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.

The Day my GPS Died

The GPS came with the rental car.  I had trouble booting it up and had to call the GPS people.  A live one answered the phone and she said that I had to use the access number that was provided with the rental paperwork.  I told her I could not find it.  She then asked for some proofs of ID, to ascertain that I was who I said I was, and when that was done she gave me the code.  I keyed in the numbers and was up and running – or at least on the ground and moving.  I really liked it.  A woman’s voice told me when to turn, how to stay on the right or left, when to drive straight ahead and for how long.  I got used to her voice and liked it.  It sort of kept me company.  The GPS is amazing, I thought to myself.  It brought me right to any place I needed to go and its last words on any given routing were “You have reached your destination.”

Then it died.  I do not know what happened.  I was driving along, and the screen was lit and the voice as reassuring as ever.  Then suddenly the screen went blank, the voice stopped, and no matter what I did, I could not bring it back to life.  I jiggled the wires.  Made sure there was power from the power jack in the car.  There was – a little light told me as much.  I tapped the screen.   Then tapped it again, harder.  Nothing twinkled.  Nothing came to life.  I knew that it was okay since from that point on, I knew where I was going.  I was in familiar territory.  But I missed the voice, looking at the passing miles on the little screen, missed knowing when I had erred in my following directions.

It was very sad.

I thought of something my brother Johnny had recently told me.  He said that he was concerned that there would come a time when everything would be in the sky and available.  At first I did not know what he meant.  But I got it when he elaborated a bit.  Someday, he said, everything will be in the sky.  There will be books, messages, photographs, movies, directions, banking, reservations, antiques, puppies, condolence cards, divorces, food deliveries, restaurant and concert seating, traffic warnings – all these and more, up there floating around and available – yes, YOURS, for a fee and the press of a few buttons.

At first I felt bereft when the woman’s voice was no longer mine, no longer with me.

I was alone. 

But in my heart of hearts, I knew she was not real and could not possibly care about anything.  She was as dead as the GPS and had always been as lifeless as a corpse.

But something in me needed her for the ride.

But then…

With all that stuff swinging through the cosmos, I hope we do not lose our need for each other.  We are, after all, inter-dependent creatures.  We need the sun and rain and each other in equal measure.  We need to ask directions to get through this life. 

We need the joy of listening to music together, of waiting for the delivery of tangible goods.  It is not good when virtually everything comes to us virtually.  We need to ask, to stretch, to wait, to screw up, wait out turn on lines, learn patience when things take time. 

Maybe the sky will buckle because of all the stuff, it will collapse in on us.  We may well lose the sky and everything in it.  Flattened by our needs. Laid low because we lost the way to each other. 

The Chelsea Hotel

I was recently in New York City.  It had been a while since I was there, and one of the places I wanted to see is the Chelsea Hotel.  It is place of legends – successive and dramatic stories that played out in many of its rooms.  Dylan Thomas over imbibed and died there.  Pattie Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe lived there, beginning a life long love affair that lasted for decades.  Bob Dylan lived there and wrote “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” in room 211.  Sid Vicious stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death in room 100.  He later died of a heroin overdose.  Leonard Cohen lived there and wrote a song about the place, in which he sang about his room and a dalliance with Janis Joplin that he later regretted.    Jack Kerouac wrote his infamous “On the Road” while on a three week drug fueled trip.  Arthur Miller suffered through his break-up from Marilyn Monroe while staying at the Chelsea.  Arthur C. Clarke found the inspiration to write “2001: A Space Odyssey” while living there.  Madonna called the place her home in the 1980’s. The lobby saw the likes of Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, the Grateful Dead, Velvet Underground and an ongoing cast of characters from the free-spirited and bohemian era that was then and now, but, for then, found its nesting place in the many rooms of the Chelsea Hotel.  The era still lives, but not at the Chelsea.  It has long since moved on.

Sadly, the Chelsea was recently sold.  The hundred or so residents still living there will have to soon relocate.  They will be bought off.  The Chelsea is to be remodeled along the lines of, according to the news, a “Holiday Inn-ish”style of structure.  A modestly priced motel.  A come and go kind of place.  A far cry from what the Chelsea once was and can never be again.

I understand that change is the name of the game.  Nothing stays the same forever. 

But I regret not visiting the Chelsea Hotel when I recently had the chance.  I asked where it was and was told that it was a good walk from where I presently was.  I should have followed my better instincts and hoofed on over there, just to take a look and maybe sit in the lobby and touch things, knowing that everything in the place is a second or third class relic.

