June 12-13: Pressure Cooker, Putting Out Fires, Poem from "Kyrie"

Sometimes people are determined to do things that will harm them, and nothing will change the course of their actions or lives.  Mental illness does this.  So does addiction.  I can attest to that fact.

It seems as though this pandemic has become a pressure cooker for a lot of the things that are wrong in the world.  Everything seems to be boiling over.  Racism.  Xenophobia.  Homophobia.  On home fronts, unstable families become more unstable.  There's the impulse to look away until all the fires go out.  That doesn't really solve anything.  It's simply an act of willful ignorance, ignoring a problem until it goes back into hiding or is a pile of ashes.

But problems don't disappear.  (Warning:  I'm about to mix metaphors here.)  Problems fester, and every once in a while they break open and all the sickness pours out.  That's what's happened with George Floyd and all the unrest that has followed his murder.  On a personal level, I've been dealing with some difficulties this past year or so that seem unending.  Just when I think the fire is under control, it flares up again.  (Sort of like the pandemic.  Everyone seems to be acting like it's disappeared.  It hasn't.  Second wave, on it's way.  Keep your masks handy, folks.)

I've had two people this evening who've been helping me stamp out a particular conflagration.  One of these people is a devout Christian.  The other is an atheist.  The atheist said this to me:  "As an atheist, I gotta say that deeply knowing how alone one is in the universe is a strong motivation for change."  The Christian told me this:  " . . . you believe in a Creator that is bigger than anxiety and depression and addiction.  He is bigger than all of us.  He is merciful and mighty and loves you . . . I pray that you think on those words as you lay trying to quiet your mind.  And know that your God loves you."

I find both of those statements strangely comforting, coming at the universe from two completely opposite points of view.  I am alone.  God is with me.  I am in charge of my own destiny.  God has a plan for me.  Don't be afraid of change.  God has your back.  In the end, both of these people were telling me the same thing:  fear not.

I went for a long walk this evening.  It was typical mid-June weather for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Warm.  Sunny.  Bugs eating me alive.  Yet, I still was able to appreciate the blue heavens.  Blue forget-me-nots growing along the path.  And blue-tailed damselflies buzzing in the lilac bushes. 

For those blue miracles, Saint Marty gives thanks tonight.

. . . and a poem about second waves:

poem from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

Home a week, he woke thinking
he was back in France, under fire;
then thought the house on fire, the noise and light,
but that was from the fireworks and the torches
and on the square, a bonfire--everyone,
in nightclothes, emptied from their houses,
drawn toward a false dawn as from a cave--

oh there was dancing in the streets all right,
and singing--"Over There," "Yankee Doodle,"
"Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory," I recall,
and "Camptown Races," who knows why--he plunged
into the crowd, tossed his crutch to the flames,
kissed delirious strangers on each side.

Say he lived through one war but not the other.

July 29: Pimping WiFi, Meth Addict, Francisco X. Alarcon, "Prayer"

Welcome to Saturday morning at McDonald's.  That's right, I'm at McDonald's right now, pimping off the free WiFi, having breakfast, and being poetic.  I'm surrounded by the normal Saturday morning crowd--old, retired men sitting together and talking politics (they don't have President Obama to kick around anymore, so they are much quieter); travelers dropping in to buy coffee and make use of the restrooms; divorced fathers with their kids, trying to create quality time; beleaguered mothers with packs of young children, looking for a break.  You get the idea.

As a child, I was taught that everyone I meet is a reflection of Jesus.  Jesus is the middle school teacher and the homeless person on the corner.  Jesus is the meth addict and the atheist.  Yes, Jesus is even Donald Trump, although I have a real problem with that one.  The Jesus in Trump is buried pretty deeply somewhere under all that orange hair.

That's my vision of Jesus.  Human.  Embracing all the flaws of humankind.

Even Saint Marty has a little Jesus in him.  Hard to believe, right?

Prayer

by:  Francisco X. Alarcon
translated by:  Francisco Aragon

I want a god

as my accomplice

who spends nights

in houses

of ill repute

and gets up late

on Saturdays

a god

who whistles

through the streets

and trembles

before the lips

of his lover

a god

who waits in line

at the entrance

of movie houses

and likes to drink

café au lait

a god

who spits

blood from

tuberculosis and

doesn’t even have

enough for bus fare

a god

knocked

unconscious

by the billy club

of a policeman

at a demonstration

a god

who pisses

out of fear

before the flaring

electrodes

of torture

a god

who hurts

to the last

bone and

bites the air

in pain

a jobless god

a striking god

a hungry god

a fugitive god

an exiled god

an enraged god

a god

who longs

from jail

for a change

in the order

of things

I want a

more godlike

god

September 29: Wrong Kind of Monks, "The Shape of Prayer," New Poem, New Cartoon

"Aah, go back to sleep.  I'm not gonna join one anyway.  The kind of luck I have, I'd probably join one with all the wrong kind of monks in it.  All stupid bastards.  Or just bastards."

