A Memory

It was a typical morning.  Maybe too typical.  I was determined to get some things done that seemed at the time important to me.  I sat here at the computer and reached for a few letters on my desk.  One letter was from Gaetan, a monk and friend of mine.  He lives in Gethsemani, our monastery in Kentucky.  I met him many years ago and we exchange letters.  He is a wonderful writer.  He writes beautifully of simple things, things available to any one of us who takes the time or, better, the effort to look at the events of daily life.

I read his letter and want to share some of it with you.  Gaetan once lived in our monastery in Lantau, China.  The monastery is on an island and not far from Hong Kong.  He was on a boat between Hong Kong and another island, Peng Chau.   The boat was making its way to the monastery.  Gaetan writes that it was a very old boat and that he was delighted, for it was, as he puts it, “like being out of time.”  The middle of the boat was open, and there was seating along the side.  A young woman was sitting with her little boy, who was about three years old.  “A beautiful, typical Chinese kid with his hair all sticking up.”  Gaetan was gazing at the river and when he looked again at the little boy, things had changed.  The boy was standing in the open space.  Suddenly, he wet his pants and started to cry out loud.  His arms hung to his sides as the urine stained his pants and formed a small puddle at his feet.  Gaetan writes that he felt do badly for him, he felt like crying himself.  He writes:

“I felt so bad for him that I could have cried with him.  I understood him completely.  I do not know why he did not ask his mother but there is a world of mystery going on inside a little child. It was like he knew he was wrong but at the same time he could not control it and so there was no alternative for him.  Se he peed and cried.  His mother was a nice woman.  She immediately got up and kissed him while he finished what he could not hold anymore. The she took him aside and held him, speaking lovingly to him – it was all in Chinese – but the love and gesture said it all.”

The story stunned me.  I put the letter down and thought about all the supposed big and important things I had to do.  I thought of the littleness of that boy, not just in terms of his size, but his helplessness and his utter dependence on his mother. 

We like to think we grow.  We like to think that there is a way to realize, once and for all, independence.   We make our plans, arrange our schedules, make all the lists of what we do or think we should do.  And then, the day comes when we can no longer control our lives and have to let go.  We feel a pressure and then the warmth running down our legs.  Things fall apart.  We need help.  And we realize that we were always like that – our independence was illusory.  The first and last word of human existence is more like a cry, a plea for some good and loving other. 

Gaetan writes that the memory is of a ride on a boat that sailed a river twenty years ago.  And it has stayed with him all these years.  He learned wisdom, the ways of God, from a mother and her son.  He did not understand a word that was shared between them.  He could only see and understand a cry, and a loving response.  The truth of salvation, on a small boat in between islands. 

A Matter of Attitude, of Refining One’s Sight

I am aware that there are a lot of things written these days about change in the church.  It is very hard to step out of the chorus of wails – be they wails for or against change.  I admit that I do feel pressured to respond, sit down and gather my thoughts so as to marshal strong and convincing reasons for the institutional church to change, to adapt to the times.  Yet something makes me refrain from getting on that particular bad wagon, the one that rolls headlong into the promising fields of hoped for change. 

I do not think change happens that way.  I live in a monastery where I find that I wish a lot of things could be different.  We monks embody all sorts of personality traits, personal habits, personal hygiene and the lack thereof.  We take our stands along conservative, liberal and indifferent lines.  And we are capable of switching hats when the need arises.  There are jealousies, fits of temper, resentments, worries about lust, anger, addictive behaviors, and stupid behaviors.  When I look at it all, as lived here by us, it makes me wonder.  We are, allegedly and I suppose really, a powerhouse of prayer.  We pray for all kinds of things, every day and several times a day.  We pray for the living and the dead.  We pray for people near and far, people who were and people yet to be.  We pray for good weather and ask that bad weather hurt no one.  We pray for an end to wars and violence.  We pray for the well being of all people, for a change of heart in men and women.  I suppose you might say that we pray for everything possible.  If words can form a prayer, we have formed it. 

I do not know if it all works.  I confess that I do think about that a lot.  So many words seem to go nowhere or seem to backfire.  Yet we persist in our prayer.  I am a believer, whatever that may mean.  But I guess that the best I can come up with is that God lives in everything and everyone.  And every whisper and groan that comes from the human heart is of God.  God is articulate in many ways, as he goes about his business.