But I had things to do, places to go.

People to see.

And I missed out. 

Well. There will be other times, other places that attract and breed the strange and mystifying world of art. 

I read that the Chelsea lost its allure a while back.  So say the newspaper stories about it.

So maybe I really did not miss anything.  But I wonder. It is a great thing that is passing, soon to be a flashy motel.  I should have sat in the place, and said a prayer of gratitude.

And then got up and looked for something just like it. 

Labor Day

Father Matt gave a homily on this past Labor Day about creation and the labor of God.   It was a beautiful homily in which he mentioned the six days of labor when God created the universe and all that is in it, and then how he rested on the seventh day.

My thoughts took off in several directions as he was speaking.  I mused over the word “labor” and I thought of the stories my mom used to tell me about her giving birth.  She gave birth to seven babies.  And over the years, I have heard my sisters tell of their ordeals with bringing their babies into the world.  For my mom and my sisters, it was a time of great joy and expectation – as it was for my dad and my sisters’ husbands.  But for a woman, the delivery of a baby is intimately personal, unique and profoundly beautiful.  It can also be painful, and a time filled with anxiety.

It is said that we are made in God’s image.  And I cannot think of any activity closer to the creative genius of God than the gestation of and giving birth to a baby (or babies).  Giving birth is a share in the very life and identity of the Divine.  Even the labor intensive activity that brings forth life is of God – God struggles and cries as life comes into this world.  God lives in all creatures – God is the source of life as well as its every manifestation.  AN infant’s first vague sense of tenderness is his or her first feeding.  It is the first sense that all of this is gift – the fruit of the labors of others.  We come from the labor of God and are sustained by it all through our lives.  And we are at our best when we labor to give life and well-being to others – especially to those who are born into circumstances of hardship, or deprivation.

There are times when we are most God-like when we are least conscious of it.  It may be good to bear that in mind when so much of our ideas about God have to do with chasing him with thoughts, theories, mental gymnastics of one type or another.  We assume that if we have the right thinking about God, we have him in our grasp.  But all the while, God has us in his – in the palm of his hand.

I was a twin and when we were born, I arrived first.  My mom used to tell me that she had no idea that she was carrying twins.  After I arrived, the doctor knew that my brother was not far behind.  He told mom that there was another baby and that he needed her help.  When she heard that there was another baby, she passed out.  And my brother arrived from her body into this world with a wail and the helping hands of the doctor.  Mom eventually awoke with two baby boys at her breasts.  And God was awake all the time, in her and in us and in the doctor - who all did the divine thing bringing God to life and bringing life to God.  It is all a mystery, rich and ongoing with wails and cries of joy.  How wondrous, this God who lives within us. 

Amy Winehouse

When someone dies young, the loss of youth adds to the grief felt by those who knew and loved the one who has died.  This was true of Amy Winehouse, the British singer who died over this past weekend.  I liked her music.  She was a gifted, sensitive person who sang in the traditions of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.  She was haunted by demons that would be hard to call “personal.”  Her struggles with drugs and alcohol were the fodder of the media the world over and many of her songs dealt with the themes of substance abuse. I watched her singing “Rehab” on the internet and watched it over and over.  It is a catchy tune.  It is sad to believe that she was singing about her own hard, and eventually lost, life. 

I was astounded when I read the comments posted on several websites.  Many were written from a sense of love, of sadness, of pain.  But there were too many written from a depraved sense of vindictiveness and meanness.  There were comments that were cruel, crude and grossly insensitive.  And these were from people who well knew of the struggle Ms. Winehouse had with abuse.  It is a tragedy that some people chose to continue the abuse, even after her death. 

I liked to watch her sing.  She had a nice smile and a way of looking at the audience as she sang one hit after another.  I winced when I saw a video of her recent appearance in Serbia.  She was out of control and was apparently booed off the stage.  It was a scene that begged for compassion, not judgment or ridicule.

People turn to gifted artists because they are capable of putting into artistic forms deep and beautiful things we all feel but cannot express.  Good things – and sad things.  Artists are at their best when we feel with them, and can laugh or hope or cry from a place in our hearts that we know is there but cannot normally reach without the aid of an artist’s gift.  An artist shares his or her life with us.  It can be a raw, vulnerable kind of sharing.  Amy Winehouse had that gift and she deserved more than the scorn and ridicule evidenced by the web site comments.  She was not able to find a way out of the labyrinth of the alcohol and drug fueled corridors that lead nowhere except dead ends.  And that was tragic.  It could happen to any one of us.

