Category Archives: Faith and Reason

December 18, 2024 · 2:01 pm

perspectives from a few steps back

“It is better to take refuge in the LORD

than to trust in man.

It is better to take refuge in the LORD

than to trust in princes.”   Psalm 118: 8-9

 Papa standing at the rimIf we had lived in the Roman Empire, which lasted about 500 years as the Western Roman Empire and another thousand or so as the Byzantine Empire based in Constantinople, we would have expected that daily life probably would never change[i].

If I was a carpenter in a village outside of Rome in the year 200 AD, I’d get up before dawn for a simple breakfast of bread, cheese, and water, and gather my wood and iron tools, some I had made, some I inherited from my father and grandfather.  Off to work making doors or furniture or a larger project in a team like an aqueduct. Return home at the end of a taxing day, maintain and clean my tools, readying them for the morning, a supper of fish or grains or occasional meat. Time with my family, a quiet conversation about the kids with my wife, or perhaps head out to the tavern to debate the games or the latest battles up north or the comely suppleness of the new barmaid. A few times a year, if I was so inclined, I might head off to the games. Gladiators, animal hunts, spectacular and gruesome executions, maybe a few of those annoying Christians thrown in among the hungry lions, bears, and tigers.

I would expect my sons to follow in my trade, join the guild, learn the skills. As I had. As my father and grandfather had. There would be a sense of inevitability and the survival of my culture, a natural permanent order of things that always were and always will be. I might complain about the excesses, stupidity, and corruption of the current emperor, grumble quietly to friends or family that I trusted. My best hope might be that an illness or assassination would bring about a change in the emperor. That there would be no emperor would probably never occur to me. I’d have little understanding of the eventual effervescence of every system or culture.

We bicker, fuss, complain about, and regret (or perhaps celebrate) the recent election or the woeful character of the choices presented to us, but do we spend any effort on the why or whether or the finitude of the fragile and vulnerable structure of the society that spawned such an election? Are we bedeviled by the trees and unaware of the danger to the forest? Are the smoldering coals in old fires even now biding time until a little breeze fires them into a conflagration?

But we ought to consider that we may be in a period of profound change that historians will regard as the collapse of a civilization. Not to panic, the transition may be several centuries in the making and another in the denouement, but for we who are living in it, a lasting confusion may accompany us throughout our lifetime.

“Schism in the soul, schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme to return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorating elements [of civilization]. Only birth can conquer death―the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new.”  Joseph Campbell, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” commenting on Arnold Toynbee’s “A Study of History.”

Why does the disruptive populism of a Donald Trump resonate with seventy million voters? One contributing factor is the sense of powerlessness and disconnection of so many. Why are depression, drug use, and loneliness at historically high levels, especially among the young?

We wander around in a time afflicted with “presentism.” From a Rusty Reno article, “Resisting Presentism”, on the fallacy of naively looking towards a perfect future while ignoring the hard earned lessons of the past: “We live in a time of hot takes. Websites rush to post commentary of the latest Trump nomination. Denizens of X and other social-media sites swirl in cyclones of denunciation and attack. Everything is keyed to what’s happening right now. The latest triumph. The latest outrage. The latest meme.” And this societal addiction by its nature leaves us terribly anxious in a constant knawing state of feeling unmoored.

A culture of self-invention, radical subjectivism, and materialist utilitarianism is what we have. A seething cauldron of conflicting values with no umpire who everyone accepts to call balls and strikes or who is safe or out because there are no agreed upon rules. Or commonly understood definitions for that matter.  We are a society of dueling egos and wills in a Nietzschean or Hobbesian nightmare. Some of our disagreements leave little room for compromise because they are so fundamental. A warm baby or a fetus torn asunder before she can draw a breath.  A man somehow changed into a woman or a surgically mutilated, permanently sterile male human body with missing parts and now committed to a lifetime of taking debilitating artificial hormones while still suffering from a tormenting mental illness.

Blame social media, the computer in everyone’s pocket, coercive and intrusive government and institutional reeducation, ideological programs that undermine trust and family structure, the deep and growing hostility and anger in the culture split along ideological lines, the twenty four hour alarmist news cycle, the predominance of nihilism, violence, and exploitive sexuality in popular entertainment, ubiquitous, addictive, and ever more degrading porn, fatherless households, racism, sexism, transphobic animus, Big Corporations, Big Pharma, billionaire tyrants, elite technocrats running our lives, lack of gun laws, too many gun laws, far right extremism, far left extremism, Nazis in the woodshed, communists in the Senate, forever chemicals in the water, overpopulation, death spiral birth rates, or pick your lead story of the day. Reasons for societal unhappiness are not in short supply and reducing our woes to one or the other also breaks along ideological fault lines.

We are the confused mess that is living through the death of one civilization and the unknown beginnings of the next.

“It’s a restless hungry feeling

That don’t mean no one no good

When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’

You can say it just as good

You’re right from your side

I’m right from mine

We’re both just one too many mornings

And a thousand miles behind” Bob Dylan, “One Too Many Mornings.”  1964

 In July, a post here discussed in detail the weakening infrastructure of Sagging Bridges in our home state of Rhode Island. The physical deterioration of what we rely on every day was a metaphor for the deep-rooted breakdown of what we rely on every day for our societal coherence.  Like the road bridges, the bridges of our civilization – their pilings, supports, beams, and the strength of what keeps us from plunging into the river are corroding and creaking a bit each time they are driven over.[ii]

I’ve been fascinated by the various and unlikely voices over the last couple of years who are lamenting the loss of a “Christian civilization,” a culture with objective truths and values, a culture with defined borders, and agreed upon norms of behavior.  Defining for its members what’s good and what’s evil. Defining a solid foundation of an agreed upon understanding of the nature of human fulfillment and happiness. Among these are Richard Dawkins, one the four horsemen of the new atheism, Jordan Peterson, social influencer extraordinaire and still on a spiritual journey, and Bill Maher, celebrated TV host, comedian, atheist, and mocker of all things religious. Others too. They understand the loss and turmoil of living in a post Christian culture but fall short of understanding what is required. They think that we can build a vehicle to the future by our own efforts. Perhaps a few tweaks and little Kantian categorical imperative. Similar to me trying to fix my car with a YouTube video, a screwdriver, and vice grips.

“Said the Lord God, “Build a house,

Smoke and iron, spark and steam,

Speak and vote and buy and sell;

Let a new world throb and stream,

Seers and makers, build it well.”   G.K. Chesterton, The Kingdom of Heaven

 They understand the loss and turmoil of living in a post Christian culture but cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that the center of a Christian culture is not a set of rules, boundaries, and definitions, but a relationship with a Person.[iii] A Christian culture without Christ is incoherent.  We will try in vain to build a tower to heaven as did the people of Babel.  Don’t we ever learn?  A tower buiilt with our own tools  isn’t what is needed, but a road, a path, a Way.

The road to heaven is already leveled and built. We must learn to walk on it.

 “And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”  Matthew 7: 26-27

[i][i] Other cultures have lasted even longer than the Roman civilization. The folks who lived in them probably never foresaw any different state. Here are a few.

[ii] In that post was some discussion of Patrick Deneen’s insightful 2018 book “Why Liberalism Failed.”  A worthy read which asks the question has liberalism failed because it succeeded? Its failure was preordained in its premises.  The book was praised by such diverse reviewers as Barack Obama and Rod Dreher.  Rather than reiterate what’s already been written, read last year’s post in the link above or better, read the book. Another powerful book on a related theme was Charles Chaput’s 2016 “Strangers in a Strange Land.”  How does one begin to live an authentic Christian life in a post Christian culture? Way too much for a blog post, I suggest strongly for your reflection and to gain deep insight into our times, read the book. Accessible, wonderfully written and powerfully insightful about what we are living through, yet the book is hopeful about where peace both inner and corporately can be found.

[iii] A brilliant debunking of “Christian civilization” without Christ is in the current First Things issue. “Against Christian Civilization” by Paul Kingsnorth. Taken from his Erasmus Lecture a few months ago. Well worth your time.

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October 6, 2024 · 7:51 pm

The Music of the Spheres

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.”  Ludwig van Beethoven

Harmonies-of-the-spheres from History of PhilosophyThe relationship between music and mathematics and the universe is mysterious.  We can start with an ancient theory and wander around a bit. Bear with me, and we’ll see where this goes.

Pythagoras intuited that musical harmony is related to mathematical ratios. He became curious about the relationship of sound to ratios when he noted the varying tones of different size hammers on an anvil as he walked by a metal forging shop.

The ordered harmonic series (1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc.) describe how vibrating strings of differing lengths or columns of air with dissimilar spacing from the end of a flute to the holes can produce sounds that are pleasing to the human ear when the increments of the strings or spacing are in simple ratios. Math in this curious way affects responses in the human brain and interpretation of sounds; harmony is pleasing to a human mind. Thus, ratios are pleasing to the mind in a not immediately obvious way.

Later, Pythagoras named his related theory the “Music of the Spheres” based on the ratios he observed in the period of the movements of celestial bodies—the Sun, Moon, and planets. Perhaps, he surmised, like musical instruments, these ratios create a form of music, although this music is beyond normal hearing.

Pythagoras concluded that numerical relationships governed the movements of the cosmos and thus created harmonies. He theorized that the regular motions and the predictable periods of the celestial bodies corresponded to specific musical notes or harmonies, forming a grand cosmic symphony, reflecting the harmony and order in the universe. Because this celestial music is everywhere all the time, this “music” is not a sound that can be heard or distinguished.

“Music of the Spheres” influenced both scientific and philosophical thought for centuries, blending ideas from astronomy, mathematics, and metaphysics; the universe functions according to rational principles, connecting the structure of the universe to music, beauty and order through mathematical harmony.

“The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift, which we neither understand nor deserve.”……”The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious.” Eugene Wigner’s[i] “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences”  

In his 1960 essay, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” physicist Eugene Wigner wondered why mathematics is so successful in describing physical reality, even in areas when there is no obvious reason for it to apply so precisely. The unexpected effectiveness of mathematics to the natural sciences suggests something profound about the nature of the universe. Applicable in physics, astronomy, cosmology, chemistry, and even biology, this inexplicable precision of math to explain the workings of nature indicates that the universe is structured toward a mathematical order and contains a relationship somehow open to human cognition and suggests a metaphysical truth.

 In his book, “Is God a Mathematician,” [ii]Mario Livio reasoned that mathematics has a dual nature. Mathematical concepts are devised by humans (e.g. the development of the calculus or complex numbers), but because these concepts appear to describe the universe so accurately, he asked if we are discovering pre-existing truths? He speculated about a both/and understanding – both invention and discovery: humans devised mathematical language to communicate the ideas, but the uncanny applicability of these concepts to describe the universe suggests they tap into something deeper and fundamental about the universe itself.

