enough, I suppose, although I did note absences of many old friends of his life, with a certain amount of sadness. Perhaps they did not know, and it was not, a matter of, as one friend of mine said, "out of sight, out of mind."  Enough friends were there, one next to me in tears said, "I miss him so much." It was, whatever the numbers, a reverent, beautiful Mass with hymns, several of which were his favorites during his life, that engaged the spiritual senses and emotional heart. The Ubi Caritas, Bread of Life, to the music of the adapted spiritual from Dvorak, known as "Coming Home."

Monsignor Murphy, in his homily, a blend of religious instruction and memories of Monsignor's contributions to the beauty of the parish edifice and appeal to our spiritual senses in order to create the context of prayer, struck just the right tone. You can hear the homily if you go onto the Saint Victor Catholic Church (official) web site for the 17th.

It was a concelebrated Mass, somewhat by accident, although again, Monsignor would have said, "There are no accidents with God" and I have come to see that certainly in the last many years. The concelebrant, Fr. Rudolf Lowenstein, OP (a Dominican)  was the son of an old friend of Monsignor Parnassus, the father having been a famous business manager for the Rolling Stones, a character who in business suit and dislike for rock music, presented something of cognitive dissonance in the rock world. With his serenity and English accent the son (a second son is also a priest) he added particular poignancy to this one year remembrance.

The lady with the dog was there. This, I can tell you, Monsignor Parnassus would never have permitted; unless the dog was a service animal, he would have received an unceremonious, "heave ho"but as usual, the dog behaved with great dignity, sitting on her lap. I still love seeing that dog, despite myself, and I think I would have told Monsignor that, as we the servers spoke before Mass in the sacristy.  He would have dismissed my feminine tolerance. We would laugh over our disputation.

There will be a rosary said next week after the 8 a.m. Mass at St. Victor on Saturday, August 23.  A caravan of as yet undetermined size will go to his grave at Holy Cross Cemetery, off Slauson in Culver City, this ceremony, this prayer, which he so desired, to occur one year precisely after his burial at the site in front of the statue of the Good Shepherd with whom he now communes.  

            
All I can end with at this moment is an "Amen"; so be it.

Paul McCartney: The Long and Winding Road during which Life does Indeed Go On in a Wonderful Concert at Dodger Stadium

A lot has happened to Paul McCartney since his first appearance at Dodger Stadium in 1966. The Beatles broke up in 1970.  Two of their foursome died, one shot by a madman. Paul lost his beloved Linda.  A lot has happened to all of us who revealed in his three hour performance on his return to Chávez Ravine on Sunday August 11.  And the merging of our respective winding roads on a temperate bright full moon night was a nostalgic revelation. 

I didn't expect it.  I was going because he was part of a legendary group whose songs had been the soundtrack of any of our lives. And had another group Wings whose songs were the soundtrack of my college life.  And Sir Paul is getting up there, 72 years up there (isn't it interesting how the age gap between some of us fans who were kids when they first burst on the scene has narrowed so. The difference between my age 9 and their age 20 something was enormous. Now it is as if we are contemporaries), and it is possible we won't see public performances much longer.

I don't think I've been in that large a crowd since a Queen concert in Madison Square Garden back in the late seventies when a friend and colleague at 99X FM radio in New York (long since renamed something else) took me along. This was during the time I thought I wanted to go into radio professionally (as opposed to my college on air training) and realized that I'd probably never make it to an on air job without a lot more connections than none. 

But I love Dodgers Stadium almost as much as I love the Hollywood Bowl. It is a plain pleasing venue. And that crowd, it was orderly and truly wonderfully mixed, every age up and down. Although I loved some of the music from my dad's generation, there wasn't even a slight chance or moment in which he would have loved the music from mine. But here a 60 something could sit next to a 20 something and be singing the same words while wildly tapping their feet on the ground and gyrating joyously. 

The staging was terrific. The history of Paul and the Beatles and Wings and the solo career all playing on these side screens book shelf.  I was primed admittedly by the breeze and my first margarita of the night (I had only two).

He was late taking the stage, no doubt to allow folks to buy plenty of souvenirs and drinks and food.at large lines  And when he came out, he made me forget that I'd seen him on television recently not looking too spry and sounding pretty hoarse.  It almost felt like he'd been in a time machine. He looked a lot like the "cute one" of days gone by; jacket and what at first I thought was a slim tie, but was a tie like stripe down the front of the shirt, revealed when the jacket came off after a couple of songs.

