September 4, 2025: “This Hour,” Longest Weeks, “”Mars, or How to Save a Dying Planet”

Even though Monday was Labor Day and it’s a four-day workweek and nothing catastrophic happened (unless you count President 47 still being alive), this has been one of the longest weeks in recent memory.  The only thing that has saved me from going completely Howard Hughes (locking myself away in a room, not showering or cutting my hair and nails, and pissing in empty Coke bottles) are walks with my wife, car rides with my son (to and from school), and text messages from my daughter (she took her first midterm exam in medical school and killed it).

Sharon Olds shares a moment of love . . . 

This Hour

by: Sharon Olds

We could never really say what it is like,
this hour of drinking wine together
on a hot summer night, in the living room
with the windows open, in our underwear,

my pants with pale-gold gibbon monkeys on them

gleaming in the heat.  We talk about our son disap-

pearling between the pine boughs, 

we could not tell what was chrysalis or 

bough and what was him.  The wine 

is powerful, each mouthful holds

for a moment its amber agate shape, 

I think of the sweat I sipped from my father’s 

forehead the hour before his death.  We talk about 

those last days—that I was waiting for him to die.
You are lying on the couch, your underpants 

a luminous white, your hand resting
relaxed, along the side of your penis, 

we talk about your father’s illness, 

your nipple like a pure circle of 

something risen to the surface of your chest.

Even if we wanted to
we could not describe it,
the end of the second glass when I sometimes
weep and you start to get sleepy—I love 

to drink and cry with you, and end up
sobbing to a sleeping man, your
long body filling the couch and
draped slightly over the ends, the
untrained soft singing of your snore, it cannot be given.
Yes we know we will make love, but we’re
not getting ready to make love,
nor are we getting over making love, 

love is simply our element, 

it is the summer night, we are in it.

I really love the penultimate line in this poem:  “love is simply our element.”  Olds gets it right.  She and her partner know each other so intimately that simply being in each other’s presence is enough to assuage  her grieving heart.

There is a great deal of comfort in a long-term, loving relationship.  My wife and I will be celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary this year.  We were together for about five years before we got married.  Doing the math, that’s 35+ years of love and support.  We’ve had some hiccups, bumps, and derailments in that time, but, as Olds says, love is simply our element.

Tonight, we had grilled cheese sandwiches and soup for dinner.  As we ate, we watched a couple episode of Schitt’s Creek.  Then we took our puppy for a trot around the block.  The weather has taken a turn, so my wife wore her winter coat on our little hike.  (I refuse to put on my winter gear until after Thanksgiving, so I just wore three layers of shirts and sweatshirts and hoodies.). It is definitely not summer anymore.

I’m avoiding getting all sentimental here.  The last couple months have been pretty stressful, with our daughter moving downstate, our son starting his senior year in high school, and my wife losing her job.  I don’t think I’ve fully recovered from all the upheaval.  All of my faithful disciples know how well I deal with change of any kind, and the changes have been coming at light speed recently.

Thank goodness my life is filled with people (friends and family) I love and who love me.  I don’t think I would have survived the last 40 or so days without having shoulders to cry on and ears to vent to.  Recently, I have found myself crying at night after the rest of household has gone to bed.  Not every night, but at least once or twice a week.  

I don’t think I’m sliding into one of my blue periods.  (My faithful disciples may recall I had quite a bad time starting November, and it lasted several months.). I’ve been monitoring the frequency and duration of these current “down” times; I really don’t want to end up in the same space again, especially with the weather turning and daylight shrinking.  

Again, what saved me last November was the love of my family and friends, especially my wife and kids.  Our element.  I truly believe that love is the most powerful force for change in the universe.  It has sustained me through many a low point in my life.  If everyone had minds of love, acted out of love, responded with love, the world wouldn’t be in its current fractured state.

I’m not going to belabor this point.  Either you agree with me or you don’t.  If you believe that the world can be saved by war and division and hatred, I’m not going to change your mind.  Ditto if you think that homeless people should be rounded up and shipped off to internment camps.  And if you are adamant in your support of tax cuts for billionaires and the elimination of pediatric cancer research, well then, I don’t know if I even want you reading this blog anymore.  Might I recommend some light reading for you, like Mein Kampf.