Holden talks about religion a few times in Catcher.  Here, he's talking to his schoolmate, Ackley, about joining a monastery.  Holden seems ready to try about anything, as long as he can be around people who are authentic, true.  Like kids.  Or, maybe, the right kind of monks.

Holden can't escape inauthentic people.  They're always present.  At work or school or church, I always meet phonies, as Holden calls them.  Some of the best people I know are agnostics or atheists, and some of the most shallow people I know profess to be Christians.

I try to surround myself with good people, whether they're Christians, atheists, straight, gay, black, white, male, or female.  It's about the quality of character more than anything else.  I have a friend who has no interest in organized religion, and yet I'd describe him as one of the most Christian people I know.  He would give you the coat off his back if you said you were cold.

That's what it's all about.  Being a Christian isn't simply about going to church.  It's about service.  Helping your brothers and sisters.  It's about action.  It's easy to say you're a Christian.  The hard part is putting Christianity into practice.  It's hard work, and it takes a lot of prayer.

That's what my poem is about today.  Prayer.  I've been thinking about prayer and Christianity a lot this past week.  I guess you might call it soul searching.  It's something I do every once in a while, especially when my life journey becomes a little rocky.  I haven't come to any monumental conclusions.  I've just been asking God a few questions.

Saint Marty's waiting for His answers.

The Shape of Prayer

When Saint Francis prayed,
I wonder if his words rose
like hummingbirds above him,
darted, pulsed in the air,
searching for God's pistil, stamen,
nectar.  When Saint Bernadette prayed,
I bet her words sat like oil
on a puddle, waited for sunlight's
prism to transform mud into
scarlet and gold and emerald.
Joan of Arc's prayers stormed the sky
with arrow, sword, lance, spear.
Mother Teresa carried her prayers,
swaddled like infant gods,
nursing them until they grew strong
enough to lift water to their lips,
feed themselves chicken broth, rice.
I'm not sure about my prayers.
Maybe they're quarters, dimes
in my pants pocket, singing as I walk
across the parking lot to my car.
Or a receipt for a birthday
present I bought last year, a winter
jacket, down pillow, bar of chocolate,
something sweet or warm or soft.
Or maybe, just maybe, they're like
winter's first snow, a confusion
of white on a November afternoon,
falling, rising at the same time,
a snow globe in a dying man's hand.

Confessions of Saint Marty

January 24: Jesus, the Disciples, and Hope

Finally, though, I got undressed and got in bed.  I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it.  I can't always pray when I feel like it.  In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist.  I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible.  Take the Disciples, for instance.  They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth.  They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head.  All they did was keep letting Him down.  I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples...

I love the fact that Holden, this scrawny teenager, is "sort of an atheist."  Yet, he seems to know a lot about Jesus and the Disciples.  As Holden keeps talking, he discusses how Jesus hand-picked the Disciples, and then he gets into a philosophical debate about whether Jesus would sent Judas to Hell.  For an atheist, Holden seems to do an awful lot of thinking about Jesus Christ.

But Holden says he can't pray, even though he wants to.  Holden is depressed.  He says so about every other page of the book.  Depression doesn't allow a person the comfort of prayer.  It doesn't allow a person the comfort of hope.  Holden can't think about Jesus or the Disciples because he's spiraling downward.  He's on his way to rock bottom.

Perhaps if Holden wasn't an atheist, if he had some kind of belief in salvation or redemption, he wouldn't be in quite so black a place.  In Biblical terms, I suppose he's like Saul, blind and bereft, on his way to becoming Paul the Apostle.  Yes, Holden wants to believe in something, wants to have some kind of faith in humankind.  What he believes in at the moment are his dead brother, Allie; his kid sister, Phoebe; and the girl from his summer in Maine, Jane.  Holden can't imagine the future because he's stuck in the past.  He wants to play checkers with Jane.  He wants watch Allie play baseball again.  He wants to take Phoebe to the movies.  He's tired of phony Disciples.  He wants Hope.

In some ways, I'm a lot like Holden.  I see phony bastards everywhere I look.  The difference between Holden and me is that I, for the most part, think the phony bastards aren't going to win.  I believe that goodness and innocence will trump the darkness of the world.  I see evidence of it every day of my life.  In my son's laugh.  In my daughter's red hair.  In the flash of sun on snow.  In a good book.  In a bowl of Campbell's chicken noodle soup.  In the warmth of my wife when I go to bed at night.

Saint Marty is surrounded by Hope.

It's always there