Yet, I feel the need to say who I am and what I want to see.  I try and discipline my eyes to see beauty.  It is there, it is everywhere.  I cannot change big things like the church or the monk next to me.  And in my better moments, I will not to want to change them.  Let them be.  Let them grow in ways that growth happens – through time, through success and failure, through however grace or providence slips through the doors of time and places unnoticed, unbidden.  But always welcomed. 

I love Manhattan.  It has changed a lot over the years.  It has, I recently noticed, somehow cleaned up its act.  Now I could wish for the past, when things were grimier, more visibly human, and more fraught with the tensions of life.  But it is what it is.  And so I walked around, looking carefully for beauty.  And of course I found it, wherever it walked on the street, played in a playground, walked the dog or rode a bike.  It soars high in that city, and sinks low.  I saw more of it than I could capture with my lens.  I found that I did not wish for change, for difference, for something better.  I just wanted to see something good, something beautiful, and photograph it.  And maybe share it.

In that way, as I described Manhattan, it is the same with the church.  The institution will always be made up of the good and the bad, saints and sinners, frauds and honest people.  It is a real mixed bag that cannot and will not ever change.  All I want to do is write what I love about it – which is its people – and, maybe, take a few good pictures.  I will leave the hoped for dismantling to others.  Maybe I will be around to take that picture, too. 

The Stubborn Lock

The lock on the door to this room where I write has been problematic for a long time.  When I stick the key into the lock, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  On good days, it works smoothly.  On bad days, I have to wrestle with the key, turning it and jiggling it until it turns and then it is very difficult to remove.  But it always works, give or take a few extra seconds.  I do not mind.  It gets the job done.

Augustine told me recently that he wanted to make extra copies of the key and that Alphonse would be coming by to check the lock and the key.  He was here a little while ago.  He could not open the door.  Well, he finally did, with no small amount of difficulty.  He told me that something was wrong with the lock.  I told him I knew that.  Then he said he would send Alex up here to put a new lock on the door and that Alex would then make extra keys and give several to me. 

Then Alphonse started talking about the lock and what might be the matter with it.  Some words I knew.  Most words I never ever ever heard of.  Well, let me qualify that.  I heard of most of the words but what they mean in the lock and key context is beyond me.  And two words baffled me.  A tang?  A cam?  And the rest – a dead bolt, inner and outer panels, pins, a spring – they were somewhat familiar to me in that at least I had heard them before.   Interesting.  But way beyond me, as to how they fit together and work so as to secure a no-entry or easy-entry door.

You do not know, I realize, Alex, Alphonse and Augustine.  They are great men, very handy with tools and machines and getting big and little jobs done.  They have been a wonderful help to me.  Like I said, I would have continued to spend years rattling that key in the door until it turned correctly and the door opened.  I think it drove Alphonse crazy this morning when he could not get the key to function.  I would have told him that all it takes is a sense of, a “feel,” for the right way to twist and pull.  But it was better that I kept silent.

I was writing something about God when Alphonse came in.  Putting words together on this computer, big words and little words, a twist here and a jangle there, all in the hope of writing something nice about a being I have never met and whose existence is behind the door that leads to the next life.

I have no key to that.

I admire Augustine, Alphonse and Alex.  I think they like my writing.  They have told me as much.  But something tells me that they are onto something that I tend to ignore.  There are all sorts of doors and keys, locks and cams and tangs in this life.  We are very adept at making them, and keeping things secure.  We make sure that some come in and others stay out.

But A, A and A know how to get in and out of all kinds of places.  I believe Paradise has a lockless and Pearly Gate.  And, if Hell has a lock, A, A and A will find a way to open it.   I think that is what angels are about.  And I think that is what God is about, training us to do what we can to open doors, turn keys, turn hearts.  I hope I do that with my words.  I know three men who do that with a smile, a kind word, and maybe a jiggle.

Belmar

Summer is upon us and the warmer weather has a way of enticing my memories of long gone summers.  When I was younger I used to spend many summer days down in Belmar, New Jersey.  It is a small town on the Jersey shore.  It has long had a reputation as a summer haven for high school and college kids.  I am sure it still enjoys that reputation.  I would go to a small bungalow on 15^th Avenue, which was owned by close friends of mine.  We would spend hours on the front porch, which had a hammock and chairs.  At night, we could see the passing cars and passersby.  People walking their dogs, or young couples walking along and holding hands.  Older people, too, would walk by, taking in the cool of the evening as they headed in the direction of the boardwalk.

