April 21: "Dogma," State of the World, "Catechism"

Billy Collins takes us to church . . .

Dogma

by:  Billy Collins

I might be an atheist

were it not

for all the tall angels

and the pudgy cherubs 

in the silvery clouds

presiding over all those miracles.

This is a good poem for a Sunday.

Looking at the state of the world at the moment (wars and climate change and politicians hawking Bibles), it's hard not to question the existence of an Almighty.  How can a Higher Power let all this shit happen?

Gone are the days when angels would sometimes knock on your front door and ask for some hospitality (dinner and a warm bed).  Lepers aren't walking down streets, ringing bells and shouting "Unclean!  Unclean!"  The blind don't see, and the lame don't walk.  Miracles just don't happen with great frequency in this day and age.  Or do they?

Here's the thing--and I think this is the point Billy Collins is making with today's poem--angels and miracles are all around us.  Every day.  That hasn't changed since baby Moses went for his little boat ride in the bulrushes.  Modern people have just become immune to the holy weird of the world.  For example, I saw a wild turkey on the side of the road today, and I ate a lavender vanilla bean gelato for lunch.  Tonight, I picked up a poet at the airport and drove her to her hotel.  This poet has won, among other accolades, the American Book Award.  Miracle upon miracle upon miracle.

I've had angels in my life, as well.  These angels have gone out of their ways to help me at various times when I've felt irredeemable.  My friend, Helen, was one of those angels.  She believed in the inherent goodness of everyone she met.  Every day was an adventure in wonder for her, from the deer feeding in her backyard to the raspberries growing along the side of a path.  She lived in the realm of the earthly sacred.  And Helen believed in me.

So, Saint Marty agrees with Billy Collins:  angels and cherubs and miracles, oh my!

Catechism

by:  Martin Achatz

I learned to recite

the "Our Father" in Latin

when I was a kid,

so I speak guilt

in two languages.

January 10: "Look," Lake Superior, Angels

Billy Collins opens his eyes . . . 

Look

by:  Billy Collins

The morning lake 

was smooth as a mirror.

A few angels were even seen

flying down

just after dawn

to check themselves out.

I have lived near Lake Superior almost my whole life.  When I was a kid, it was just a 20-minute drive away.  The library where I now work is just a three- or four-minute walk from the big waters.  There's something incredibly comforting to me in that proximity.  When I was in graduate school downstate, surrounded by asphalt and concrete, it felt as if a part of me was missing--a big, tundra-sized part.

In winter, Lake Superior is rarely smooth as a mirror, as Collins says in today's poem.  There's always wind or clouds or snow, and gray dominates the landscape.  That doesn't mean that angels don't fly down just after dawn to check themselves out in its surface.  In fact, I would say that, when the lake is the color of January, blending with the sky, it's difficult to determine where the world ends and heaven begins.  We all sort of become angels, searching for our reflections in its chaotic cold expanse.

And really, that's what living a good life is all about, isn't it?  Somehow trying to be reflections of the divine here on Earth.  Maybe we're all just Lake Superiors, angels dancing across the surface of our bodies.

Yesterday, one of my sisters fell in her driveway and fractured the radius and ulna in both of her wrists.  A freak accident.  Both of her arms are in casts, with just the tips of her fingers sticking out.  For a person who's used to being self-sufficient, she is now fairly dependent on others.  I stopped by her house on the way home tonight to drop off some pistachios (one of her favorite snacks) and see how she was fairing.

She's frustrated.  In pain.  Coping.  In an instant, her life has gone from Lake Superior on a clear, calm July day to Lake Superior roiling with winter and wind.  It's not easy seeing angels reflected in yourself when the gales of November come early, as Gordon Lightfoot sang.  

However, I've found that angels tend to be much more visible in the midst of struggle and storm.  It's as if a skim of ice melts from the surface of your eyes and, suddenly, angels are everywhere,  Bringing you glasses of water.  Sending you loving text messages.  Helping you in the simplest and most profound of ways.