If I wasn't smiling I was crying tears of recognition. Oh, yeah, I remember singing that song in my bedroom in the Bronx ("Yesterday" when Yesterday wasn't really yesterday for me; I was far too young). Len Speaks reminded me of Roger Moore (on whom I had a major crush during his time as James Bond; Oh, Wait, I had a major crush on Pierce Bosnian too!), during the Firework laced Live and Let Die segment.

I felt like the late high school and college kid I used to be, but finally without all the angst!

I even liked the few tunes he did that were from the "new" album. 

Whether rehearsed or not, it all felt fresh and only for me, next to all those people who felt it was only for them. 

Where has the time gone?  And yet it all stood still. I couldn't be happier that I went with Leo, Connie, and Len to this historical fest. 

I have heard people say, and maybe I even believe it myself intellectually, that civilization in America began to decline once the Beatles came over the pond.  But you know what?  I admit it, den if that's true, I didn't care on Sunday. It was a bona fide blast!

Thank you, Sir Paul as we go back on our winding roads separately.

Robin Williams: One More Psychic Post Mortem

Along with virtually anybody else out there who has shared the planet with Robin Williams, I can't help but think about his last few days and the moment he decided to extinguish his own flame.

From the way we hear he died, a belt attached to a closet from which he hanged himself, it sounds as if the final decision was an impulsive one.  They said that he had cuts on one of his wrists, rather superficial, but several. I admit to being a bit of an armchair forensic psychologist in saying this, but I suspect he originally thought to slit his wrists and then couldn't do that. 

I feel so sad for what seems to have been a frenzied patch that he could not escape from this time. Something, maybe something even small from the objective observer's point of view, sent him over the edge from the gift of life to a madness from which one cannot recover.

Come on, haven't you ever felt like that?  I don't know if it was as extreme as the moment which faced Robin Williams, but I have had more times than I'd like to admit where logic failed me and restraint nearly did. These are hard to describe events. They come out of nowhere. Nothing in the external world or circumstance has changed from one day to the next, but on this day, old demons, and I think truly think they exist, attack. The brightest day of God's creation simply sinks into a kind of tunnel and all that you can think about is to escape this feeling, this I can't escape feeling.  I have to escape feeling. Remind yourself. Maybe Robin tried, "You have a great life. The best possible. Look at the horror in the rest of the world. Who are you to feel so lost?". Some people might say that if God was not in his life (from a religious perspective and I have no idea whether He was or not), then that explains it.  I disagree. I try to be a faithful Catholic, and I know, k-n-o-w, that in the throes of the "whatever it is", described by so many over the years, that it is almost as if, no matter the strength of belief, that one's body and mind seem almost to feel like they are being dragged from the light. It's like one of those horror movies where the victim is ripped from under her bed, where she is trying to hide.

With me, it is when certain responsibilities that I fear the most begin to press too much and I cannot be seen being weak. Williams was doing four movies, had been a great success in comedy and in drama, had three kids and a couple of wives, three, I think. Something always pressed on him and he usually kept it at bay, by performing, by using alcohol and drugs, by as many mechanisms as he could possibly manage until he could no longer manage them.

In those moments, while the world would say, "You should be thinking of others," everything is like a pinhole of intense cosmic pain.  There is a kind of raging blindness of soul.

Maybe in the next days we will hear what it was for Robin.  Maybe he left a note and tried to explain. Maybe there will never be nothing but whatever was in his head which we can never know. 

Don't assume anybody has it made. Frankly we are all broken people. But some breaks can be hidden better than others until the crack in the façade explodes the body and soul. 

Eternal Rest Grant Unto him O Lord and may perpetual light shine upon him.  May he rest in the peace he could never find on this earth.

Newman and Knox Pray For Us

On and off, for years, I have been fascinated by John Henry Newman, who in the middle of the 19th Century, after much complex thought and intense prayer, converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. I have read his sermons. I have been to the pulpit in Oxford, at St. Mary's, where he preached before his conversion. I have been at Little more where Newman was received into the Catholic Church.  I have read several biographies of him trying to get into his mind, the mind of a man who can articulate, with relative certainty, the decision to become and remain Catholic, the essence of that Faith and its ultimate Truth.  And the teaching of that Faith without compromise. 

