December 15: Physical Push, Poetry Reading, Hunger

 Merton begins writing his thesis  . . , 

When I got back to New York, one of the first things I did was to break away, at last, from the household in Douglaston. The family had really practically dissolved with the death of my grandparents, and I could get a lot more work done if I did not have to spend so much time on subways and the Long Island train. 

One rainy day in June, then, I made a bargain with Herb, the colored taximan at Douglaston, and he drove me and all my bags and books and my portable vie and all my hot records and pictures to put on the wall and even a tennis racquet which I never used, uptown to a rooming-house on 114th Street, just behind the Columbia library. 

All the way up we discussed the possible reasons for the mysterious death of Rudolph Valentino, once a famous movie star: but it was certainly not what you would call a live issue. Valentino had died at least ten years before. 

“This is a nice spot you got here,” said Herb, approving of the room I was renting for seven-fifty a week. It was shiny and clean and filled with new furniture and had a big view of a pile of coal, in a yard by the campus tennis courts, with South Field and the steps of the old domed library beyond. The panorama even took in a couple of trees. 

“I guess you’re going to have a pretty hot time, now you got away from your folks,” Herb remarked, as he took his leave. 

Whatever else may have happened in that room, it was also there that I started to pray again more or less regularly, and it was there that I added, as Bramachari had suggested, The Imitation of Christ to my books, and it was from there that I was eventually to be driven out by an almost physical push, to go and look for a priest. 

July came, with its great, misty heats, and Columbia filled with all the thousands of plump, spectacled ladies in pink dresses, from the Middle-West, and all the grey gents in seersucker suits, all the dried-up high-school principals from Indiana and Kansas and Iowa and Tennessee, with their veins shriveled up with positivism and all the reactions of the behaviorist flickering behind their spectacles as they meditated on the truths they learned in those sweltering halls. 

The books piled higher and higher on my desk in the Graduate reading room and in my own lodgings. I was in the thick of my thesis, making hundreds of mistakes that I would not be able to detect for several years to come, because I was far out of my depth. Fortunately, nobody else detected them either. But for my own part, I was fairly happy, and learning many things. The discipline of the work itself was good for me, and helped to cure me, more than anything else did, of the illusion that my health was poor.

Merton is really on his own for the first time in his life.  Free to make his own decisions, follow his own heart.  So, in the midst or writing his graduate thesis on William Blake, Merton also begins to pray, explore Christian writings, and, eventually, feels a strong urge to seek out a priest.  A "physical" urge, as he describes it.  Something from deep inside him.

As you all can probably tell, I've felt quite reflective these last several days.  In a season that, in many major religions, is dedicated to light and hope, my little family unit has been the recipient of much love and help from friends.  I haven't had to look very far to see grace at work in my life.  (This is saying quite a lot, as I tend toward a darker view of the universe a lot of the time.  I'm a poet,  What can I say?)

Tonight, I gave a Zoom poetry reading for my local library in the town where I grew up.  I do it every year--Christmas-themed poems, stories, and essays.  I spent most of the late afternoon and evening preparing for it, after working eight hours for the library (a different one--yes, I know this is getting confusing).  I guess you could say that my whole day was dedicated to libraries and books and literature.  Not a bad gig.

The way I prepare for events like this is fairly intuitional.  I start reviewing poems and essays, reading and rereading what I've written.  And, like Merton, if I feel a kind of physical push, I print out what I'm reading.  I usually end up with 15 to 18 pages worth of material.  Once I have that pile, I start rereading it all again.

I've been using this process for years, and it never fails that a theme starts emerging as I review everything that I've selected.  A strong metaphysical current, if you will.  I can't explain how this happens.  Perhaps it's my subconscious at work, as I've usually been thinking about the reading for days.  Or perhaps--just perhaps--it is something stronger, deeper.  Something outside of myself, telling me what I need to say.

Either way, the theme that emerged tonight was "hunger."  During this pandemic, I think we all are experiencing various forms of hunger.  Hunger for friends and family.  For food from a favorite restaurant.  The ability to walk into a theater, sit down, eat popcorn, and watch the latest Tom Hanks movie.  Or go to a library for a live poetry reading, with musicians singing Christmas carols.  The whole world is hungry for this kind of normalcy.