Like life, Lake Superior's moods are wildly changeable.  They can't be controlled or subdued or trained.  Anyone who has lived near its shores for any length of time understands this.  Respects this.  Finds beauty in this.  And if we open our eyes, we can see angels reflected in its glacial waves.  Sometimes, those angels look a lot like ourselves.

Sometimes, they even look like Saint Marty.

April 22-24: Something I Have Never Forgotten, Wrapped in Darkness, King Kong

Merton experiences a spiritual revelation . . . 

When I went back to Havana, I found out something else, too, and something vastly more important. It was something that made me realize, all of a sudden, not merely intellectually, but experimentally, the real uselessness of what I had been half deliberately looking for: the visions in the ceiba trees. And this experience opened another door, not a way to a kind of writing but a way into a world infinitely new, a world that was out of this world of ours entirely and which transcended it infinitely, and which was not a world, but which was God Himself. 

I was in the Church of St. Francis at Havana. It was a Sunday. I had been to Communion at some other church, I think at El Cristo, and now I had come here to hear another Mass. The building was crowded. Up in front, before the altar, there were rows and rows of children, crowded together. I forget whether they were First Communicants or not: but they were children around that age. I was far in the back of the church, but I could see the heads of all those children. 

It came time for the Consecration. The priest raised the Host, then he raised the chalice. When he put the chalice down on the altar, suddenly a Friar in his brown robe and white cord stood up in front of the children, and all at once the voices of the children burst out: 

“Creo en Diós...” 

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth...” 

The Creed. But that cry, “Creo en Dios!” It was loud, and bright, and sudden and glad and triumphant; it was a good big shout, that came from all those Cuban children, a joyous affirmation of faith. 

Then, as sudden as the shout and as definite, and a thousand times more bright, there formed in my mind an awareness, an understanding, a realization of what had just taken place on the altar, at the Consecration: a realization of God made present by the words of Consecration in a way that made Him belong to me. 

But what a thing it was, this awareness: it was so intangible, and yet it struck me like a thunderclap. It was a light that was so bright that it had no relation to any visible light and so profound and so intimate that it seemed like a neutralization of every lesser experience. 

And yet the thing that struck me most of all was that this light was in a certain sense “ordinary”—it was a light (and this most of all was what took my breath away) that was offered to all, to everybody, and there was nothing fancy or strange about it. It was the light of faith deepened and reduced to an extreme and sudden obviousness. 

It was as if I had been suddenly illuminated by being blinded by the manifestation of God’s presence.

The reason why this light was blinding and neutralizing was that there was and could be simply nothing in it of sense or imagination. When I call it a light that is a metaphor which I am using, long after the fact. But at the moment, another overwhelming thing about this awareness was that it disarmed all images, all metaphors, and cut through the whole skein of species and phantasms with which we naturally do our thinking. It ignored all sense experience in order to strike directly at the heart of truth, as if a sudden and immediate contact had been established between my intellect and the Truth Who was now physically really and substantially before me on the altar. But this contact was not something speculative and abstract: it was concrete and experimental and belonged to the order of knowledge, yes, but more still to the order of love. 

Another thing about it was that this light was something far above and beyond the level of any desire or any appetite I had ever yet been aware of. It was purified of all emotion and cleansed of everything that savored of sensible yearnings. It was love as clean and direct as vision: and it flew straight to the possession of the Truth it loved. 

And the first articulate thought that came to my mind was: 

“Heaven is right here in front of me: Heaven, Heaven!” 

It lasted only a moment: but it left a breathless joy and a clean peace and happiness that stayed for hours and it was something I have never forgotten. 

Merton experiences an epiphany here.  A vision of God's presence in the world--a light that is both completely ordinary and completely transcendent.  It's available to everybody.  I suppose all you have to do is open yourself to it, the way Merton does at this moment he's describing.

Most people aren't that open to this experience.  I know I'm not.  Most days, I keep my head down, blinders on, focused on myself and my problems.  That pretty much describes the human condition.  Instead of seeing the light, I see the dark.  