After Monsignor Parnassus of my parish died last August, I discovered a number of books in his library by another Anglican convert, who was born two years before Newman's death, Ronald Knox.  They were sold as part of Monsignor's estate and I did not have a chance to read but a few pages of one, a retreat for lay people. Those few pages were enough for me to make a note. I need to know more about another Englishman who made a conscious change to the faith which has been mine from birth.

. Fr. Newman



It is nearly a year after that mental note.  Something brought me back to Knox. I think it was a sense that my commitment to my faith was in danger. The world is falling apart. Christians are, literally, being crucified in the Middle East.  And here we Americans are living our lives as if we have all the time in the world and we cannot be touched by persecution. We have forgotten about 9/11 and are blissfully passive about the liberties being taken away from us in small bits. I am put in mind of the frog placed in a pot in cold water, heated gently, until finally, the frog realizes the danger too late.  And Catholics, in my parish, and elsewhere, seem outright apathetic during services. They come late and leave early. They wander around, often at the moment of the Consecration.  And there seems to be little more than a passing nod to theological principles. Ecumenism has somehow become a kind of "whatever" to any form of belief.  I have wondered why I should even remain a Catholic if what is taught is merely some kind of proscenium for an absence of first principles. There is a bit of the brother of the prodigal son in my attitude.  I see my own fellow Catholics saying, "Oh, that really isn't something you have to believe!", often things which are as the apostles said, "hard sayings" that it would be rather nice to be able to dismiss. 

 Fr. Knox

So I needed another level head, like Newman's. I turned to Ronald Knox. I decided to see if there was a biography. There was an autobiography, A Spiritual Aeneid, and a biography by the author of Bridgehead Revisited.  I read both. My first reaction was to note how similar were the experiences of the two men who existed together on the earth for only two years, Newman and Knox.  They shared a depth of intellectual dis-ease with what they tried and tried to reconcile--the confusions of the Anglican faith which incorporated low and high forms that were greater or lesser a reflection of the Catholic Faith from which they had split from after Luther nailed his theses and Henry the VIII had an itch in his groin that he confused with divine inspiration.  And each, ever so slowly (less slow for Knox than for Newman) read and prayed and read again and concluded that the Faith of the Church fathers was the faith manifested in Roman Catholicism.  It saddens me that Knox is not as well known in convert and Catholic circles as is Newman, but that is a potential subject for another entry.

What reading about Knox (and pieces of his writing) has done, as it did for Newman before him, was make me long for thinkers like him, for models like them, who can keep me from a tendency toward despair for the manifestations of Catholicism that are unclear, or contradictory.

They knew the faith they adopted.  It was not a matter merely of "feeling good" on earth to which I think Catholicism has devolved, in complete misunderstanding of the nature of life and the sacrifice of Christ.  It was an assent (Newman wrote a book called the Grammar of Assent) to a nuanced whole of which Christ is the Center and the Catholic Church's Magisterium is the admittedly imperfect repository, but one that has the fullness of the truth.  If you pick and choose what you will accept you have two choices (and I am talking to myself here as well as to this blog), then you are in the wrong religion. The New Evangelization seems to be missing the point of our faith.  I heard a priest say that it wasn't necessary to be theological. I think the opposite. I think it is first necessary to understand what our faith says, determine to embrace it even when it is hard and it is ALWAYS hard, and then invite those who would join what Robert Barron calls "The Strangest Way". 

The Catholic Church has survived far worse than the misunderstandings and meanderings of today. Blessed John Henry Newman and Ronald Knox, pray for us. 

Saint Dog

This is a sample dog. 

I should have liked to have taken a picture of the actual dog, but I would have thus brought myself to the attention of the owner in the front pew of my church. 

Since I am an altar server and wear the outfit denominating myself in that role, folks have come up to me and complained.  I went so far as to create a sign that said  "We love your pets, but only service dogs are allowed in the Church."  I properly interposed the reality of the problem. Since my sign never saw the light of day, I am making no further efforts. 

In truth, and in fact being a pet lover of enormous energy, I have a hard time objecting to what I know, intellectually, is a breach of reverence. It is probably more of one when my fellow parishioner brings the dog, I think it's a bulldog, like the one above, to the Communion rail. At least she has never presented him as an actual communicant, for then I would object, and heartily. 

Here's the amazing thing, though. The dog is always good. I mean, he is held in her arms all throughout the service and the dog doesn't bark, grunt or squirm. That's better than the children in our pre-school who visit the children's room because they tend to a wee bit of noise.  Not the dog. He lays there in peaceful un-moving.