Many books, articles, and essays followed to the present day[iii], and an ongoing debate ensued.  Is the language of advanced mathematics, beyond most of us, and the esoteric domain of brilliant knowledgeable physicists and mathematicians, the key to understanding and explaining the universe we observe? Is math a very clever invention of human beings or is the language of mathematics discovered as a deeper truth about how preexisting reality is ordered?

When (and if) we move into a next level of understanding, will the universe be understood in a “theory of everything” that can only be described mathematically in arcane terms, unserviceable to the intuitive natural understanding of almost all of us, including me?

Is math a genius language humans invented to communicate a sublime reality we have yet to discover fully?

“Music’, said Arkady, ‘is a memory bank for finding one’s way about the world.”  Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines

In Bruce Chatwin’s gifted hybrid non-fiction novel,” The Songlines”, he chronicles what he discovered during his time with a Russian friend and the aboriginal people in the trackless outback of Australia. He learned to sing the songs they have used for centuries that create a map of their environment they can navigate. But “Songlines” are more than that.

Aboriginal people of Australia use these songs to map their environment and navigate vast landscapes, however “Songlines” or “dreaming tracks,” are also infused with the aboriginal spirituality. Their myths teach that the land was sung into existence by ancestral beings during the Dreamtime. We were all sung into being, what a marvelous image!

 Each song corresponds to a specific journey taken by one of these ancestors, describing the geographical features, flora, fauna, and waterholes along the way. By singing the song, an aboriginal person walks the land spiritually and historically as well, retracing the steps of their ancestors. The song encodes and preserves vital information about the landscape that allows the singer to find their way across otherwise featureless terrain.

The land is not only a physical place; it’s alive with history, legend, and meaning. A “Songline” connects the singer to the land, the people, and their ancestral history. As Chatwin presents it, the songs are more than maps—they are a way of experiencing and interacting with the world, where the act of singing creates a profound connection to the earth and its stories.

Just as Pythagoras understood in ancient Greece, music is imbued mysteriously with the innermost workings of the universe; he could describe music with math for pitch, harmony, rhythmic patterns, and tempo. And as the aboriginal people understand, music connects us to our universe with innate, mysterious, intuitive bonds that open wide mind, imagination, spirit, and soul.

~NASA Hubble Galaxy 240 light years awayMusic, too like math, is a wonderous alchemy of human cognition and the universe. In a sense, the universe only exists because someone is there to perceive it. Human creativity and genius took the stuff of the universe – wood, metal, reeds, strings, felt hammers, and more – fashioned and refined and tuned a vast diversity of instruments which enhanced and added complexity to the marvel of human voice and created sound images that reflect our universe with inexhaustible variety.

As we wonder how the abstractions of math are a profound bridge between the capabilities of the human spirit and the nature of this miracle of a universe we inhabit, may we ask the same question about music? Is music invented or discovered? Is there some magical mixture made possible by the nature of the universe and the nature of the human being perceiving and imagining it, who then communicates in astonishing ways? And does music itself describe the universe in mysterious ways that we intuit, but struggle to articulate?

Is music a genius language humans invented to communicate a sublime reality we have yet to discover fully?

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”  Friedrich Neitzche

One regular Wednesday in 1273 Naples, a priest was saying his customary daily Mass. However, he was not only a priest, although that was central to all he thought and did.[iv] Thomas Aquinas has been called the ‘bridge between antiquity and modernity’ who integrated the wisdom of ancient philosophy with Christianity, arguably the preeminent mind of the 13th century, and one of the greatest minds in history. His unfinished Summa Theologiae alone would have secured his place in Western history, but he wrote many volumes more. He read widely and studied the Church fathers, Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers, Jewish rabbinic writers like Maimonides, and Islamic scholars like Averroes. His works are considered formational to Western civilization and of surpassing clarity and beauty.

He is renowned for his practice of stating the position of his interlocutors most coherently; Thomas answered after summarizing an opposing argument in its strongest terms and reasoning, oftentimes better than proponents articulated their ideas. [v]Aquinas’s works and methods are studied carefully and marveled at seven hundred years later concerning a wide range of topics including the existence of God, the nature of faith, and natural law as an objective foundation for morality. His brilliance on these inquiries and many other topics is unequaled to this day.

That Wednesday, however, as he sometimes became awed during the Consecration of the Blessed Sacrament and unique presence of God, St. Thomas Aquinas was moved to tears and struck dumb for a considerable time with a mystical vision. At the conclusion of Mass that day, he was asked by his secretary Reginald if he was going to return to his writing in the afternoon as was his custom. “No,” he replied. “All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me,” Thomas said.

He never wrote another word and died a few months later, perfectly at peace. Many have speculated on his vision that day. Was it Jesus Himself speaking? Some have said it was a beatific vision of heaven.

Thomas loved music as an expression of worship and his love of God[vi]. I like to think his vision was heard as well as seen. Perhaps it was a music that conveyed the Beatific Vision and a mystical full comprehension of Creation and God. We will never know, but my hope and whimsical belief is that such a vision entailed music. Whether Gregorian chant or Bach or Beethoven or Chopin or Coldplay or Coltrain or more likely something beyond our imagination will never be known this side of the eschaton, but I happily imagine beautiful music, music that conveys perfect joy, hope, peace, understanding, and Love without any lack or further longing.

“Give thanks to the LORD on the harp;

with the ten stringed lyre chant his praises.

Sing to him a new song;

pluck the strings skillfully, with shouts of gladness.”

Psalm 33: 2-3

Vincent_van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_ProjectThe human person has a curious capacity for wonder. The universe is filled with persistent, unexplainable beauty, but why are we capable of noticing and being awestruck by this chain of astonishment? Chaotic, yet ordered; incomprehensible, yet intelligible, we seem to be created, our brains seemingly wired to appreciate it all. How marvelous is our capacity to wonder and to be in wonder. To be amazed and deeply longing simultaneously for a fulfillment unknown. Why is this so?

We are often overwhelmed with loud modern discordant cacophony, but we hear best in silence. The small quiet voice Eijah heard in the cave, God not in fire or earthquake or wind, but a “light, silent sound.”[vii]

Silence, but not complete silence. A whisper. Pythagoras’s “Music of the Spheres” – omnipresent, but unheard until we do hear it, and it has nothing to do with natural acuity of hearing. The beatific vision of complete and sudden insight that is perhaps what Thomas Aquinas heard – peace and joy with all made clear through a new music previously unimagined, but immediately recognized, discovered, as if we had been expecting that ineffable beauty all our lives.  [viii]

Why when we in hope discover this music in which we answer all our questions, have we been expecting this Music of the Spheres all our lives – this Beatific Vision heard best as a whisper in silence, a vision, a moment that changes everything? Robert Cardinal Sarah in his book ‘The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise” suggests that we will find and hear this vision into the infinite because we are created Imago Dei – In the Image of God. Thus, this expectation found in silence that is not quite silent is in the human heart from its creation. “I am speaking…about an interior state. It is not enough to be quiet either. It is necessary to become silence. For, even before the desert, the solitude, and the silence, God is already in man. The true desert is within us, in our soul….The Father waits for his children in their own hearts.” [ix]

So, dear readers, this music, this vision found in silence is within each of our hearts, waiting to be discovered. I wish us all fair winds and following seas as we set sail to find it, and we don’t have to leave our homes for the journey.

“At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.”  1 Corinthians 13:12

[i] The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

[ii] “Is God a Mathematician?” Mario Livio, Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2009

[iii] Full disclosure. A quick survey, all beyond my math and physics knowledge. If you are curious, here are a few more:

Roger Penrose’s “The Road to Reality” (2004): Penrose, a renowned physicist and mathematician, explores the deep connection between mathematics and the physical universe. He discusses how mathematics seems to have a unique status in physics, suggesting that mathematical truths exist in a Platonic realm of reality and that the physical universe somehow “taps into” this realm. The book is over a thousand pages long with over 10,000 formulas to support his hypothesis. Good luck.

In his book “Our Mathematical Universe” (2014), cosmologist Max Tegmark proposes that the universe itself is mathematics. Is everything in the universe, including matter and consciousness, describable by mathematical structures? According to this view, the universe’s deep mathematical nature is not just a coincidence but a fundamental aspect of reality.

Carlo Rovelli’s “Reality is Not What It Seems” (2016): Rovelli, a theoretical physicist, explores quantum gravity and the nature of space and time. Rovelli touches on how our understanding of reality has increasingly become a question of mathematical description, especially in the context of quantum mechanics and general relativity.

[iv] St. Thomas Aquinas

[v] Unlike so much of what we read today as reasoned debate is trivial and merely mocking strawman positions not actually held by their proponents. Much as employed in what the new atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have written about God and their version of theology and faith. Thomas Aquinas stated the opposition better than they did and addressed the strongest arguments.

[vi] Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote five Eucharistic hymns, and four of them are included among the liturgical texts for the Feast of Corpus Christi.

[vii] Kings 19: 11-12

[viii][viii] All images are public domain: Harmony of the Spheres from Thomas Stanley’s “History of Philosophy” 1655;

NASA Hubble image of a galaxy 240 million light years away;

Starry Night Over the Rhone  (La Nuit étoilée) by Vincent van Gogh, 1888 [Musée d’Orsay, Paris]

[ix] “The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise,” Robert  Cardinal Sarah with Nicolas Diat, 2017, Ignatius Press

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May 12, 2024 · 5:59 pm

Selvage

“The final act of an unraveling society isn’t immoral behavior; it’s canonizing immoral behavior as a ‘new normal’ and celebrating it as a ‘moral victory.’” Jeff Iorg

Selvage is a beautiful word and a meaningful concept that denotes the edge of a web or cloth as finish to prevent it from unraveling. It is derived from Old English, “selfegge” and literally is ‘its own edge,’ derived from self plus edge. Woven from the thing itself. The edge of a lovely woven thing like a scarf or a bolt of good cloth or even a culture. Ours could use some selvage.

Weaver Cove Sunset 3A couple of weeks ago, the general became specific, as cultural changes will do. Rita and I travel seven minutes west to Burma Road and the Weaver Cove Boat Landing on Narragansett Bay often at sunset. A large dock extends out towards Prudence Island, and in the summer it’s busy with boats coming and going – dropping and picking up passengers from the many small craft that launch and return there. Several boats are moored offshore and kept there for the boating season from May to October.

For the rest of the year, the only folks are sunset lovers like us. On a good night, there can be a dozen of us, but many times we have it almost to ourselves. We can walk down a long rocky beach or eat a sandwich supper in the car or venture out on the dock if the winter wind off the bay isn’t trying to cut us in half.

Recently we walked back from the beach. A solitary figure was sitting with his legs dangling off the end of the dock. An old yellow motorcycle was leaning on its stand near the end of it. After a while he laid back looked at the clouds and listened to the fish jump with the evening’s quiet waves slapping gently against the piers. Rita, as she often does, felt a stirring of the spirit. She is much more attuned to such things than I am, a better listener to heavenly interruptions. When he finally gave up his revery, she headed down towards his bike. I followed her. She has sensitive antennae for folks who are hurting.