Merton, himself, admits that this divine vision he experiences is fleeting.  He simply can't sustain it.  I suppose it's like striking a match.  The flame springs up, blue and brilliant, then settles down, gutters for a minute or so, and disappears into smoke.  And what Merton is left with is an intense physical memory of God.  But it sustains him for a long time.,

Tonight, I'm sort of wrapped in darkness.  Like a blanket around my shoulders.  Just like Merton can't shake the light of God's grace from his eyes, I can't quite shrug off these shadows.  Instead, I'm sitting here trying to make friends with them.

That probably sounds crazy.  I mean, who wants to invite darkness to take a seat on the couch next to you?  Really, though, that is the only way I know how to overcome these feelings.  By living with them, talking with them, trying to understand them.  Sort of like what Hemingway wrote:  "Write the best story you can and write it as straight as you can."

You don't need to ornament the dark.  Ascribe all kinds of big words to it.  Darkness is simply the absence of light.  And it's also what comes before sunrise.  My darkness comes from a kind of aloneness.  Being surrounded by people, yet unable to talk about the big hairy ape that's stalking my thoughts.  (Yes, that's a King Kong allusion.  Stick with me.)  There are things in life that are difficult to put words to.  Because if you put words to them, it makes them real, and, if they're real, then you have to deal with them.  And who wants to deal with a 40-foot tall gorilla?

You just have to wait out the darkness.  Stay in the cave until the sun shows up, however long that takes.  Get used to the monkey.  Maybe find out it's not all that frightening.  Tame it.  Maybe take a trip to the Empire State Building with it.  Visit the Statue of Liberty.  Take in a Broadway show.  Maybe Hamilton.  

Sometimes the things that frighten us the most turn out to be angels instead of monsters.  Or maybe God, putting you to the Job test.

Saint Marty is sitting in his dark living room, ready for anything--Job or Kong or angel or God.

March 8: Man in a Mouse-Colored Overcoat, Angels, "Fezziwigging"

Merton encounters a possible angel . . . 

In the big meditation on the “Two Standards,” where you are supposed to line up the army of Christ in one field and the army of the devil in the other, and ask yourself which one you choose, I got into too much of a Cecil B. De Mille atmosphere to make much out of it, but in the considerations on a choice of a state in life which followed, a strange thing happened, which scared me a little. It was the only incident that savored of externally supernatural intervention in the retreat. 

I had already made my choice of a state of life. I was going to be a Franciscan. Consequently, I embarked on these thoughts without too much personal concern. I was meandering around in considerations of what a man ought to do with his earthly possessions—a meditation that might have been useful to someone who really had some possessions to dispose of—when my doorbell rang. I pressed the button that opened the street-door below, and went to the head of the stairs, thinking that perhaps it was Gibney or somebody like that. 

It was a little man in a mouse-colored overcoat, whom I had never before seen. 

“Are you Thomas Merton?” he said to me, as he arrived on my landing. 

I did not deny it, and he entered my room and sat down on the bed. 

“Did you write that review of that book about D. H. Lawrence in the Times book section last Sunday?” he asked me. 

I thought I was in for it. I had favorably reviewed a book on Lawrence by Tyndall, under whom I had done my thesis at Columbia. He had written just the kind of a book that was calculated to drive all the people who had made a Messiah out of Lawrence clean out of their wits with pain and rage. I had already got an angry letter in the mail for even reviewing such a book, and I thought that now somebody had come around to shoot me if I did not recant. 

“Yes,” I said, “I wrote the review. Didn’t you like it?” 

“Oh, I didn’t read it,” said the little man, “but Mr. Richardson read it, and he told me all about it.”

“Who is Mr. Richardson?” 

“You don’t know him? He lives in Norwalk. I was talking to him about your review only yesterday.” 

“I don’t know anybody in Norwalk,” I said. I could not figure out whether this Mr. Richardson liked the review or not, and did not bother. It did not seem to have any bearing on the man’s visit after all. 