So, I spoke to that hunger tonight.  Tried to address those kinds of urges we all have in our lives for what gives us comfort, feeds our souls.  The holiday season sort of lends itself to this kind of meditation, as much of it centers around the concept of hope.  

And, as I read, looked into the faces of all the people on my computer screen, I felt hope.  Yes, I'm stuck in COVID isolation.  Yes, my daughter has lost her ability to smell or taste anything.  And yes, my normal frenzy of Christmas preparation is greatly curtailed.  Yet, hope was present tonight.  

I have no idea if anybody else felt it, this thing with feathers, perching in their souls, as Emily Dickinson described it.  But I did.  I felt its wings beating against my ribcage.  Its plumes were all the people who were at the reading tonight. who have dropped off groceries these last few days, who have reached out by phone or text or email to express concern and love.  

Human beings are driven their whole lives by hunger for various things.  Hamburgers.  Poetry.  Sex.  Love.  Wine.  Friendship.  Art.  Cheetos.  God.  It's what gets us up in the morning, keeps us moving throughout the day.  Each 24 hours are an exercise in chasing and finding hope.  Filling the emptiness around and inside ourselves.  

I am filled up tonight.  Satisfied.  However, I will certainly wake up hungry again tomorrow morning.  That's the way it works.  Nobody throughout human history has escaped this cycle.  Even Jesus Christ.  Buddha.  Mohammed.  They may all have been incarnations of the Creator.  God made flesh.  But, they were still fully human. subject to all the same pulls and urges and hungers.

Some snapshots from my day:

• My beautiful daughter is still achy and tired.  She has fully lost her sense of smell and taste.  
• My beautiful puppy was my office mate all day, coming over to my chair every once in a while when I needed a break to pet her.
• My beautiful wife made dinner tonight.  Hamburger Helper.  Delicious.
• I had a beautiful phone conversation with my writer friend, Ronnie, about art and faith and music and poetry.
• I gave a Christmas poetry reading to a group of beautiful people.
• I played a game of Trivial Pursuit with my beautiful family, as we watched Ratatouille.
• The bottom element inside my stove burned out tonight as I was trying to cook a pizza for my handsome son.  I have to call an appliance repair place tomorrow.  I have a feeling nobody will step foot in our house until after we are done quarantining.

As you can tell from those snapshots, my day was filled with things that nourished my soul and things that left me craving more.  That is the nature of the universe.

Saint Marty gives thanks tonight for the miracle of hunger.

February 16: Hrung Disaster, Worry, Leap of Faith

A little backstory on Ford Prefect . . .

Somewhere in a small dark cabin buried deep in the intestines of Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz's flagship, a small match flared nervously.  The owner of the match was not a Vogon, but he knew all about them and was right to be nervous.  His name was Ford Prefect.*

* Ford Prefect's original name is only pronounceable in an obscure Betelgeusian dialect, now virtually extinct since the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which wiped out all the old Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven.  Ford's father was the only man on the entire planet to survive the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster, by an extraordinary coincidence that he was never able to satisfactorily explain.  The whole episode is shrouded in deep mystery:  in fact no one ever knew what a Hrung was nor why it had chosen to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven particularly.  Ford's father, magnanimously waving aside the clouds of suspicion that had inevitably settled around him, came to live on Betelgeuse Five, where he bot fathered and uncled Ford; in memory of his now dead race he christened him in the ancient Praxibetel tongue.

Because Ford never learned to say his original name, his father eventually died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts of the Galaxy.  The other kids at school nicknamed him Ix, which in the language of Betelgeuse Five translates as "boy who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven."

That's a pretty depressing little history of a character in a novel that's supposed to be a sci-fi farce/comedy.  Granted, the details have a certain amount of the ridiculous in them, especially the translation of his Betelgeuse Five name.  It would sort of be like me being christened with a name that means "boy who will grow up into a man who worries too much about work and money and family and the color of the mole on his leg."

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows my penchant for worry.  It's one of my hobbies, along with blogging, writing poetry, and listening to Christmas music at inappropriate times of the year.  (In my defense, there really is no time of the year when Christmas music is inappropriate.  It's the people around me that think Christmas music doesn't belong in May or June or July or August.)  Worry, on the other hand, is never really out-of-season.

