June 26: Round-About Way, Teachers, Graduation in Pandemic

How William Blake changed Thomas Merton's life . . .

The priests that he [William Blake] saw going their rounds in black gowns--he knew no Catholics at the time, and had probably never even seen a Catholic priest--were symbols, in his mind, of the weak, compromising, pharisaic piety of those whose god was nothing but an objectification of their own narrow and conventional desires and hypocritical fears.

He did not distinguish any particular religion or sect as the objects of his disdain:  he simply could not stand false piety and religiosity, in which the love of God was stamped out of the souls of men by formalism and conventions, without any charity, without the light and life of a faith that brings man face to face with God.  If on one page of Blake these priests in black gowns were frightening and hostile figures, on another, the "Grey Monk of Charlemaine" was a saint and a hero of charity and of faith, fighting for the peace of the true God with all the ardent love that was the only reality Blake lived for.  Towards the end of his life, Blake told his friend Samuel Palmer that the Catholic Church was the only one that taught the love of God.

I am not, of course, recommending the study of William Blake to all minds as a perfect way to faith and to God.  Blake is really extraordinarily difficult and obscure and there is, in him, some of the confusion of almost all the heterodox and heretical mystical systems that ever flourished in the west--and that is saying a lot.  And yet, by the grace of God, at least in my opinion, he was kept very much uncontaminated by all his crazy symbols precisely because he was such a good and holy man, and because his faith was so real and his love for God so mighty and so sincere.

The Providence of God was eventually to use Blake to awaken something of faith and love in my own soul--in spite of all the misleading notions, and all the almost infinite possibilities of error that underlie his weird and violent figures.  I do not, therefore, want to seem to canonize him.  But I have to acknowledge my own debt to him, and the truth which may appear curious to some, although it is really not so:  that through Blake I would one day come, in a round-about way, to the only true Church, and to the One Living God, through His Son, Jesus Christ.

We all have that one teacher who makes a difference in our lives.  The one who fundamentally changes you in some way and sends your life spinning off in a new direction.  For Merton, it was William Blake.  Blake showed Merton the path to his future.  I've been lucky enough to have a few such influences in my long educational career, from middle school on up.  Mrs. Kantola, seventh grade.  Mrs. Luoma, eighth grade.  Ms. DeCaire and Mrs. Jones, high school.  Phil Legler, Beverly Matherne, Diane Sautter, Ray Ventre, John Vandezande, Ron Johnson, and John Smolens--college.  All fantastic teachers who were somehow able to make me learn something new about myself and who I wanted to be.

Tonight, I "attended" a high school graduation ceremony.  It had been postponed and rescheduled several times due to the pandemic.  There had already been parades of graduates in cars.  Videos on the school district's Facebook page.  All very moving and exciting and culminating tonight, on the school's football field, with the Class of 2020 sitting in folding chairs, distanced six feet apart.  My daughter's boyfriend was sitting in one of the those chairs.  And my wife and I were parked outside the stadium, watching from the fence line, listening on the radio to the speeches and addresses.

My daughter's boyfriend is an amazing young man, who overcame a lot of obstacles in his educational career.  My daughter has been dating him for going on four years now.  That's a long time for teenagers, who seem to change partners about as often as they change socks.  I've watched him grow and mature, struggle and overcome.  I'm sure he's had some mentors in his life--people he's looked up to.  Maybe they've changed him with a kind word or a valuable life lesson.  Or maybe they kicked him in the ass when his ass needed kicking.  Whoever those individuals are, they can be pretty proud of him.  I certainly am.

So, I present to you the miracle of graduation.  Of seeing bright, shining young people taking their first steps into the future.  It is always, in my experience, a wondrous thing to behold.  The pandemic may have delayed this moment.  It may have set up barriers that needed to be hurdled.  It may have even made graduation seem impossible.  Yet, the impossible happened tonight.

And for that, Saint Marty gives thanks.

May 28: Graduation Parade, Possibility and Hope, Poem from "Kyrie"

This evening, I attended a graduation parade.  My daughter's boyfriend is part of the Class of 2020, and so I drove out to the high school, parked along the side of the road, and waited for all the seniors to come rolling by in the cars, streamers and balloons snapping, horns blazing away.

It was one of the first times since this pandemic really got serious a few months ago that I allowed myself to be part of a community event.  All the spectators stood by their cars, safely distant, and waited for their senior to drive by.  Even though I saw a few MAGA hats and a couple people simply not following the Covid-19 safety guidelines for the parade, this night wasn't about politics.  

