I agree with that statement. Think about it. Walking through Walmart, imagine the stories of every person that you pass in the aisles. Each person has a story, full of joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures. And we all started out the same way: newborn babies, placed in our mothers' arms, pink and innocent, full of all kinds of hope.
I remind myself of that fact almost every day. The man who flips me off as I'm driving down the highway may have just received a cancer diagnosis. The woman who glares at me when I bump into her shopping cart may have a grown child suffering from schizophrenia. The teenage boy who jokes about me with his pack of friends in McDonald's may have a father or mother with a drinking problem. We just don't know.
I am not immune to being judgmental. I'm human, and I fall into the same traps as everybody else. But that makes me one of the mass of men, as well. Leading my life of quiet desperation.
Saint Marty is in good company.
Before 4:30 Mass
by: Martin Achatz
by: Martin Achatz
I look down from the choir loft
At the silence gathered below.
Mrs. MacDonald wears her wool coat
In the same pew she sat in
With her parents, seventy years ago.
She looks behind her, as if she expects
Her father to march up the aisle,
Sit next to her, his boots
Still red with dust from the mines.
Father George flits from person-to-person,
Like a hummingbird in an apple tree,
Pausing long enough to taste
The blossom of each sinner's grief
Before moving on. My daughter, white
Acolyte, lights candles on the altar,
Checks chalice and paten, makes sure
Gospel and cloth are in place
For the coming show. So much quiet
Desperation fills the sanctuary,
Everyone craving a piece of holiness
To bring home, bake with eggs and oatmeal,
Spaghetti and meatloaf for the week.
I reach down, press the red button.
The pipe organ takes a long breath,
Groans to life, resurrected again.
It waits for my fingers, holds
Music in its gold pipes that reach
Up and up to the vaulted ceiling,
To the bell in the steeple. It waits
For that low D of the first hymn,
Voices rising like seagulls
At the silence gathered below.
Mrs. MacDonald wears her wool coat
In the same pew she sat in
With her parents, seventy years ago.
She looks behind her, as if she expects
Her father to march up the aisle,
Sit next to her, his boots
Still red with dust from the mines.
Father George flits from person-to-person,
Like a hummingbird in an apple tree,
Pausing long enough to taste
The blossom of each sinner's grief
Before moving on. My daughter, white
Acolyte, lights candles on the altar,
Checks chalice and paten, makes sure
Gospel and cloth are in place
For the coming show. So much quiet
Desperation fills the sanctuary,
Everyone craving a piece of holiness
To bring home, bake with eggs and oatmeal,
Spaghetti and meatloaf for the week.
I reach down, press the red button.
The pipe organ takes a long breath,
Groans to life, resurrected again.
It waits for my fingers, holds
Music in its gold pipes that reach
Up and up to the vaulted ceiling,
To the bell in the steeple. It waits
For that low D of the first hymn,
Voices rising like seagulls
Above the waves of Galilee.
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