May 14: "View from a Bridge," Center of the Universe, "Penny for Your Thoughts"

Billy Collins crosses a bridge . . .

View from a Bridge

by: Billy Collins

I never thought

of myself

as a little universe

inside a big one

until just now.

It's always a little humbling to realize you are not the universe or center of the universe or even an important component of the universe.  Most individuals don't learn this lesson until much later in life.  Children are simply too me-centered to realize that, in the grand scheme of things, we are very small cogs in an infinite machine.  A lot of adults I meet have never experienced this epiphany, either.

I come from a large family, so I had tons of siblings to make me aware of my insignificance.  It was difficult enough getting an extra helping mashed potatoes at the dinner table.  Forget being center stage for any length of time.  Humility was a virtue that was drilled into me from the time I was very young.

Perhaps that's why I have pursued a career in the arts--to get people's attention and recognition.  Although, even now, I try to avoid spotlight situations.  I much prefer to shine the spotlight on other people and accomplishments.  Give me a bag of M&Ms or a slice of pizza, and that's all the acknowledgement I need.  (Really, that's all anyone needs.)

Those are most of Saint Marty's thoughts for today.

Penny for Your Thoughts

by: Martin Achatz

She tasted like Superior,

her skin a glacier under

the current of my tongue,

pushing her closer and closer

to the edge of the world

where whales moan all night.

Did you get your money's worth?

February 20: I Am Going to Be a Priest, God Talks to Us, River Phoenix

Merton has a quiet revelation . . .

It was the voice of the Church, the Bride of Christ who is in the world yet not of it, whose life transcends and outlives wars and persecutions and revolutions and all the wickedness and cruelty and rapacity and injustice of men. It is truly meet and just always and in all things to give Thee thanks, Holy Lord, omnipotent Father, eternal God: a tremendous prayer that reduces all wars to their real smallness and insignificance in the face of eternity. It is a prayer that opens the door to eternity, that springs from eternity and goes again into eternity, taking our minds with it in its deep and peaceful wisdom. Always and in all things to give Thee thanks, omnipotent Father. Was it thus that she was singing, this Church, this one Body, who had already begun to suffer and to bleed again in another war? 

She was thanking Him in the war, in her suffering: not for the war and for the suffering, but for His love which she knew was protecting her, and us, in this new crisis. And raising up her eyes to Him, she saw the eternal God alone through all these things, was interested in His action alone, not in the bungling cruelty of secondary causes, but only in His love, His wisdom. And to Him the Church, His Bride, gave praise through Christ, through Whom all the angelic hierarchies praise Him... 

I knelt at the altar rail and on this the first day of the Second World War received from the hand of the priest, Christ in the Host, the same Christ Who was being nailed again to the cross by the effect of my sins, and the sins of the whole selfish, stupid, idiotic world of men. 

There was no special joy in that week-end in Virginia. On the Saturday afternoon when we started out from Richmond to go to Urbanna, where Jinny’s family had a boat they were going to sail in a regatta, we got the news about the sinking of the Atbenia, and then, that evening, I suddenly developed a pain in an impacted wisdom tooth. It raged all night and the next day I staggered off to the regatta, worn out with sleeplessness and holding a jaw full of pain. 

Down at the dock where there was a gas-pump for the motor boats and a red tank full of Coca-Cola on ice, we stood out of the sun in the doorway of a big shed smelling of ropes and pitch, and listened to a man talking on the radio from London. 

His voice was reassuring. The city had not yet been bombed. 

We started out of the cove, and passed through the mouth into the open estuary of the Rappahannock, blazing with sun, and everybody was joking about the Bremen. The big German liner had sailed out of New York without warning and had disappeared. Every once in a while some high drawling Southern female voice would cry: 

“There’s the Bremen.” 

I had a bottle of medicine in my pocket, and with a match and a bit of cotton I swabbed the furious impacted tooth. 

Nevertheless, when I got back to New York, it turned out that the war was not going to be so ruthless after all—at least so it seemed. The fighting was fierce in Poland, but in the west there was nothing doing. And now that the awful tension was over, people were quieter and more confident than they had been before the fighting had started. 