He politely returned her greeting and commented on the beautiful end of the day. He told us his name, but for this we will call him Jason. She told him how much we enjoyed this lovely spot on this lovely island and said he must too. Jason sighed.

Well, yes, he said, but tonight he came to remember his best friend who died exactly a year before from acute alcoholism before he was thirty.  This was his favorite spot. Had a boat. Ah. Then the gate opened to his heart, and it all poured out. Jason was twenty-nine. Three of his close friends were dead from alcohol and drugs. Another sigh. Then he said he was terribly lonesome. His “significant other” (I hate that phrase) had thrown him out of the apartment two nights before. Let’s call her Alison, although he told us her name.

They have four children together and were saving for a house. He missed her and the children with a deep longing. He sighed again. His dead friend’s brother, for reasons he didn’t understand, had waged a social media campaign of hatred against him with terrible calumnies and accusations that Alison believed. She had the car. He had the bike. She had the lease to the apartment. He had the bike. His paycheck was directly deposited into an account she had barred him from, but he was not overly dismayed because the kids needed to eat. He had a few bucks in cash. We offered him a place to stay for a few nights and some food. He said he was good to go and staying temporarily on another friend’s couch. Jason had pulled into the landing dirt parking lot by the dock to think about things on his way home from work.

He wanted things to go back to what they were a few weeks before. Just wanted to go to work, do his job and come home to his kids. Play with them. Hold them. Read to them. Goof with them. Stopped talking. Stared off over the bay.

Rita told him he was loved by God and that if he trusted in Jesus, he would find his way through this back to the truth of his life and his family. I joined in with a few things about how this would pass. His life was not defined by the last few weeks. That the Creator of all this beauty of the bay knew him and his pain.  Rita and I had been married fifty-seven years with good times and bad; we would pray that things would work out for them. He listened with great attentiveness. Got quiet. He told us he had to go get something to eat and get some sleep. If he could sleep. He reminded us of us at his age when we were going through our worst troubles in Maine.[i] Bewildered at the sudden turn of his life. Confused. Broken hearted. Anxious. Miserable. Lost.  

We all lingered for a minute or so. I asked him about his bike. He said it ran great so long as he could get it going. We started to go back to our car.

He headed to his motorcycle, hesitated, then he turned back towards us. Looked like there was something left to be said-something unfinished. Hesitated. Now shy, he asked if we would hug him. Of course. Rita hugged him with her motherly warm embrace. I hugged him. He clung to me like I was his father.

He thanked us, and after a brief struggle with his kick starter and choke Jason tinkered his motorcycle back to life and headed off south on the Burma Road after he emerged from the parking lot. Rita and I stood together holding hands and watched him go until the sound faded. We pray for Jason, Alison, and their children each day since. We look for him when we go to Weaver Cove, but so far, we haven’t seen him. May never see him again. Hope we do, but sometimes that’s how these things go. We pray together for Jason and Alison and their children everyday now.

“If I needed you, would you come to me,

Would you come to me for to ease my pain?

 If you needed me, I would come to you.

I would swim the seas, for to ease your pain.”  “If I Needed You,” [ii]   Townes Van Zandt

The many articles and podcasts on the unprecedented epidemic of loneliness, depression, anxiety, and brokenness in our culture, especially among the young, are commonplace. Screen time, social media replacing personal relationships with a majority of kids living in single family or recombined families, the failure to commit phenomenon, low marriage rate, critically low birth rate, and COVID isolation are all frequently mentioned as possible causes. I have written in this blog about the many with an unfulfilled capacity for God. All topics unto themselves for books, never mind blog posts.[iii]  The solution is one person at a time, and it is spiritual.  I’ll retell an old joke that may fit the topic:

A believer who perhaps misunderstood how these things most often work was convinced that God would intervene miraculously and save him from the rising river in a hundred-year flood. A rescue vehicle pulled into his driveway and offered the man a ride to safety. “No! God will save me.”  The river rose, and he fled to the second story. A rescue dory rowed against the fierce current to his window, and the firefighter told him to jump in. “No! God will save me.” He fled to his roof. A last-ditch paramedic helicopter hovered over him, and the rescue crew lowered a basket to him. “No. God will save me.” Finally, the river swept the house away and broke it up. He drowned within minutes. Arriving in front of God, he started complaining angrily, loudly, and bitterly. “You failed to rescue me, God; how could you desert me to perish in that flood?”  “My son, you missed the outpouring of my grace; I sent you a truck, a boat, and a helicopter.”

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”  Psalm 34:18

We heard a moving talk recently from Amy Ford, the founder of Embrace Grace, a nationwide nonprofit that helps equip churches to help single moms and families. She talked about her times of hearing such “heavenly interruptions.” Some would call them invitations of the Spirit. Listening. Being attuned to that gentle whisper, gentle whispers which inspire us to do “small acts of kindness with great love,” as St. Mother Teresa would say.

I tremble at how many whispers I must have missed[iv] and am grateful for those I have managed to respond to. They come every day, perhaps many times a day. A kind word. Just an acknowledgement that another person exists and has struggles. Opportunities to love. Opportunities to be loved.

Just as selvage is the weaving together of the many threads of a cloth to make it strong, so our culture is made strong one thread at a time, one life at a time, one person at a time. By all of us. By me. By you.

“The ultimate test of your greatness is how you treat every human being.” Pope St. John Paul

 

[i] A summary of our struggles at twenty-nine and the fork in the road. https://quovadisblog.net/2012/05/28/maine-tales-iv-the-road-not-taken/

[ii] “If I Needed You” Don Williams and Emmy Lou Harris cover

[iii] Here is one article in Atlantic: “Loneliness, Solitude and the Pandemic”.  There are many others. An excellent podcast on the lonely culture with Dr. Matthew P and Bishop Robert Barron.

[iv] I am rereading some of Flannery O’Connor’s wonderful, dark, and richly symbolic stories which remind me of the subtle invitations to grace that are often missed by her characters. We all miss occasional invitations to grace. Heavenly interruptions.

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April 28, 2024 · 7:38 pm

Witnesses

Every year 105,000 Christians are killed because of their faith. This shocking figure was disclosed by Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne, representative of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) on Combating Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians, at the “International Conference on Inter-religious dialogue between Christians, Jews and Muslims,” (Conference as reported on this site in 2011, Catholic Culture.org)

[i]When we think of martyrs[ii] for their Christian faith, what often first comes to mind are ancient artifacts and stories, some legend, most rooted in fact. The Roman catacombs. Exposed to live beasts in the Colosseum for the entertainment of the gladiator bread and circus spectators, like all addicts needing more and more of their malformed pleasures of gore and the suffering of others to achieve new highs. We think of the original apostles; all but Judas Iscariot who committed suicide and John who died of extreme old age in exile on Patmos. The rest were murdered for their faith, refusing to deny Jesus, a refusal unto their own death.

Beheaded, crucified, burned alive, skinned alive, ran through with a sword, sawn in half. Being an original apostle of Jesus was no sinecure. They died because they had seen something that utterly transformed them and gave them absolute confidence that something was greater than death. Not for riches, not for power or conquest, certainly not for pleasure or praise, but to spread the Good News that echoes down the centuries: Jesus Christ of Nazareth died and then arose from the dead; they gave up everything we tell ourselves is necessary for happiness and died in beatitudo[iii].

What we don’t often think about is that more Christian martyrs were murdered in the last century than in all the previous centuries since Jesus walked in Jerusalem, about forty-five million of them. This does not include those murdered by tyranny who happened to be Christian, only those who specifically died for their faith. From Auschwitz to the Gulag, the Cultural Revolution of Mao and the Marxist revolution in Mexico to the ongoing butchery of radical Islam such as Boko Haram[iv] in Nigeria. From Father Maximillian Kolbe and Edith Stein (Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)[v] to Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro in the Catholic persecution of La Cristiada during the Marxist Mexican revolution and the courageous Cristero resistance to the atheist repressors, what Graham Greene called the “the fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth.”[vi]

“¡Viva, Cristo Rey!”

“But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together upon him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him; and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.” Acts 7:57-60, RSV (In a previous verse describing Stephen, his face was described as that of an angel.)

Stella, Jacques, 1596-1657; The Martyrdom of St Stephen

Stella, Jacques; The Martyrdom of St Stephen

In our secular culture of a sort of loosely defined neo Pelagianism, all dogs go to heaven. If most think about God at all, our god is a remote clockmaker who maybe set things in motion millions of years ago but has little or nothing to do with our day-to-day life or how we live it. The qualifier is just being a generally nice person, which is an embarrassingly low bar. Maybe you need to love pets and be pleasant at the coffee shop. The prevalent worldview about these things in young people has been called “Moral Therapeutic Deism,” the central point of which is that the goal of human existence is to feel good about oneself and be happy. Surely a flimsy and ill-defined structure and not one for which self-sacrifice, especially sacrifice of one’s life for a relationship with God makes any sense at all.

Faith like that is not a set of moral principles. Nor a philosophy. Nor just ritual, habit, and lifestyle. No, faith like that is a deep relationship of trust with a Person. An irreplaceable friendship worth dying for. As St. Thomas Aquinas famously stated, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

Not ancient history, but contemporary and ongoing, the witnesses of great devotion and love are an ongoing miracle. What prompted this post were two stories a visiting Columban missionary priest told us at daily Mass the week before last on the memorial of St. Stephen, who was murdered with large stones. All Stephen had to do was deny the truth of what he knew about Jesus, and all would be forgiven. He chose to suffer an excruciating death before making such a denial. Why would he ever do that?

Our celebrant telling the stories served many years in missions including seven in Juarez, Mexico on the border with El Paso, Texas. While there, he taught and pastored three young men in his confirmation class. One was discerning a vocation to the priesthood. Our meanest poverty here does not approach what afflicts the poor in Juarez. These young men scratched out an income as best they could. One source of cash was helping those trying to make it across to El Paso. Before we start in on “illegal immigrants” and all the rest, these are desperate people trying to escape cruel government, no opportunities, and worried each night how they will feed their kids tomorrow. As we sip our morning coffee and make whatever breakfast pleases us, we may want to ponder for just a moment what it would be like to live in such circumstances and what we would or would not do to provide some measure of security for our loved ones.

Many of these unfortunates are then further exploited by the ‘coyotes’ who traffic human beings. If they are young and female (or sometimes male), after they pay their rapacious fees, they can be trapped into the sex trade, addicted, and ruined. The three young men charged much less and got them safely over the border. However, the coyotes worked for the cartels (one of two in Juarez at the time). With cash flow that rivaled large corporations, the people trade netted as much as the drugs that were their original main product. Brutal and better armed than the police, even the gendarmes are afraid of them. These three young men had no chance at all. One evening, they were kidnapped, dragged into the desert, and stoned to death, their heads were smashed with large rocks. Again, and again, and again. Beyond recognition even with dental records. The cartel thugs then threw dead dogs on top of their corpses as their warning to any who dared to defy them, no matter how insignificant their small piece of the action was.