On the other hand, if your happy place involves family and friends, and if you want to save the world before all the polar bears are drowned and we’re living in fallout shelters, then you already know that love is the only thing that will save our asses.

Yesterday, Saint Marty wrote about poem about Mars and saving the planet, based on the following prompt from September 3 of The Daily Poet:

On this date in 1976, the Viking 2 unmanned spacecraft took the first close-up pictures of the surface of Mars.  Write a poem about the frantic search to find water (and perhaps living creatures) on Mars.  As there is plenty of life already here on Earth that needs attending to, your poem may or may not take on a cynical tone.

Mars, or How to Save a Dying Planet

by: Martin Achatz

There’s so much red there, even 

the air bleeds, as if the entire

world is an open wound, a bullet

hole in the belly of the universe.

We send probes, motorized gadgets

to crawl, fly in search of canals

gone dry or some indigenous red carrot.

Why do we search for something

life-giving in a place that’s just

a red stain, a murder scene?

Instead, we should go for a walk

at midnight along the shores of

of Lake Superior, let the water

numb our ankles, ache our bones, wash

over us, until we all shine like beach glass.

September 11: "The Names," Love, "Godspeed"

I remember the morning.  Watching the news reports from the Twin Towers.  Seeing the second plane plow into the second Tower.  The Pentagon.  Shanksville.  And I remember going into a classroom at the university that afternoon, staring into the faces of young people who knew that their world had just changed forever.  

When I got home that evening, I picked up my nine-month-old daughter and hugged her.  Hard.

Billy Collins' poem for the victims of 9/11 . . . 

The Names

by: Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name --
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner --
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.

When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

I'm not going talk any more about my memories of 9/11.  Everyone of a certain age has memories like mine about that terrible day.  Memories full of shock, anger, and grief.  

Tonight, I hold onto the love I feel for the people in my life.  If there was one thing that I learned that September day 23 years ago, it's this:  never to take for granted my family and friends.  At the end of my life, it's not going to matter how much money I have, how many books I've written, or how famous I am.  What is going to matter is how much I've loved and how much I was loved.  

That's Saint Marty's wish for you all this evening--love.

Godspeed

by: Martin Achatz

I write these words over two weeks
past the time I last spoke with you,
when you called me from your bed,
said in a voice so weak it sounded
like dandelion seeds in August,
“Always,” letting me know this would be
our last time together, that you were
done with this stupid blue marble
floating in this ever-expanding
universe, wanted to spread your arms
and soar. I write these words two
days after we all gathered to say
goodbye, Godspeed, thanks
in the rain, where table napkins
with daisies on them melted
into a puddle of beached jellyfish.
And I write these words twenty-
one years and one day after
the planes hit the Towers
and people dialed their husbands,
wives, sisters, brothers, children,
lovers, friends to say one more time
“I love you” and “I will always
be there.” Yesterday, I saw
the picture of a man who leapt
from a window in Tower One,
him diving down, arms glued
to his legs. I hope that he felt
like an eagle or kite or seraphim
as he sailed and spun. Hope
that the wind in his face reminded
him of that day as a kid
when his dad pushed him
on the playground
swing so high he thought
he would keep rising, rising
at the speed of God.

August 23: "Love," Aunt Marian, Adoration

Tonight, I am writing about love.

In the past week, I've been getting messages from my sister about our aunt, my mother's youngest sister.  Last Friday, Aunt Marian had a stroke, although it seemed as though they caught it early enough.  No paralysis.  Speech only slightly slurred, but improving.  Swallowing with a little difficulty, but improving, as well.  Tonight, I found out that the doctors have discovered metastatic cancer throughout my aunt's body.  

I come from a very large family, with lots of aunts and uncles and cousins.  Love has always been abundant in my life.  Even though that love, for most of my adulthood, has been distanced by space (most of my relatives live around the Metro Detroit area), I still love them, and they love me.

My aunt and uncle made yearly pilgrimages to the Upper Peninsula to visit us in the past.  Aunt Marian married my dad's youngest brother.  That's right.  The baby of the family married the baby of the family.  And, when I was around them, it was obvious how much they respected and adored each other.

Billy Collins writes about adoration and love . . . 

