March 22, 2026: “Before,” Sundays, “Lost on an Island”

Most faithful disciples of this blog know that I dislike Sundays intensely.  

This animosity has nothing to do with God or religion or faith.  I’m a cradle Catholic; play keyboard/pipe organ at several different denominational churches every weekend; and say prayers every morning and night (and at various times during the day).  The reason I dislike Sundays:  they come before Mondays and the start of another work week.  

Monday through Friday, I feel like Sisyphus—pushing that boulder uphill until I reach the summit on Friday.  On Sunday, that fucker rolls back to the bottom of the hill, and I start trudging down to start the whole process all over again.  

Marie Howe writes about a boulder . . . 

Before

by: Marie Howe

The boulder once dust, will be dust again,

but today, so filled with its own heaviness,

it can’t hear the grunts of the men who push and roll it

                                                                        to the mouth of the tomb,

and it can’t yet conceive how else it might be moved.

Howe is talking about mortality here, echoing the blessing that’s repeated every Ash Wednesday:  Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  Howe’s boulder has consciousness.  It knows its own weight, but it doesn’t know all the back-breaking effort it took to get it to that tomb entrance.

I’m feeling the weight of that boulder tonight as I prepare to head into another week of teaching and library work, and I’m not excited.  It always feels as though I’m just starting to relax as the weekend comes to an end.  I even took a little nap this afternoon, which is a luxury I rarely allow myself.  Now it’s almost 10 p.m., and the boulder is starting its downward descent.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love working at the library, and there are aspects of teaching that really energize me.  However, the heaviness of the next five days is overwhelming.  Plus (and most church musicians can back me up on this fact), the Lenten/Easter season adds extra stress and weight to life. Palm Sunday is in seven days, and then Holy Week, with all the bells, whistles, smoke, and chants.  In two weeks, I will look like a refugee from a George Romero flick.

I guess the takeaway from tonight’s post is that I’m tired.  Tired of the daily grind.  And politics.  And President 47.  And Republicans.  And war.  And divisiveness.  47 has ruined basically the last ten years of life in the United States (and the world).  If I could just stay home, write poems, and take my puppy for walks, I would.  (With the price of oil and gas rising every day, that’s pretty much all I’ll be able to afford to do.)

This weekend, I watched a movie starring Michael Caine as a dying Thomas Pynchon-esque writer.  It was titled Best Sellers.  One of Michael Caine’s catchphrases in the film is “bullshite.”  (I don’t think I need to translate that for you.)

Allow me to say this:  I’m tired of all the bullshite going on in my country and around the globe.

The only bright spot this Sunday was the Zoom poetry workshop I led this evening, with some of my best friends participating.

Saint Marty wrote the following poem in workshop tonight.  It’s about being lost and found  . . . 

Lost on an Island

by: Martin Achatz

Some people think it’s impossible

to get lost on an island, with all

its coast to guide you home to

where you began.  I’m here to tell you

you it’s easy to get lost on a piece

of land surrounded on all sides

by water, fresh or salt, that water

isn’t a street sign or highway

marker telling you how far to

the next McDonald’s or gas station

or rest area.  Water encourages

lostness with its waves and currents

and horizons.  If anything, water

wants to turn us all into Odysseus

sailing 20 years before he crawls

onto Ithaca’s shores, driven

by a yearn for the arms of Penelope

or wet nose, rough tongue of Argos

waiting by the palace door those two

decades.  Even on an island, yes, 

it’s easy to get lost, be lost, stay lost.

See that beach there?  I bet it’s named

after somebody who got lost and built

a shack on the sands and called it

home.

November 1, 2025: “The Prepositions,” All Saints’ Day, “Litany of Saints for Laundry Day”

Yes, it is the first day of November.  All Saints’ Day.  

In all the years that I’ve been a music minister (at Catholic, Methodist, and Lutheran churches), I don’t think I’ve ever played a service or Mass for All Saints’ Day, which is strange since my son was baptized on this feast.  That’s almost four decades of playing the pipe organ without having to deal with saintly litanies.  (At Catholic Easter Vigil Masses, the priest/cantor sings several litanies involving saints and angels and whatnot, and I have a confession:  I don’t like litanies or Gregorian chant all that much.  A little too medieval for me.)