Called out by the bereaved families the next morning, our visiting priest went out and helped recover the corpses. He remembers carefully scraping the rocks for brain, flesh, and blood, retaining as much of the DNA as possible because it belonged to human beings created in Imago Dei and must be given reverence and be buried with them. Each year on the memorial of the stoned to death St. Stephan, he remembers his three young men. Perhaps they don’t belong in the long list of classic Christian martyrs who died for their faith, but neither were they coyote predators; they had empathy and care for their clients, caring human beings of faith and hope.

The second story the missionary priest told us that morning fits the Christian martyr description more closely. A hundred miles south of Juarez in a diocese served mostly by Jesuit missionaries, Pedro Palma, a sixty-year-old tour guide, similarly crossed paths with the Sinaloa cartel for reasons that may never be known. He was shot several times on the street in front of the church in the village of Cerocahui. He managed to stagger inside crying out for sanctuary, a centuries old tradition of protection. Sanctuary and haven ignored by the gunmen; they rushed in after him and finding him halfway up the center aisle, shot him several more times. With the last of his strength, he dragged himself to the altar and died.

Two elderly Jesuit priests who had retired to live at the church rushed to his aide. Father Joaquin Mora, 78, and Father Javier Campos, 80, were murdered alongside him. Helpers? Yes. Doing what priests do? Yes. But ultimately, they were what the gunman perceived them to be, and rightly so. Witnesses.

***************************************************************************************

Would I have such faith and confidence in my faith in Christ? I pray that I would if called to. Jesus, I trust in You.

One last witness in this post: Charles de Foucauld. As a young man he gained some fame as an explorer and author. Later he experienced as many still do, a new understanding, a conversion, a metanoia change of mind. “He lost his faith as an adolescent. His taste for easy living was well known to all and yet he showed that he could be strong willed and constant in difficult situations. He undertook a risky exploration of Morocco (1883-1884). Seeing the way Muslims expressed their faith questioned him and he began repeating, “My God, if you exist, let me come to know you.” [vii] And so God answered that prayer, and Charles discovered a new life worth living.

Later, Foucauld became a Trappist, then a priest, and worked the rest of his life among the Muslims telling them about the Gospel, the Good News. Charles was murdered by an Islamist gang of assassins in 1916 who clearly didn’t want what he was offering. He wrote many things, including this prayer that explains what becomes the deepest core conviction of all witnesses. One worth dying for.

“Father,

I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you.

I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures.

I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul; I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,

for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands, without reserve, and with

boundless confidence, for you are my Father.” Charles de Foucauld

[i] Main image from UK Art and the Fitzwilliam Museum. The Martyrdom of St. Stephen, Jacques Stella. https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-martyrdom-of-st-stephen-5568

[ii] “Martyr” is from the ancient Greek matur, and then liturgical Latin, meaning “witness.” The final and ultimate statement of faith as a witness.

[iii] Great peace and joy.

[iv] “Boko Haram, which aims to expel Western influence and create a Salafi-Islamist state in its area of operations, has killed an estimated 50,000 people and displaced more than 2.5 million people since it was established in 2002.”

[v] St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, ne Edith Stein, a Catholic convert and renowned philosopher prior to the war was murdered at Auschwitz for her faith. As was St. Maximillian Kolbe, a Franciscan friar and Polish priest imprisoned for speaking out against the Nazis and while there volunteered to die in place of a married man with children who had been selected to be killed. The man he replaced eventually survived the camps.

[vi] https://www.usccb.org/committees/religious-liberty/viva-cristo-rey

[vii] https://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20051113_de-foucauld_en.html

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February 11, 2024 · 6:21 pm

Big Waves Break Twice

“And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?” as spoken by St. Thomas More, “Man for All Seasons,” Robert Bolt

Sachuest Beach Surfers endRita and I will often walk Sachuest Beach. Sometimes we sit at Surfer End and pray or watch the surfers or the waves on a smaller wave day. We have been transfixed watching them build with the wind far out into the bay. As they approach the shore, the larger ones will break twice: once about fifty feet out and a second time when gravity again overcomes momentum and the top curls over very near shore.

Thousands of gallons cascade over suddenly with a noticeable thump that can be heard and felt up on the seawall. Why anyone would ever bring a sound maker to a beach has always been a mystery to me. Just the waves please. Breaking. Breaking. For a million years.

Recently the big ones breaking twice set me thinking about Brown v Board of Education and the more recent Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision. Both were big waves that broke twice.

“To separate children from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” Chief Justice Earl Warren about Brown v Board of Education

In 1954 Brown v Board of Education overturned Plessy v Ferguson in 1896 that enforced separate but equal segregation, zealously guarded practices mostly in the South. For fifty-eight years, segregation held sway. Separate facilities for black folks: lunch counters, bus seats, restrooms, hotel accommodations, sports teams, and most damningly, schools.

In Plessy, the Court held that “separate but equal” satisfied the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment. But “separate but equal” was separate only.  Equal was a far piece off. In Brown, justice finally prevailed.

A quick and just overturning of a gravely mistaken Supreme Court decision half a century ago, and all was set right overnight. Not exactly. The wave breaks twice. Those of us of an age will never forget the interim.

For the next decade or more, the battle raged with the Federal government stepping in many times to enforce integrated facilities when the various states refused to comply. Democrats pushed hard back for many years to sustain the old “Jim Crow” laws that stifled opportunities for minorities. Opportunities to ride at the front of the bus, opportunities to drink from the same water fountain, opportunities to eat at the same counter in the cafeteria or restaurant, opportunities to an equal education in the same school or college as white kids. Blood was shed. Dr. Martin Luther King and others were shot, hung, burned, and martyred to the cause of equality of rights and opportunity. “We Shall Overcome” was sung by Joan Baez on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and on the march to Selma, Alabama with Dr. King and became an anthem most of us knew well. The “I Have a Dream” speech on the Lincoln Memorial steps in 1963 can still bring chills almost another sixty years later.

The wave breaks twice, and it’s a brutal turmoil under the swelling surface.

“Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided. We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision…” Majority opinion in Dobbs v Jackson

As it was with Plessy, so it is with Roe. A gravely flawed decision from nearly fifty years before was justly undone. The second break is building. The segregationists brought out the dogs. The abortion lobby and their political allies are hard at it now with different dogs. This time many states are passing laws and trying to protect those who have no voice, while the Feds are working for the abortion lobby. The Feds have largely ignored almost two hundred attacks on churches and crisis pregnancy centers from vandalism to fire-bombing since the preliminary Dobbs decision was illegally leaked to a complicit press.[i] Those praying and holding signs at abortion clinics have not been so lucky. For them, it’s been predawn arrests in front of their families by heavily armed Department of Justice and FBI storm troopers.[ii] The confusion, draconian policies, and rhetoric we read and see every day is the interim as it was in those fifteen years following Brown v Board of Education. For us, it’s just the beginning.

Perhaps at some future point, a case will be adjudicated about the personhood of the pre-born human being. The science of embryology is settled without exception about the human nature of the fetus with her unique and complete genome. The sticking point is ideological and philosophical, not scientific. When does a developing human being gain the protection as persons under the law? When in the continuum of human development should the dividing line between life and extinction be drawn? Or do we simply ‘follow the science’ and protect innocent human life during its most vulnerable period from the start?

“The person—especially a woman—may be disillusioned by the fact that over time a man’s affection turns out to be only, so to speak, a cover for desire or even for an explicit will to use. Both a woman and a man may be disillusioned by the fact that the values attributed to the beloved person turn out to be fiction. Because of the dissonance between the ideal and the reality, affective love is sometimes not only extinguished but even transformed into affective hatred.” – Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility

The false binding of abortion to the freedom of women has made this discussion most knotty. Once the argument is framed as chattel or forced pregnancy, the humanity of the fetus is quickly pushed to the back of the bus.

What if we considered the discussion from the other side of the mirror, a changed vantage point? What if the sexual revolution has brought about a new type of enslavement for women? Perhaps if men were held accountable more explicitly for their participation in the baby making act, this deeper joint responsibility would allow the developing human to become once again hallowed and an invitation to nurturing, not destruction. Three generations of aggressive and irresponsible sperm donors have risen like specters from the sexual revolution. Women, rather than gaining freedom, are held primarily responsible for an unplanned pregnancy[iii]. The hook up culture assumes hooking up as an expectation, but if the baby making act makes a baby, well, the mom better take care of things because she blew the protection, right? And the kid is thrown into the soul blasted bargain.

Section 17 of Pope St Paul VI’s famous (or infamous according to your light) “Humanae Vitae” accurately foretold the predictable outcome of ubiquitous contraception as a proposed solution to this changed expectation, unprecedented in the history of our culture as a norm. “Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.”

One-night stands or a few weeks hook up became far too common, and the surrounding “with care and affection” often was a forgotten victim, along with the baby. Has this been a ‘freedom’ or an impoverishment for women? Does any woman, no matter how frightened and abandoned and alone, in her heart of hearts want to destroy the baby in her womb?

The momentum shift jerked the culture off its center of gravity, and the tilted axis left men, women, and developing babies profoundly undone.

“Love consists of a commitment which limits one’s freedom – it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one’s freedom on behalf of another. Limitation of one’s freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing. Freedom exists for the sake of love.” Karol Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility

[i] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/256390/2023-witnessed-continued-attacks-on-pro-life-pregnancy-centers-churches

[ii] https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/fbi-justice-department-twist-federal-law-arrest-charge-pro-life

[iii] After forty years of Rita and I involved in helping women in this predicament, the guy walking or threatening to walk if the woman becomes pregnant is commonplace. The expectation of the man to “do the right thing” is a quaint and naive anachronism.

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December 24, 2023 · 8:54 pm

Christmas Letter 2023

Creche.jpg

“Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th’encircling gloom,

Lead Thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home,

Lead Thou me on!

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.”

St. John Henry Newman

—– Psalm 46:10 Be still and know that I am God —–

Seems like we just sent one of these out, yet here we are a year later. We’ve recently returned from Thanksgiving with our most hospitable California daughter Meg, her much loved husband Marty, and our West Coast grandkids: sensitive and beautiful Adelaide (now 6!), the magic Charlotte (4), and Koufax the German Shepherd wonder dog who will fetch until our arms give out. Marty’s extended family, as always, made us feel welcome and loved. His brothers and sister with their children fill any house with joy and good conversation. His Mom, Gloria, as always, puts on an unmatched feast in a home full of laughter and love. And any unfortunate side effects are nothing a few weeks at the gym can’t remedy.

We missed this year’s Nutcracker at Stadium Theater for the first time ever with four of our amazing home-schooling daughter Angela’s kids dancing multiple roles and her also much-loved husband, Peter, recruited as one of the fathers in the opening Party Scene that always ushers in Christmas for us. Angela and Meg themselves danced in Nutcrackers in various roles for many years. The performance never ages and enchantment proceeds. Even their most active three-year-old Lil’ Pete, held almost in check by his mom, goes quiet when the curtain goes up. To experience such beauty, color, Tchaikovsky’s timeless music, and the soaring, graceful action as a three-year-old is a wonder we can only imagine and envy We’ll watch the DVD, but we will definitely be there next year with a rebuilt budget for multiple bouquets.