Now, as a practicing Christian, I know that worry (and its source--fear) really is the enemy of faith.  There's that whole thing about trusting that God will give us everything that we need.  I mean, Jesus says at one point in the Bible, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air:  They do not sow or reap or gather into bard--and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"

Yet, I indulge in worry every day.  Today's main worry:  money.  Of course, that is one of my constant worries.  As often happens, the day that my paycheck arrives (which was yesterday), it was already gone for the week.  And there are still bills to pay.  Groceries to buy.  Gas to put in the car so my wife and I can get to work.  Don't know how all that's going to happen, but I have to put it all in God's hands.  That's all I can do.

I think, maybe, in the 21st century, it's a little more difficult to do than when the disciples were walking around with Jesus Christ.  In those days, it wasn't unusual to see lepers getting cured and dead people climbing out of their tombs.  If a stranger knocked on your door at night, he might be your cousin Levi or he might be an angel travelling through Galilee on the way to Jerusalem to dispense some divine justice.  Signs of God's presence and generosity were a little easier to spot.

These days, you have to look a little harder, understand a little more deeply, to see signs of God's providence and generosity.  I don't expect, in the next day or so, for some distant relative whom I've never met to die and leave me a multi-million dollar inheritance.  Won't happen.  What I have to do is take leaps of faith.  This week, my leap of faith is that we will somehow make it to the next paycheck, which comes at the end of next week.

Faith and trust--those aren't top on my list of hobbies right now.  Worry still holds the top spot.

Saint Marty is a work in progress, as always.

January 17: Fearless People, E. Ethelbert Miller, "Malcolm X, February 1965"

I admire fearless people.

When I say "fearless," I don't mean people who have no fears.  Everybody has fears.  Jesus Christ, in the Garden of Gethsemane, had doubts and fears.  Yet, He put those feelings into God's hands.  That's what fearless people do.  They walk through their fears, trust in their higher power.

To be without fear is stupid.  To let fear rule your life is equally stupid.  I think that fearless people embrace their fears and turn them into something else.  Stepping stones, maybe.  Gates to pass through.  Roads to walk down.

Today's poem is about a fearless man.  Malcolm X.  In the poem, Malcolm contemplates all the hatred and cruelty he's experienced in his life.  Yet, he doesn't let himself be defined by those things.  Instead, he turns to love, even though he knows death is out in the dark street, gun in hand, waiting for him.

Saint Marty tries to be fearless.  Not sure he actually achieves it, though.

Malcolm X, February 1965

by:  E. Ethelbert Miller

i will die this month. how

i do not know. still there

is much work to be done. i

am afraid not for myself but

for betty and the girls. some

nights i stay awake looking

out the window, a gun in my

hand. i know how cruel people

can be. i have known hatred and

blindness. there are brothers

waiting to do me harm. i will

die for them. i will love them

as only i can. may allah be my

witness.

December 4: All Want Dignity, Follower, Simplest Rules

O'Hare had a little notebook with him, and printed in the back of it were postal rates and airline distances and the altitudes of famous mountains and other key facts about the world.  He was looking up the population of Dresden, which wasn't in the notebook, when he came across this, which he gave me to read:

On an average, 324,000 new babies are born into the world every day.  During that same day, 10,000 persons, on an average, will have starved to death or died from malnutrition.  So it goes.  In addition 123,000 person will die for other reasons.  So it goes.  This leaves a net gain of about 191,000 each day in the world.  The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000.

"I suppose they will all want dignity," I said.

"I suppose," said O'Hare. 

According to a website I just consulted, the world's population in the year 2000 was 6,145,006,989.  So that little prediction in Slaughterhouse was fairly accurate, give or take about 900,000 people.  I'm sure that, back in 1969 when Vonnegut first published his little war novel, the concept of having seven billion people existing on the planet was a little terrifying.

The world's population passed that number several years ago now.  We are dealing with all kinds of problems as a result.  Climate change.  The resurgence of Nazis in the world.  Donald Trump and company.  In some ways, I think our world is more surreal than the future that Vonnegut predicted.

However, what strikes me the strongest in that little passage above is Vonnegut's comment near the end:  "I suppose they will all want dignity."  He's saying this tongue-in-cheek, of course.  Vonnegut knows that all human beings deserve dignity.  During the bombing of Dresden, he saw the very worst acts that humans could perpetrate against each other.  That experience guided his entire adult working life, I think. 