It was about young people, smiling, laughing, waving, claiming this night as their own.  In the last three months, the Class of 2020 has faced challenges that haven't existed for close to four generations.  A global pandemic that brought school, work, scholarship applications, college visits and orientations, proms and graduation ceremonies to a complete halt.  For a while.

But tonight, the world moved forward a little.  Tonight was about young people, looking into their futures and seeing possibility and hope.  That was a miraculous thing to witness.

And Saint Marty gives thanks for that.

Poem from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

He planned his own service, the pine box,

the open lid, which hymns, chapter and verse,

who would pray, how long, who'd carry him out.

He wrote it all down in a fair hand,

stroking the shawl around him in his chair,

and gave away his watch, his dog, his house.

Emmett said, he'd have lain down in the grave

except he needed us to tuck him in.

He shaved each day, put on his good wool pants

chosen for the cloth and a little loose

as they lowered in another son-in-law.

Sat by the door, handrolling cigarettes

three at a time, licking down both ends,

and wheezed and coughed and spit in a rusted can.

April 13, 14, 15, 16: Grace of Those Days, Class of 2020, Senior Pictures

Merton indulges in some serious nostalgia . . .

In the last moments in which I had an opportunity to do so, I tasted the ferocious delights of exultant gloating over the companions I was about to leave.  They stood around me in the sun, with their hands hanging at their sides, wearing their black smocks and their berets, and laughing and sharing my excitement, not without envy.

And then I was riding down the quiet street in a carriage, with my luggage beside me, and Father talking about what we were going to do.  How lightly the cab-horse's hoofs rang out in the hard, white dirt of the street!  How gaily they echoed along the pale smug walls of the dusty houses!  "Liberty!" they said, "liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty," all down the street.

We passed the big polygonal barn of a post-office, covered with the tatters of ancient posters, and entered under the dappled shadow of the plane trees.  I looked ahead, up the long street to Villenouvelle station, where I had taken the train so many times in the small hours of the morning, on my way home to spend the Sunday in St. Antonin.

When we got on the little train, and traveled the way we had first come to the Aveyron alley, I did indeed feel my heart tighten at the loss of my thirteenth century:  but oh, it had long ceased to belong to us.  We had not been able to hold on, for very long, to the St. Antonin of the first year:  and the bitter lyre of the Lycee had burned all its goodness out of me again, and I was cauterized against it, and had become somewhat insensitive to it:  not so much so, however, that I did not feel a little sad leaving it for ever.

It is sad, too, that we never lived in the house that Father built.  But never mind!  The grace of those days has not been altogether lost, by any means.

I think this sheltering in place makes everyone feel the way young Merton feels here--sad for the things we had or might have had.  I'm sure the high school seniors are experiencing this melancholy in a much different way than most.  In the blink of an executive order, they lost the last three months of their time together.  Prom, gone.  Senior skip day, gone.  Graduation ceremony, gone.  All night grad party, gone.  All those last laughs, last classes, last moments of shared irony.  Gone.

On Facebook right now, I've noticed a particular movement--posting your senior pictures in honor of the Class of 2020.  While I understand the sentiment behind it, I'm not sure if displaying my 1980s clothes and haircut necessarily makes today's high school seniors feel consoled or better in any way.  I think it's simply a way for middle-aged people to post embarrassing pictures of themselves to make fun of.  And I hate to say it, but I don't think the impulse to do this is truly motivated by thoughts of these young people who've lost so much.  It's more about nostalgia than anything else.

Don't get me wrong.  I've laughed at many of those senior pictures that have come through my Facebook feed.  Enjoyed the bad hairstyles and unfortunate outfits that were cool once.  They have brought good memories back for me.  But my point is that I HAVE those memories.  I can recall the warm June night I paraded out of my high school for the last time.  I can hear the songs that were played at the all night grad party (to this day, hearing Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)" will immediately take me back to the Elks Club at 2 a.m. in the mid-80s.)  I was able to say goodbye to that part of my life in a profound and meaningful way.

The seniors of 2020 will never have the opportunity to be nostalgic about their last year of high school.  How can you be nostalgic about isolating in your home for months?  Or face masks?  Or economic recession/depression?  Death counts?  That's the stuff of a Stephen King novel, not your senior yearbook.  My heart breaks for these young people, because this time in their lives ended with a fever instead of "Pomp and Circumstance."

So, I will not be posting my senior picture on Facebook in support of the Class of 2020.  (Nobody wants to see that anyway.).  While, for me, that photo is a reminder of everything I had back then, for the graduating class of 2020, it's reminder of everything they have lost right now.

Instead, Saint Marty will post a picture of his puppy, because a cute puppy is more of a consolation to high school seniors right now than mullets and parachute pants.