I went to a dentist who hammered and chipped at my jaw until he got the wisdom tooth out of my head, and then I went back to Perry Street and lay on my bed and played some ancient records of Bix Beiderbecke, Paul Whiteman’s trumpet player, and swabbed my bleeding mouth with purple disinfectant until the whole place reeked of it. 

I had five stitches in my jaw. 

The days went by. The city was quiet and confident. It even began to get gay again. Whatever happened, it was evident that America was not going to get into the war right away, and a lot of people were saying that it would just go on like this for years, a sort of state of armed waiting and sniping, with the big armies lined up in their impregnable fortified areas. It was as if the world were entering upon a strange new era in which the pretence of peace had defined itself out into what it was, a state of permanent hostility that was nevertheless not quite ready to fight. And some people thought we were just going to stay that way for twenty years. 

For my own part, I did not think anything about it, except that the grim humor of Russia’s position in the war could not help but strike me: for now, after a loud outcry and a great storm of crocodile tears over Chamberlain’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia the year before, the Reds were comfortably allied with Germany and blessing, with a benign smile, the annihilation of Poland, ready themselves to put into effect some small designs of their own regarding the Finns. 

The party line had evolved indeed, and turned itself into many knots since the days of the 1935 Peace Strike and the Oxford Pledge. We had once been led to believe that all wars were wars of aggression and wars of aggression were the direct product of capitalism, masking behind Fascism and all the other movements with colored shirts, and therefore no one should fight at all. It now turned out that the thing to do was support the aggressive war of the Soviets against Finland and approve the Russian support of German aggression in Poland. 

The September days went by, and the first signs of fall were beginning to be seen in the clearing of the bright air. The days of heat were done. It was getting on toward that season of new beginnings, when I would get back to work on my Ph.D., and when I hoped possibly to get some kind of job as an instructor at Columbia, in the College or in Extension. 

These were the things I was thinking about when one night Rice and Bob Gerdy and I were in Nick’s on Sheridan Square, sitting at the curved bar while the room rocked with jazz. Presently Gibney came in with Peggy Wells, who was one of the girls in that show at the Center Theater, the name of which I have forgotten. We all sat together at a table and talked and drank. It was just like all the other nights we spent in those places. It was more or less uninteresting but we couldn’t think of anything else to do and there seemed to be no point in going to bed. 

After Rice and Gerdy went home, Gibney and Peggy and I still sat there. Finally it got to be about four o’clock in the morning. Gibney did not want to go out on Long Island, and Peggy lived uptown in the Eighties. 

They came to Perry Street, which was just around the corner. 

It was nothing unusual for me to sleep on the floor, or in a chair, or on a couch too narrow and too short for comfort—that was the way we lived, and the way thousands of other people like us lived. One stayed up all night, and finally went to sleep wherever there happened to be room for one man to put his tired carcass. 

It is a strange thing that we should have thought nothing of it, when if anyone had suggested sleeping on the floor as a penance, for the love of God, we would have felt that he was trying to insult our intelligence and dignity as men! What a barbarous notion! Making yourself uncomfortable as a penance! And yet we somehow seemed to think it quite logical to sleep that way as part of an evening dedicated to pleasure. It shows how far the wisdom of the world will go in contradicting itself. “From him that hath not, it shall be taken away even that which he hath.” 

I suppose I got some five or six hours of fitful sleep, and at about eleven we were all awake, sitting around dishevelled and half stupefied, talking and smoking and playing records. The thin, ancient, somewhat elegiac cadences of the long dead Beiderbecke sang in the room. From where I sat, on the floor, I could see beyond the roofs to a patch of clear fall sky. 

At about one o’clock in the afternoon I went out to get some breakfast, returning with scrambled eggs and toast and coffee in an armful of cardboard containers, different shapes and sizes, and pockets full of new packs of cigarettes. But I did not feel like smoking. We ate and talked, and finally cleared up all the mess and someone had the idea of going for a walk to the Chicken Dock. So we got ready to go. 

