September 7: Society of Friends, What It's All About, Silence and Emptiness

Lessons in religion from a young and jaded Merton . . .

The train crossed the Tiber. The little pyramid and the cypresses of the English cemetery where Keats was buried disappeared. I remembered some allusion in Plautus to a big hill of rubbish and potsherds that had once stood in this part of the city. Then we came out into the bare plain between Rome and the sea. In this distance were San Paolo, and the low hills that concealed the Trappist monastery of Tre Fontane. “O Rome,” I said in my heart, “will I ever see you again?” 

The first two months after I landed in New York, and went to the house in Douglaston, I continued to read the Bible surreptitiously—I was afraid someone might make fun of me. And since I slept on the sleeping porch, which opened on the upstairs hall through glass doors and which, in any case, I shared with my uncle, I no longer dared to pray on my knees before going to sleep, though I am sure everybody would have been pleased and edified. The real reason for this was that I did not have the humility to care nothing about what people thought or said. I was afraid of their remarks, even kind ones, even approving ones. Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage. 

There is no point in telling all the details of how this real but temporary religious fervor of mine cooled down and disappeared. At Easter we went to the church where my father had once been organist, Zion Church, with the white spire standing among the locust trees on the hill between us and the station. And there I was very irritated by the services, and my own pride increased the irritation and complicated it. And I used to walk about the house or sit at the dinner table telling everybody what a terrible place Zion Church was, and condemning everything that it stood for. 

One Sunday I went to the Quaker meeting house in Flushing, where Mother had once sat and meditated with the Friends. I sat down there too, in a deep pew in the back, near a window. The place was about half full. The people were mostly middle-aged or old, and there was nothing that distinguished them in any evident way from the congregation in a Methodist or a Baptist or an Episcopalian or any other Protestant church, except that they sat silent, waiting for the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. I liked that. I liked the silence. It was peaceful. In it, my shyness began to die down, and I ceased to look about and criticize the people, and entered, somewhat superficially, into my own soul, and some nebulous good resolutions began to take shape there. 

But it did not get very far, for presently one of the middle-aged ladies thought the Holy Ghost was after her to get up and talk. I secretly suspected that she had come to the meeting all prepared to make a speech anyway, for she reached into her handbag, as she stood up, and cried out in a loud earnest voice: 

“When I was in Switzerland I took this snapshot of the famous Lion of Lucerne....” With that she pulled out a picture. Sure enough, it was the famous Lion of Lucerne. She held it up and tried to show it around to the Friends, at the same time explaining that she thought it was a splendid exemplification of Swiss courage and manliness and patience and all the other virtues of the watchmaking Swiss which she mentioned and which I have now forgotten. 

The Friends accepted it in patience, without enthusiasm or resentment. But I went out of the meeting house saying to myself “They are like all the rest. In other churches it is the minister who hands out the commonplaces, and here it is liable to be just anybody.” 

Still, I think I had enough sense to know that it would be madness to look for a group of people, a society, a religion, a church from which all mediocrity would absolutely be excluded. But when I read the works of William Penn and found them to be about as supernatural as a Montgomery Ward catalogue I lost interest in the Quakers. If I had run across something by Evelyn Underhill it might have been different.

I think that one could find much earnest and pure and humble worship of God and much sincere charity among the Quakers. Indeed, you are bound to find a little of this in every religion. But I have never seen any evidence of its rising above the natural order. They are full of natural virtues and some of them are contemplatives in a natural sense of the word. Nor are they excluded from God’s graces if He wills. For He loves them, and He will not withhold His light from good people anywhere. Yet I cannot see that they will ever be anything more than what they claim to be—a “Society of friends.”

The Trappist monk Merton seems to take over here, casting a pretty jaundiced eye at any Christian denomination other than Catholicism.  This Merton is very different from the later version who vehemently opposed war and nuclear proliferation.  Who turned turned to Eastern mysticism as a way to deepen his own spiritual life.  At the end of his life, he was attending an international conference on monasticism in Bangkok, Thailand, when he suffered an accidental death by electrocution.  (Some conspiracy theorists say his death wasn't so "accidental," due to his outspoken beliefs regarding world peace and the Cold War.)

Thomas Merton will probably never be canonized because of these controversial aspects of his life.  (The fact that opposition to war and an interest in Eastern contemplative practices are "controversial" says more about the skewed politics of the Church than Merton's own merits as a Catholic thinker/prospective saint.  These days, that line of thinking will probably deny the canonization of Dorothy Day for her "socialist" leanings on behalf of workers and the poor.)  But I'm not here tonight to argue the merits of Merton's cause for sainthood.  Merton was very human.  He enjoyed the spotlight that his writings brought him.  Yet, he tried to use that spotlight to make the world a better place.  Isn't that the definition of true goodness?