We had an atypical wet summer in paradise this past year, both during our stay on the lake in Weld, Maine, and on our local Aquidneck Island beaches, but that didn’t prevent us from much great family time, swimming in fresh stream fed water of Webb Lake and the healing salt water of Narragansett Bay. A few rounds of body surfing are always exhilarating, and it doesn’t matter if the air is full of water too. The rousing competition of board and card games on the porch overlooking the choppy waters of the lake helps when things get slow on a rainy afternoon. Papa sometimes cheats and always gets caught; justice is quickly and mercilessly administered by sharp-eyed granddaughters.

An even better cloudy day pastime is gratifying the architectural imagination of cousins playing together and creating a detailed construction project – not merely sandcastles, but whole villages and forts, populated with an eclectic unlikely menagerie from horses to a T-rex and a few Lego personalities in primary colors. Often, the steep sand walls are decorated along their elaborate crenellated palisades and towers with scavenged seaweed and stick flags, scallop or quahog shells, and an occasional gull eaten crab. Great anticipation and surprising patience are shown by the abovementioned three-year-old, standing poised and ready with a truck or excavator in hand. Finally, after a half hour of painstaking construction with numerous design challenges resolved by the committee, and secret tunnel entrances are carefully dug under the moat by his doting sisters, the grand citadel is declared ready. After a picture is taken to memorialize the marvel for perpetuity, they signal, “GO!” to the relatively giant one-man wrecking crew. Sometimes a video is taken of pure glee with delight shared as much by the architects and contractors as it is by the demo guy. Not a mole hill sized mound is left standing for the wind and tide to finish off.

So cloudy days do not diminish joy when the afternoon is lighted by glories of children playing.

Fall came, and the wet warm season sparks an autumn splendor more magnificent than the previous year after its summer of drought. The winter will soon be full upon us, but Christmas lights will fend off the darkness, the cold will be defeated by a good woodstove and a well-stocked woodshed, and much-loved music that never fails us will fill our churches, homes and hearts. And joy will not be diminished.

May God’s rich blessings pour down on you and yours with a most Merry Christmas and the new beginnings of 2024,

Love in Christ,

Jack and Rita

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November 20, 2023 · 9:41 am

Cuts and Fills

“The Road goes ever on and on

Out from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

Let others follow it who can!

Let them a journey new begin,

But I at last with weary feet

Will turn towards the lighted inn,

My evening-rest and sleep to meet.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Mississipi River BridgeWhile on a recent drive with a couple of granddaughters to their ballet class in the northern part of Rhode Island, we traveled on I-195, a tiny portion of the massive 47,000-mile-long Interstate Highway System. Originally conceived of by President Dwight Eisenhower, the same logistical mind that organized the triumphant Allied effort to destroy the Third Reich, it was enabled after he signed into law the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. The bill committed to pay ninety percent of the costs in each state for a webwork of fine roads with a minimum of four lanes, well defined dividers, and no grade level crossings allowed — a system of limited access, high speed highways tying together every major population center across the country. The interstate system was planned as well to permit rapid military deployments of huge quantities of hardware, personnel, and materials of war should that ever become necessary.[i]

As was also presumed, commercial and residential development was planted and cultivated along these roads, changing the landscape from farm and forest to housing, manufacturing sites, and ubiquitous strip malls for good or ill. But jobs followed, providing mobility, opportunity, and prosperity for millions.

For those of us who were around before these amazing roads were commonplace, they replaced the two and four lane roads like Route 1 and Route 66 that delivered the means for all road trips. They were comparatively slower and less safe for high-speed travel with multiple on-grade crossings requiring safety controls like stop signs, traffic lights, and backups. When 95 was almost completed through Masschusetts, I was a teenage driver. The wide, fast, impeccably paved highway with limited access was built, but not yet open, the temptation for many, including me, was not to be denied. One clear fall afternoon, we bypassed the barriers. I found a way on to the highway with an older friend who owned an early Jaguar XKE. The Jag was a money pit, but it could fly. With no police, no other cars on the road, and our youthful sense of invulnerability, we buried the speedometer at 140 miles per hour. Many others tried their luck, and I heard of no fatal errors. The lane divider lines were a blur at that speed.

 (Writing): “most of the time it’s more like cutting a highway through a mountain. You just have to keep working with your pick, chipping away at the rock, making slow progress.” Piers Anthony[ii]

As I ride now over these skillfully engineered and constructed roads, sometimes I’ll remember some of the site engineering I studied as part of my forestry course work. After extensive surveying for the proposed paths of these wonders, the data was worked hard (mostly by hand on paper or calculator in the fifties and sixties). Then came the exacting tedious slog designing the bridges over and under the proposed highway with sufficient clearances, planning the exits and entrances with drivable curves, and plotting to level within acceptable tolerances the slopes to maximize fuel efficiency up and down elevation changes of thousands of feet.

One critical calculation was the necessary cuts and the fills. Over thousands of miles over every terrain imaginable, the planners considered every soil type that must be utilized or discarded or blasted or scooped up and moved with tens of thousands of pieces of equipment and construction workers. Optimizing millions of cubic feet of earth to be moved is a gargantuan calculating challenge. Perfect optimizing to control construction costs aimed for the dirt dug out (cuts) to balance with the dirt required to raise the elevation of the road where it needs to be raised (fills).

When we traverse a raised section of the road and look down into a pastoral valley, or when we cut through a defile between fifty foot high solid New England granite vertical cuts towering on both sides, every drilled hole and blasted face was sheared off and hauled elsewhere. When we pass under or over a bridge every place the highway intersects a river, a marsh, a crossing road large or small that local people need to keep their communities together, we seldom note that someone surveyed, calculated, and designed it. Others blasted, dug, welded, compacted, carefully poured concrete to exacting standards. Every mile is a triumph of engineering, persistence, and dedication.

We blow by at seventy miles per hour heedless, listening to our tunes and podcasts, chatting with our companions, our minds wandering with the tedium of a long drive.

It occurred to me there are metaphors lying in these cuts and fills.

“A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.” Alexander the Great[iii]

Alexander of Macedonia changed the world, paved the way for the later Roman Empire, and established his dominance over a vast territory from Macedonia to Egypt and from Greece to India. He was a brutal, sometimes cruel, and brilliant general and leader of soldiers. He was a gifted orator and well educated in Greek philosophy.  He died after a hard bout of drinking led to a catastrophic health collapse at the age of 33. Alexander was complicated.

sculpture-of-alexander-the-great-as-helios,2140542Our pastor told a story last week I had never heard. As he lay dying, Alexander called together his closest advisors and generals. He commanded three things concerning his funeral arrangements. No matter how odd the instructions were, no sensible person would disobey a command from Alexander, even a posthumous dictate. He demanded that his casket be carried to his burial place by one person alone, his physician. The path to his burial place was to be strewn with all the coins and jewels in his possession. Since he was an acquisitive conqueror, there were a lot of coins and jewels. And finally, as his body was carried, his dead arms were to hang down from the sides of the casket with open and empty hands. These instructions of despair and final failure were despite his seeming great success acquiring every possible human honor.

What can be made of this bizarre story? His physician, who was presumably one of the most able in the whole empire, could not preserve his life. We are all destined for the grave. The wealth that he had so aggressively and successfully amassed was so much detritus, good only for pavement to the dead Alexander. His hands, empty and open at his birth, would be empty and open upon his death. As many have written, including in the Bible. We bring nothing into this life and take nothing away from it.

“So walk on air against your better judgement.” On the tombstone of Seamus Heaney from his poem “The Gravel Walks.”

Getting back to our cuts and fills. Surely, if there is any meaning and purpose to it, the question is where does the road we build over our lifetime lead? What is its meaning and purpose? And how are we harmonizing our daily lives to that purpose and meaning? What cuts and fills need to be made in our lives to build our road once we identify the destination? What needs to be added, and what needs to be cut away? How painstaking is our survey and analysis? How well is our highway mapped out and the way to build it understood?

What is primary and central in my life? What do I worship? i.e. Honestly and without self-deception, what is of highest worth or most valuable [iv]to me? Do I desire ardently a deep relationship with the Creator of the universe or make do with some inferior creature which can never satisfy? All our false gods are addictions, which can never satisfy and demand ever more feeding to achieve the same level of temporary satiation.

He knocks on the door, that is what He does, the Hound of Heaven. Do I swing it wide open and invite Him in? Or is the door blocked with the clutter of my life slowly accumulated since my youngest days? How frantically have I avoided the quiet time necessary to comprehend the meaning of my life?[v] “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him.”[vi]

Is the addiction most central to my life the praise and honor of others? Must I measure myself by pleasing others, counting “likes?” Do I need to cut that deeply out and fill the hole with genuine humility?

Is what most important to me my own pleasure, my entertainments, and distractions, satiating my needs, emotional, physical? Do I need to cut that deeply out and practice a lifestyle more ascetic, less focused on my own wants and given over to serving others, to seeing others with the eyes of Christ and responding to the necessities they lack, and I take for granted?

Is the hidden focus of my life power, the ability to control my immediate environment and people with manipulation? Do I expect deference from those with whom I share my life? Do I need to cut that deeply out and live to identify and obey the will of my Father?

Is what is most dear to my heart an ephemeral wealth of expensive trivialities and trinkets that will be scattered on the path to my grave, the accumulation of an imaginary security that cannot possibly last or satisfy. Do I need to transform my heart and to live more simply in gratitude because everything I have is a gift, including even my life? As St. Ambrose said more than a thousand years ago, if you have two coats, one of them is yours, the other belongs to the man who has none.

Unexpected roadblocks and pitfalls will inevitably befall us, but most importantly is our road aimed at the right destination?

“He will provide the way and the means, such as you could never have imagined. Leave it all to Him, let go of yourself, lose yourself on the Cross, and you will find yourself entirely.” St. Catherine of Siena

One of the great errors of our times is a sort of spiritual inversion. At best we think that seeking God is on us, our ascent, on us and the quest we are most comfortable with: we fantasize that we control it. No, we don’t. We can’t. And most tragically, we don’t need to.

There are several parallel metaphors in this post. The first is the Master Excavator and road builder Who will make the right cuts and fills if I only ask, grit my teeth, and try hard enough. The second is the Hound of Heaven Who is the pursuer, and the One knocking at our door. He never breaks down the door, but persists and persists and persists, never giving up on us. That is the master point of this mixed metaphor post: our most egregious mistake is to assume that it is we who must fill the gap and climb the hill and forge our way to a union with God. We control the process. We cannot possibly attain the mountain top with our own efforts, but quest’s goal comes to us if we only open ourselves to His tender mercy.

One short story to exemplify what we’ve been exploring.