Somewhere in the midst of all this, an idea had come to me, an idea that was startling enough and momentous enough by itself, but much more astonishing in the context. Perhaps many people will not believe what I am saying. 

While we were sitting there on the floor playing records and eating this breakfast the idea came to me: “I am going to be a priest.”

This is how most big ideas come to me:  in quiet, mundane moments.  Between scrambled eggs and jazz, Merton comes to his calling.  It's not one thing.  He doesn't read a want ad from a Trappist monastery.  Doesn't see a billboard in Times Square with the face of Saint Benedict on it.  I suppose that it is simply an accumulation of events and experiences that leads him to this epiphany.  Perhaps it's everything that's happened in his life up to this point.

It is almost midnight on Saturday.  It has been a long day of library work and church musician work and writer's work.  This blog post is the end for me.  After I click the publish tab, I may just stumble off to bed, or I may put a movie in the Blu-ray player and fall asleep on the couch.  I could go grab some chips from the kitchen cupboard, a glass of wine, and a book.  Read into the early Sunday morning hours.  

And somewhere, in the middle of all that, perhaps God will reach down and tap me on the shoulder.  Whisper in my ear.  Place in my mind something astounding.  Maybe I'll wake up in the morning, run to my kitchen table, and start writing a book that will become a bestseller.  Or start scribbling a poem in my journal that will become a viral sensation.  Or apply for an arts residency on Rabbit Island.  Or compose an opera libretto.   

Here's the thing:  I think God talks to us all the time.  We're just too blinded and deafened by life to hear Her.  It's like chasing sleep when the person in bed next to you is snoring so loud that it rattles the windows.  It's impossible to do.  The noise overwhelms the urge for rest, drives it away.  And you lie there, head on the pillow, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the leftover pizza in the fridge.

Since I'm a poet, I sort of depend on inspiration for a lot of what I do.  Sometimes it's easy.  Last weekend, God put a poem in my head.  I took out my journal and, about three hours later, I had a finished poem.  Sometimes it's difficult, like tonight.  I planned on working on a chapbook manuscript this evening.  Instead, I read a short story.  Had a text conversation with a good friend who had a really terrible day because of a reaction to a medication.  Watched the movie The Family Stone.  Planned a couple poetry workshops.  Answered a couple e-mails.  Took a nap.  Basically, I did everything BUT revise that book.

Now, I want to watch a River Phoenix movie.  Maybe My Own Private Idaho.  I'm not sure if all the things I've done this evening are a prelude to some kind divine artistic revelation, or just stupid indulgences.  Avoidance.  Noise getting in the way of God's work in my life.  And it's getting so late that God may just have to call back tomorrow.  

I'm going to click publish in a minute or so.  Grab a piece of pizza.  Cue up River Phoenix.  Fall asleep on the couch.

That is what Saint Marty is feeling called to do.  Amen.  Hallelujah.  Pass the bottle.

January 3: Mountain of a Purgatory, Epiphany, Word Made Flesh

Merton embarks on his climb of the Seven-Circled Mountain . . .

I very quickly made friends with him, and told him all about my thesis and the ideas I was trying to work with, and he was very pleased. And one of the things he sensed at once was something that I was far from being able to realize: but it was that the bent of my mind was essentially “Augustinian.” I had not yet followed Bramachari’s advice to read St. Augustine and I did not take Dan’s evaluation of my ideas as having all the directive force that was potentially in it —for it did not even come clothed in suggestion or advice. 

Of course, to be called “Augustinian” by a Thomist might not in every case be a compliment. But coming from Dan Walsh, who was a true Catholic philosopher, it was a compliment indeed. 

For he, like Gilson, had the most rare and admirable virtue of being able to rise above the petty differences of schools and systems, and seeing Catholic philosophy in its wholeness, in its variegated unity, and in its true Catholicity. In other words, he was able to study St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus side by side, and to see them as complementing and reinforcing one another, as throwing diverse and individual light on the same truths from different points of view, and thus he avoided the evil of narrowing and restricting Catholic philosophy and theology to a single school, to a single attitude, a single system. 