I look at the photos on the Internet of the flowers, notes, letters and mementos that are piling up outside of her London house.  There are also pictures of Vodka bottles, which was her favorite drink.  But even these were left by those who loved her, but may not have known what else to leave.  I can understand that.

What I do not understand are the comments I read on the Internet.  If those who wrote them ever heard her words and music, what they wrote does not show it.  What they wrote only shows how narrow and self-centered they are, people who watched the suffering of another human being and laughed, and when she died, wrote what they thought was smart or cool.  It wasn’t.  It was frightening, something ignorant and akin to something out of hell.  Amy Winehouse lived better than their words.  And she also wrote better, much better.  She left sadness and beauty behind.  She left something real, something that we all hope to cope with in this life. 

I hope she found the peace that was, in this life, beyond her grasp.  But in her reach for it, she touched the stars.   

Amie’s Card

I was recently to Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York and I took a lot of pictures.  I made note cards out of some of the pictures and sent one to Amie, a long time friend of mine who lives in Staten Island – right across the Narrows from Brooklyn and, therefore, not all that far from Coney Island.  We have corresponded for as long as I can remember.

Amie wrote back to me and did so on a card that she made.  She wrote how much she liked my card. It brought back a lot of memories for her, for she used to go to Coney Island as a teenager and how she loved the fireworks that were set off every Tuesday night. 

She said my card is beautiful.  And so is hers.  It is card she made by hand.  She wrote all over the inside and back.  She could not write on the front, for that is adorned with little plastic colored beads on a background of deep blue. The beads are glued on in a fan like shape – not unlike the majestic tail of a peacock.  But they are more like a burst of fireworks on a long gone Tuesday night, on Coney Island.   It is a special card, one that I know was made with love and especially for me. 

I know that my card brought back good and warm memories for her.  I cannot remember exactly what photograph I used for the card – for I made a bunch of them.  Yet I like Amie’s better.  It brings back other memories to me, memories of all the times we have written to each other and how the letters and cards have carried so well the ups and downs of the human heart in its search for beauty, for goodness, for God.  Amie is an artist and has used her gift to bring the mystery of God to view – through pastels, slides, and, in the case of the card sitting here on my desk, little dazzling plastic orbs of color and arrangement.

She lets go her of art very easily.  She gives away a lot of it – and somehow it seems to move her to create more, to give away more. 

She recently told me that she will soon be heading to a Benedictine monastery in Erie, Pennsylvania for a stay.  I know some of the women there – and I know that Amie will be welcomed and loved.  The community there thrives on art and any artist is welcome. 

There are times I wonder if we have reached a point where words need a rest.  Have we exhausted them?   Maybe.  Words that try to seize mystery are woefully overburdened.  And so it is that art then takes the stage and has its “say.”  It communicates beauty in color, form, wonder – and it satisfies our restless need to create something near divine with whatever we have at our disposal.  And then some of us, like Amie, give it away.  I cannot express in words how much her friendship means to me.  I have learned so much from her – she is a traveler who is seeking the divine because somehow she has already found it.  And she won’t let it go.  She can do that – and still give it away. 

The Man from Mid-City

Many years ago I met a man in a New Orleans restaurant.  The name of the restaurant was Mike’s Mid-City Café.  The name of the man I have long forgotten, though I am pretty sure I have it here, in this room, on an old address list.  I have not lost the list.  It is, I like to think, just temporarily misplaced.  I had gone there that night to meet my cousin Steve and when I walked in, Steve was sitting at the bar.  I sat next to him and after we had a drink he told me he wanted me to meet a friend of his.  I said sure and asked where he was and Steve nodded toward a booth.  Sitting at the booth was a little man, very nicely dressed, reading from a book.  A beer sat in front of him on the table.  We walked over and Steve introduced me to him.  He invited us to sit.  I asked him what he was reading and he smiled and said, “You may have never heard of it.  It is a book called On the Nature of Things by Lucretius.  It is in Latin.”  I thought a bit and told him that I had heard of it.  In fact, I had read it and even translated it in college.  I did not tell him that.  As we chatted, he told me that he was a Latin teacher in the same school where Steve then taught.  We spoke a bit more, then thanked him for his conversation and headed back to the bar.  That was twenty years ago.  I never saw the man again, though I did write to him and we may have exchanged a few letters. 