Occasionally over the years we have had the great blessing of carrying the Eucharist to someone homebound, including each other when one of us was down for the count.

Last week in doing that I met a man in dire circumstances.  My new friend’s hair was white, thin, and disheveled, but clean; a barber had not visited him in his recent past. His health was imperiled, and his skin was gray. He could barely walk due to neuropathy. When I knocked, he called out a welcome, asked me to come in, and visibly struggled to sit up.

 He lived just over the line from abject poverty and slept on a tattered sofa in a mobile home with crumpled blankets.  The air was foul with cigarette smoke permeated in every piece of furniture and clothing, his refrigerator had no doors, just a small camper style fridge propped on a small platform kept what little food he had from rotting. An old cat wandered about freely and evidence of its incontinence was spotted across the faded rugs.

He was welcoming, looked me in the eye, knew all the prayers, and was eager and grateful to have the Blessed Sacrament. He couldn’t stream Mass from our parish for there was no television or computer.  There was a worn unframed picture of Jesus taped up on his wall.

A homeless guy he had taken in was sleeping in his bedroom, the only other room in the home. Do I have a homeless guy sleeping in my house? Have I taken in someone who needs shelter? He has. With very limited resources and declining health, he shares what he has. It is his habit.[vii]

When I pronounced my part of the prayers and held out the Blessed Sacrament to him, he stared intently at it, leaning forward to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus. He yearned. Do I yearn with such gratitude and desire for the Miracle and the Mystery?  Or do I heedlessly line up for the miracle at every Mass, a Mystery not fully acknowledged or appreciated? Do I understand in my core that the God/Man invites me to be that intimate with Him? To take Him literally within me. I think my new friend who also takes in the most destitute among us does so appreciate and so acknowledge. “Behold the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.” 

“Lord, I am not worthy to receive You, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.”

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” Revelation 3:20 (New American Standard Bible)

[i] The main arteries are numbered in the fives for roads running north and south and progress from west to east. Route 5 along the Pacific Coast, then 15, 25 etc. all the way to the road that was created through my hometown, Route 95. 95 runs parallel for the most part to the Atlantic Coast from Houlton, Maine to Miami, Florida. Truckers usually refer to them as The Five or The Ninety-Five. The roads spanning west to east are numbered from south to north, thus 10, 20, up to 90, which in my original state Massachusetts runs from Boston to the border of eastern upstate New York, passing through the Berkshires. It ends in Seattle, Washington, crosses the Mississippi River from Wisconsin to and the northern Rockies in Montana. The system uses a large number of bypasses near major cities. The main highway usually passes through, and the bypasses help move the traffic around the congestion. Near us is 195, 295, 395, and 495 which routes pass through traffic around Boston and Providence.

[ii] Piers Anthony is a much-published British fantasy and science fiction author. Created the fictional world of Xanth.

[iii] Alexander the Great conquered one of the largest empires in human history by the time he was 33. “One of the world’s greatest military generals, he created a vast empire that stretched from Macedonia to Egypt and from Greece to part of India. This allowed for Hellenistic culture to become widespread.” (from Encyclopedia Britannica.)

[iv] The etiology of “worship” is from Old English, where it originally conveyed the idea of something being worthy or valuable. What is my highest value and aspiration?

[v] ChatGPT seconded my most faulty memory when I asked it to confirm a fragment that haunts me: Here is its summary: “Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher, wrote in his “Pensées” (Thoughts) that the worst problem of modernity is the inability of people to sit quietly for an hour by themselves in a room. In one of his famous passages, known as the “Pascal’s Wager,” he reflects on the restlessness and distractions that prevent individuals from contemplating deeper matters. Here is a paraphrase of the relevant passage: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Pascal was expressing concern about the constant distractions and noise that prevent people from engaging in introspection and contemplation, which he considered essential for understanding deeper truths and finding meaning in life.”

[vi] I once memorized as part of an English Literature class with a brilliant Jesuit scholar at Boston College Francis Thompson’s classic “Hound of Heaven.” I could have saved myself a lot of pain and hurt for myself and others if I had listened to it more attentively.

[vii] Deacon John in our current parish held a training session for us and a few others just beginning to serve here. It was a retraining for us as we had been trained in past parishes. His was the best yet, inculcating into us the profound gift and responsibility of acting as the hands and feet of Jesus for others. He said, “Never forget, you are Christ, bringing Christ, to Christ!” Just so. When I told him about how it went when I went to the home of the man I described above, Deacon John said that he believes if we get to Heaven, we will be joyful to wash the feet of guys like him. Score two for Deacon John. Just so.

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October 6, 2023 · 12:19 pm

Church Guns

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” (Mr.) Fred Rogers

When we lived in Farmington, Maine, happily we were parishioners in the wood framed, off the main street, St. Joseph Church. Sunday after Mass, we often helped with a coffee and snacks gathering in the basement church hall across the street. As well as a venue for parishioners to share stories and freshen friendships, newcomers could meet the regulars and ask questions about the parish, the town, and be welcomed into friendly fellowship. Everything from where the town dump was and good sources for the best local plumbers and electricians as they made unwelcome discoveries about their new house to how many children do you have and where do you work.

For the kids, though, there were different priorities that took over right after the weekly cookie and donut raid. Our son, Gabe, and his two platoon members, Jason, and Paul, all about ten years old, immediately went looking for the toy bin under the stairs for their weekly games, then having secured what they needed, bolted outside to get sweaty and dirty for the ride home. If we were lucky, their church clothes survived for another week with just a little stain remover. One late summer Sunday morning, we were conversing with two folks new to Franklin County, both of whom had moved to town to teach at the Farmington campus of the University of Maine.

The conversation, as conversations with new acquaintances of an academic bent sometimes go until we get to know one another, was a bit formal with some careful probes to establish the guidelines and borders. It was quite clear quite early that our newly welcomed folks were unlikely to be National Rifle Association members or deer hunters. Having never lived in a rural area or in truth very far away from an academic enclave, they carefully shared some concerns about the local folks who weren’t members of the university.  Did they hunt? Did they wander around unsupervised and armed on to other people’s land?

I was trying to reassure them that most hunters I knew were respectful of other people’s property, responsible, careful, and skilled. The native-born Maine residents that we had come to know, trust, and love could be counted on for affable conversation, a devastating creative dry wit, advice both practical and theoretical, and in an emergency, they were self-sufficient, resolute, calm, and completely reliable. They just needed some venison in their freezer. Deer, as well as pastoral, beautiful, fast, doe eyed, and all the rest of Bambi lore, were ambulant meat after all. Since the predators were mostly gone, if the herd was not controlled, the deer would first strip the young trees of any bark they could reach and then starve in the winter. Our conversation partners discreetly exchanged skeptical looks. Maybe deer birth control would be a better method? Condoms were a problem, I suggested. The bucks hated them and could not be trusted to use them consistently. Doe were notorious for forgetting to take their pill. But I digress.

Suddenly, as enthusiastic boys are inclined to do, Gabe, Jason and Paul burst into the conversation with an urgent and deadly serious interruption. “Dad, Dad, the door to the closet is locked!  We need the church guns!”

I think our new friends returned the next week, but my memory is fuzzy after so many years.

“The Pope? How many divisions does he have?”   Joseph Stalin

Iosif_Stalin

The Russian tyrant and “Man of Steel” was right of course.[1] But more right was St. Pope John Paul II.[2] He knew the military might of the Soviet Union could not be resisted, but his battle could be waged by spiritual and cultural weapons. Karol Wojtyla understood that culture was the most dynamic force in world history, and it was there he and the Holy Spirit could prevail.

The man who would become pope and saint grew up in the most difficult of times. After the Warsaw Pact, his beloved Poland was invaded from the east and west and divided by agreement between two of history’s most ruthless tyrants: Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. After Hitler broke the agreement by invading Russia, Poland was brutally ruled by the Nazis. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were murdered, including twenty percent of its Catholic priests along with many of its writers, poets, artists, academics, and intellectuals. Both Nazis and Communists crushed any resistance by trying to destroy its culture. In the Eastern sector before Hitler broke his word, and not to be outdone, the notorious Russian secret police NKVD murdered 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia in the Katlyn woods — one at a time with a bullet in the back of the head in April and May of 1940.  However, the Polish culture was deeply embedded in the hearts of its people after a thousand years of Catholic thought, writings, art, theater, and poetry memorized as children. Obliterating it proved to be a thorny thicket for both the Reds and the Nazis.

Young Karol Wojtyla was part of a widespread secret resistance, but his part was non-violent. His group frequently held clandestine performances and readings of Polish literature, poetry, and plays to pass on tradition and help the strong Polish culture to endure. When the Church was harshly suppressed, he heard the call to the priesthood and secretly entered the underground seminary of Cardinal Sapieha. Father Wojtyla was ordained on the Feast of All Saints in 1946.

Towards the end of the war at the Malta Conference, the allies on the brink of defeating the Third Reich met to decide the fate of Eastern Europe. The Poles had no place at that table; they were divvied up like the garments of Jesus. To placate their former ally, Joseph Stalin, Great Britain, the United States, and other allies agreed that many of the former independent states like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, East Germany, and Estonia would remain under the domination of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) behind the Iron Curtain as Churchill explained.  Poland mourned that in World War II their beautiful country lost twice. One oppressive and murderous regime was replaced by another.

The Soviets destroyed churches and church schools, making them warehouses or vacant lots, persistently suppressing the authority of the Church. Many Catholic clergy were exiled to Siberia. The puppet government installed an Orwellian system of secret police, informers, and a formidable propaganda machine. Schools were taken over to indoctrinate the children into Communism starting in kindergarten. Soviets deliberately set up social and work structures to undermine family life with small mandatory apartments and staggered shifts to make family dinners less likely. The children ultimately belonged to the state. The Church and the family are where culture is sustained, and they were recognized as the greatest impediment to full implementation of the Communist Marxist ideology.

Throughout his early priesthood, Father Wojtyla organized young people, especially couples and through camping and ski trips into the Polish hills and canoeing on its rivers. Mass was celebrated on the altar of an overturned canoe. His focus from the start was to imbue and sustain Polish culture and most importantly its faith in the hearts of its people, always emphasizing the innate freedom and dignity of each individual person as created Imago Dei. He taught and discussed around the campfire that human rights were not conferred, nor could they be destroyed, by the state. He was regarded by the Communists as a thinker, not a doer, and was to some degree left alone as not dangerous to the regime, which allowed him without protest to become first an Auxiliary Bishop then Archbishop and Cardinal of Krakow. They permitted him to attend all the Vatican II meetings from 1962 to 1965, and he wrote the bulk of one of its most significant documents, Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope.)[3]

But the Communists soon learned of his resolve during the prolonged battle from 1967 to 1977 over Nowa Huta (New Steelworks)[4], their planned “worker’s paradise” and factory community outside of Warsaw. Communist planning omitted the construction of any church. No need for the old superstitions in the paradise of the worker. Archbishop Wojtyla fought for years to disabuse them of their illusions that such a thing could pass on his watch.