“I have been travelling around all day,” he said, thoughtfully. “I was in Elizabeth, New Jersey; then in Bayonne, New Jersey; then in Newark. Then, when I was coming back on the Hudson Tube I thought of Mr. Richardson and how he had been talking about you, and I thought I would come and see you.” 

So there he was. He had been in Elizabeth and Bayonne and Newark and now he was sitting on my bed, with his mouse-colored overcoat and his hat in his hand. 

“Do you live in New Jersey?” I said, out of politeness. 

“Oh, no, of course not, I live in Connecticut,” he said quickly. But I had opened out only an avenue to further confusion. He went into intricate geographical details about where he lived and how he happened to be associated with this Mr. Richardson of Norwalk, and then he said: 

“When I saw the ad in the paper, I decided to go over to New Jersey.” 

“The ad?” 

“Yes, the ad about the job I was looking for in Elizabeth, and didn’t get. And now I haven’t even enough money to get back to Connecticut.” 

I finally began to see what it was all about. 

The visitor was stumbling around in a long, earnest, and infinitely complicated account of all the jobs he had failed to get in New Jersey, and I, with a strange awe and excitement, began to think two things: “How much money have I got to give him?” and “How did he happen to walk in here just when I was in the middle of that meditation about giving all your goods to the poor?...” 

The possibility that he might even be an angel, disguised in that mouse-colored coat, struck me with a force that was all the more affecting because it was so obviously absurd. And yet the more I think about it, the more I am convinced of the propriety of God sending me an angel with instructions to try and fool me by talking like a character in one of those confusing short stories that get printed in the New Yorker.

Anyway, I reached into my pockets and started emptying them, putting quarters and pennies and nickels on the desk. Of course, if the man was an angel, then the whole affair was nothing but a set-up, and I should give him everything I had on me, and go without supper. Two things restrained me. First, the desire of supper, and, second, the fact that the stranger seemed to be aware that I was somewhat moved with secret thoughts, and apparently interpreted them as annoyance. Anyway, figuring that I was in some way upset, he showed himself to be in a hurry to take the little I had already collected for him, as if that were plenty. 

He hastened away, stuffing a dollar bill and the change into his pockets, leaving me in such a state of bewilderment that I positively could not sit down cross-legged and continue the meditation. I was still wondering if I should not run down the street after him and give him the other dollar which I still had. 

But still, applying St. Ignatius’ standard to the present circumstances, I had done fairly well. I had given him about three-fifths of my liquid capital. 

Perhaps, in a way, it is better that I didn’t give him everything and go without supper. I would have preened myself with such consummate and disgusting vanity—assuming I did not die of fear, and call up one of my friends to lend me something—that there would have been no merit in it at all. For all that, even if his story was disconnected and very silly, and even if he was not an angel, he was much more than that if you apply Christ’s own standard about whatsoever you have done to the least of His little ones. 

Anyway, it certainly put some point into that meditation. 

I don't think angels are recognized very much these days.  They still walk around, knock on doors, ask for money on the subway, hold signs outside Walmart that read "Haven't Ate in 3 Days."  They may be sitting at the desk six feet away in your office.  Or they may be sleeping in your house, right in the next room.

It isn't a matter of snow-white wings and harps and halos.  Angels are those people who put you to the test--to see whether you'll share your last piece of pizza, hand them your hat and gloves, put your arms around them when they are breaking in two.  That's what Merton recognizes in the passage above.  He sees an angel in a mouse-colored overcoat, and he gives that angel enough money to find his way home.

I think I failed an angel recently.  A young one, full of pain.  Instead of holding him tightly, telling him that I love him, I got angry instead.  Made him feel worse.  And, because of that act of impatience on my part, I almost paid a very big price.  God taught me a lesson.  A huge one.

That's also the job of angels.  They teach us things about ourselves, push us to be better people.  I am moving forward tonight, thankful for the chance to redeem myself.  Prove to that young angel that I can do better.  Be better.  

