January 4: The First Devil, Demons, 40 Days in the Desert

 Merton is exorcised . . . 

The essential thing was to begin the climb. Baptism was that beginning, and a most generous one, on the part of God. For, although I was baptized conditionally, I hope that His mercy swallowed up all the guilt and temporal punishment of my twenty-three black years of sin in the waters of the font, and allowed me a new start. But my human nature, my weakness, and the cast of my evil habits still remained to be fought and overcome. 

Towards the end of the first week in November, Father Moore told me I would be baptized on the sixteenth. I walked out of the rectory that evening happier and more contented than I had ever been in my life. I looked at a calendar to see what saint had that day for a feast, and it was marked for St. Gertrude. 

It was only in the last days before being liberated from my slavery to death, that I had the grace to feel something of my own weakness and helplessness. It was not a very vivid light that was given to me on the subject: but I was really aware, at last, of what a poor and miserable thing I was. On the night of the fifteenth of November, the eve of my Baptism and First Communion, I lay in my bed awake and timorous for fear that something might go wrong the next day. And to humiliate me still further, as I lay there, fear came over me that I might not be able to keep the eucharistic fast. It only meant going from midnight to ten o’clock without drinking any water or taking any food, yet all of a sudden this little act of self-denial which amounts to no more, in reality, than a sort of an abstract token, a gesture of good-will, grew in my imagination until it seemed to be utterly beyond my strength—as if I were about to go without food and drink for ten days, instead of ten hours. I had enough sense left to realize that this was one of those curious psychological reactions with which our nature, not without help from the devil, tries to confuse us and avoid what reason and our will demand of it, and so I forgot about it all and went to sleep. 

In the morning, when I got up, having forgotten to ask Father Moore if washing your teeth was against the eucharistic fast or not, I did not wash them, and, facing a similar problem about cigarettes, I resisted the temptation to smoke. 

I went downstairs and out into the street to go to my happy execution and rebirth. 

The sky was bright and cold. The river glittered like steel. There was a clean wind in the street. It was one of those fall days full of life and triumph, made for great beginnings, and yet I was not altogether exalted: for there were still in my mind these vague, half animal apprehensions about the externals of what was to happen in the church—would my mouth be so dry that I could not swallow the Host? If that happened, what would I do? I did not know. 

Gerdy joined me as I was turning in to Broadway. I do not remember whether Ed Rice caught up with us on Broadway or not. Lax and Seymour came after we were in church. 

Ed Rice was my godfather. He was the only Catholic among us—the only Catholic among all my close friends. Lax, Seymour, and Gerdy were Jews. They were very quiet, and so was I. Rice was the only one who was not cowed or embarrassed or shy. 

The whole thing was very simple. First of all, I knelt at the altar of Our Lady where Father Moore received my abjuration of heresy and schism. Then we went to the baptistery, in a little dark corner by the main door. 

I stood at the threshold. 

“Quid Peris ab ecclesia Dei?” asked Father Moore. 

“Fidem!” 

“Fides quid tibi praestat?” 

“Vitam aeternam.” 

Then the young priest began to pray in Latin, looking earnestly and calmly at the page of the Rituale through the lenses of his glasses. And I, who was asking for eternal life, stood and watched him, catching a word of the Latin here and there. 

He turned to me: 

“Abrenuntias Satanae?” 

In a triple vow I renounced Satan and his pomps and his works. “Dost thou believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth?” 

“Credo!” 

“Dost thou believe in Jesus Christ His only Son, Who was born, and suffered?” 

“Credo!” 

“Dost thou believe in the Holy Spirit, in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of saints, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the body and eternal life?” 

“Credo!” 

What mountains were falling from my shoulders! What scales of dark night were peeling off my intellect, to let in the inward vision of God and His truth! But I was absorbed in the liturgy, and waiting for the next ceremony. It had been one of the things that had rather frightened me—or rather, which frightened the legion that had been living in me for twenty-three years. 

Now the priest blew into my face. He said: “Exi ab eo, spiritus immunde: Depart from him, thou impure spirit, and give place to the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.” 

It was the exorcism. I did not see them leaving, but there must have been more than seven of them. I had never been able to count them. Would they ever come back? Would that terrible threat of Christ be fulfilled, that threat about the man whose house was clean and garnished, only to be reoccupied by the first devil and many others worse than himself? 