I remember the pictures of the Ark of the Lord Church in Life Magazine when it was finally built. Prior to its construction, Mass was celebrated in all weather in a large field with a resilient large steel cross dug into the earth from the very beginning of the “worker’s paradise.” The world began to take note of this handsome and forceful leader with the theater trained voice who preached non-violent resistance and the dignity and innate freedom of Polish men and women. He was unrelenting.

When the world was surprised in 1978 by his elevation to the papacy as Pope John Paul II, the first non-Portrait_of_the_Pope_John_Paul_II in PolandItalian in four and a half centuries, the Politburo started to understand fully the worst mistake of its sixty-year history of brutal rule. When he was elected Pope, he immediately announced that “the Church of Eastern Europe was no longer a Church of silence because now it speaks with my voice.”

“Open wide the doors for Christ. Do not be afraid.”  His first homily as Pope spoke directly to the people and as a challenge to Communists everywhere.

In 1979 he made his first visit as Pope to his homeland. The impact was world changing. In Poland, the regime had fostered isolation and distrust, so no one knew how many were dissatisfied outside of their immediate circle of trusted friends, and how many mourned the suppression of their ten centuries deep Catholic culture and longed for its freedom and sanctuary.  All feared exposing their hatred of the tyrant because informers were everywhere, and dissent earned you a long cold train ride to Siberia. If you were lucky. When Pope John Paul came and spoke tirelessly – fifty talks and homilies in nine days, celebrated numerous Masses, and led them in many prayers of hope, many witnessed after that visit for the first time they felt safe, accepted, and united. And there were millions of them.

In Victory Square in Krakow, hundreds of thousands of people chanted and sang, “We want God. We are Your people. He is our King. He is our Lord!” John Paul put his hand on his heart and wept quietly.

He spoke and it was the turning point, the first domino to the fall of the Soviet Union. “And I cry. I who am a son of the land of Poland and who am also Pope John Paul II. I cry from the depths of this millennium. I cry on the vigil of Pentecost. Let your Spirit descend! Let your Spirit descend and renew the face of the earth, the face of this land. Amen.” 

He never spoke once in fifty talks of those nine days about government or ideology or economics. His challenge was individual and human, one heart and mind at a time. He simply told them in essence, “You are not who they say you are. You are a Christian people united in faith and freedom and culture.” His often-quoted favorite scripture was from the Gospel of John, “The truth will set you free!”

He instilled hope in a non-violent ‘revolution of conscience.’  He called himself the Slavic Pope signaling he was speaking not just to Polish people but to all the enslaved people of Eastern Europe.

In 1980, the Solidarity union was formed in the Gdansk shipyards and led by electrician Lech Walesa as a direct reaction to the Pope’s rallying cry. He led a strike that almost overnight became national for grievances against the workers by the state. When the government eventually offered new benefits, freedoms, and fair treatment for the Solidarity workers in the shipyards who were barricaded in their warehouse, Walesa refused until the offer was extended to all the workers in Poland. Twenty thousand people gathered around the besieged warehouse in support. The government folded, and for the first time a Communist government acquiesced in the just demands of workers. All the workers.

For the next ten years, the unrest spread throughout Eastern Europe. The fire of hope and the truth about the nature of human beings was ignited and could not be extinguished by force or lies. A severe martial law was imposed in Poland. The pressure on the government went underground but persisted. Pope John Paull visited again 1983, 1987, 1991 (twice), 1995, 1997, 1999, and 2002. When Ronald Reagan saw the video of the Pope kissing the ground of Poland on his first visit, he remarked that the world had changed in that moment.

After the lid came off and Solidarity was created, the USSR through their surrogates in the Bulgarian Secret Police[5] tried to stuff the genie back into the bottle and hired an experienced Turkish assassin, Mehmet Ali Ağca, who shot at the Pope four times in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, hitting him twice and severely wounding him. His wounds troubled his health for the rest of his life. Ağca was caught and sentenced in Italy then deported to Turkey where he was convicted of a previous assassination of a left- wing journalist.

Several years later the Pope visited and embraced Ağca in the Turkish prison as well as reaching out to his family and mother. He publicly and privately forgave Ağca, and a picture exists of Ağca kissing the ring of the Pope during the visit. In 2007, two years after the death of the Pope who had befriended him, Ağca converted to Roman Catholicism. Like the founder of his beloved Church, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope John Paul responded to violence, hatred, cruelty, and vengefulness with forgiving love. Every soul, every human being precious, unique, unrepeatable, capable of transformation. Even assassins.

There was little violence in the ‘revolution of conscience’ other than what the government perpetrated. Demonstrations. Protests. Courageous stands. Way too many ups and downs for a blog post.[6] See the footnote for a great video resource readily available. It took another decade until 1989 for free elections to finally finish off the regime.

To be sure many other factors contributed: the leadership in tandem with John Paul of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The leadership of playwright Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia and Walesa in Poland and many others in Lithuania, Hungary, East Germany. But this was the Lord’s battle too and that of His shepherd, John Paul II, and it was definitive.

Between 1989 and 1990, they fell one by one. Poland first, then the rest: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the infamous Berlin Wall came down in November of 1989. The guns of the Church had sounded, and the walls came down.

“Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.”  Vaclav Havel

[1] Unidentified photographer – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID 2003678173. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing.

Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (1878-1953), leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953

[2] http://karnet.krakowculture.pl/en/18092-krakow-john-paul-ii-in-poland-photographs-by-chuck-fishman

[3] “Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths. In a wonderful manner….”  Gaudium et spes.

[4] Perhaps a tribute to Joseph Stalin. Stalin, his adopted name, is a derivation of the Russian for Steel.

[5] There is great controversy and much conflicting evidence supporting the claim that the USSR through the Bulgarians hired Mehmet Ali Ağca. But sufficient collaborative testimony and investigations lay the blame clearly at with the Communists. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Pope_John_Paul_II

[6] Great coverage of this in the 2018 documentary:  “Liberating a Continent:  John Paul II and the Fall of Communism” by Executive Produce Carl Anderson, former Grand Knight of the Knights of Columbus. Video clips in abundance and excerpts from Mr. Anderson, George Wiegel, definitive biographer of JPII, Reagan administration National Security Advisor, and many others. Streaming on Amazon Prime and other services. https://www.amazon.com/Liberating-Continent-John-Paul-Communism/dp/B01MS4VIGH

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September 29, 2023 · 8:04 am

Body Surfing

“Always marry a girl from Texas; no matter what happens, she’s seen worse.” I first heard this from Pete Seeger during his concert at Symphony Hall in Boston in the late sixties.

~1967 Red Sox program

The latest generation of fear filled waders with their water shoes and 50 SPF might well miss their big chance. Sometimes you just jump into the wave and ride it out. We married way too young at twenty and fifty-seven years later we’re still trying to work things out. According to current standards we did everything wrong. No pre-nup, no separate accounts – bills paid in cash out of envelopes without one for savings, no student debt because we were paying as we went with tuition paid from my summer tree climbing job. Rita was working as a registered nurse while I finished school. All in. One old beat-up car we shared with no payments, third story walk up railroad apartment, no savings account, nothing held back, in love and glad of it. She wasn’t from Texas, although I’ve known some strong women from Texas, so I’m pretty sure the quote above is true. No, Rita was a nurse, and the saying applies: Always marry a nurse because no matter what happens, she’s seen worse.

We had no carefully planned house carefully furnished, or even a budget outside of hastily scribbled categories and weekly amounts on the envelopes, and no plan for every contingency we could worry about. Twenty-five bucks a week into the “Rent” envelope. Ten into “Food.” Five into “Electric” Five into “Phone.” Five into “Entertainment,” which was spent for an occasional movie downtown or an impulse trip to the State Street Fruit Store for a fifty-cent hot fudge sundae. Sometimes when the urge struck after we went to bed, I was sent out to bring a couple of them home – whip cream, nuts, and a cherry included. Everything cost much less, and wages as always barely kept ahead of them.

Our one extravagance was the KLH stereo and turntable we bought with our wedding money. Vinyl. Eclectic. From Van Cliburn’s Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to Dave Brubeck, Doc Watson, and Mozart. Stupid happy. Lots of hugs. Lots of cuddles. Still a lot of hugs and cuddles, sleeping like spoons. Some hard times later. Mistakes and some heartaches. And good times. Many more good times. Some challenging waves; some thrilling ones too. Very few regrets. Wouldn’t change a thing.

The first summer after we were married at Blessed Sacrament Church, which is where we both had our First Communions, the Red Sox won their first pennant in twenty-one years. The time before that was in 1946 when Ted Williams returned to Fenway from WWII. Before that it was two years after my father was born in 1918 when they traded away the Babe. No series win for another 34 years after that pennant. My father, a lifelong fan, never saw a series win. But he and my mother were visiting us in Northampton when they clinched the pennant in 1967. Yaz. Rico Petrocelli. Reggie Smith. Jim Lonborg. Tony C. George Scott.

Everyone came out of their houses. All the church bells in town were ringing in jubilation. Rita climbed up on my shoulders, and I started to sprint down the sidewalk dodging the crowd like a running back. She pulled my hair to stop and started to laugh. Laughing so hard she wet her pants and warmed my neck. Got angry at me for the wet pants. I loved her so.

Ah yes, All in. Jump in the wave with some good timing and the ride is exhilarating. From a distance, the observer doesn’t perceive very rapid motion, but inside the break is very different. The sound of the surf and the rush of the water in your ears, the power of the thing. You’re flying, carried along by a surge of energy that built up for a hundred miles, then breaks when gravity overcomes speed, and the shore slopes shallow. Some rough rides, some smooth, occasional misses and the wave passes over you. But, God, jump in. Hesitate when the right wave comes, and you will never see another one like it. There is no substitute.

“Sing me a melody,

Sing me a blues

Walk through the bottomland without no shoes

The Brazos she’s running scared

She heard the news

Walk through the bottomland without no shoes

Won’t you walk through the bottomland without no shoes?” Lyle Lovett[i]

We rode many waves over the years. Some tested us sorely. One memorable ride was in 1983, the year after our third child was born in April and my father died on his birthday in December. We learned once again what it was like to ride a wave that was an invitation from God.

We visited a Catholic community while at a conference during the winter in Providence, Rhode Island and met some folks who later would become close friends. We sensed a strong sense of belonging, but we already had that in Maine and could have stayed for the rest of our lives.

In the spring of 1983, all our little family – Rita and I with the three kids (only Meg who wasn’t born yet was missing) went on a four-day Easter retreat in Augusta when we were living in Maine. We had felt a prompting of the Holy Spirit to move back closer to our parents who were aging: my recently widowed mother and both of Rita’s folks. And perhaps a call to dive into a wave carrying us into deeper waters in our faith. We loved small town Maine, our parish, my job; I resisted. But in the prayer journal I kept each morning, the readings kept coming. About caring for parents. About God gathering His people. About journeys of faith. Give me a break, Lord. I like it here!