That's what this messy life is all about.  It's pretty simple.  When you feel anger, reach toward understanding.  When you're feeling poor or hungry, share what you have anyway.  And when you are in despair, look for hope.

Saint Marty gives thanks tonight for a little angel with a big message.

And a poem to make you smile tonight . . .

Fezziwigging

by:  Martin Achatz

I've always loved how your calves
flash like comets as the fiddler saws
"Sir Roger de Coverly" across
his strings, and you and Mrs.
Feizziwag march across warehouse
floor, flush other dancers away,
startled partridges before hungry
hounds. How your face gleams
with goose grease, figgy pudding,
pockets filled with crumbs of mince
meat. How at home, you peel off
breeches, stockings, unbutton, unbuckle,
shrug on nightshirt, climb into bed.
Mr. Fezziwig, she coos.
Mrs. Fezziwig, you growl.
As if you don't know her
first name, she forgotten yours.
That you have just met
at that yule revel, spied
her by the wassail bowl, decided
she would be your gold
and frankincense and myrrh
that holy night. How you coax
her with lip, mouth, tongue
until she finally remembers
your name, sighs it over
and over and over and over:
Francis, oh, Francis, oh,
Frank, yes, Frank, yes, Frank
until bells begin to peal
in the steeples on that cold,
clear Christmas morning.

July 14: Marianas Trench, Jericho Brown, "Herman Finley"

Okay, I am a little down tonight.  I am going to wallow for a few hours.  Actually, I've been wallowing since about 6 p.m.  That's five hours and counting.  You will have to excuse me this evening, Constant Readers.  I have been drinking a little, and the night is stretching out before me like the Marianas Trench, full of blackness and weird oceanic danger.

Jericho Brown's poem, which I thought was going to be a wallowing poem, sort of turns out in the end to be life-affirming.  Not what I was expecting.  I thought it was going to be a little more Emily Dickinsonian (I know that isn't really a word, but I like it).  Instead, it's more like It's a Wonderful Life, without the angels and ringing bells.

Saint Marty promises that he isn't going to try to jump off any bridges tonight.

Herman Finley

by:  Jericho Brown

I didn't tell you that, in the end, he begged

For the end.  Death like the bed after

The bedtime story.  Death like a widening

Crack of light beneath the door. 

He begged them to let him

Go so he could go.  Said I want

To die.  Then said kill me.  Please. 

You and I endure that first pain.  

We just want to die.  People with that

Other ultimately physical agony say

Kill me and know they won't discuss it

In therapy.  Kill me.  I’m thinking

Of him today because I want to die

And I am ashamed to say it.  My thinking

Is red and sticky.  Rather than kill me,

I'd like you to listen as I live

In a perpetual whine.  Can’t I still be

Somebody’s baby?  Say yes for yourself.

Call me some time.  Every day I wish to die,

Remind me how he insisted.

Kill me.  And I’ll live again.

Even Death is in a good mood!

January 31: A Dream, Prayer, New Cartoon

Robert once had a dream when he was about ten years old, just after the family had returned home from Italy and he had received the Pope's blessing.  He and his father were strolling in Riverside Park, as they sometimes did in good weather, and even though there were no streams in that park, in his memory of it a stream came flowing down the hill south of Grant's Tomb.  He would remember seeing Jesus Christ standing waist high in the water, not as a grown man but as a boy of his own age.  And Jesus turned to him and beckoned, and that was the first time, he supposed, that he thought of becoming a priest.

Robert [Ives' son] struggles with his decision to enter the priesthood.  He has a girlfriend who he cares about a great deal.  He spies on a young woman from the neighborhood as she undresses in her bedroom.  On some nights, he plays in an amateur jazz band with his school friends.  He's not sure if he wants to be a priest, a husband, or a musician.  Yet, God sends him a message in a dream.  He interprets it as a call to the priesthood.  It could also be a premonition of his early death, as well.