I had a course on The Nature of Things while in college.  Back then, I was not overly impressed.  It was a mandatory course and I did not have the fervent love for the book that our teacher, Father O’Sullivan, had.  I remember him as very kind and very scholarly.  He later fell in love with a lady and shifted his sense of grammar from Latin to his love for her.  I thought that was pretty nice. 

I remember that there was a final exam.  It was to be a translation of Lucretius.  We were told that it would be a passage in Latin and we had to correctly translate it into near perfect English.  Jack Christell picked me up at my house at five in the morning and we drove over to Seton Hall.  The Student Center was not yet open, so we parked in the near empty and enormous lot.  We both smoked back then.  Jack smoked Raleigh cigarettes because his dad collected and then redeemed the coupons.  I smoked either Parliaments or Marlboros.  There were no coupons.  I liked the taste.  So we sat there in the car with a flashlight and clouds of smoke and memorized, word for word, the sections we were hoping would appear on the exam sheet.  I remember that it was cold and we had the car heater on full blast.  The heater was not that good.  We were still cold.

I do not remember what the text was.  I do remember that me and Jack guessed the right translation.  We both passed and even though I think Father O’Sullivan suspected that we memorized it, he never said anything.  We purposefully made a few minor mistakes to give the impression that we struggled through the test.  Maybe that worked.

Years passed.  Jack and I entered the seminary.  Roughly two years after we entered, Jack began to show signs of depression.  He went for therapy, then began a regimen of drugs, but his condition worsened and he had to leave the seminary. He returned home and took what began to be a string of low-income jobs.  We exchanged letters but he eventually stopped writing.  One morning I found a fax at my table here at the monastery.  Jack had taken his own life – he hung himself in the house where he grew up and where, by that time, he lived alone.  I felt terrible that I had not kept up with him. 

I would see Steve every time I went to New Orleans, which was often in those days.  And he would make it a point to see me in my various locales.  He visited me in every place I lived over the years, including here, at the monastery.  I loved him like a brother.  He was so easy to be with, though his three wives may not agree with me.  But he weathered all that well.  We would sit and chat for hours about the nature of the church, war and politics, love and loss, the past and the future….well, the nature of things.

He passed away a few months ago.  He had a severe diabetic condition and succumbed to the gradual weakening of his body.  I could not go to the funeral – we are limited to such things – but I know he would have understood that.  I like to think we were there for each other when it mattered.  He was a good and faithful friend.  He shared friendship with such a seeming ease and joy.

I think I found the man’s name.  The man in the booth from a long time ago.  I found the list.  Actually, it was right next to me in a pile of papers.  I had a hunch it was there.  His name was Lane Zellerman.  It was obvious that he loved books, loved the past, loved history.  I liked him.  Looking back, I am glad he found his passion.  Steve told me that he never married.  His first love was the written word and all that he could give to it and it to him.

In this morning’s New York Times there is a review of a book that brought all this to mind. The name of the book is Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Steve Greenblatt.  On the Nature of Things and old Lucretius figure prominently in the mapping of the book.  Among other things, Greenblatt is indebted to the ancient text of Lucretius as well as its history.  Looks to be a good read.  I am not sure I will get to it – I may have already benefitted from it.  But, I may get it.  One never knows.

Memories came back to me as I read the review.  Some good and some sad ones. 

We all struggle with this life, with the nature of life as it blesses us, wounds us, casts us aside.  There are moments when hope seems as close as breathing and other times when it seems gone, never again to come back.  It always does, if we wait for it.

Lucretius dispensed with the need for a God to give all this plausibility.  And for him it worked. 

And that is good.

For me, life has been a series of hits and misses.  Some days I get it, other days I don’t.  The best I can figure, even Jesus relied on the common grace of friendship to get him through tough times.  No big answers, just friends.

Friends you meet other friends with.  Friends who share a drink or two in a bar.  Friends who share a cold morning, memorizing some old words that may still ring true.  I think of the nature of things all the time.  And discuss it with my friends.  And share what I can with you. 

                                                                                                                           

Slab City

His name is Dave and he is ninety-years old.  I recently read an interview with him that appeared in The Sun Magazine. He lives in a place called Slab City, a squatter’s community located on a desolate swath of South California desert.  Cement slabs are all that remain of a former military base.  They serve as foundations for the tents, old buses, vans and other makeshift dwellings.  Nearby, there is a bombing range.  Military aircraft fly overhead every day to practice military maneuvers, including dropping bombs.