So, the takeaway from Slaughterhouse today is this:  it doesn't matter what color your skin is, who you love, whether you are male or female, what God you worship--everybody deserves dignity and respect.  Jesus Christ believed this.  So did Muhammad and Buddha. Unfortunately, many "followers" of Jesus and Muhammad choose to ignore this fact.

Why is it that the simplest rules are the most difficult for people to follow?

Saint Marty doesn't have an easy answer to that question.

November 20: Rabble-Rouser, Young Man, Warming Center

Another Kilgore Trout book there in the window was about a man who built a time machine so he could go back and see Jesus.  It worked, and he saw Jesus when Jesus was only twelve years old.  Jesus was learning the carpentry trade from his father.

Two Roman soldiers came into the shop with a mechanical drawing on papyrus of a device they wanted built by sunrise the next morning.  It was a cross to be used in the execution of a rabble-rouser.  

Jesus and his father built it.  They were glad to have the work.  And the rabble-rouser was executed on it.

So it goes.

If the Alanis Morissette song "Ironic" is running through your head, that's okay.  It's running through mine, as well.  Of course, Vonnegut is playing with irony here--the future rabble-rouser creating a crucifixion cross with his father for a current rabble-rouser.  Vonnegut is making a statement about the past, present, and future.  How there are circles within circles.  Everything repeats, including the executions of rabble-rousers like Jesus Christ and Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Yes, I think that people who are activists for peace and love and justice are mostly doomed.  Someone with a cross or a gun will come along and take them out.  So it goes.  A lot of people are threatened by the idea of compassion and equality for all human beings.  They want to protect their pieces of the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving dinner, are unwilling to share what they have.

That's why we have an epidemic of refugees who can't seem to find homes.  Instead of opening doors, people want to build walls.  I'm not pointing fingers here.  I'm guilty of this sin, as well.

This morning, as I was walking into the medical center where I work, I saw a young man with a suitcase talking to a nurse who had walked into the building a few steps ahead of me.  It was around 6 a.m., and it was less than 20 degrees outside.  The young man was asking the nurse for directions to the Warming Center in town.

The Warming Center opens every morning in the winter to provide food and shelter for homeless people in the area.  From the medical center, it's about two miles away.

The nurse gave the young man directions, and he thanked her.  I watched him button up his coat, pick up his suitcase, and walk out into the cold, dark morning.  And I let him go without offering to give him a ride or at least a cup of coffee.  I tried to rationalize that the young man could have been dangerous, carrying a knife or gun.  I needed to be safe, I said to myself.

All day long, however, I've been thinking about him.  I missed an opportunity to share my pumpkin pie with someone who was hungry.  I blew it.

I hope that he made it to the Warming Center safely.  I hope there was coffee and oatmeal or something.  I hope that he was able to take a hot shower.  I hope he encountered someone today who was a better person than me.

Saint Marty is thankful this afternoon for humility and shame.  They remind him how to be a better person.

January 16: Time Was Ripe, Nonconformists, Martin Luther King Jr.

"Don't lie to me, Father," said Barbara.  "I know perfectly well you heard me when I called."  This was a fairly pretty girl, except that she had legs like an Edwardian grand piano.  Now she raised hell with him about the letter in the paper.  She said he was making a laughing stock of himself and everybody associated with him.

"Father, Father, Father--" said Barbara, "what are we going to do with you?  Are you going to force us to put you where your mother is?"  Billy's mother was still alive.  She was in bed in an old people's home called Pine Knoll on the edge of Ilium.

"What is it about my letter that makes you so mad?" Billy wanted to know.

"It's all crazy.  None of it's true!"

"It's all true."  Billy's anger was not going to rise with hers.  He never got mad at anything.  He was wonderful that way.

"There is no such planet as Tralfamdore."

"It can't be detected from Earth, if that's what you mean," said Billy.  "Earth can't be detected from Tralfamadore, as far as that goes.  They're both very small.  They're very far apart."

"Where did you got a crazy name like 'Tralfamadore?'" 

"That's what the creatures who live there call it."

"Oh God," said Barbara, and she turned her back on him.  She celebrated frustration by clapping her hands.  "May I ask you a simple question?"

"Of course."

"Why is it you never mentioned any of this before the airplane crash?"

"I didn't think the time was ripe."