Love

by: Billy Collins

The boy at the far end of the train car 

kept looking behind him 

as if he were afraid or expecting someone 

and then she appeared in the glass door 

of the forward car and he rose 

and opened the door and let her in 

and she entered the car carrying 

a large black case 

in the unmistakable shape of a cello. 

She looked like an angel with a high forehead 

and somber eyes and her hair 

was tied up behind her neck with a black bow. 

And because of all that, 

he seemed a little awkward i

n his happiness to see her, 

whereas she was simply there, 

perfectly existing as a creature 

with a soft face who played the cello. 

And the reason I am writing this 

on the back of a manila envelope 

now that they have left the train together 

is to tell you that when she turned 

to lift the large, delicate cello 

onto the overhead rack, 

I saw him looking up at her 

and what she was doing 

the way the eyes of saints are painted 

when they are looking up at God 

when he is doing something remarkable, 

something that identifies him as God.

I've always been drawn to the final image of this poem, the boy looking up at the girl like a saint having a vision of God.  I can see it--that boundless veneration for something/someone that seems perfect and unattainable.  The purity of that love, before cruelty or heartbreak shatters it.

I'm not saying my aunt is a saint or a god.  We're all human beings, dealing with out own failings and wants.  But my memory of Aunt Marian is one of love.  My wife and I got married on the same day (October 14) that my aunt and uncle got married.  They came to our wedding, danced at the reception together.  I've always felt incredibly connected to them because of that.

Aunt Marian doesn't want any extraordinary measures to sustain her life.  She's told her daughter that she wants to go home to die.  After all the arrangements have been made, that is exactly what is going to happen.  Palliative care and home, where she and my uncle (who passed a few years ago) lived, loved, and adored each other for so, so long.

I've learned so much by watching people like my aunt and uncle love each other and their family.  When I look at my wife or daughter or son, I hope people see the same kind of love in my eyes.  Sacred.  Holy.

Saint Marty loves his aunt.

Photo by Abbigail Berry

July 8: "The Peasants' Revolt," Love, Conditions

Billy Collins writes a love poem . . .

The Peasants' Revolt

by: Billy Collins

Soon enough it will be over--

the shirt hanging from the doorknob,

trees beyond the windows,

and the kettle of water bubbling on a burner.

Soon enough, soon enough,

the many will be overwhelmed by the one.

Instead of the shaded road to the house,

the blue wheelbarrow upended,

and a picture book across my hips in bed,

just an expanse of white ink,

or a dark tunnel coiling away and down.

No sunflowers, no notebook,

no sand-colored denim jacket

and a piece of straw in the teeth,

just a hole inside a larger hole

and the starless maw of space.

But we are still here,

with all the world before us,

a beaded glass of water on the night table,

and the rest of this summer afternoon ahead.

So undo the buttons on your white blouse

and toss it over a chair back.

Let us lie down side by side

on these crisp sheets like two effigies on a tomb,

supine in a shadowy corner of a cathedral.

Let us be as still and serene

as Richard II and Anne of Bohemia--

he who ended the Peasants' Revolt so ruthlessly

and she to whom he was so devoted,

now entombed together, hand in stone hand.

Let us close our eyes in the white room

and let the fan blades on the ceiling cool us

as they turn like the hands of a speeding clock.

Love is complex.  Love can hurt and heal.  It can bring pleasure and pain.  It can be a revolt, and it can be a coronation.  Love comes in many forms.  I love my wife, and I love my kids.  I love my puppy.  I love my extended families, both through blood and marriage.

Personally, I don't know anything about love, really.  Yes, I've tried most of my life to be a loving person to everyone, including those who bug the shit out of me.  Everyone deserves to be loved.  (Except Donald Trump, but let's not go there.)  I'm lucky because I know there are people in this world who love me deeply, despite all of my failings and hard edges.  (Yes, I do have hard edges.)

And that's what love is all about--that word "despite."  True and meaningful love sees through cruelty and aggravation and pain to what lies beneath, which is soft and gentle and kind.  Yes, I love individuals who make love very hard.  People who can't move past their own disappointments and resentments, who put conditions on love.  

I can't love you until . . .  

How about this one?--

 I will love you if . . .  

Sound familiar?  If you have to put qualifiers on love, then it's not really love.