In everything that I do--whether it's leading a poetry workshop, teaching a film class, or registering patients for medical appointments--I try to somehow make a difference in people's lives.  I think that's why we're put on this planet.  To lift up, make better, spread joy and peace.  As a Christian, I know one of my jobs is to teach people about Jesus.  Reading the Gospels aloud to strangers won't accomplish this.  The best way I know how to teach people about my faith is through acts of kindness and understanding.  Helping out.  Acceptance.  That's what it's all about.

Every morning, driving to work, I say a little prayer.  It goes something like this:  "Hey, God.  It's me again.  Sorry for messing up yesterday.  Help me to be a good person today.  Grant me wisdom to say and do the right things.  Let me make somebody's life better."  I figure if I can do that by bedtime, I've earned a good night's sleep.

That doesn't mean that my life is without hardships.  If you read any saint's life story, you know that being a saint is a prescription for difficulty--ridicule, persecution, sometimes torture and death.  Just because I'm a Christian doesn't mean I'm automatically exempt from any of these things.  But it does mean that I have, as the Gershwin song goes, someone to watch over me.  That's the difference.  I'm not alone.  Ever.

Of course, some saints have experienced long periods where it felt like God stepped away from them.  Mother Teresa once wrote to a friend and confessor, "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see,--Listen and do not hear--the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak . . ." Her silence and emptiness lasted 40 years. Yet, she never stopped trusting in God's love. That's the difference between a normal person and a saint, I guess. Ever present trust.

I have been experiencing God's silence myself recently. I'm not Mother Teresa. Trust doesn't come as easily for me. Yet, tonight, I was reminded of God's love. I went to my parents' house for a Labor Day barbecue. We had grilled cheeseburgers and watermelon. It was a low-key dinner. No place settings. We just grabbed plates and food. Rose, my sister who has Down syndrome, was there. She's really confused these days. Dementia has taken away a lot of her memory. She frequently called me by my brother's name. She called my wife by my daughter's name.

Yet, she was legitimately happy to see my family, although our puppy got on her nerves a little. At one point she turned to me and said, "Martin, I'm glad you're here." (It was the only time during the evening that she used my name.) That was my sister talking to me. I think it was also God talking to me. Reminding me that I'm here for a reason. And that He's glad I'm here.

I'm no saint, that's for sure. But God spoke to me tonight.

And for that miracle, Saint Marty gives thanks.

September 15: The Pequod Meets the Bachelor, My Mother, Dementia

And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing down before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab's harpoon had been welded.

It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, in glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous to pointing her prow for home.

The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended, bottom down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all colors were flying from her rigging, on every side. Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp.

As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most surprising success; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in the same seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months without securing a single fish. Not only had barrels of beef and bread been given away to make room for the far more valuable sperm, but additional supplemental casks had been bartered for, from the ships she had met; and these were stowed along the deck, and in the captain's and officers' state-rooms. Even the cabin table itself had been knocked into kindling-wood; and the cabin mess dined off the broad head of an oil-butt, lashed down to the floor for a centerpiece. In the forecastle, the sailors had actually caulked and pitched their chests, and filled them; it was humorously added, that the cook had clapped a head on his largest boiler, and filled it; that the steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it; that the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and filled them; that indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the captain's pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent testimony of his entire satisfaction.

As this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod, the barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle; and drawing still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round her huge try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like poke or stomach skin of the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke of the clenched hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates and harpooneers were dancing with the olive-hued girls who had eloped with them from the Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an ornamental boat, firmly secured aloft between the foremast and mainmast, three Long Island negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory, were presiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile, others of the ship's company were tumultuously busy at the masonry of the try-works, from which the huge pots had been removed. You would have almost thought they were pulling down the cursed Bastille, such wild cries they raised, as the now useless brick and mortar were being hurled into the sea.

Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on the ship's elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama was full before him, and seemed merely contrived for his own individual diversion.

And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy and black, with a stubborn gloom; and as the two ships crossed each other's wakes- one all jubilations for things passed, the other all forebodings as to things to come- their two captains in themselves impersonated the whole striking contrast of the scene.

"Come aboard, come aboard!" cried the gay Bachelor's commander, lifting a glass and a bottle in the air.

"Hast seen the White Whale?" gritted Ahab in reply.

"No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him at all," said the other good-humoredly. "Come aboard!"

"Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?"