In fact, he seems almost prayerful in his near snooze, meditative, let's call it. Saintly, even.  Saint Dog.

I recently re-read something about animals and heaven-- the authority (not dogma, so as a Catholic I MAY freely disagree and so I do) is that animals, though they have souls, do not have the knowledge of the Divine such that they are infused with the Holy Spirit and would be with us in heaven. I cannot accept that idea as I plan on greeting my cats Lucretia, Bruno (the sole dog in my life), Rameses, Hollywood, Trouble, Bud, Bert, Diablo, Oz. and Elwood, in heaven assuming I get there myself. 

And now, having seen Saint Dog, on more than one occasion acting in many ways perhaps more reverently than some of his human fellows in attending the service, I am certain that Thomas Aquinas, though otherwise an excellent theologian and all around fellow was wrong about animals. Animals must go to heaven. They make us whole and sometimes even holy.

The Small Totalitarian Futile Idiosyncracies of the Nanny State

As I was driving around Los Angeles yesterday, I noticed a storefront with a big Plus Sign + and the newly ubiquitous photo advertising the "medical" services.
 This sighting put me in mind of the five small-ish intrusive things that have been thrust on individuals and are part of the creeping eradication of our basic liberties.

I believe in reasonable restrictions for the good of a society, so I wasn't particularly upset when cigarettes were banned in small closed in spaces, like airplanes. I wasn't even horribly upset when they were banned inside of a restaurant. But leave it to our keepers (nameless, faceless, all too frequently) to go that extra step--ban it everywhere, outside and, inside (there are those who would forbid you to smoke in your own apartment or house). And anything that even substitutes for a cigarette, like e-cigs, which emit only vapor are forbidden now, and includes e-cigs that have NO tobacco or nicotine, but simply look like cigarettes. Why? Because "we" the ever present "we" who always know better and can impress their will, fear that even the fakes will encourage smoking by the young. It doesn't stop them smoking of course. I see many a youngster taking drags on old fashioned cigarettes. I see many a cool cat tossing out his or her butt from a car. I recently purchased bubblegum cigarettes as kind of a joke. They look pretty real. I have thought about going into a restaurant and putting the "pack" on the table and waving one around. Guaranteed, I would not be permitted to have it. It isn't a cigarette. Isn't that free speech?

Meanwhile, smoking the weed is not only becoming permissible, but, we have the storefronts like the one I saw on virtually every block these days. And while supposedly one must prove that one needs it medically (and I am for a doctor prescribed use with the item provided by a regular pharmacy) the folks on the news crowding for their share are not I am guessing necessarily providing the documentation. Or, as we know, a lot of doctors will say something is medically necessary when it isn't. ("Hey, doc, could you write a note saying I'm laid up?"  Never happens right?)

So now, if you go to a Hollywood Bowl to see someone as rad as Kristin Chenowith, somebody is there smoking a joint freely but you can't be seen with a fake cigarette of the traditional type. No one worries about my experience of second hand smoke here. Why? Because the society has accepted the idiocy that marijuana is "good" but the tobacco cigarette is "bad".  In that advanced Brave New World, probably after  (I hope) I'm dead, the movie "Now, Voyager" will have an approved edit. You know that scene where Bette Davis and Paul Henried are parting ways after a kind of forbidden romance, he puts two tobacco filled (and unfiltered omg!) cigarettes into his mouth and lights them and says, "Shall we have a cigarette on it?" and gives Bette one? That lovely romantic scene will now be Paul putting two joints into his mouth and he'll be dubbed saying, "Shall we have a toke on it?"

As Joan Rivers has many times said in her bits, "Don't get me started!"  The world is going to hell on a hand basket, but here in California we are waging a major war--against plastic shopping bags. They are banned. Well, sort of. The tale is that the plastic bags were hurting the environment so they had to go in favor of these fabric like things or amalgam who knows what which you buy and forget to bring every time you go to a supermarket and have to buy more so that your car is a junk heap, or, for ten cents a piece you can buy a paper one. Oh, but wait a minute?! Didn't we get the plastic bags all those years ago because we were killing too many trees? I guess we have so many more trees now than we did then. But is deforestation no longer a problem. I thought it was.

The re-useable bags are wonderful, are they not?   As long as you make sure that you separate the food stuffs to avoid contamination, and you don't want to put the Comet with the meat. And of course we will all wash our bags will we not? But wait a minute!  I notice in Ralph's one of the largest grocery chains that you can still get a plastic bag.  Oh, it is thicker than the old ones, and, of course, you have to pay that 10 cents for it. And who is benefiting?  The stores charging the ten cents to those of us who always forget the ones that can be reused.