There was an enormous nightclub several blocks away which catered to the young crowd.  The place was always packed and from the porch we could hear the howls and the laughter as the crowd there moved into full swing.  The name of the club was Bar Anticipation.  It was and still is the place “to be” in Belmar on a hot summer’s night.

I was there in the winter a few years back. The town was deserted, since most of the houses were summer rentals and were closed up.  The boardwalk was closed for the winter months.  Main Street had a some places open, since there is a resident winter population in the area.  But the streets near the beach were practically deserted.  I stayed a few nights in the bungalow on 15^th Avenue with Bill, friend of mine.  His family owns the bungalow. We had a heater and some blankets, so the nights were fine.  In the evenings, we sat on the porch with the TV on in the room behind us, the volume turned low.  A bottle of wine was opened and we toasted each other and talked about old times, all the summers we enjoyed in that house, the memories flowing as easily and as readily as the wine.

The little bungalow is the kind of place that we know well at a particular time in our lives, and then we move on and leave it behind.  Yet its simplicity and its comfort is something we look for again and again all during our lives.  Many new places are silently compared to the elegant charm of a modest beach bungalow in Belmar.  It is as if it was a place that good memories were born, and it would be something of a miracle to reduplicate that process in all the later places of our lives.  But memories that glow are born from special times, special places.  I am fortunate that I can go back and savor the times that were, in the very place those memories came from.

When I was last there, Bill and I sat on the porch late into the night.  Bill wanted to go out, but I talked him into just hanging out there and chatting.  He asked me several times if things were okay, if I was sure I did not want to go out.  I told him no, that it was good to be there, to be at peace.  I could hear the ocean, its waves rhythmic, even, marking time with each roll on the beach.  Like days and years, as they come and then go.  But that night, all seemed still, and good.  Time rolling on, the taste of wine, a good friend, a return to what is beautiful and good in this life.

The Receipt

I have taken pictures all through the years.  I have my slides, prints and negatives.  I have been scanning them so that I can share them with my family and friends.  It is taking a long time, but it is worth it.  I am glad I kept everything – there must be something good said for the pack rat side of me.
Every so often, I come across something that more than sparks an interest.  It can, if I let it linger, light a bonfire of memories. This morning I came across one such thing.  It is a photo envelope from Plains Pharmacy, in Fairfield, New Jersey.  I was a priest in the parish there at the time, which, according to the date on the envelope, was August 10, 1977.  A roll of film cost $8.62 cents to be developed and printed.  It was Kodacolor film and there may have been two rolls, since there are two sleeves in the envelope that held two separate strips of negatives.  I scanned the negatives, which held memories galore.  There I am, hosting a car wash given by the youth group of the parish.  We had the wash behind the church.  I recognize the kids – now grown with families of their own.  I am still in touch with almost all of them. Looking at their faces, one by one, I can see now what they could not have seen.  Good times and bad.  Healthy and hurtful relationships and marriages.  Sickness and, in some cases, way too early a departure from this life.
There are pictures of the church as it was decorated for Advent.  Big colorful banners hang from the walls of the church.  I recently saw the woman who made them and asked her about them.  She said they were long gone.  Her name is Mary Anne and she looks well.  I will send her pictures of the banners.
And New Orleans.  I went with a couple at about that time.  It was a convention of sorts and I tagged along.  I visited family while I was there.  There is a nice shot of the couple standing next to a street car.
There are a few pictures of friends I sailed with on the Queen Elizabeth II.  We sailed from England to New York.  What a great trip that was. Some of the people in the photo have left this life.  Some are still here.  It was good to share a voyage with them across the sea.
There is the receipt.  Receipts have not changed that much.  There is a date and charge number, my name and address and the name and address of the pharmacy.  Charlie ran the pharmacy and Claire worked the register.  Charlie had a good sense of humor.  When he saw me, he used to say “Someday your prints will come in,” – a play on the similar phrase from Cinderella.  I got to know Claire’s family very well.  I am still in touch with them.
Some years later, Charlie lost the store and struggled a bit till he found another line of work.  I think he hoped to keep the store but could not keep pace with the deals being offered by the then up and coming big discount drug stores.  I still hear from him at Christmas.
There is a lottery ticket in the photo envelope from the store.  A “snap and win” lottery ticket.  I scraped off the gold on top of the numbers but in the process scraped off the numbers as well.  Maybe I won, maybe I lost.  But it makes no difference since in the small print on the back of the card, it reads that all prizes had to be claimed by December 15th, 1977.
Maybe I could have been a rich man.
But maybe I already am.
I need be still, and look at the pictures, and realize with some humility and gratitude how many people have befriended me.  I hope I have been as good and as friendly to them.  All kinds of people – photos do not differentiate between religions, creeds, beliefs, color or nationality.  Everyone has a beauty and a magic.  We each hold the charm of life and hopefully learn to share it, and, with a photo, keep it to remember.  While I have some life, some years left to me, I will take pictures, and keep the negatives, and pass them on.  They really do have something of a life, even after I am gone.

