July 9: "Logos," Miracles, Bishop Baraga

Mary Oliver on miracles . . . 

Logos

by:  Mary Oliver

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?

If you say the right words, the wine expands.

If you say them with love

and the felt ferocity of that love

and the felt necessity of that love, 

the fish explode into many.

Imagine him, speaking,

and don't worry about what is reality, 

or what is plain, or what is mysterious.

If you were there, it was all those things.

If you can imagine, it is all those things.

Eat, drink, be happy.

Accept the miracle.

Accept, too, each spoken word

spoken with love.

I spend a good deal of time in the classroom talking about ethos, pathos, and logos with my writing students.  Ethos is a rhetorical appeal that relies on the credibility and trustworthiness of the writer.  Pathos is an appeal to the emotions--basically getting your readers emotionally invested in your message (through compassion or anger or pity, for example).  Logos is the exact opposite of pathos.  Logos is an appeal to reason and logic and intellect.

Mary Oliver isn't really trying to engage in a rational debate in this poem.  She's talking about the Biblical narrative of the loaves and fishes, where Jesus feeds five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish.  If you are casting around for an explanation of this miracle, you're missing the point of Oliver's poem and the gospel accounts.  The disciples accepted the miracle without question.  Oliver pretty much backs up the disciples.  She tells her readers to just "Accept the miracle."

I know that's difficult for a lot of people.  Back in Biblical times, it was taken for granted that angels walked the Earth and blindness could be cured with mud and a little spit.  Logos didn't even enter the equation.  It was mostly pathos and ethos.  Nowadays, pathos and ethos are left to poets and artists and musicians.  Logos is the realm of scientists and engineers.  Miracles belong to people who dance with rattlesnakes, blind with desperation.

When my sister, Sally, was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma of the brain, I prayed for a miracle.  I worked in healthcare for close to 20 years, so I knew all about prognoses and diagnoses.  When I first saw images from Sally's CAT and PET scans, the logos side of my brain knew immediately that my sister had little chance of surviving.  But ethos and pathos wouldn't let me completely abandon hope for recovery.

My family contacted the local Catholic diocese, and a few days later, our parish priest arrived at my parents' house where Sally was under hospice care.  Father Larry brought a relic from Bishop Baraga, a Slovenian Roman Catholic missionary who was the first Bishop of Marquette from 1857 to 1868.  Baraga's cause for sainthood is currently under consideration by the Vatican.

Father Larry brought one of Bishop Baraga's stoles and anointed my sister with it.  Then, we recited a family rosary.  It was a powerful moment, with hope hovering in the room like a trapped sparrow, beating at the windows of all our hearts.  That night, everyone in my family believed in miracles.

About a week or so later (maybe less), Sally took a last, deep breath one morning and died, surrounded by her family and closest friends, and it was a miracle.  Not the miracle we where looking for, but a miracle nonetheless.  Each person in the room lifting Sally up, sending her on her final journey with gratitude and grief for the time we all had with her.

No, my sister didn't miraculously jump out of bed to whip up a pot of her spaghetti sauce.  No, she didn't miraculously open her eyes and tell us to stop being babies.  And no, the room didn't miraculously smell like blooming roses when she passed.

If you are a logos person, you probably won't experience anything miraculous in your lifetime.  Because you're too focused on comprehending and explaining, instead of just following Oliver's simple directive:  "Accept . . . each spoken word / spoken with love."

Saint Marty gives thanks tonight for each spoken word.  Each soft breath.  Each person he loves and who loves him.

April 14: Sunlit Detail, Grand Rapids, Nostalgia

All these things I saw.  Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remembered the life of my time with increasing feeling.

Dillard is talking about memory.  Remembering the sunlit times of her life.  In paragraphs before and after the above passage, she writes of oceans and space and France.  Things from her past.  She's flooded with nostalgia, thinking about a former place or time in her life.  With nostalgia comes a certain degree of sadness, as well.  Dillard is walking a tightrope.  Above, moon and stars.  Below, canyon and darkness.

First, I apologize for my absence these last two days.  It was my mid-week blogging pause to lesson plan and grade and teach.  By the time I get home after class on Wednesday night, I am usually brain dead.  It takes much energy to engage a classroom full of 25 undergraduates between the ages of 18 and 23.  Last night, I had enough gumption to order a pizza, eat it with my wife and daughter, and then stumble off to bed.

This weekend, I will be traveling to Grand Rapids with my family.  My daughter has a dance competition.  We will be leaving tomorrow morning.  It's about a six- or seven-hour drive, depending on the number of stops we make.  The members of our Grand Rapids landing party include myself, my wife and son and daughter, my sister, and my daughter's boyfriend.  By tomorrow night at this time, I will probably be throwing my son into a swimming pool or eating McDonald's food in a room at the Ramada Inn.

On my way home from work this evening, I stopped to visit my sister's grave.  I drive by the cemetery almost every day, and sometimes I just experience this urge to turn into the entrance gates.  Tonight, I stayed there about ten or fifteen minutes, talking, telling my sister about the trip, work, school.  I told her about her godson (my son), and how he is now sporting a Mohawk haircut.  And I told her about my daughter and her boyfriend.  My sister would have liked him.

Yes, like Dillard, I indulged myself in a little nostalgia.  Happiness and sadness.  I know that grieving is a process.  Healing takes a lot of time.  It has been almost eight months since my sister's death.  It was sunny and warm in the cemetery this afternoon.  All the snow had melted around my sister's headstone.  The metal nameplate on it was warm to the touch. 

I sometimes experience tremendous guilt for convincing my family to discontinue my sister's medical treatment, for bringing her home under hospice care.  It's an irrational feeling.  I know this.  My sister's brain lymphoma was very advanced, the tumor in her head caused a debilitating stroke.  She wasn't opening her eyes, barely responded to questions.  She had suffered a lot and was going to die.

My family had been praying for a miracle.  Our parish priest brought the stole of Bishop Baraga to bless my sister.  Frederick Baraga was declared venerable by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.  That means that he's two steps away from being declared a saint.   Father Larry placed the stole around my sister's head, anointed her with chrism.  We recited the rosary.

Now, perhaps the miracle my sister received was an end to her pain.  I remember the morning she died.  One of her best friends was standing at the foot of her bed, and, as we prayed, she lifted her arms up, as if she were giving my sister up to God.  It was a gesture that profoundly moved me.  It was shortly after that moment that my sister breathed her last breath.

Yes, grieving is about letting go.  Releasing all the pain and anger and sadness.  Until I give all that up, I'm never going to be able to appreciate what I had with my sister.  The jokes we shared.  The long hours we worked together.  The closeness and trust.

That is what Saint Marty is missing tonight.  Those sunlit details.