Finally, after much hesitation, on Holy Saturday, I managed to meet with the retreat director, Father Bourque (no relation to the Boston Bruin All Star defenseman.) We talked for a half hour around eleven o’clock after everyone was in bed. He had a pronounced French-Canadian accent. I showed him my journal, hoping that he would tell me to get real and stop making myself crazy. The job market was terrible, we were just coming out of a recession, and the real estate market was worse. Houses in our county were lingering for up to a year until the sellers got tired and cut their prices severely. He looked at me with startlingly deep blue eyes and said, “I think God wants you to move.” My heart started pounding. Not my plan.

He suggested that since moving a few hundred miles with my family to uncertain places in uncertain times was serious business, I should do some testing to make sure of our discernment. Ah, I thought. A good out. But his test turned out to be not trivial. Father Bourque looked at me again, “Since times are hard, test the waters for a job down there, and if that looks promising, put your house on the market.” How about something a little safer like a wet fleece[ii], Father? This test is a commitment to the wave before it breaks. “Look for the job, sell the house,” he said.

We do understand that we don’t always understand; responding and traveling in the Will of God is always in the end faith in the unknown trail, and there are brambles, stumbling stones, and blind corners. On our return Monday, I called my boss in Boston. I was on the road selling commercial projects for a large regional lumber company, making Boston wages, but in a much less expensive cost of living situation in rural Maine. Life was settled and going well. But the invitation and wave were calling. Since I was in good standing in the company, the most comfortable testing of the job waters was calling the office. “Warren,” I said, “Just thinking of maybe exploring a larger market. What have you got in say, Southeastern Mass, or Rhode Island or even Cape Cod?” “I like what you are doing in Maine,” he said, “but if you need to make a change, I’d love to have you in Rhode Island. I just fired the guy there on Friday.” I remembered what a skilled veteran told me once: don’t bother to learn their names until they’ve been here at least a year. It’s a tough business.

Be still my heart. That’s one of Father’s discernment keys, but houses stay on the market here for a long, long time. We’re still safe. I called a friend who was a real estate agent in town. Ed was my tennis buddy and not encouraging about us moving, but he said he would put a satisfactory price on it from a seller’s perspective and list it if I insisted and had lots of patience. I did insist and would be happy if my patience was infinite. We had a full price offer in five days. The wave was breaking and moving much too fast for comfort.

When we made a second visit to confirm the community, we were invited to stay with a family who would soon become dear friends we love to this day. On a walk in the neighborhood with the baby, five houses down the street, we came upon a realtor nailing up a “For Sale” sign on a less than thriving street Norway maple tree. The owner had died two weeks before, and his sister who now owned the house was selling it quite a bit below market because, while solid and well built, it was sixty years old and needed major updating – needed a new kitchen, a new bathroom, refinishing the oak floors, painting all the walls, rewiring and replumbing. But the roof was good, the furnace sound, the full Douglas fir two by four framing superlative. Made an offer. Accepted in a day. Done deal.

Easter retreat. By Pentecost we were living in Providence with a lot of work to do. That’s what body surfing can be like. The rush of power is beyond your ability to control. Moving faster than you thought you could. Twenty yards closer to the beach in five seconds.

That’s what body surfing with God can be like.

Sachuest Beach Surfers end

One more recent short body surfing story that ties back to the opening quote from Pete Seeger about girls from Texas (and nurses). Earlier this year, I was body surfing at Surfer’s End on Sachuest Beach (See picture from my cell phone). At 77, Rita was reading a book and sort of keeping an eye on me. She was skeptical that body surfing was the best use of my time at our age.

The key to body surfing is timing. It’s all timing. Hit the wave just as it breaks, and you can go a long way. Jump into it too early, and it passes you by. Too late, and it breaks ahead, rapidly fizzling out in front of you while you turn to wait for the next one. Thrashing and frantic swimming to catch up is useless. There are other possible outcomes. Lose sufficient attention and the wave smashes your face into the sand. Forehead scrapes that look like someone touched up your forehead with a belt sander loaded with a 24-grit belt. They can bleed profusely but without any real lasting injury other than cosmetics. I bled. Came up out of the water. Good thing there were no sharks about. Waded toward shore splashing the cleansing and cooling salt water on my head. Blood running down my face.

Rita glances up and looking concerned walks down to the water. “Always marry a nurse because no matter what happens, she’s seen worse.” It’ll all be OK now. My nurse will assess the damage. Her face goes from concern to something else. I am starting to worry about spending the evening in the emergency room. She struggles to control her emotions. She tried to resist; she really did. Then she bursts into laughter. “I told you, dummy.”

“To me, when you go body surfing, it’s a way of simplifying everything. It’s just you and the wave and the experience. Life is a balancing act.” Mike Steward, champion body surfer. From a Surfer Today article.

[i] Superb video with the incomparable Emmy Lou Harris providing in the harmony. Walk Through the Bottomland

[ii] See Judges 6:33-40 in which Gideon tests God’s promise of victory over overwhelming enemy forces by laying out a fleece for dew.

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September 21, 2023 · 11:02 am

Every Once In A While

“No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.” Dorothy Day

~Courtesy of wayne evans

Open source courtesy of Wayne Evans

Every once in a while, I hear a story that restores my hope and saves me from a descent into disappointed cynicism. We know a young woman, let’s call her “Virtue,” who is suffering through a dark period in her life, and there have been more than a few of those she has suffered through in her life, most admittedly through her own bad choices. In former relationships, she was physically and emotionally abused. She’s more careful now in her choice of partners, but as it turns out not careful enough.

Last year “Virtue” made a mistake by choosing to engage in the baby making act with someone who didn’t love her and marry her and commit his life to her. Let’s call him DB for short. And sure enough, a baby was conceived in the baby making act. After all, that is what the baby making act is devised to do.

They were living in an apartment with a friend of the unloving male lover. When it was discovered that she was with child, the friend of the father’s, whose name was on the lease for the apartment, stated unconditionally he would tolerate no troublesome little human beings in his life. Since they enjoyed the apartment, DB, the irresponsible[i] father-to-be made the decision for all three of them: father, mother, and baby: the kid had to go. Or DB would go. She knew that her connection to the tiny human being within her womb would not allow her to “terminate the pregnancy” as the euphemism goes. So, her original mistake was not to be compounded by a tragic new one. But that is not to say it wouldn’t be difficult, very difficult.

DB was true to his word (if nothing else), and after persistent harassment failed to loosen her resolve, he left in the night with a new girlfriend to an undisclosed out of state address. “Have a nice life.” This scenario is now commonplace, especially among the poor, compounding their misery.

“And what if—what are you if the people who are supposed to love you can leave you like you’re nothing?” Elizabeth Scott, The Unwritten Rule

We met “Virtue” last winter when she was eight months pregnant and a week short of living under a bridge with no place to go. A friend introduced us. After some hectic scrambling with some good-hearted friends, collectively, we were able to secure a spot in a homeless shelter for expectant mothers – a kind of miracle given the abysmal shortage of such havens for those without options. But the time has now run out there, and the shelter needed space for new desperate clients.

We met with one of the same friends and “Virtue” recently to discuss options and help find a more permanent situation for her and her baby, now seven months old. Her situation is still far from secure. The baby is healthy, happy, relaxed, and curious about everything going on about her. She has beautiful dark hazel eyes that follow every move, eyes that stare unblinking at you in trust and candor. No pretense with babies. She is patient while the adults talk with all those strange sounds. Rolls of baby fat dimple her elbows and knees, plump that will burn off as soon as she gains her mobility and starts crawling, crabbing, walking, running, climbing, exploring, and testing her mom’s ability to keep up.

The almost toddler laughs a lot when old guys rain raspberries on her arm, and she seizes anything within range of her chubby hands. She has a minor issue that requires physical therapy, but her mom is diligent with getting her to her appointments and relies on the kindness of volunteers in her church congregation for rides to and from. Her prognosis is excellent for full health.

Her mom told us this story over coffee.

She left the baby for a short time with her parents while she ran some errands and picked up some needed groceries for them. She was able to stay a short while with her parents, but the rules of the elderly housing project where they live preclude a longer stay.  She went shopping on foot. She has no car.

As she walked on the sidewalk in her small city, “Virtue” encountered a disheveled, unshaven man prone on the concrete. All the pedestrians carefully averted their eyes and eschewed intervening with his obvious predicament. Not “Virtue.” She stayed.

She knelt next to his head. His breathing was shallow. “Sir, are you alright?” No response. Roll him out of his vomit. “Sir, are you alright? I’m calling nine one one. They’ll be here soon.”  Check breathing again. Make sure he is still doing that. Flag down passing pedestrians dressed in hospital scrubs. They join her and check for a pulse. A bit thready.

The rescue crew shows up within five minutes or so and takes over. “Virtue” left her name and contact information as a witness with the police officer who soon joined them. They determine acute alcohol poisoning. If left unattended and ignored the stranger on the sidewalk could have lain there until he stopped breathing.

“Virtue” told us her story in a matter-of-fact manner but was pleased she had been able to help. Sure. That’s what human beings do for one another. “What else could I do?” Without hesitation or doubt.  A week short of being on the street herself with an infant, she was the one who took notice instead of stepping over the guy like all the rest hurrying to their urgent destinations. She was the one who did the loving thing for a stranger.

The French poet killed in the first World War, Charles Peguy, wrote, “The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope.” A homeless mother taught me that last week.

Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  Likewise, a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 

On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you.’

Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?”  And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”  Luke 10: 30-37 (New American Bible translation)[ii]

[i] An all-too-common adjective for hormonal, negligent sperm donors in recent decades. As it turns out, the sexual revolution didn’t liberate women as much as it liberated and enabled irresponsible men – going on three generations of them. The unwritten rule today is that if a baby results from the baby making act, it’s the woman’s responsibility to ‘take care of’ because of the failed contraception (anti conception), and the expectation for physical coupling in a hook up culture is a given. The male may choose to pay for her in getting rid of the baby. Or he may just evaporate. No opprobrium attaches to the man who was once expected to “do the right thing” after he did the wrong thing. Increasingly rare is the man who “does the right thing” before, during, or after the hook up.

The ‘hook up’ culture is an appropriate metaphor. Sexual coupling with virtual strangers who have no commitment, no love, no sense of self giving to the other person has all the love and tenderness of a beat-up, faded tow truck backing up to a Rent A Wreck auto with a blown engine.

Great book on the topic: Global Sexual Revolution: Destruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom, 2015, by Gabriele Kuby

[ii] The Samaritan was despised in first century Israel as an apostate and treated as a pariah. One of the lessons from the parable is that Jesus came for the despised, the poor, the alienated and not for the perfect and sanctimonious. “Virtue” is among the poor, the sinners like all of us trying the best we can to live in a fallen culture, the abandoned, those with few options,  yet it was she, and only she, who reached out to the stricken man on the sidewalk. There is hope in that, and a lesson for us all.

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