God doesn't usually provide clear-cut answers.  We don't live in Old Testament times, when angels appeared on your doorstep and delivered personal messages from Yahweh.  No, we live in the twenty-first century.  God doesn't text or tweet or have a Facebook page.  Divine messages with clear-cut answers or instructions are a thing of the past.  Way past.

I have a friend who's struggling with a difficult question recently.  She was advised to meditate, clear her mind, and wait for some kind of answer from God.  It didn't go so well.  As a thinking, intelligent person, she couldn't stop her own thought long enough for any kind of answer from on high.  She just continued struggling.

My friend has made her decision.  I'm not sure how inspired it was, but she feels it was the correct one for her.  I just wish we lived in a world where angels still dropped by for coffee and God parted seas and turned bad guys into pillars of salt.  It would be a little easier to know right from wrong.  I'm a little tired of living in a gray world, if you get my meaning.

Maybe God's going to visit me in a dream tonight.  Maybe some seraphim is going to be waiting on my doorstep when I get home tonight.

Saint Marty should check his e-mail.  Maybe God sent him a prayer confirmation.

Confessions of Saint Marty

December 27: Started to Cry, Angels, Piece of Mind

"You can take it all.  You can pay me back.  Bring it to the play."

"How much is it, for God's sake?"

"Eight dollars and eighty-five cents.  Sixty-five cents.  I spent some."

Then, all of a sudden, I started to cry.  I couldn't help it.

Holden's sister, Phoebe, gives Holden her Christmas "dough" because he's out of cash.  It's a simple act of giving.  Something that a kid does without thinking.  She has money.  Holden needs money.  She gives Holden her money.


I'm sorry I didn't post yesterday.  I worked twelve hours, and then my book club came over last night for our Christmas meeting.  They were here really late, and, by the time the house was cleaned up, I couldn't string two words together into a coherent sentence.

Which I'm really sorry about, because I really had a piece of my mind I wanted to share.  You see, on Christmas evening, we went to a get-together at the house of my wife's cousin.  It was lovely, noisy, crowded, and just a little out-of-control.  Basically, it was a family Christmas.  We had turkey and mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole.  All of my favorites.  And, of course, we opened presents.

My wife's family follows the tradition of choosing names.  So, each adult usually receives one present.  I prefer this tradition.  It cuts down on the commercialism that is rampant this time of year.  It also allows you to purchase something really decent for your person.

Well, I got a little surprise.  All of my wife's sisters, their husbands, our niece, and my wife's grandma pitched in and bought my wife and me a wonderful present.

One of the most expensive expenses in our weekly budget is the purchase of gasoline for our vehicles.  My jobs take me into Marquette, Michigan, about 20 miles away, every day.  My wife usually make at least one trip to the "big city" at least once a day, as well.  That's a lot of gas.

My sister-in-law handed me a card on Christmas night.  Inside the card were gift certificates to a local gas station.  A lot of gift certificates.  Enough so that we won't have to purchase gas for several weeks.  I sat there, completely stunned.  Then, like Holden, I started to cry.

"Don't do that," my wife's cousin said, "or we'll all be messes."

I laughed.

My wife and I are truly blessed.  Some people don't believe in angels.  I can tell you, without a doubt, that they exist.  I may never be able to pay back my wife's family for everything they've done for us over the years.  We've struggled through mental illness and addictions and separations.  We've endured.  Because of love.  Because of family.

Saint Marty believes in Christmas miracles.

Angels are all around me

August 5: Readings in Paradise and Rudyard, Vacation Tomorrow, Magic 8-Ball Monday

We (me, my wife, and kids) got back from our little poetry trip a little over an hour ago.  It was a great excursion to the eastern Upper Peninsula, and the people I met at the readings were kind and supportive.  I even sold a couple of books.

In Rudyard, Michigan, I read with mystery novelist Steve Hamilton, novelist Sue Harrison, poet Keith Taylor, and poet/short story writer/playwright Ron Riekki.  In Paradise, it was Steve Hamilton and Keith Taylor again.  We were joined by poet Julie Brooks Barbour.  It really was an honor to read with all these accomplished writers.  They were all so gracious.  I met some old friends and made some new ones.  Keep an eye out for a couple reviews of some books I picked up on this trip.