Barbara doesn't believe Billy.  She thinks her dad is going a little bit . . . cuckoo.  Little green men.  Time traveling.  Distant planets.  If my father started talking like Billy, I would probably consider putting in him Pine Knoll, too.  The problem is that Billy is telling the truth, but he has no way of proving it to his daughter. 

Any person with ideas that don't conform to the norm are considered cuckoo.  A lot of the time, the nonconformists suffer for their beliefs.  Some pay the ultimate price.  Jesus Christ.  Abraham Lincoln.  Gandhi.  Today celebrates Martin Luther King Jr.  Now, King didn't accept the status quo.  He questioned, probed, argued, marched.  He knew that he was right, and he refused to back down, even in the face of great adversity.  Of course, he paid for his beliefs in blood.

I've been thinking a lot about Dr. King today.  His courage and moral fiber.  Certainly, he wasn't a perfect man.  He had his flaws.  Everybody does.  Yet, his cause was true and right.  That's what was important.  Dr. King didn't live to see the fruits of his efforts.  If it weren't for Dr. King, Colin Powell probably wouldn't have been Secretary of State.  And Barack Obama would never have been President of the United States.

On the cusp of the inauguration, I celebrate everything that Martin Luther King Jr. stood for.  Equality.  Acceptance.  Integrity.  Faith in humanity.

Saint Marty is grateful today for Dr. King.

January 4: Dirty Old Men, Liberal Thing, Baby Killer

"Well, I know," she said.  "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men.  And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them.  And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs."

So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.

Vonnegut is visiting a war buddy in Cape Cod, to talk about their shared experiences and the bombing of Dresden.  Vonnegut's still struggling with his war book, and he's trying to gather material.  He is sitting in the kitchen with his buddy when his buddy's wife confronts him.  She is furious at the idea of Vonnegut's book, accusing him of wanting to glorify war, thereby perpetuating it.

I understand the wife's anger.   A lot of adults don't think enough about the future.  Don't reflect on the repercussions of their actions.  Writers write books about war, making it sound glorious and heroic.  (Now, there certainly are heroes in war, but those heroes are not generally celebrated for taking lives.  They are celebrated saving lives.  But most of war is terrifying and bloody, fought by young people who are only a few years out of high school.  Babies, as Vonnegut's friend's wife says.)

Business people drill for oil without thinking of renewable energy sources.  Politicians repeal laws that help the poor.  Countries close their borders to refugees who are starving and terrified.  There are immediate benefits to all of these actions.  More and cheaper gasoline.  Balanced governmental budgets.  A false sense of security.  In the end, however, our children will suffer.

Vonnegut befriends his buddy's wife by making a promise about his book:  "I tell you what . . . I'll call it The Children's Crusade."

Vonnegut was an old liberal.  I'm getting to be an old liberal.  A lot of people view the word "liberal" as some kind of insult, akin to "baby killer" or "ecoterrorist."  I don't get that.  Here's a question I always think about when it comes to the difference between being liberal and conservative:  If I were going to a dinner that included my favorite food in the whole world, would I want a conservative portion, or would I want a liberal portion?

Jesus Christ did not love conservatively.  He loved liberally--Jews, gentiles, men, women, children, beggars, thieves, prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors, soldiers, prisoners.  There was no holding back.  Above all, Jesus loved children, the "babies" as Vonnegut's friend's wife calls them.  In the babies, Christ saw the future of the world.

As you can tell, I'm thinking a lot about the future this evening, because of the incoming President of the United States; of the daily reports of terrorist attacks in places like Turkey and Syria; of the people who believe global warming is some kind of Chinese conspiracy theory; of the alarming worldwide trend to ignore or deny the needs of the poor and homeless and displaced.

Taking care of these problems is not a liberal thing or a conservative thing or a Christian thing or a Muslim thing.  It's not a Democrat thing or a Republican thing.  It's a human thing.  As Vonnegut says, it's a crusade for the children.

Saint Marty is liberally grateful for his kids tonight.

April 26: A Good Poem at the End of a Long Day

Yes, I survived the P.O.E.T.S. Day meetings this morning intact.  They were long, contentious, angry, aggravating, and disappointing.  I don't want to go into details.  I still respect the university and English Department at which I teach.  I will not cast aspersions on any of my colleagues, no matter how wrong-headed and elitist I think they are.  I'm tired and need a good poem to end my day.