Shall we move on to the light bulb? I am a hoarder of the incandescent. Unless I die before I run out, I shall use no or very few of those twisty things that hurt the eyes, and if they break, require a hazmat team to clear the mercury. Now, they are covering the twisty things with what looks like the old incandescent. See it is just the same!  "Buy me!"  Oh, you'll have to because soon it will be illegal for stores to sell the incandescents. "What are you in for?"  asks the guy in a cell in a local jail.  "I sold black market incandescents", answers the newbie evildoer.

The red light camera, another brilliant move. First, we see that when someone comes up to one of those cameras, they either speed up or they slow down. Either way, they increase accidents. So a few have been removed from major intersections. And, guess what, we found out that a lot of those tickets, the money wasn't always going to the cities, but to some company--making a killing, if the lights didn't kill the drivers trying to figure out whether to speed up or slow up.

And now, we have a new species on the road to add to the traffic and danger, all in the name of ecology and community good feeling. The bicyclist. "Share the road."  I have written about this inanity on these pages before. My sense of the foolishness of the idea of car and bicycle co-existing in Los Angeles or any major city in the United States (I saw how it goes in England, with a bus right on the tail of a bicyclist and tough if the bicyclist isn't moving fast enough!).  Just the other day on Fountain Avenue, a crowded thoroughfare in West Hollywood, a guy with a backpack and ear buds was tooling happily along the road. None of us could pass him at the required three feet, well at any feet, and so the traffic was purely backed up until there was a space in the left lane and we could get out of the right lane.  Our feel good politicians are setting drivers up for accidents, and not doing the bicyclists any good thereby.

These are the little totalitarian moments.  And the big ones are already here or on their way. And who among us will stand up and say, "Stop the insanity!"

Into the Archives

I was doing some stuff shifting. Amazing that I have only been in this apartment for just under two years, but I have managed already to forget where I have things, or I notice a box, and wonder what I put in it.  I found in one box a reflection from November 1982. The wondering was about why I ever became a lawyer in New York and why having moved to California I was working to take the California Bar and be admitted on the West Coast as well.  Lots of things hadn't happened for me yet. I hadn't returned to the Catholic Church yet. I was by then 12 years lapsed. I hadn't found a niche for myself, as an attorney in New York and a potential one in Los Angeles, and I was then pining and vaguely working (clearly not hard enough) to become a television writer. I was working in a very small law office as a secretary pending passage of the Bar, and doing some research and lots of client handholding. I had already discovered both in New York and in California that the pontifications about THE LAW writ large, just like the pontifications about pretty much any institution or activity, just did not accord with the reality. I was looking for the pure--which would become a large subject of therapy when I began it in 1990--and in not finding it, I was becoming very anxious. Or should I say, I was becoming more anxious than usual. 

So here were my thoughts at the tender age of 28.


(My boss) asked me today why I had decided to become an attorney.  It's a question which I have never liked because I've honestly had no answer--not even one for myself.  It probably had something to do with my parents egging me on (my mother really) to things educational, philosophical, analytical, and linguistic.  While the reason was never articulable, it was always a definite unswerving goal.  Even unswerving when I thought I might also like to be in the entertainment industry. 

(The boss) went on to confirm verbally what I've come to know and be disturbed about--that to survive in this law business, it is necessary to "stretch" one's ethics.  A disquieting reality which is more disquieting once reiterated by yet another long practicing attorney.

It jolts me, makes me afraid, and insecure, and guilty.  In my soul I know I cannot continue in this field.  Intellectually, and once again, realistically, I also know I may have no real choice.  This, as they say, is all that I am prepared for.  The finding of options is never easy.  The taking of options even less so.  Poor Pollyanna!  I'm not really a Pollyana but I cannot deny my gut feeling that if I pursue what I feel is wrong it will wither me early on.  It would be a case of not being true to oneself and a defiance of Polonius' best advice.

My father believes me to be a fool to spend so much time to become something and then have the desire to give it up. Wasn't that something I should have investigated before I invested time? You cannot investigate in advance what the practice of law will be like.  College does not prepare you for it.  Law school is strictly, in my opinion, an academic exercise that minimizes what it should maximize, the clinical, the stark reality of day to day paperwork, filing, nasty clients, nastier adversaries, deadlines, lies, delays.  The law in any substantive sense takes a back seat.