That doesn't mean that you have to allow yourself to be hurt over and over again.  No.  That's not what I'm saying.  I'm saying that, if you love someone, you have to love ALL of them--even the most difficult (and some would say unlovable) parts.  

The heart is one of the most resilient creations in the universe.  It can be broken, over and over and over and over.  Yet, it can also be mended, over and over and over and over.  I've been through my fair share of heartbreaks and heartmends.  That's what life is all about, isn't it?  That's what we all want in life--to love and be loved.  Sometimes, you have to go through wars before you find love, or love finds you.

Some people reading this post might think I'm being sentimental here.  I will say that real love is anything but sentimental.  Love is a full-time job, and, like all jobs, there will be really good days and really bad days.  I've given up on love quite a few times, but love has never given up on me.

Maybe that's why some people say that God is love.  Because love really never gives up on you, even when you're at your worst.  If She exists, I imagine God to be just as fiercely stubborn in affection, compassion, and loyalty.  God never gives up on you, just like love.

Now, here is the most difficult part of the love equation:  you can't really love other people if you don't love yourself.  There is no way to accept the devotion of another person if you don't feel like you deserve it.  I've done some pretty terrible things in my life.  (No, I'm not going to give you an itemized list.)  Things that I'm still working through in therapy.  I've had to learn to forgive myself, and that has been difficult.  Yet, I can't give love to other people if I can't give it to myself.

So, tonight, Saint Marty ends this post with love, for the people in his life, his dog, and himself.  He hopes his faithful disciples do the same.

June 12: "The English Professor," Love, "Man at Work"

Billy Collins misdiagnoses someone . . . 

The English Professor

by: Billy Collins

When I asked him

if he was in love,

he accused me

of anthropomorphizing him.

Love is a word that gets thrown around a lot.  For example, this afternoon, someone offered me a Twix candy bar, and I said, "I love Twix!"  Other examples:  I've claimed to love, at various times, The Godfather, Tracy Chapman songs, long naps, cheddar bay biscuits from Red Lobster, writing poems, and River Phoenix.

Love, in our present age, has been devalued as a concept, and I'm just as guilty as anyone else.  The word "love" used to be reserved for certain bonds or relationships between living creatures.  "Love" indicates a depth of emotion and devotion that can't really be applied to songs or food or inanimate objects.  I love my kids and would sacrifice my life for them.  I also love Cheetos, but I wouldn't donate a kidney to get a family-size bag of them.  See the difference?

I try to be very aware of how I use the word "love" in my everyday conversations, reserving it for when I'm interacting with honest-to-God loved ones--my wife or kids or siblings or close friends or dog.  (Yes, pets can be loved ones.)  I can say "I love you" to them without feeling disingenuous.  I truly do love them.

This evening, I hosted a concert at the library.  A duo named Flagship Romance that I admire a lot.  (I almost used the "l" word.)  They sang almost all completely original songs with harmonies so close they sounded like one voice.  It was a lovely way to end my day.  (NOTE:  "lovely" is a much more usable word that doesn't require a marriage license or birth control or paternity test.)  These performers are obviously very passionate about what they do.  (Dare I use the "l" word?)  They have been blessed with incredible musical talents.

I have been blessed, I think, with writing talents.  I can't imagine a day going by without me scribbling or typing a poem or short story or essay or blog post.  Writing is a part of who I am.  Do I love writing?  Hmmmmm . . . I guess it depends on how your define the word.

The ancient Greeks identified and defined eight different types of love:

1. Eros:  sexual passion
2. Philia:  deep friendship
3. Ludus:  playful love
4. Agape:  love for everyone
5. Pragma:  longstanding love
6. Philautia:  love of the self
7. Storge:  family love
8. Mania:  obsessive love

My love of poetry and writing borders on mania at times.  If I'm working on a piece of writing, I can be more than a little obsessive.  My love for my kids:  storge.  My love for the music of Flagship Romance tonight:  philautia tinged with mania.  

A popular saying these days is "Love is Love."  It's mostly used to confront homophobes and transphobes (basically any kind of love phobe).  You don't pick who you fall in love with.  Love picks you.  Period.  As long as you don't eros you cocker spaniel.

Saint Marty is now going mania the shit out of a bag of M&Ms. 

Man at Work

by: Martin Achatz

If you spy me sitting

on a bench by a lake,

staring at a paddling duck,

please know that I'm hard at work

writing a poem.