Sharon Olds comforts herself with a litany of prepositions . . . 

The Prepositions

by: Sharon Olds

When I started Junior High I thought
I’d probably be a Behavior Problem
all my life, John Muir Grammar 

the spawning grounds, the bad-seed bed, but
the first morning at Willard, the dawn 

of seventh grade, they handed me a list
of forty-five prepositions, to learn
by heart. I stood in the central courtyard,
enclosed garden that grew cement, 

my pupils followed the line of the arches
up and over, up and over, like
alpha waves, about, above,
across, along, among, around, an
odd calm began in me,
before, behind, below, beneath,
beside, between, I stood in that sandstone
square and started to tame. Down,
from, in, into, near, I was
located there, watching the Moorish half-
circles rise and fall. Off,
on, onto, out, outside, we
came from 6th grades all over the city 

to meet each other for the first time,
White tennis-club boys who did not
speak to me, White dorks 

who did, Black student-council guys who’d gaze 

above my head, and the Black
plump goof-off who walked past and
suddenly flicked my sweater-front, I thought to shame me.
Over, past, since, through,
that was the year my father came home in the
middle of the night with those thick earthworms 

of blood on his face, trilobites of
elegant gore, cornice and crisp
waist of the extinct form,
till, to, toward, under, the
lining of my uterus convoluted,
shapely and scarlet as the jointed leeches 

of wound clinging to my father’s face in that
mask, unlike, until, up, I’d
walk, day and night, into 

the Eden of the list, hortus enclosus where
everything had a place. I was in
relation to, upon, with, and when I
got to forty-five I could just start over, 

pull the hood of the list down over 

my brain again. It was the first rest

I had had from my mind. My eyes would run
slowly along the calm electro-
cardiogram of adobe cloister,
within, without, I’d repeat the prayer I’d
received, a place in the universe,
meaningless but a place, an exact location—
Telegraph, Woolsey, Colby, Russell—
Berkeley, 1956,
fourteen, the breaking of childhood, beginning of memory.

Litanies can provide some comfort, as Olds’ poem demonstrates.  They occupy the mind, provide a kind of stability.  Olds keeps returning to the list of prepositions because the real world (full of nipple-flicking boys and injured, alcoholic fathers) is so out of her control.  

As you know, I’m what is sometimes referred to as a “cradle Catholic”—that means I was born, baptized, and raised in the Catholic Church.  There have only been a few times in my life that I haven’t attended weekend Masses on a regular basis.  I think every young Catholic goes through that sort of rebellious stage where, instead of going to church on Sunday morning, you hit McDonald’s instead.  (That little rebellion ended for me when I started to get paid for playing the pipe organ on Saturday evenings.)  I’ve been doing my church musician thing for going on 40 years now.  

So, my weeks are full of teaching and library work, and my Saturdays and Sundays are full of organ and piano benches at one Catholic parish (on rare occasions two), two Lutheran parishes, and one Methodist parish (very infrequently).  If you’re wondering when I get a day off, the answer is pretty simple:  I don’t.  Planning any kind of time off for me is like planning the invasion of Normandy.

Today, I was able to pull off something pretty special.  In the middle of working and teaching and music ministering, I planned a surprise 30th anniversary party for my wife.  My biggest surprise for her:  our daughter drove up from medical school to attend.  While my wife and I attended our regular Saturday Mass, our kids and friends gathered at a local restaurant, decorated its back room, and waited for us to walk through the door.

To say that my wife was taken aback is an understatement.  She had no idea what was happening.  I could see it on her face as our litany of friends and relatives all shouted “Surprise!”  And when she realized that our daughter was sitting at the head table, she just about lost it.  

Everyone we loved was there.  We ate and talked and laughed and reminisced.  In a year that has been dominated by President 47 dismantling democracy and taking food and healthcare away from American citizens, tonight was balm for my heart and soul.

After the dinner, our daughter and her significant other came to our house to play games and visit.  It was such a good day and night.  (I didn’t even mind going to the laundromat today, and I hate doing laundry.)