The priest, and Christ in him—for it was Christ that was doing these things through his visible ministry, in the Sacrament of my purification— breathed again into my face. 

“Thomas, receive the good Spirit through this breathing, and receive the Blessing of God. Peace be with thee.” 

Then he began again to pray, and sign me with Crosses, and presently came the salt which he put on my tongue—the salt of wisdom, that I might have the savor of divine things, and finally he poured the water on my head, and named me Thomas, “if thou be not already baptized.”

We're all possessed by demons, like Merton.  Real or metaphorical.  Things that take hold of us and won't let go.  Bad habits.  Smoking.  Drinking.  Porn.  Sex or drug addiction.  Obsessions.  With singers.  Poets.  Artists.  Actors.  Books.  Poems.  Movies.  I've been known to overindulge in a few of these demons.  (I may be indulging in one of them right now--a little RumChata to the point of being slightly drunk.)

Human beings are weak things.  We give ourselves over to substances and experiences that are bad for us.  Over and over.  We keep returning to them until they either destroy us or we learn to be better people.  Now, reading a book continuously won't ruin you (unless it happens to be Fifty Shades of Grey or The Art of the Deal).  Neither will re-watching a movie several times (unless it's Fifty Shades of Gray or anything with Donald Trump cameos).  Over my December quarantine, I've been possessed by two writers (Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott), a couple movies (Greta Gerwig's Little Women and Love Actually), and writing.  

My family has been fairly indulgent of my Christmas demons.  I've been reading an Alcott biography and new Dickens biography.  Watching Little Women and Love Actually late at night, multiple times, after everyone has gone to bed.  And finishing my Christmas essay and poem.  Now, in the first days of January, I'm still reading the biographies.  I've moved on to watching The Family Stone and Yesterday.  And, with my holiday essay and poem done, I've have turned my attention to revising a chapbook manuscript.

That's the other thing about demons.  They're easily replaced.  As Merton says, after being exorcised, a person can be "reoccupied by the first devil and many others worse than himself."  I've seen this happen, as well.  Food addiction replaced with prescription drug addiction.  Or sex addiction.  One unhealthy obsession replacing another.  People with genetic predispositions to addiction are vulnerable to becoming repossessed, if you will, unless they are pretty vigilant.

Now, I don't want to get all kinds of comments about how addiction is a disease.  I know this.  I come from a family with a pretty strong history of substance abuse.  How I have dodged that bullet, I have no idea.  I'm a poet and artist.  Subject to bouts of depression.  Constantly battling financial insecurities.  By all accounts, I should, at the very least, be a raging alcoholic, on the level of Dylan Thomas.

But I'm not.  Instead, I'm addicted to writing.  Reading about famous writers.  Watching Christmas movies.  (I also have a huge weakness for chocolate, but that's the subject of another blog post.)  I suppose those are healthy demons to be wrestling with.  (Unless you ask my family members about how many times I watch The Family Stone in a day.  They might  think that an intervention is needed.)

Like anybody else, I am weak.  I wouldn't last 40 days in the desert.  I wouldn't even last one hour, especially if the Devil came along and offered me a cold cup of water and a ham sandwich.  I give in to my obsessions all the time, often to the detriment of the people I care about most.  I invite my demons in, sit down, and have dinner with them on a nightly basis.

That doesn't make me a bad person.  It makes me human.  I don't beat my children or cheat on my wife.  I don't get drunk and miss work.  As possessed people go, I'm pretty high-functioning.  No masturbating with crucifixes in public for me.

I have also learned in the past year to accept the possessed people in my life.  Sometimes, those people hurt me deeply.  That doesn't make me love them any less.  It just fills me with disappointment and sadness.  I don't want people I care about to do things that will harm them.  Yet, I have no power over their actions or choices.  So, I can only sit back and wait for the exorcist to show up.  And watch The Family Stone one more time.

Saint Marty gives thanks for the miracle of sappy Christmas movies tonight.

Another of my obsessions . . . 

January 3: Mountain of a Purgatory, Epiphany, Word Made Flesh

Merton embarks on his climb of the Seven-Circled Mountain . . .