I pray to God that there may be raised up more like him in the Church and in our universities, because there is something stifling and intellectually deadening about textbooks that confine themselves to giving a superficial survey of the field of philosophy according to Thomist principles and then discard all the rest in a few controversial objections. Indeed, I think it a great shame and a danger of no small proportions, that Catholic philosophers should be trained in division against one another, and brought up to the bitterness and smallness of controversy: because this is bound to narrow their views and dry up the unction that should vivify all philosophy in their souls. 

Therefore, to be called an “Augustinian” by Dan Walsh was a compliment, in spite of the traditional opposition between the Thomist and Augustinian schools, Augustinian being taken not as confined to the philosophers of that religious order, but as embracing all the intellectual descendants of St. Augustine. It is a great compliment to find oneself numbered as part of the same spiritual heritage as St. Anselm, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, and Duns Scotus also. And from the tenor of his course, I realized that he meant that my bent was not so much towards the intellectual, dialectical, speculative character of Thomism, as towards the spiritual, mystical, voluntaristic, and practical way of St. Augustine and his followers. 

His course and his friendship were most valuable in preparing me for the step I was about to take. But as time went on, I decided to leave the notion of becoming a priest out of the way for the time being. So I never even mentioned it to Dan in those days. 

As November began, my mind was taken up with this one thought: of getting baptized and entering at last into the supernatural life of the Church. In spite of all my studying and all my reading and all my talking, I was still infinitely poor and wretched in my appreciation of what was about to take place within me. I was about to set foot on the shore at the foot of the high, seven-circled mountain of a Purgatory steeper and more arduous than I was able to imagine, and I was not at all aware of the climbing I was about to have to do. 

Merton is about to embark on a journey toward the Catholic Church and, eventually, priesthood.  He recognizes that it is not going to be easy.  Or, perhaps more accurately, as a memoirist looking back, he realizes how difficult the journey actually was.  Either way, it's a long, long trek through mountain and desert, chasing the tail of a comet.

Today is the Sunday that celebrates the Epiphany.  Three astrologers/astronomers/magi/kings appear in Bethlehem, looking for Jesus to deliver some belated birthday presents.  You all know the story.  Gold and frankincense and myrrh.  Kingship and divinity and sacrifice.  For Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, it's the unveiling of truth as told in prophecy.  God in human form.  The intersection of Heaven and Earth.

Of course, the word "epiphany" has come to mean any sudden realization, whether religious or scientific or philosophical or literary.  James Joyce made a career writing about small epiphanies in his characters' lives.  Snow falling all over Ireland, on the living and the dead.  That sort of thing.  A simple revelation that resonates like a church bell at midnight.

Anything could bring about an epiphany.  Brushing your teeth in the morning.  Brushing your teeth at night.  Watching your child sleep, counting each of his breaths.  Eating one too many Christmas sugar cookies.  Taking your puppy for a moonlit walk in the backyard.  

As a poet, I am constantly on the lookout for these small, everyday acts that carry profound meaning.  Some people may call them inspirations.  I prefer to think of them as Bethlehem moments, because I'm a Christmas lover.  When everything falls into place--at the intersection of syllable and image and meaning--that is when I feel as though I've been touched by something much larger than myself.  Something divine.  

And it's a great gift.  Each time.

Tonight, as Epiphany Sunday draws to a close. I give thanks for all the Bethlehem moments in my life.  When a star appears in the darkness, and I follow its light to some everyday place--a barn filled with cows and chickens and straw and a huge pile of manure.  And there, as the Gospel of John says, in the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Saint Marty joins the magi at the manger tonight, worshipping Word made flesh. 

January 6: Jack and Doolittle, Epiphany, Banishing Darkness

Thomas Merton had an imaginary friend:

I had an imaginary friend , called Jack, who had an imaginary dog, called Doolittle.  The chief reason why I had an imaginary friend was that there were no other children to play with, and my brother John Paul was still a baby.  When I tried to seek diversion watching the gentlemen who played pool at Mr. Duggan's saloon, I got into much trouble.  On the other hand, I could go and play at Burroughs' place, in their garden and in the room full of old lumber over the studio.  Betty Burroughs knew how to join in games in a way that did not imply patronage, though she was practically grown up.  But for friends of my own age, I had to fall back on my imagination, and it was perhaps not a good thing.  