Charlie

WARNING: As Hurricane Irene batters the East Coast, federal disaster officials warned that Internet outages could force people to interact with other people for the first time in years. Residents braced themselves for the horror of awkward silences and unwanted eye contact. FEMA advised: “Be prepared. Write down possible topics to talk about in advance. Sports...the weather. Remember, a conversation is basically a series of Facebook updates strung together.”


The above was written by a Charlie, who is a friend of mine on, uh, Facebook.  Actually, I knew Charlie when he was a little kid.  I was his parish priest in Fairfield, New Jersey.  His mom and dad were great people – they worked for the parish for many years.  Charlie would often come with his dad, who ran the parish bingo operations.  As I remember him, Charlie had a wonderful smile and was as friendly as a kid can be.  His dad worked hard, as did his mom.  I think they had trouble making ends meet, but managed through the years to raise a fine family.
I found Charlie on the Facebook site shortly after I signed on.  I looked at his pictures.  He had been a Marine and is now married and has a beautiful wife and kids.  He works in construction and the above was posted on his “wall” a few days ago.  I think it is funny.  It is typical Charlie – I do not know if he wrote it but it sure is “him.”
There are times I miss the interaction I enjoyed with people when I served them as a parish priest.  Charlie and his family were and still are a gift to me.  I can see his mom and dad in my mind’s eye – how proud they were of their kids, and how very proud they must have been of Charlie.  He has lived a good life.  He is a good and giving man.
Say what you will about the pros and cons of Facebook.  It has enabled me to touch base with a lot of people I knew over the years.  Being in touch with them now reassures me that the only reason we are born to this life is to know each other, love each other and help each other. Maybe some day, I can return the kindnesses given me by Charlie and his family.
The world is shrinking, due to marvels like Facebook.  We really are in the process of becoming a global village.  People reach out all the time via social networks.  We might tend to over do it a bit, so the above quote might be for some close to their  experience.  But the human heart calls us back again and again to what is good and real in life.  To flesh and blood people, their smiles, their hopes and dreams, their need for human contact.
Facebook links people in Cyberspace.  I have a feeling that someday, I will see Charlie and his family again.  The internet offers a way to really connect.  It offers a way to embrace those we love and somehow lost touch with along the way.  It brings back good memories, good times, good people.

