March 12: All His Distant Friends, Joy Harjo, Cheerios in my Life

Santiago settles in under the stars . . .

"How do you feel, fish?" he asked aloud. "I feel good and my left hand is better and I have food for a night and a day. Pull the boat, fish."

He did not truly feel good because the pain from the cord across his back had almost passed pain and gone into a dullness that he mistrusted. But I have had worse things than that, he thought. My hand is only cut a little and the cramp is gone from the other. My legs are all right. Also now I have gained on him in the question of sustenance.

It was dark now as it becomes dark quickly after the sun sets in September. He lay against the worn wood of the bow and rested all that he could. The first stars were out. He did not know the name of Rigel but he saw it and knew soon they would all be out and he would have all his distant friends.

My favorite part of this passage--"he would have all his distant friends."

I've been an astronomy enthusiast my whole life--from the time I was about eight or nine and got a telescope for Christmas.  I spent many a night gazing at all my distant friends when I was a kid.  I remember the first time I looked at the moon's craters through my telescope and realized there were mountains and valleys out there in space.  It was a humbling revelation, making me realize how really tiny I was in comparison to everything in the universe.

This evening, I am in Calumet, Michigan, with my wife and son.  I'm here to write and perform in a radio variety show.  These weekends are always kind of a whirlwind of travelling, writing, rehearsing, and acting.  I get to meet and work with a lot of gifted and talented musicians and performers, many of whom I call friends.  

I sometimes wonder how I ended up living a life that has allowed me to do some of the things that I've done.  I've spoken with and interviewed three-time United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, the first Native American ever to hold that position.  I've spoken with and interviewed two-time United States Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey.  I still have both of their private cell phone numbers as contacts in my cell phone,  I sat in a room with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sharon Olds for a whole week as she talked poetry, read poetry, and critiqued my poetry.  

I've published a collection of poems.  Released two spoken-word CDs of my poetry.  I was selected to serve as Upper Peninsula Poet Laureate.  Two times.  Consecutively.  I've directed plays and musicals.  Starred in plays and musicals.  I saw Lily Tomlin perform Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe on Broadway.  I met Alec Baldwin.  Saw Elie Wiesel speak in-person about the horrors of the Holocaust.  I touched Vincent Price.  

I have two beautiful, smart kids.  The cutest puppy in the world.  A couple jobs I love.

I don't go around bragging about all the things I've done.  All the brilliant people I've met.  Self promotion is not my thing.  I find people who feel the need to make themselves the brightest stars in the sky a little . . . boring.  They want to be moons and comets and Joy Harjos.  And they're really just bowls of Cheerios.  Bland and milky.

And Saint Marty has to pour a lot of sugar on the Cheerios in his life to make them interesting enough to eat.

April 12-13: Very Good Catholic, Place to Belong, Home

 Merton is a stranger in a strange land, and finds himself home . . . 

At Matanzas I got mixed up in the paseo where the whole town walks around and around the square in the evening coolness, the men in one direction and the girls in the other direction, and immediately I made friends with about fifty-one different people of all ages. The evening ended up with me making a big speech in broken Spanish, surrounded by men and boys in a motley crowd that included the town Reds and the town intellectuals and the graduates of the Marist Fathers’ school and some law students from the University of Havana. It was all about faith and morals and made a big impression and, in return, their acceptance of it made a big impression on me, too: for many of them were glad that someone, a foreigner, should come and talk about these things, and I heard someone who had just arrived in the crowd say: 

“¿Es católico, ese Americano?” 

“Man,” said the other, “he is a Catholic and a very good Catholic,” and the tone in which he said this made me so happy that, when I went to bed, I could not sleep. I lay in the bed and looked up through the mosquito netting at the bright stars that shone in upon me through the wide-open window that had no glass and no frame, but only a heavy wooden shutter against the rain.

Merton, visiting Cuba to recuperate from an operation and rest before entering the monastery, finds himself in a group of Cubans from all stations of life.  Intellectuals and communists.  Marist Fathers students and University of Havana students.  The one thing that unites them all--their faith in God.  Despite being a foreigner in the country, Merton is filled with the peace of belonging.

I think that's what everyone is looking for, every day:  a place to belong.  I lived in Detroit when I was a young child.  For most of the rest of my life, I have made my home smack dab in the middle of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, except for a short, three-year stint in Kalamazoo.  Four apartments.  One house.  I've taught at two universities.  Worked in a book store.  An outpatient surgery center.  A cardiology office.  Two hospitals.  As a plumber's apprentice.  A housekeeper, cleaning operating rooms and birthing rooms.  I've been an organist at five different churches, four different Christian denominations.  Now, I work for a library.  I've been with the same woman for over thirty years.  Have a beautiful, 20-year-old daughter, funny 12-year-old son, and the cutest puppy in the world.

As the song goes, it has been a long and winding road.

And I don't think I'm done yet.  I have lived the life of a pilgrim, constantly searching for what Merton describes in the above passage.  A place where I look up through mosquito netting at the bright stars and feel completely content.  At home.  

Of course, my parish priest--and one of my best friends who's a Methodist minister--would tell me that the home I'm searching for isn't physical at all.  Merton would probably agree with them.  It's a spiritual thing.  A God thing.  It's what Paul encountered on the road to Damascus.  What Moses met on Mount Horeb.  What Buddha found beneath the Bodhi tree.  What Muhammad discovered in a cave called Hira.

But I'm not Merton.  Or Paul or Moses or Buddha or Muhammad.  My road is still a little unclear to me.  I try to treat everyone in my life with love and kindness every day.  I fail every day.  I try to be a good Christian every day.  And fail.  Good husband.  Fail.  Good father.  Fail.  I think that the only thing I've really perfected in my life is my ability to be imperfect.  

Here is what I call home tonight:

• My son, who let me kiss him on the forehead before he went to sleep.
• The peanuts I'm eating.
• My daughter, who brought me a cup of ice water before she went to bed.
• A picture of my sister who died of lymphoma about six years ago.
• My puppy, who forced herself into my lap and insisted on being held close to my chest.
• Books of poetry stacked on the table beside me.
• My wife, in all the complicated messiness of our thirty years together.
• Rain tapping against the window behind me.

All of the things on this list are ephemeral.  Could disappear tomorrow.  Yet, at this moment, they are what make me feel like I'm exactly where I should be.  Like I belong.  

Mother Teresa said, "If you want to change the world, go home and love your family."

Saint Marty tries to change the world every day.