June 22: "Fireflies," Proximity, James Baldwin

Mary Oliver on the need for intimacy . . .

Fireflies

by:  Mary Oliver

At Blackwater

fireflies 

are not even a dime a dozen--

they are free,

and each floats and turns

among the branches of the oaks

and the swamp azaleas

looking for another

as, who doesn't?

Oh, blessings

on the intimacy

inside fruition,

be it foxes 

or the fireflies

or the dampness inside the petals

of a thousand flowers.

Though Eden is lost

its loveliness

remains in the heart 

and the imagination;

he would take her

in a boat

over the dark water;

she would take him 

to an island she knows

where the blue flag grows wild

and the grass is deep,

where the birds

perch together,

feather to feather,

on the bough.

And the fireflies,

blinking their little lights,

hurry toward one another.

And the world continues,

God willing.

This poem is about closeness.  The fireflies seek each other out by flashing in the oaks and swamp azaleas.  Rivers rush toward lakes and seas and oceans.  Foxes and flowers--basically, everything--are hungry for each other, because that's what we're all crave:  proximity.  Companionship.  Love.

The world continues because of this impulse.

I am the youngest of nine children.  That means that I never lacked human companionship as a kid.  I was surrounded by my sisters and brothers.  All the time.  There were few places in our home where privacy existed.  Bathrooms.  Bedrooms, sometimes.  (Until I was in high school, I shared a bedroom with one of my older brothers.  When you're a horny teenage boy, closeness like that puts a cramp in your style.)  Dinners were huge events where we all sat around the table, competed for food, and unpacked our days.

So I came to be a pretty social animal, at least within the confines of my family.  I like people.  I like being around people.  Until I don't.

As with most individuals, I have my Greta Garbo moments when I want to be alone.  Being a poet sort of necessitates a certain amount of solitude and isolation.  That doesn't always mean physical isolation.  I watched a documentary once about the life of writer James Baldwin.  A friend of Baldwin described how he saw the writer in the middle of a loud, unruly party.  Baldwin was scribbling in a notebook.  After a while, he put down his writing utensil, closed the notebook, and said something like, "It's done, baby."  He'd just completed the manuscript of The Fire Next Time, if memory serves.  That book went on to become one of the seminal works about race relations published in the 1960s.  And Baldwin finished it in a house full of drunken guests.

Most of the writing I'm able to complete in a day isn't done in sound-proof, panic room conditions.  I don't lock myself in my office and yell at noisy family members because, for the most part, noisy family members are my inspiration.  Just as Baldwin seemed to thrive on the energy of throngs.  My poems and blog posts and essays are cobbled together during or between moments of chaos.  For example, this blog post started life this morning after a library staff meeting.  Was continued during and after lunch.  Now, I'm finishing it as I wait for a concert to begin at the library.  This whole day has been a piecemeal of stolen writing moments surrounded by gaggles of people.

Sometimes, I wish for a schedule that would allow me to write consistently for a few hours in complete aloneness.  But, except for one or two writing conferences I've attended, that has never been my reality.  Instead, I'm a firefly flashing in a field of fireflies.  The dampness inside the petals of a thousand flowers.  James Baldwin scratching out words in the middle of a crowded room.  Proximity.  Companionship.  Love.

And now, Saint Marty has just one thing left to say--"It's done, baby."

Two of Saint Marty's favorite fireflies . . . 

May 18: "Prayer," Plain Ridiculous, Love

Some of Mary Oliver's last wishes . . . 

Prayer

by:  Mary Oliver

May I never not be frisky.

May I never not be risqué.

May my ashes, when you have them, friend,

and give them to the ocean,

leap in the froth of the waves,

still loving movement,

still ready, beyond all else,

to dance for the world.

That's how Mary Oliver wants the world to remember her--leaping in the waves of the Atlantic, dancing for the world.

I'm not sure how I want to be remembered, if I'm remembered at all.

If I cross somebody's mind ten, 15, or 20 years after I die, I hope I make that person smile.  Laugh out loud.  My whole life, I've embraced the ridiculous.  Because humans are just plain ridiculous.  Two years ago, there were government leaders who compared wearing facemasks during the pandemic to the Holocaust.  (Okay, that may cross the line from ridiculous to downright stupid, but you get the idea.)  Then there are climate change deniers.  People who march into public libraries and try to dictate what I should or should not be allowed to read.  Others who believe there is "right" and "wrong" kinds of love.