Some Religious Thoughts about Subway Riders

On my last trip up north, I rode the New York subways a lot.  My aunt was in a Brooklyn hospital and the easiest way to get there was by taking the train from New Jersey and then walking a few blocks from Penn Station to catch the N or the R subway to Brooklyn.  All in all, it took about an hour and a half to get from New Jersey to Brooklyn.
I like the subways.
I was thinking about the people I saw on them as I was falling off to sleep last night.  Maybe that is a kind of prayer for them.  I hope so.  I realize prayer is supposed to go directly to God with no stops or detours.  But the subway train and its riders were on my mind last night.  The people almost swayed in my thoughts as I pictured them riding the rails beneath Manhattan.  So I caught another ride with them, and I think that is close to God, too.  For he must have been in the subway, too.
There was a Chinese man whose little daughter squeezed in between his legs.  He sat next to me, by the door.  His daughter looked up at him and pointed to a plastic bottle he held in his hands.  She wanted a drink and he would smile and slip the straw in her mouth.  She would finish drinking and then rest her head in his lap.  She looked at me and smiled.
A young Latino mother sat across from me.  Her little boy, who looked to be about five, couldn’t stay still.  He would run from her, and then turn and laugh, and then run back.  She would try to grab him but he was quick.  He’s be off again before she could get her hands on him.  I had the feeling that the boy would have been in big trouble had not the others on the car been looking on.  The mother was careful to keep her cool.  And the little boy knew it.  And loved it.  And exploited it.
A young black couple were holding hands and kissing.
A lot of people had iPods, iPads, Kindles, MP3 players and other devices that had games on them.  In fact, I would say most people were absorbed in those things.
One lady sat across from me and when I looked at her I had to look away because I could not tell if she was a man or a woman.  There was something about her or him that was vaguely undefined.  Hard to tell, these days.
And old Chinese man was reading his paper.  The paper was in Chinese and I could see a page from how he held the paper.  I think it takes a near genius to read Chinese.  He smiled as he was reading.  And I wondered what made him smile.
A young guy got on with a CD player and his buddy was right behind him.  When the train started to move, the guy turned on the music and the buddy started to dance and twist, and then got onto the floor and spun around and around.  The music was good – I think it was something about sex by James Brown.  It was a fast, popping kind of song that made me want to move, to dance.  But as it was, I sat there.
The more I write this, the more I remember.  All the people, so handsome and beautiful, living life as best they can and moving beneath one of the greatest cities in the world.  All of it made by God, though God is always discrete, hidden, living as he does in all living things.  In the dance, in little thirsty babies, in kids running up and down the aisles, in the smile of an old man and the kiss of the young.  It is there every second of every day.  They say Manhattan is a city that never sleeps. God doesn’t sleep, either.  He rides.

Goodness as Revelatory

I have known Donnie all my life.  We were friends through school and then I moved away from town and did not see him as frequently.  I did see him recently.  I went back home and made it a point to get in touch with him.  He is a retired fireman.  I did not spend much time with Donnie during his working years.  We were both absorbed by our life callings.  I was a priest in the same town where Donnie was a fireman.
When I saw him this last trip, we covered a lot of ground in our conversations.  One night, we sat beneath an awning in a church parking lot.  It was raining, but we did not mind.  We drank red wine until the wee hours of the morning, and talked and talked.  He loves many of the same things I do – black and white photography, street scenes, the works of Diane Arbus, Vivien Meier, Cartier-Bresson.  I told him about other photographers I thought he might enjoy, like Milton Rogovin, Helen Stummer and Helen Leavitt.  Donnie absorbed everything I said.  He goes to Manhattan a lot.  From what I gathered, he heads into the city on a weekly basis, taking in all kinds of scenes – music, museums, book stores, art galleries, photo exhibitions.  He is a walking encyclopedia of Manhattan culture – high, low, and in between.  He loves Italy and has gone back many times over the last twelve or so years, making contacts with relatives and friends over there.  He hosts parties for his family and friends that number in the hundreds – just from the immediate area of our home town.   He cooks – I see his delicacies on Facebook.  He never married – he lives in a big house that sounded like an open house to me.  Friends come and go and stay if need be.  Donnie has offered his home, his meals, his warmth to many a man or woman in need.
I remember Donnie as a gifted athlete and outstanding student.  He was an only child and I remember, too, how proud his parents were of him, and rightfully so.  He was always eager to do good and be good, and to share whatever he could with others.  I do not know it all came easily to him.  All I know is that he made it look effortless.
At one point in our conversations, he must have felt he made a lapse in something that he said.  He looked at me and said, “I have never been religious…I do not go to church.  When I was a kid, it all seemed so narrow to me, I needed some space, some way out of that l box.”  I said I understood and refrained from trying to encourage him to see himself in a different light – the light with which I saw and see him.
But now I can take a stab at it.
Donnie told me that he likes my writing.  It comes naturally to me.  I do not make a big deal out of it.
I like what he does not make a big deal of.  I like his naturalness, his goodness, his willingness to go out of his way to help others.  And think nothing of it.
One day while I was in Manhattan, it poured rain.  It really came down.  I was soaked.  And on top of that, the trains to New Jersey were cancelled.  Something about a derailment on the Jersey side.  I finally made it home by bus.  My cell phone rang the next day and it was Donnie.  He said he had tried to call me to see if I needed a ride from Manhattan – he had heard about the derailments and wanted to come in and get me.  I got the message but did not play it back until he told me that.
I am in my monastery now, a place where we ponder spirituality and the place of God in this life.  I suppose that a church secures for some a sense of God.  But for me, a phone call like Donnie’s assures me that I am in the right place.  And I am glad that Donnie moved along in life along the lines he loved – I sense he finds God there, too.  And gives him away, through a call, through his love of beauty, through his open house and great food.  It all somehow fits, even though we cannot always see it.  A bit of rain helps, along with a good friend and some red wine.