Mother did not mind the company I kept in my imagination, at least to begin with, but once I went shopping with her, and refused to cross Main Street, Flushing, for fear that the imaginary dog, Doolittle, might get run over by real cars.  This I later learned from her record of the affair in her diary.

Merton seems to have a fairly lonely childhood at this point in his story.  No friends his own age.  No one to confide his fears and dreams.  Instead, he has to make up a person.  I suppose that's not too unusual for a child his age (which is, I'm estimating, to be around six or seven at this time).  I have to confess, however, that this little detail of his life saddens me this Epiphany.

I have had a full day of activity--I went back to bed for a little while this morning, and then I went out to a local diner for a late breakfast with my wife, where we engaged in conversation that didn't simply center on who's picking up my son from school and driving him to the dance studio and picking him up from the studio and driving him home and getting him to bed.  It was adult conversation.  And then I went to the church and cleaned.  Marble floors that needed mopping.  Pews that needed dusting.

Despite all of this activity, and the activities that I will engage in tonight (a poetry workshop, open mic, and an Epiphany celebration at a poet friend's house), I find myself feeling very alone today.  Not really able to discuss things in my life that are troubling me.  They are deeply personal issues that I really can't talk about with a lot of people.  I'm almost tempted to invent an imaginary friend with whom I can share my problems freely.  I would name her (yes, it would be a woman--I've always felt more comfortable in the presence of females) Claire, because of a lifelong crush I've had on the actress Claire Danes.

Claire would be the perfect confidant.  Safe.  I could tell her anything without fear of judgmental looks or advice that I'm really not seeking.  She would simply listen with understanding, avoiding all the stuff that normally clutters up the sharing of life difficulties.  In the end, Claire would take all the problems that I hand over to her, pack them in a suitcase, like Mary Poppins, and, tucking her red hair behind her ears, she would take my worries away with her.  Maybe to dump in Lake Superior or the Atlantic Ocean.  And my life would be normal and predictable again.

On this Feast of the Epiphany, I know that no imaginary magi Claire is going to materialize, bearing magic luggage that will swallow all the problems that exist in my life.  It isn't that easy.  This new year/new decade began with the loss of one of my dearest friends.  I'm not sure if that is some kind of omen for what is to come in 2020.  Drastic, difficult change.

Tonight, I will go to my poet friend's house, with my wife, and we will light candles on her Christmas tree.  On this twelfth night, I am going to embrace the image of those candles, flickering on the branches, banishing darkness.  This act will not be imaginary.  I will be surrounded by people I care about, who love me and have helped me through a lot this past year.  It will be a night of embracing hope.  For the return of peace, love, and joy in my life and the world.

Saint Marty wishes everyone hope on this Epiphany Eve.

March 14: Grading, Epiphany, Classic Saint Marty

For the two people out there who have been waiting all day for me to post, I offer my apologies.  I have been grading all day and night.  Literally.  I just finished.

Well, tomorrow, my family will be returning from the Wisconsin Dells.  My daughter did well this weekend in the dance competition.  For her solo tap dance performance, she took gold and was first in her age group.  Today, she danced twice, with two different groups.  The first group were given a platinum trophy, and the second group took gold and placed seventh in its category.  So, overall, a successful weekend.

For those of you who could care less about dance or the Wisconsin Dells or grading, I again apologize.  I am a proud father and a tired professor.  After I am done typing this post, I am going to brush my teeth, eat a brownie, and go to bed.

I have had an epiphany about myself this weekend.  I really love my family.  I never want to be in this situation again.  From this point forward, I will NEVER miss one of my daughter's dance weekends.  It has been, to put it mildly, hideously depressing.

And now for an episode of Classic Saint Marty from a happier time . . .

March 13, 2014:  Torn Web, "Confessions," Saint Augustine

...Wilbur often thought of Charlotte.  A few strands of her old web still hung in the doorway.  Every day Wilbur would stand and look at the torn, empty web, and a lump would come to his throat.  No one had ever had such a friend--so affectionate, so loyal, and so skillful.