Like I said, the human race is ridiculous.

Here is Saint Marty's prayer for tonight:  

May I never not be able to laugh.

May I never not be open in mind and heart.

When I am just ashes, mix those ashes

with concrete, and pour them into the barrels

of all the handguns in the United States.  Make

ink with my ashes, and print a book of poems

with them.  Let the poems be about my family

and friends, and let the last line of the last poem be

one word, repeated over and over and over:

love love love love love love love love love.

Because there is never enough love in the world.

June 17-18: Back to Christ's Altars, Communion and Catholic Bishops, Love

Merton finds peace in a noisy place . . . 

Yet the room was not quiet, either. It was right on a corner next to the stairs, and when anybody on our floor was wanted on the telephone, someone would rush up the stairs and stick his head into the corridor right by my door and yell down the echoing hall. All day long I heard those voices bellowing, “Hey, Cassidy! Hey, Cassidy!” but I did not mind. It did not stop me from doing twice as much work in that room, in one year, as I had done in all the rest of my life put together. 

It amazed me how swiftly my life fell into a plan of fruitful and pleasant organization, here under the roof with these Friars, in this house dedicated to God. The answer to this was, of course, the God Who lived under that same roof with me, hidden in His Sacrament, the heart of the house, diffusing His life through it from the chapel Tabernacle: and also the Office I recited every day was another answer. Finally, there was the fact of my seclusion. 

By this time, I had managed to get myself free from all the habits and luxuries that people in the world think they need for their comfort and amusement. My mouth was at last clean of the yellow, parching salt of nicotine, and I had rinsed my eyes of the grey slops of movies, so that now my taste and my vision were clean. And I had thrown away the books that soiled my heart. And my ears, too, had been cleansed of all wild and fierce noises and had poured into them peace, peace—except for that yell, “Hey, Cassidy,” which, after all, did not make much difference. 

Best of all, my will was in order, my soul was in harmony with itself and with God, though not without battle, and not without cost. That was a price I had to pay, or lose my life altogether, so there was no alternative but wait in patience, and let myself be ground out between the upper and nether millstones of the two conflicting laws within me. Nor could I taste anything of the sense that this is really a martyrdom full of merit and pleasing to God: I was still too obsessed with the sheer, brute difficulty of it, and the crushing humiliation that faced me all the time. Peccatum meum contra me est semper. 

Yet, in spite of all that, there was in me the profound, sure certitude of liberty, the moral certitude of grace, of union with God, which bred peace that could not be shattered or overshadowed by any necessity to stand armed and ready for conflict. And this peace was all-rewarding. It was worth everything. And every day it brought me back to Christ’s altars, and to my daily Bread, that infinitely holy and mighty and secret wholesomeness that was cleansing and strengthening my sick being through and through, and feeding, with His infinite life, my poor shredded sinews of morality. 

Here it is.  Merton finds peace in this place, because he is reciting the Divine Office, and every day he is "brought back to Christ's altars, and to my daily Bread."  He's praying, going to Communion, and removing things from his life that have acted as roadblocks in his faith journey.  Like Merton, every individual finds his/her own way to God, no matter what name or form God takes.  Yahweh,  Jesus.  Nature.  The Universe.  It's a very personal thing.

Something happened today that bothers me quite a bit.  The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted (not unanimously) to draft a document that may, if adopted in November, be used to deny individuals, who hold public office and support abortion rights, the ability to receive the sacrament of Communion.  The document hasn't been written, and the final vote hasn't been cast by the bishops.  However, this step seems to cross the line, using a deeply personal and spiritual act as a way to influence public policy.  And that, in my book, goes completely against what I know about Jesus Christ and his teachings.

Abortion is a very personal matter.  Laws can be made to protect it or make it illegal.  Abortion is not going away, no matter what politicians or bishops or judges say or do.  I am not a woman.  Therefore, I have never had to face that terrible choice in my life, and, rest assured, any woman who has faced that situation has agonized and suffered over the decision.  Making abortion illegal again doesn't mean abortions will stop.  They will simply become more dangerous and life-threatening.  