The Late Night Show in the Cheap Motel

I like cheap motels.  And I recently stayed in one.  The name or the place does not matter.  It was between Georgia and New York City.  There is a certain charm to a cheap motel.  For one thing, such a place does not glare glitz.  The place where I stayed was reasonably clean.  The lady at the reception desk was friendly.  She took my information and my money and then gave me the little plastic card for the door and pointed me in the direction of my room.
It was a one floor motel.  As I went to my room, I passed some people partying it up outside and inside their room.  They sat on lawn chairs and seemed friendly and were definitely having a good time.  They were drinking beer and had a bunch of little kids. They said hello to me as I passed and I wondered if they would ask me to join them later on.
The door card worked.  There was a big screen TV with a remote in my room, a little coffee machine, shampoo, soap, conditioner, a little coffee machine with four packets of coffee and a bunch of Styrofoam cups.  The lady at the desk told me that there would be a continental breakfast available in the morning.
It was a bit stuffy so I turned on the air conditioner and got ready for bed.  It was late, and I was tired.
I got into bed, kicked off the covers, bundled up all the pillows so I could lean on them, and turned on the TV.  With the proper aim of the remote, going from channel to channel was easy.
I settled on a show that was on the Science Channel.  It was all about the beginning and the end of things, of everything.  The commentator was a young British guy and he was pleasant enough to listen to and to watch.  He offered all kinds of interesting examples of what he called “entropy.”  That word means, basically, that everything in a closed system goes from order to disorder.  Disorder is the more operative of the two.  It has the upper hand.  It is inevitable.  The British guy showed a castle made of sand that eventually was washed away.  He had other examples too.  Melting ice cubes. He spoke of one of the qualities of time as being a process.  History moves forward.  The universe moves.  One thing happens after another.  There are sequences, developments, chapters, evolutions and revolutions.
So things get better for a while.  Then they corrode.  And rot or die.
I began to feel ill at ease.
I could hear the party outside.  They had not asked me to join them. Now I was wishing they had.
It got worse.
The British man said that the end will come.  In a few billion years, our sun will run out of whatever makes it a big hot source of light and energy and will became a dwarf star.  A puny little thing.  And then it will, finally, become a dark star and everything will be sucked into it, never to return.  Gone for good.  Into the dark hole.
Te British guy said that there would be nothing left.  And to top it off, he said that every star in the universe, every single one, is doomed to the same fate.  In other words, the entire cosmos is destined to be the same that it was before it was.  Nothing.  No matter, no rain or sunshine or earth, wind and fire or Tina Turner.
I cannot remember the end of the show.  Maybe the British guy said something along the lines of enjoying ourselves while we can.  In fact, I think he did say something like that.
Maybe I should have crashed the party that was still going on outside.
Instead, I started to watch the next show.
It was some special with Stephen Hawking, the world famous physicist who has charmed millions and enraged millions.  He has a disease that has left him physically impaired – he has to communicate through a machine – but his mind is incredibly active.
He warmed up to his topic – explaining how the idea of God is just that – an idea – and how science can explain all that people have used God to explain.
It was getting very late.  I was still thinking about the first show and how everything was going to end and vanish and never come back. Including Stephen Hawking.
Then I thought of something.  Actually, I thought of two things.
As far as the first show, the word that came to me was “push.”  This whole thing is being pushed.  Just like when a woman has to push to give birth, God pushed this Cosmos into being from the womb of the void and he is still pushing.
With a flick of the Divine Wrist, everything came into being and is growing, decaying, coming to life again, decaying.  Yin and Yang.
Secondly, I had just seen a friend of mine that morning who is a philosopher.  A professional philosopher.  He wrote a letter to the New York Times and it was published.  He wrote to suggest that someone should not criticize the work of another if one does not have sympathy for it – it one does not share a sense of the world under critique.  He was, specifically, complaining about a writer who wrote about religion in a negative way and did not or could not share the vision of that religion.  In short, my friend suggested that he is an outsider.  Not in the game.  I thought that was a fair criticism.
So, maybe Stephen Hawking should stick to his figurings about the universe without crossing the yard to his religiously inspired neighbors and trashing their party.
A flick of the wrist.  Magic.  Creation.  Something out of nothing.
The party outside had quieted down.  I heard a bit of laughter.  Then it was quiet.
I turned off the TV with a flick of the button.  The screen went blank.
A flick of the wrist, yes.
Goodness, mercy, hope, love, redemptive suffering, going an extra mile, giving from one’s want to those who have little.  Wondrous things that are of as wondrous an origin.  When it all ends, may there be another slight of hand, another flick of the wrist, a new card thrown into the void that then magically comes to life – bringing into being all that was and is, seen and unseen, pushing, pushing, pushing.