I think this passage highlights something very significant about Charlotte's Web:  it's a beautifully written book.  White's prose is sparse and simple, and yet, with simple imagery (a torn web), he can conjure the deepest of emotions.  Charlotte's absence is a palpable ache in those few sentences.

Today is when I'm supposed to reach into my book bag, take out a book I'm carrying around, and talk about it.  Well, get ready.  The tome I pulled out is a copy of Saint Augustine's Confessions.  I had it in my possession for a while, and, every now and then, I read a few pages.

I'll be honest.  Sometimes it's not easy reading.  Augustine's writing, unlike E. B. White's, is dense.  He packs a lot into each paragraph.  But there's much beauty in his language, as well:

...So I was welcomed by the consolations of human milk, but it was not my mother or my nurses who made any decision to fill their breasts, but you who through them gave me infant food, in accordance with your ordinance and the riches which are distributed deep in the natural order.  You also granted me not to wish for more than you were giving, and to my nurses the desire to give me what you gave them...

A gorgeous little passage about God's generosity.  Yet, it also touches upon greed.  Augustine, in the image of the suckling infant, rejoices in the idea of having just enough.  It's a warning to be satisfied with the gifts God has provided.  Just enough milk.  Just enough desire.

Wilbur is learning this lesson at the end of Charlotte's Web.  Sure, he misses his spider friend, but he also rejoices in the gifts Charlotte has given him.  His first autumn.  First snow.  First Christmas.  He doesn't spend his days lamenting his loss.  Rather, he gives thanks for the friendship he had.  Just enough friendship.

That's something Saint Marty has to learn and relearn every day:  being happy with his "just enough."

Think of the web as half full...

January 8: Epiphany Sunday, Revelation, New Cartoon

"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.

"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth," returned the Spirit.  "But they know me.  See!"

This little exchange is between Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present.  The Spirit and Scrooge are traveling around the world, visiting different groups of people celebrating the Yuletide.  Ebenezer is constantly surprised that people in desperate circumstances are able to summon up Christmas cheer.  It's a revelation to him, happiness in the face of poverty.

Today is Epiphany Sunday, the day that commemorates the arrival of the magi to worship the Christ child.  The magi show up with their birthday presents and find themselves in the presence of God Made Flesh.  That's a pretty huge revelation.  Most of the revelations I encounter are less earth-shattering (although the one about Jamie Lee Curtis being a hermaphrodite blew my mind, until I discovered it was just an urban legend).

Of course, nothing's going to beat the magi's epiphany.  Not too many of us can brag that we've met the Son of God.  However, I know that each day, in some way, can be an epiphany.  I've been struggling the last few days with worries about money.  That's nothing new for me.  In fact, a day without worrying about money would be an epiphany at the moment.

I think I labor under the false expectation that if I can make more money, or my wife can get a job, or I win the lottery, or I win the Nobel Prize in Literature, suddenly my life will be happier.  I will be content each and every waking moment, and life will be an endless array of pleasures.  Trips and iPads and publications and hot tubs.  Sounds wonderful.

However, that's not quite the way it works.  Scrooge labors his whole life to make more and more money.  He pinches pennies (or tuppence or whatever) until the coins cry. Yet, he's miserable.  Bob Cratchit, with his shabby house and pigeon-sized goose and sickly son, is happier than Scrooge, who, by all indication, is a Victorian version of Donald Trump, less the bad hair.

Maybe that's the epiphany I'm looking for this Sunday:  money won't buy happiness.  Pretty lame, I know.  It was a pretty earth-shattering realization for Scrooge, though.  Along with that epiphany, I will add an addendum:  trust in God.  I need to get that second part tattooed across my forehead.

This weekend has been a struggle for me.  The bills keep coming, but the cash is in short supply.  (If you're getting tired of me whining about my money situation, I extend my apologies.  It's sort of consuming me at the moment.)  I'm still having Scrooge moments.  I'm having one right now.

Saint Marty needs to have a magi moment:  he needs to trust in the goodness of God.

Confessions of Saint Marty