The one I have chosen is by U. A. Fanthorpe, and it's about Romulus and Remus, Blodeuwedd, Athena and Helen of Troy, Aprhodite, and Jesus Christ.  It's a poem I wish I had written.

And it makes Saint Marty very happy.

Nativities

 Godlings are born racily.

They are excavated
Into life by the strong licks
Of the world-cow, suckled
By goats, mares, wolves.

Blossom of oak, blossom of broom,
Blossom of meadowsweet
Go to their making.

They erupt through the paternal
Skull fully armed, hatch from an egg,
Or appear, foam-born,

In Cyprus, in a shell,
Wearing a great deal of hair
And nothing else.

This one arrived
At the time of the early lambs
By means of he usual channels.

The usual channel

April 17: Athletic Bastards, Hate in General, Love in General

Ed Banky was the basketball coach at Pencey.  Old Stradlater was one of his pets, because he was the center on the team, and Ed Banky always let him borrow his car when he wanted it.  It wasn't allowed for students to borrow faculty guys' cars, but all the athletic bastards stuck together.  In every school I've gone to, all the athletic bastards stuck together.

Holden is an alienated young man.  He has a problem with "athletic bastards" like his roommate Stradlater.  He has a problem with phonies like his father, who's a corporate lawyer.  He has a problem with Ackley, his suite mate at Pencey Prep, because of his bad hygiene.  Pretty much Holden has a problem with practically the whole world.

Perhaps that's why so many troubled teens identify with Holden.  Holden speaks for a group of people who usually have no voice.  I think that's why The Catcher in the Rye is considered to be such a subversive book, because it's main character is on the fringe, not fitting in with any of his peers.  It's no wonder that Holden's story has been linked to so many messed-up kids involved in violent acts in schools and on the streets.  Mark David Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon, had a copy of the novel with him when he was arrested.  He inscribed the book, "This is my statement" and signed it as "Holden Caulfield."

Yesterday afternoon, a colleague saw my copy of  The Catcher in the Rye sitting on my desk.  He looked at it and half-jokingly said, "Are you allowed to keep that here?  Has the FBI talked to you about Boston yet?"

At first, I was a little taken aback.  I quickly regained myself and said, "Yeah, I told them the book belonged to you."

My colleague laughed and then went on a diatribe about terrorists and Islamic extremists and the suspension of the Geneva Conventions and torture.  I listened politely.  I understood his anger.  I was angry Monday night as I watched the news reports about the Boston Marathon bombing.  It wasn't unfocused, general anger.  It was anger that wanted justice and retribution and revenge for all the lives that were injured and lost.

We still don't know who's responsible for what happened in Boston.  Domestic or foreign, it was an act of terror.  Certainly, the person or people who did it felt justified (maybe even righteously inspired) to plant those explosive devices.  For me, it's a Mark David Chapman moment, the guilty party using the Bible or Koran or Declaration of Independence or Second Amendment or The Catcher in the Rye or whatever to perpetrate and act of senseless hatred and violence.

People just don't get it.  Mark David Chapman didn't get it.  Osama bin Laden didn't get it.  Skinheads don't get it.  J. D. Salinger wasn't promoting hatred.  In fact, at the end of the novel, Holden says he misses Stradlater and Ackley.  Mohammed and Jesus Christ didn't promote hatred.  They were all about love and peace.  Anybody who thinks otherwise has got it wrong.  Jesus hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes and thieves.  He loved these people, even if He disagreed with their life choices.

I call myself a follower of Christ.  That means I'm supposed to love people.  Forgive people who do me harm.  Anyone.  Black, white, straight, gay, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindi, short, tall, fat, skinny.  I have to forgive the party responsible for the Boston bombing, show love and compassion.  That's a tall order.  But being a Christian is not easy.  Just ask Jesus.  He has the scars to prove it.

Hate in general is bad.  Hatred of anyone (gay or African American or Muslim or Christian) or anything (unless it's bad poetry).  Love in general is good.  It's what we should all aspire to.  Jesus said, "As I have loved you, so you must love one another."  Mohammed said, "Do you love your creator?  Love your fellow-beings first."  John Lennon sang, "All you need is love."

Saint Marty thinks those are words to live by.

Sing it with me...