I very quickly made friends with him, and told him all about my thesis and the ideas I was trying to work with, and he was very pleased. And one of the things he sensed at once was something that I was far from being able to realize: but it was that the bent of my mind was essentially “Augustinian.” I had not yet followed Bramachari’s advice to read St. Augustine and I did not take Dan’s evaluation of my ideas as having all the directive force that was potentially in it —for it did not even come clothed in suggestion or advice. 

Of course, to be called “Augustinian” by a Thomist might not in every case be a compliment. But coming from Dan Walsh, who was a true Catholic philosopher, it was a compliment indeed. 

For he, like Gilson, had the most rare and admirable virtue of being able to rise above the petty differences of schools and systems, and seeing Catholic philosophy in its wholeness, in its variegated unity, and in its true Catholicity. In other words, he was able to study St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus side by side, and to see them as complementing and reinforcing one another, as throwing diverse and individual light on the same truths from different points of view, and thus he avoided the evil of narrowing and restricting Catholic philosophy and theology to a single school, to a single attitude, a single system. 

I pray to God that there may be raised up more like him in the Church and in our universities, because there is something stifling and intellectually deadening about textbooks that confine themselves to giving a superficial survey of the field of philosophy according to Thomist principles and then discard all the rest in a few controversial objections. Indeed, I think it a great shame and a danger of no small proportions, that Catholic philosophers should be trained in division against one another, and brought up to the bitterness and smallness of controversy: because this is bound to narrow their views and dry up the unction that should vivify all philosophy in their souls. 

Therefore, to be called an “Augustinian” by Dan Walsh was a compliment, in spite of the traditional opposition between the Thomist and Augustinian schools, Augustinian being taken not as confined to the philosophers of that religious order, but as embracing all the intellectual descendants of St. Augustine. It is a great compliment to find oneself numbered as part of the same spiritual heritage as St. Anselm, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, and Duns Scotus also. And from the tenor of his course, I realized that he meant that my bent was not so much towards the intellectual, dialectical, speculative character of Thomism, as towards the spiritual, mystical, voluntaristic, and practical way of St. Augustine and his followers. 

His course and his friendship were most valuable in preparing me for the step I was about to take. But as time went on, I decided to leave the notion of becoming a priest out of the way for the time being. So I never even mentioned it to Dan in those days. 

As November began, my mind was taken up with this one thought: of getting baptized and entering at last into the supernatural life of the Church. In spite of all my studying and all my reading and all my talking, I was still infinitely poor and wretched in my appreciation of what was about to take place within me. I was about to set foot on the shore at the foot of the high, seven-circled mountain of a Purgatory steeper and more arduous than I was able to imagine, and I was not at all aware of the climbing I was about to have to do. 

Merton is about to embark on a journey toward the Catholic Church and, eventually, priesthood.  He recognizes that it is not going to be easy.  Or, perhaps more accurately, as a memoirist looking back, he realizes how difficult the journey actually was.  Either way, it's a long, long trek through mountain and desert, chasing the tail of a comet.

Today is the Sunday that celebrates the Epiphany.  Three astrologers/astronomers/magi/kings appear in Bethlehem, looking for Jesus to deliver some belated birthday presents.  You all know the story.  Gold and frankincense and myrrh.  Kingship and divinity and sacrifice.  For Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, it's the unveiling of truth as told in prophecy.  God in human form.  The intersection of Heaven and Earth.

Of course, the word "epiphany" has come to mean any sudden realization, whether religious or scientific or philosophical or literary.  James Joyce made a career writing about small epiphanies in his characters' lives.  Snow falling all over Ireland, on the living and the dead.  That sort of thing.  A simple revelation that resonates like a church bell at midnight.

Anything could bring about an epiphany.  Brushing your teeth in the morning.  Brushing your teeth at night.  Watching your child sleep, counting each of his breaths.  Eating one too many Christmas sugar cookies.  Taking your puppy for a moonlit walk in the backyard.  

As a poet, I am constantly on the lookout for these small, everyday acts that carry profound meaning.  Some people may call them inspirations.  I prefer to think of them as Bethlehem moments, because I'm a Christmas lover.  When everything falls into place--at the intersection of syllable and image and meaning--that is when I feel as though I've been touched by something much larger than myself.  Something divine.  

And it's a great gift.  Each time.