Given my background and attitudes I could not know this before I began the pursuit.  I've said it before.  I don't regret the decision to study the law.  It will always be a part of my make up, my intellectuality, if you will, and I probably can use it somewhere, but I might regret staying with its official practice.  Becoming an integral member of this club might cost me dearly. A denial of myself.  A denial of what I have believed in.

And what do I believe in?  Pinning that down itself becomes less easy as the years pass and as the incongruities loom large and answers are nowhere to be found--or worse, when the answers are there but I have no time to look for them.

I was raised, at least nominally, a Catholic.  I went to Catholic School.  I was drilled in dogma.  I tried to go to Church.  And I believed in a basic morality.  There were good things to do.  And bad things you didn't do.  You didn't cheat.  You didn't lie.  You didn't steal.  You listened to the teachers. And you believed in God. The Catholic God.

I've been out of Catholic school a long time.  My parents had no specific religious conviction so there was no pressure for me to follow the institutional line once I left high school.  I cannot really remember the dogma, other than "Who created me?"  God created me.  I still have the residual influence though, a strong residual influence, that peculiarly I don't want to fade. There are good things to do. And bad things that you don't do. You don't cheat. You don't Either lose yourself in a rigid, artificially constructed institutional religion, waiting for the world to destroy itself and taking no responsibility for events and people, or you reject God, man, right, wrong, anything, and act according to worst possible instincts.  I don't want to float. I don't want to be controlled.  Leaving another question.  What do I want?

People are so willing to disprove the existence of God.  I still want to find Him.  The Bible, say every religious group in every shape and variety and translation and interpretation--He's in there somewhere.  Looking to places, religions and words--these to not seem to be where God would bother to be.

I wanted and still want to believe that the law allows for morality.  But I've read much that says morality has no place in the law.  I have never agreed with this.  The law ostensibly protects rights.  Rights cannot exist without reason, in a vacuum.  A person has rights because of some basic premise.  Protection of a society is a reason, but hardly the reason to defend one man unto death, or through every court.  It's a basic sense of a Must.  A feeling of THIS MUST BE. 

What upsets me about myself is that while I have beliefs, I don't have conviction.  I can be swayed.  By fear. By pressure of opinion.  My father often say that I was raised wrong, that I should have been taught to play poker. He means that literal and in a way to deal with people, to be able to play hard ball. Tough minded in the ways of the world.  Understanding how to wheel and deal.

I respect my father.  And I understand his thought.  After all I'm in a profession where these attitudes go without saying.  On the other hand I recall that he behaved I less than nasty ways when he dealt wit others.  It's just not built into either of us.  He's not happy about it.  I am.  I just wish I could follow through.  Wanting to be ethical is not a weakness.  It's just looked upon as one. 

I'm not quite ethical.  I want to be more ethical.  And I certainly don't want to be less so.  And as I travel the path that I have thus far, I fear the chances for maintaining ethics lessen daily.  It disturbs me.  Saps my strength.


I started to write more after this, but something must have interrupted me, and I did not complete the further thought.

I began to investigate my faith again, not long afterward.  I have changed perspectives on what is and is not the fullness of faith and I believe that Catholicism has it.  I struggle still to separate the Message from the messengers.  And I have the same tendency with everyone else to throw away the Message because the messenger is sometimes so foul in behavior.  But I have also learned that being foul in behavior is something we all share from time to time, the result of our still fallen natures. Redemption restored a relationship, not our natures. And we must fight our natures daily. I must fight my nature daily. And it seems that God is giving me the Graces I need, sometimes despite my resistance and petulance.

I found a few years later the only thing I could do as an attorney, working for the State Bar as, you might have guessed or knew if you know me, as an ethics attorney. There are no accidents with God. On balance its lesser moments were much outweighed by the good work my colleagues and I did, but like everything else, it was tinged, tainted let's say, with egos abounding and a failure sometimes to do what was best in favor of doing what the voice du jour demanded. Or pretending to.  When I was fired from that job, along with a number of other managers, in a "change of direction" I knew I would never practice law again. I keep the licenses active but only because I worked so darn hard to get them. An ethics attorney was what I was cut out to be if I were to remain an attorney, as I did.  Been there. Done that.

I still don't know why I became an attorney, exactly.  But it was meant to be, I am sure. What I will be henceforward is still in development. But attorney at law for me now is a past activity with a present nostalgic title.