In the interview, he said “I have not done a damn thing with my life except staying alive.”  After living at the slabs for ten years, he felt he needed more solitude and moved his camp a mile farther out into the desert. He has a commanding view of the bombing range.

Attached to the walls of the near wreck of a motor home he calls his house are prints of Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles and the Potato Eaters.  Stacks of books are everywhere: Thomas Wolfe, Cormac McCarthy, Truman Capote.  He recently started writing and is always striving for perfection in his work.  “Oh, it can never be achieved, he said, “but it must be the goal.”

That is pretty much all I know about Dave.  But I like what little I know.  He may have been down and out for most of his life, but he persists in something.  He strives to write well.  I hope he succeeds.  I hope he finds peace in the crafting of words on paper, words about his life, his hopes, his failures, his efforts to do well.  Writing necessarily entices one to search for meaning.  Dave is at work on the most important and rewarding search in life.  He is doing more than merely staying alive. 

None of us do much in this life, though most of us live with the burden or the illusion of making a big dent in life, far more than the small indent of a word or two on paper.

The woman in the gospel is persistent.  She has nothing but her need to press Jesus again and again for help.  He gradually listens to her, and responds with care.

A miracle happens.

We can do nothing more effective than prayer.  It may seem at times futile, but something strange and ultimately good comes from it.  Maybe not today, or tomorrow, and the response may differ radically from what we asked for.  But even the lowly among us know how small are our efforts but how necessary our willingness to have a goal, to try and give something of ourselves to the God who will someday lift us from the slabs of life to something lasting, an eternal home. 

Cities

I suppose the typical American dream is to own a big house in a real nice area, what one might call an “upscale” area.  Huge homes with gatehouses, pools, plenty of acreage.  Maybe I am wrong.  But it seems that the media holds up such places as the most desirable.

When I was in the northeast not too long ago, I traveled to Brooklyn almost every day for the two weeks I was there.  I took the train and subway and one day went as far as Coney Island.  But most days I went to the Lutheran Medical Center to see my aunt, who was hospitalized there.  She spent several weeks there and then moved on to a rehabilitation facility.  She is doing better these days.

The Lutheran Medical Center is the place where I was born.  It is located on 2^nd Avenue and 56^th Street, in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.  My aunt tells me that years ago, the area was heavily Swedish.  Then, as time passed, other ethnic groups moved in – mostly Irish and Italians.  They eventually moved on and now, from what I was able to see, the area is heavily Latino. In the hospital, there are directional signs in several languages – English, Spanish, Arabic and Russian.  There is also a sign directing people to the Chinese section of the hospital.

I would walk the several blocks from the subway to the hospital and loved what I saw.  There were kids playing in the streets and sidewalks.  There is a park near the hospital and kids were there, too, in abundance.  Their mothers sat and watched them, chatting with each other as the kids had all kinds of fun, spraying each other from a fountain, skipping rope, playing ball.  An ice cream and hot dog van was parked right outside the gate and did a brisk business. 

The area is very residential.  There are mainly row houses.  There were little gardens in front of many of them, with statues of the Virgin Mary and flowers in some of the gardens.  People sat on the steps, chatting away the morning.  There were stores, too, up on the main avenue.  All kinds of stores.  Small grocery stores and coffee shops with counters.  There were flower shops and hair salons, store-front churches and newspaper stores.  Liquor stores and cleaners, clothing shops and vegetable stands.  All of these had windows that were wonderfully decorated.  I took some pictures of them.  The streets were teeming with life.  I felt safe walking around.  One day, there was a large crowd – there was a ball game and just outside the small field was a food bazaar.  Vendors were there, seemingly representing every nationality and food.  I walked through the area slowly and was amazed at the variety of languages and dress.  Yet everyone got along – it actually had a natural feel to it, all the differences being gathered on a street in Brooklyn.  It was beautiful. 

There is such richness to Brooklyn.  My thoughts have returned there often since I returned here, to Georgia.  Admittedly, I have a bias.  I think of those kids on the Brooklyn streets who are learning so much from each other – they are picking up their “street smarts.”  May what they learn serve them, and us, well.

The big churches up there are not doing well.  People cannot relate to the old, established style of religion.  Life goes on – they are finding their own, the best they can. God comes through for them and in them.  He lives in the untypical, the places we somehow have forgotten and moved away from.  He is here, too, in the homes that have big pools.  But something tells me he is harder to find there.