Tonight, as Epiphany Sunday draws to a close. I give thanks for all the Bethlehem moments in my life.  When a star appears in the darkness, and I follow its light to some everyday place--a barn filled with cows and chickens and straw and a huge pile of manure.  And there, as the Gospel of John says, in the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Saint Marty joins the magi at the manger tonight, worshipping Word made flesh. 

January 2: An Obscure Desire, Goals and Dreams, Primary Motivator

Merton starts entertaining the notion of becoming a priest . . . 

I went to Father Moore after the sermon on hell and said that I hoped he was going to baptize me really soon. He laughed, and said that it would not be much longer. By now, it was the beginning of November. 

Meanwhile, there had been another thought, half forming itself in the back of my mind—an obscure desire to become a priest. This was something which I tended to hold separate from the thought of my conversion, and I was doing my best to keep it in the background. I did not mention it either to Father Ford or Father Moore, for the chief reason that in my mind it constituted a kind of admission that I was taking the thought more seriously than I wanted to—it almost amounted to a first step towards application for admission to a seminary. 

However, it is a strange thing: there was also in my mind a kind of half-formed conviction that there was one other person I should consult about becoming a priest before I took the matter to the rectory. This man was a layman, and someone I had never yet seen, and it was altogether strange that I should be inclined so spontaneously to put the matter up to him, as if he were the only logical one to give me advice. In the end, he was the one I first consulted—I mean, the one from whom I first seriously asked advice, for I had long been talking about it to my friends, before I came around to him. 

This man was Daniel Walsh, about whom I had heard a great deal from Lax and Gerdy. Gerdy had taken his course on St. Thomas Aquinas in the graduate school of Philosophy: and now as the new school year began, my attention centered upon this one course. It had nothing directly to do with my preparation for the exams for the M.A. degree in January. By now degrees and everything else to do with a university career had become very unimportant in comparison with the one big thing that occupied my mind and all my desires. 

I registered for the course, and Dan Walsh turned out to be another one of those destined in a providential way to shape and direct my vocation. For it was he who pointed out my way to the place where I now am. 

When I was writing about Columbia and its professors, I was not thinking of Dan Walsh: and he really did not belong to Columbia at all. He was on the faculty of the Sacred Heart College at Manhattanville, and came to Columbia twice a week to lecture on St. Thomas and Duns Scotus. His class was a small one and was, as far as Columbia was concerned, pretty much of an academic bypath. And that was in a sense an additional recommendation—it was off that broad and noisy highway of pragmatism which leads between its banks of artificial flowers to the gates of despair. 

Walsh himself had nothing of the supercilious self-assurance of the ordinary professor: he did not need this frail and artificial armor for his own insufficiency. He did not need to hide behind tricks and vanities any more than Mark Van Doren did; he never even needed to be brilliant. In his smiling simplicity he used to efface himself entirely in the solid and powerful mind of St. Thomas. Whatever brilliance he allowed himself to show forth in his lectures was all thrown back upon its source, the Angel of the Schools. 

Dan Walsh had been a student and collaborator of Gilson’s and knew Gilson and Maritain well. In fact, later on he introduced me to Maritain at the Catholic Book Club, where this most saintly philosopher had been giving a talk on Catholic Action. I only spoke a few conventional words to Maritain, but the impression you got from this gentle, stooping Frenchman with much grey hair, was one of tremendous kindness and simplicity and godliness. And that was enough: you did not need to talk to him. I came away feeling very comforted that there was such a person in the world, and confident that he would include me in some way in his prayers. 

But Dan himself had caught a tremendous amount of this simplicity and gentleness and godliness too: and perhaps the impression that he made was all the more forceful because his square jaw had a kind of potential toughness about it. Yet no: there he sat, this little, stocky man, who had something of the appearance of a good-natured prize fighter, smiling and talking with the most childlike delight and cherubic simplicity about the Summa Theologica. 

His voice was low and, as he spoke, he half apologetically searched the faces of his hearers for signs of understanding and, when he found it, he seemed surprised and delighted. 

Merton is contemplating two life-changing decisions.  First, he wants to convert to Catholicism.  Being a cradle Catholic myself, I didn't have to wrestle with this decision.  My parents made it for me.  I was baptized by Bishop Joseph Breitenbeck of Detroit.  According to my mother, because I was baptized by a bishop< I was supposed to become a priest myself.  Instead, I became a blogger saint.