Brooklyn


My Aunt Margaret and Uncle Jim lived in Brooklyn.  Dad used to drive the seven of us kids and Mom over to see them when we were little kids.  God knows how we all fit in the old Packard.  We must have sat on each other’s laps in the back seat and two little siblings sat in the front.  The car was green, and then painted maroon.  I cannot remember the order of the colors.  It of course had no air-conditioning.  We lived in Hempstead then, which was on the eastern end of Long Island.  I suppose it was about an hour’s drive from Hempstead to Brooklyn.  Margaret and Jim had very little money.  They lived on the third floor – a walk-up – of an old brownstone.  As I remember it, the apartment was really nice.  A long wooden staircase wound its way to the third floor. The banisters were of highly polished wood.  There was a skylight in the bathroom and the toilet had a pull chain which was connected to a water tank above the toilet.  The kitchen was small, and all the appliances were old, even back then.  In the sitting room, which served as a living room and was the front room of the apartment, there was a beautiful breakfront made of wood.  It was beautifully carved, with a mirror in the middle and little shelves up and down the sides.  Uncle Jim was a poet – he used to write for the Brooklyn Irish paper called the “Irish Echo.” They never had children, and when we visited them, they lavished us kids with Cokes and cakes – chocolate cakes from Entenman’s Bakery, and ice cream and other goodies that we rarely got when we were home.  I did not realize until many years later how much it must have cost them to give us so much.  They just did not have it to spare. In later years, I used to hear Aunt Margaret say that when she needed money, it always had a way of coming along.  I do know that even though they had little in terms of things, of wealth, they sure were happy.   Whatever they needed came along.  I would guess that Uncle Jim made a little money from the paper.
I can still remember the view from their rear window, which looked out from the dining room onto the back yard.  The yard was small and filled with vegetation and little paths.  There was a statue of the Virgin Mary, which stood in the middle of a bird bath. Apartment houses filled the landscape for as far as one could see.
They lived there rent free since they cleaned the office of the dentist who owned the building and whose office was on the ground floor.
After dinner, Aunt Margaret and Uncle Jim sat in the living room on big soft chairs and told us stories of Ireland, from where they had come. Uncle Jim smoked a pipe and I still remember the aroma of his tobacco. On a hot summer’s day, the heat in the apartment was intense.  There was an overhead fan, and an occasional breeze from the open and screened windows.  But we did not mind.  I do not think anyone had air-conditioners back then.
The years passed.  Uncle Jim developed what was, looking back, Alzheimer’s disease and would leave the apartment and wander.  On one trip, which turned out to be his last, he was mugged and was found by the police.  He was placed in a nursing home not far from where they had lived.  Aunt Margaret was to follow him there a short while later.  They lived there for several years and died days apart from each other.  They were apart from each other and reality at that point.  But it was not to be a parting of the ways.  It was as if one knew the other had left this life and wanted to follow.
All that was a long time ago.  I am getting on in years, and when I go, a lot of old memories will go with me.  Maybe my nieces and nephews will hear snippets of conversation, but they, too, will lose their moorings to this life and will fade into history.
Like Aunt Margaret used to say, they were given what they needed.  And, more importantly, they shared from their very modest means.
And we, too, are given what we need.  There is nothing we can hold on to forever.  There comes a time when we have to move on.  We can be a blessing to those we love, by sharing what we have.  We will get by. And learn something about God from such fleetingly rich memories of Cokes and cakes on hot summer days, all gone, but somehow still alive, still whispering to me.