"Not enough to speak of- two islanders, that's all;- but come aboard, old hearty, come along. I'll soon take that black from your brow. Come along, will ye (merry's the play); a full ship and homeward-bound."

"How wondrous familiar is a fool!" muttered Ahab; then aloud, "Thou art a full ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, call me an empty ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. Forward there! Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!"

And thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze, the other stubbornly fought against it; and so the two vessels parted; the crew of the Pequod looking with grave, lingering glances towards the receding Bachelor; but the Bachelor's men never heeding their gaze for the lively revelry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning over the taffrail, eyed the homewardbound craft, he took from his pocket a small vial of sand, and then looking from the ship to the vial, seemed thereby bringing two remote associations together, for that vial was filled with Nantucket soundings.

The contrast is pretty stark in this chapter.  The Bachelor, joyous and buoyant and homeward bound.  The Pequod, dark and heavy and White Whale bound.  It's the difference between wedding and funeral.  Reception and wake.  The crew of the Bachelor is sailing toward the future.  The crew of the Pequod, toward imminent, albino-fluked doom.

Today, I'm going to write about a subject that is difficult for me.  My mother has been struggling with dementia for several years now.  My father passed away in February.  They were married for 65 years, raised nine children.  Buried two of them.  They were partners for a very long time.  As my father lay dying in the hospital, my mother was holding his hand, saying over and over, "You were a good husband.  You were a good father."

Sometimes, I think my mother's dementia has been a blessing for her in the last seven months.  It has allowed her to go through her days without feeling my father's absence constantly.  Every once in a while, she will ask where he is.  For the most part, however, she's been not exactly happy, but blessed with only small bouts of grief.

Recently, however, my mother has been focused on my father's death, asking my sisters how he died, what the funeral was like, whether she needs to sell her house, where her car is.  Very recently, she's been repeating one thought:  "I should just die and get it over with."

It seems as though she's giving up.  Instead of sailing into the future, she's headed out into deeper, darker waters.  Perhaps this is natural, but it is difficult to hear and witness.  Her dementia allows her to focus and obsess on certain thoughts and actions.  Right now, she's obsessed with death.

My mother has always been a huge force in my life, even more so than my father.  She was the one who pushed me to excel in school, supported me through some of the most difficult times of my life.  She never judged any of the decisions I made, even if she thought they were wrong-headed.  No, her one wish was simply for me to be happy.

I want my mother to be happy, to be celebrating something instead of mourning my father.  I'm not sure I can do anything to make that possible.  There's a big piece of her puzzle missing now.  A 65-year-shaped piece.  And she's spending her days looking for that piece.

Saint Marty is thankful this morning for having a mother who has loved him.  Unconditionally.

September 10: Locusts, Down's Syndrome, Complex Innocence

In 1921 a Russian naturalist named Uvarov solved the mystery.  Locusts are grasshoppers:  they are the same animal.  Swarms of locusts are ordinary grasshoppers gone berserk.

Grasshoppers gone berserk.  Creatures transformed through drought or other natural calamity into something dangerous.  Great hordes of locusts swarming over farmland and field, pillaging and marauding like shoppers on Black Friday, leaving behind shreds and stalks.  Nature can be cruel.  Locusts and tornadoes, tsunamis and earthquakes.

I have a sister with Down's syndrome.  All my life, she was a loving presence.  Everybody loved her.  When I was in high school, the members of the football team loved her.  I never went to a game, whether it was homecoming or playoffs.  My classmates came to my house, picked up my sister, and brought her to the football games.  Like I said, everybody loved her.

As people with Down's syndrome get older, they can sometimes change.  Alzheimer's disease and dementia are fairly common.  There's a genetic link between Down's and Alzheimer's.  Over the last few years, my sister has become a different person.  She asks the same questions over and over.  Although she's always been stubborn, she was never mean about it.  Now, she will become downright physical if things don't go her way.  She's punched me on more than one occasion.

I'm not sure if that means that my sister is developing Alzheimer's.  She's certainly not the girl who went to high school football games with my friends.  It makes me a little sad.  Sometimes she's the sister I remember from my childhood, but, more and more often, she's belligerent and downright mean. 

People who are not around her on a daily basis don't recognize how different she is.  In small doses, she is still sweet and funny, hugging everybody, saying, "You know, I love you."  To those closest to her, however, she is just not the same.  Of course, I know she's still the sister who I grew up with, but I miss the simple innocence.  Her innocence now is more complex.

I love my sister.  It's tough to see her aging and changing.

Saint Marty prefers the grasshopper.

I just needed a good laugh . . .