Second, somewhere in the back of his mind, Merton feels the nudge to become a priest.  It's not something that he's fully admitted to anybody.  Yet.  He writes that  ". . . in my mind it constituted a kind of admission that I was taking the thought more seriously than I wanted to . . ."  Words, spoken concretely, make an idea or notion tangible.  Once uttered with breath and vibrating vocal cords, a thought becomes real.

This second day of 2021, I have set no goals for myself.  Given voice to no resolutions.  I don't believe in making life-changing decisions at the stroke of midnight on December 31st.  That act has failure written all over it.  Certainly, I have notions of things I would like to accomplish.  Poems to write.  Manuscripts to polish and send to potential publishers.  Programs to organize for the library.  Nothing, however, that I want to discuss in this post.  Because, 365 days from now, I don't want to face a laundry list of disappointments.

Having goals is important.  Almost as important as having dreams.  The word "goals" implies something within reach.  A goal is something like, "I'm planning to drink less alcohol" or "I plan to send out poems to publishers."  Both of those are attainable.  Drinking one less glass of wine at dinner is possible (unless you're an alcoholic, and then you will probably need the help of a 12-step program).  Submitting poems to literary magazines for consideration is also possible (unless you aren't a poet).  

The word "dreams" implies fairy tale.  Something beyond the scope of reality.  I dream of winning a multi-million-dollar lottery jackpot.  Writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection, a bestselling novel that's adapted into an Academy Award-winning film.  Getting a full-time professorship at the university.  Being named Poet Laureate of the United States.  All circumstances over which I have little-to-no power.

Both "goals" and "dreams," however, have something in common:  hope.  Some people think hope is a useless emotion, giving a person the belief that the impossible is possible.  I hope that the United States will institute universal healthcare.  That a cure for cancer will be found in the next month.  COVID-19 will vanish from the face of the planet.  Donald Trump and his family will end up in prison by February.  Hope.

I think hope is a necessary part of life.  A primary motivator.  Getting me out of bed in the morning.  Behind the wheel of my car, driving to work.  Writing in my journal.  Typing up blog posts.  These are all acts of hope, predicated on the possibility of something good happening.  A good breakfast.  Good interaction with coworkers.  Good new poem.  Good ideas launched into the world.  

So, that is what I give voice to this evening.  Goals.  Dreams.  Small and large.  Attainable.  Unattainable.  Realistic.  Fantastic.  That is what the opening days of any new year are all about.

Saint Marty went for a walk this morning with his puppy.  Everything was covered with a cold white rime.  Trees.  Cars.  Houses.  Ponds.  It made everything seem clean and new.  The world erased of errors and ugliness.  Blinding hope all around.

January 1: Source of Our Strength, Harbinger of Something Miraculous, Ham Dinner

Merton craves craves renewal and finds strength in weakness . . .

I came out of the presbytery with three books under my arm. I had hoped that I could begin taking instructions at once, but the pastor had told me to read these books, and pray and think and see how I felt about it in a week or ten days’ time. I did not argue with him: but the hesitation that had been in my mind only an hour or so before seemed to have vanished so completely that I was astonished and a little abashed at this delay. So it was arranged that I should come in the evenings, twice a week. 

“Father Moore will be your instructor,” said the Pastor. 

There were four assistants at Corpus Christi, but I guessed that Father Moore was going to be the one whom I had heard preaching the sermon on the divinity of Christ and, as a matter of fact, he was the one who, in the designs of Providence, had been appointed for this work of my salvation. 

If people had more appreciation of what it means to be converted from rank, savage paganism, from the spiritual level of a cannibal or of an ancient Roman, to the living faith and to the Church, they would not think of catechism as something trivial or unimportant. Usually the word suggests the matter-of-course instructions that children have to go through before First Communion and Confirmation. Even where it is a matter-of-course, it is one of the most tremendous things in the world, this planting of the word of God in a soul. It takes a conversion to really bring this home. 

I was never bored. I never missed an instruction, even when it cost me the sacrifice of some of my old amusements and attractions, which had such a strong hold over me and, while I had been impatient of delay from the moment I had come to that first sudden decision, I now began to burn with desire for Baptism, and to throw out hints and try to determine when I would be received into the Church. 