Saint Marty wrote a litany for today, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem that includes visits from three saints.  You can research saints on the Internet and choose your favorite, or make a list of your obsessions and create a saint from that.  Write a poem to the Saint of Poets, the Saint of Birds, or make up your own saint.  The Saint of the Internet, perhaps?  The Saint of Broken Violins?  Feel free to use one or more real or invented saints in your poem.

Litany of Saints for Laundry Day

by: Martin Achatz

I wake on dirty clothes day 

     to first snow on the grass,

     a breath of white that will

     be gone as soon as the sun

     opens its morning eye.

Our Lady of Termination Dust, pray for us.

I stare at autumn gold 

     on the hillside across 

     from King Koin Laundry

     this first day of November.

Saint Maidenhair, pray for us.

I scribble these words, my first

     lines while the colds

     spin cycle, tumbling

     like teens in a Buick’s backseat.

Saint Coitus, pray for us.

I think of you, my first (and only)

     love at home, waiting

     for me to return with

     baskets of bread-warm clothes.

God of Bounce Dryer Sheets, remind us

     we were all once fresh and clean. 

March 30: "Don't Hesitate," Experience Joy, Gorge Yourself

Mary Oliver gives some advice . . . 

Don't Hesitate

by:  Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate.  Give in to it.  There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.  We are not wise, and not very often kind.  And much can never be redeemed.  Still, life has some possibility left.  Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches and power in the world.  It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.  Anyway, that's often the case.  Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty.  Joy is not made to be a crumb.

My favorite line in that whole stunning poem:  "Joy is not made to be a crumb."

I think that most people think of joy as something rare, like seeing the aurora borealis in a midnight sky or an albino skunk.  We don't know what to do when joy descends on us, because it feels alien.  I know that, when I experience any type of happiness, I'm always waiting for mayhem to come knocking on the door.

Maybe it's a matter of not feeling like I've earned the right to be happy or experience joy.  I was brought up by parents who believed in hard work.  From a very young age, I was taught that nothing in life was free.  As a cradle Catholic, I was spoon-fed guilt along with my strained carrots and peas.  Happiness comes after a whole lot of hard work, like planting and tending a garden all summer, waiting for the harvest in autumn.

Yet, I know that joy isn't some kind of divine reward.  God doesn't look down from on high and say, "Wow, Saint Marty worked his ass off this week.  I'm going to send him a little something special today."  That's not the way the universe works.  If it did, we'd all be Pavlov dogs, performing tasks to receive crumbs of joy to drool over.

That isn't joy.  Joy, as Oliver says, comes quickly, unexpectedly.  When it appears, there are two choices:  grab it with both hands and enjoy every moment of it; or shut the door, turn off the lights, and wait for it to disappear.  Too often, I've done the latter.  Because it's hard for me to trust in joy.  Just like there can't be light without dark, there can't be joy without sadness and grief.  They can't be separated.

The question then becomes whether or not joy is worth the sadness and grief.  That's the price you pay.  If you love someone deeply, you accept the 100% probability that you will lose that person eventually (or that person will lose you).  There's no way around that.  

Oliver says that joy happens when love begins, and I agree with her advice:  don't be afraid of joy.  Sit down at the table and eat all you can.  Gorge yourself on it.  Joy isn't about crumbs.  It's about heaping bowls of mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and slabs of turkey (or beef or chicken or ham).

Here is my joy for today:  I sat on my couch this evening with my dog.  She hunkered down on her blankets, curled into a comma, and fell asleep.  It was the first time I've seen her really relax since she was attacked last weekend.  She grunted and groaned and snored and twitched.  As I watched her, scratched her slumbering back, I thought of how close we came to losing her, and there it was:  joy and despair.  Two sides of the coin.

Saint Marty embraced this plenty and gave thanks.

January 31: Substitute Organist, Lapsed Catholic, Conversion Story

Billy wasn't a Catholic, even though he grew up with a ghastly crucifix on the wall.  His father had no religion.  His mother was a substitute organist for several churches around town.  She took Billy with her whenever she played, taught him to play a little, too.  She said she was going to join a church as soon as she decided which one was right.