Tomorrow morning, I head below the Mackinac Bridge for a little vacation with my family.  When I say little, I mean little.  But I'm going to enjoy every second away from the worries and cares of the last few weeks.  You'll forgive me if I only post once daily this week.  I'm trying to scale back, relax.

Which brings me to my question for Magic 8-Ball Monday:

Will my garbage get picked up tomorrow as usual?  (I'm not going for anything deep.  Remember, I'm taking it easy on myself this week.)

And the answer from Holden Caulfield is:

...All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere, guys carrying crucifixes and stuff all over the place, and the whole bunch of them--thousands of them--singing "Come All Ye Faithful" like mad...

I have no idea what that quote has to do with garbage, but I know my garbage is going to get picked up tomorrow morning.  So, I guess maybe the angels are my garbage guys.  Maybe.


Saint Marty doesn't really care.  He's on vacation.

He looks like an angel to me

February 21: Allie, Disappearing, Angels

Anyway, I kept walking and walking up Fifth Avenue, without any tie on or anything.  Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening.  Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street.  I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again.  Boy, did it scare me.  You can't imagine.  I started sweating like a bastard--my whole shirt and underwear and everything.  Then I started doing something else.  Every time I'd get to the end of a block I'd make believe I was talking to my brother Allie.  I'd say to him, "Allie, don't let me disappear.  Allie, don't let me disappear.  Allie, don't let me disappear.  Please, Allie."  And then when I'd reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I'd thank him.  Then it would start all over again as soon as I got to the next corner.  But I kept going and all.  I was sort of afraid to stop, I think--I don't remember, to tell you the truth.

This passage comes near the conclusion of The Catcher in the Rye.  Holden is almost at the end of his rope, headed toward a mental breakdown that will land him in a hospital.  He's physically ill, feeling abandoned/alone.  In an earlier part of the novel, he describes how he wants to be the catcher, saving children who are about to plunge off the cliff at the edge of the field of rye.  Now, Holden is at the edge of the cliff, and he's calling on his brother, Allie, to save him from going down, down, down.  To save him from disappearing.

I think we all have angels we call upon in times of great stress and trouble.  Holden's angel is Allie, his brother who died of leukemia.  I always find this moment in Holden's tale a little heartbreaking.  Allie's death was, in a lot of ways, the start of Holden's downward spiral.  The amount of love and loss that are expressed in the above passage are immense.

My mother-in-law died before my wife and I married.  She was a wonderful woman, full of laughter and life, and she loved her three daughters fiercely.  When we put the decorations on our tree every Christmas, there are certain ornaments that receive special places.  Those ornaments were made by my wife's mother.  A picture of her hangs on our living room wall.  She's laughing, her face a vision of joy, no shadow of her future illness present.  That's the way I remember her.  Joyful.

Last night, my daughter was sitting next to my wife on our couch.   We were watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  Sirius, Harry's godfather, had just been killed, and my daughter looked up at my wife and said, "Do you miss your mommy?"

My wife looked up at her mother's picture hanging above the entertainment center.  "Every day," my wife said.  "I think about her and miss her every day."

My daughter leaned her head on my wife's shoulder.  "I'm glad you're still here with me," she said.

"So am I," my wife said.  "So am I."

I know my mother-in-law would have loved my daughter and son just as fiercely as she loved her daughters.  She would have laughed with them and played with them.  She would have been in the front row at each of my daughter's dance recitals.  I have no doubt of that.

My mother-in-law's memory and spirit are guiding angels in my house.  From the times we share just sitting on the couch, watching TV together, to the trips to get ice cream on hot summer nights, she's watching over us.  I truly believe she has held my family together, through my wife's mental illness and sexual addiction, through the lean times and the times of abundance.  She's with us.  Every day.

She has kept Saint Marty's family from disappearing.

She's there.  Evey day.