My desire became much greater still, by the end of October, for I made the Mission with the men of the parish, listening twice a day to sermons by two Paulist Fathers and hearing Mass and kneeling at Benediction before the Christ Who was gradually revealing Himself to me. 

When the sermon on hell began, I was naturally making mental comparisons with the one in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist and reflecting on it in a kind of detached manner, as if I were a third and separate person watching myself hearing this sermon and seeing how it affected me. As a matter of fact this was the sermon which should have done me the most good and did, in fact, do so. 

My opinion is that it is a very extraordinary thing for anyone to be upset by such a topic. Why should anyone be shattered by the thought of hell? It is not compulsory for anyone to go there. Those who do, do so by their own choice, and against the will of God, and they can only get into hell by defying and resisting all the work of Providence and grace. It is their own will that takes them there, not God’s. In damning them He is only ratifying their own decision —a decision which He has left entirely to their own choice. Nor will He ever hold our weakness alone responsible for our damnation. Our weakness should not terrify us: it is the source of our strength. Libeuter gloriabor in infirmitatibus meis ut inhabitet in me virtus Christi. Power is made perfect in infirmity, and our very helplessness is all the more potent a claim on that Divine Mercy Who calls to Himself the poor, the little ones, the heavily burdened. 

My reaction to the sermon on hell was, indeed, what spiritual writers call “confusion”—but it was not the hectic, emotional confusion that comes from passion and from self-love. It was a sense of quiet sorrow and patient grief at the thought of these tremendous and terrible sufferings which I deserved and into which I stood a very good chance of entering, in my present condition: but at the same time, the magnitude of the punishment gave me a special and particular understanding of the greatness of the evil of sin. But the final result was a great deepening and awakening of my soul, a real increase in spiritual profundity and an advance in faith and love and confidence in God, to Whom alone I could look for salvation from these things. And therefore I all the more earnestly desired Baptism.

I truly love the idea of weakness being the source of strength.  The whole Jesus narrative embodies this idea.  Christ wasn't born in a palace, attended by servants or handmaids or wet nurses.  Nope.  His parents were poor.  Travelling by donkey.  I suppose the modern equivalent of that would be hitchhiking or driving across country in a 1982 Pinto.  Jesus' birth is all about humility.  Finding beauty in cow shit and piles of dirty straw.  Power in poverty.

This first day of the new year, I'm struck by this notion.  I just poked around Facebook, looking at the posts of friends and family.  Many of them celebrate the end of 2020, which, I must agree, was a pretty wretched year on many levels.  Yet, the idea of the changing of a number somehow signifying a change of luck or circumstance is, at the very least, misguided.

The only way that January 1, 2021, will be the harbinger of something miraculous is if the entire human race admits its weaknesses and failings.  If all people  start to wear facemasks and practice social distancing.  Millionaires and billionaires have Scrooge moments and begin to distribute their wealth to the poor and hungry.  Politicians embrace true servitude and remember that they work for us, not the other way 'round.  And everyone, down to the last person on this planet, treats everyone else as if they are children of God.  Embodiments of the divine.

If that happens today, things would begin to change.  Instead of accumulating money, we'd stockpile kindness and generosity.  Each day would dawn with hope, end with thankfulness.  That would be a real revolution, based on love instead of power.  Donald Trump would be ladling soup for the starving.  Mitch McConnell handing out blankets to the homeless.  Members of the Supreme Court marching for equality and justice for everyone, regardless of race, gender, nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.  It would be heaven on Earth.  That's the real message of Christ's nativity.

So, if you want 2021 to be different than 2020, practice kindness.  All day.  Every day.  Treat this planet with respect.  Hold others accountable for cruelty and hatred.  Be a friend.  A lover.  A miracle.  

I am a weak person.  Subject to anger and despair and jealousy.  I admit that.  Yet, I am graced, despite all of these failings.  Or because of them.  Grace is not about earning something.  It's about receiving something you don't deserve.  Power in poverty.  Wealth in want.

Tonight, I am having a ham dinner.  The ham was given to my family by a friend near the beginning of our quarantine, along with several bags of other groceries.  Scalloped potatoes.  Wine.  It will be a feast provided by love.  A true communion that will feed not just our bodies, but our spirits.  

This is how Saint Marty will remember the beginning of 2021.