She never did decide.  She did develop a terrific hankering for a crucifix, though.  And she bought one from a Santa Fe gift shop during a trip the little family made out West during the Great Depression.  Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

And the crucifix went up on the wall of Billy Pilgrim.

Yesterday, I wrote about crucifixes in my life.  For Billy, they don't really represent anything, except his mother's taste in souvenirs from gift shops.  Billy wasn't raised in a religious home.  Billy's mom goes to church to make money.  That's it.  There's no soul searching involved.

When I was a teenager, I was well on my way to becoming a lapsed Catholic.  On Sunday mornings, instead of going to Mass, I went to McDonald's for breakfast.  If I did go to Church, I sat in the pew and fell asleep.  A cradle Catholic, I had grown sort of immune to the movement of grace in my life.

It was the pipe organ that brought me back.  I took nine years of piano lessons when I was young.  Although I wasn't a gifted musician, I was a hard worker.  I could play well.  About the time that I entered college, my home church lost an organist, and my parish priest--a kind, benevolent dictator of a man--basically told me that I was going to be the church's new organist.  The next Saturday night, I was sitting in the choir loft, playing the organ.

Somehow, my priest knew that it was exactly what I needed.  (It also didn't hurt that he paid me very well.  Back then, it was all under-the-table.  No taxes and W-2s.  Just handfuls of twenty dollar bills, which I promptly spent on things like new clothes, gas for my car, and, occasionally, alcohol.)  Gradually, though, I started paying attention to what was going on during Mass.  Listening to the readings and homilies.  I started appreciating Christ's message of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, friending the friendless.  It started to sink in.

Over thirty years later, I'm still sitting at the same organ every Saturday night, and I still enjoy it.

It's not an exciting conversion story, like Saint Paul's.  I wasn't blinded by God or cast into a cave with hungry lions.  It happened gradually, like peeling away the layers of an onion, if I may borrow the metaphor from Shrek.

Tonight, Saint Marty is grateful for pipe organs.

September 14: End of Life, James Dickey, "The Heaven of Animals"

Last night, I had my students listen to an essay in which a mother is trying to explain death to her two-year-old daughter.  It was quite moving.  Then I had my students write about their beliefs about death.

Now, I know young people usually don't think about the end of life much.  They're too busy thinking about school and beer and pot and sex.  That's just where they are in their development.  However, when I asked some of them to share what they had written, I was a little surprised at the number of my students who simply don't believe in an afterlife.  As one of them so eloquently put it, "It's just the end."

Now, as a cradle Catholic, I grew up with pictures of angels in clouds, wings bright as a snow storm.  From the time I can remember, heaven was as real to me as Milky Way candy bars and my pet turtle Obi-Wan.  I never thought to question its existence.

Now, as an adult, my belief has been tempered by my many experiences with death.  In the past two years, as many of you know, I have seen two of my older siblings die.  And I would be lying if I didn't admit to doubts and questions.  The test of any strongly-held belief is being able to hold it up against strong interrogation.

I can still say today that I believe in heaven.  It's not the same heaven that I imagined as a child.  No clouds or harps or white robes or wings.  I know there is something beyond our existence.  Something where pain and loneliness and fear don't exist.  A better place.

That's what Saint Marty believes.  We are all destined for something better.

The Heaven of Animals

by:  James Dickey

Here they are. The soft eyes open.   

If they have lived in a wood

It is a wood.

If they have lived on plains

It is grass rolling

Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,   

Anyway, beyond their knowing.   

Their instincts wholly bloom   

And they rise.

The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,   

Outdoing, desperately

Outdoing what is required:

The richest wood,

The deepest field.

For some of these,

It could not be the place

It is, without blood.

These hunt, as they have done,

But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.   

They stalk more silently,

And crouch on the limbs of trees,   

And their descent

Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years

In a sovereign floating of joy.   

And those that are hunted   

Know this as their life,

Their reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge   

Of what is in glory above them,   

And to feel no fear,

But acceptance, compliance.   

Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle’s center,

They tremble, they walk   

Under the tree,

They fall, they are torn,   

They rise, they walk again.