Now, perhaps you're of the mindset that a woman who chooses to have an illegal abortion deserves to become sick or die.  Again, I'm a lifelong Catholic, and that thinking really doesn't gibe with the Jesus Christ I know.  If you are against abortion, I'm fine with that.  Then you also need to do something to make sure that all mothers have social, financial, and medical support, not just for the term of the pregnancy, but until their children are fully grown.  And you need to provide for those children, too--make sure they are healthy, cared for, eat well, get good educations.  In short, you need to be in it for the long haul, not just nine months.

Using a sacrament of the Catholic Church as a way to influence public policy and servants is tantamount, in my mind, to going against something Jesus Christ said to Pharisees or Herodians or the spies of the chief priests:  "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."  This rebuke appears in the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in one form or another.

In short, at least in my thinking, the bishops who support the drafting of this document regarding Communion aren't trying to spread the Body of Christ, which, if you are a Christian, can be a force for great spiritual healing and understanding.  Reread that passage from Thomas Merton, if you don't believe me.  No, these bishops are using Communion like an allowance that's being withheld as punishment.

As I said earlier, abortion is a deeply personal matter, made between a woman, a medical provider, and whatever support system she has.  No law is going to change that.  The law is there to protect citizens' rights, to allow them to make good or bad choices (depending on your point of view).  I don't believe in abortion, would do everything I could to help someone facing that decision, and love her no matter what.  That's my choice.  My neighbor who lives down the street may believe in abortion.  That's her choice.  Both of those choices are protected.  Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's.

Communion is a deeply personal, spiritual matter, something that happens between you and God.  It can heal a broken heart.  Bring someone back to church.  Change people's minds and souls.  Nobody has the right to stand in the way of that.  Render unto God the things that are God's.

I'm not trying to sway anyone's opinion with this post.  You may disagree with me.  I respect that and still love you.  Because that's what it all boils down to, if you call yourself a Christian:  love.  Love is love is love.

Saint Marty grew up singing that song:  "They'll know we are Christians by our love . . ."  He tries to live by those words every day of his life.

November 29-30: Supernatural Order, Mother COVID-Positive, Mystery

 Merton learns something about the supernatural order of the universe . . . 

Moral theologians say that the mendacium jocosum in itself does not exceed a venial sin. 

Seymour and Lax were rooming together in one of the dormitories, for Bob Gibney, with whom Lax had roomed the year before, had now graduated, and was sitting in Port Washington with much the same dispositions with which I had been sitting in Douglaston, facing a not too dissimilar blank wall, the end of his own blind-alley. He occasionally came in to town to see Dona Eaton who had a place on 112th Street, but no job, and was more cheerful about her own quandary than the rest of us, because the worst that could happen to her was that she would at last run completely out of money and have to go home to Panama. 

Gibney was not what you would call pious. In fact, he had an attitude that would be commonly called impious, only I believe God understood well enough that his violence and sarcasms covered a sense of deep metaphysical dismay—an anguish that was real, though not humble enough to be of much use to his soul. What was materially impiety in him was directed more against common ideas and notions which he saw or considered to be totally inadequate, and maybe it subjectively represented a kind of oblique zeal for the purity of God, this rebellion against the commonplace and trite, against mediocrity, religiosity. 

During the year that had passed, I suppose it must have been in the spring of 1937, both Gibney and Lax and Bob Gerdy had all been talking about becoming Catholics. Bob Gerdy was a very smart sophomore with the face of a child and a lot of curly hair on top of it, who took life seriously, and had discovered courses on Scholastic Philosophy in the graduate school, and had taken one of them. 

Gibney was interested in Scholastic Philosophy in much the same way as James Joyce was—he respected its intellectuality, particularly that of the Thomists, but there was not enough that was affective about his interest to bring about any kind of a conversion. 

For the three or four years that I knew Gibney, he was always holding out for some kind of a “sign,” some kind of a sensible and tangible interior jolt from God, to get him started, some mystical experience or other. And while he waited and waited for this to come along, he did all the things that normally exclude and nullify the action of grace. So in those days, none of them became Catholics. 

The most serious of them all, in this matter, was Lax: he was the one that had been born with the deepest sense of Who God was. But he would not make a move without the others. 

And then there was myself Having read The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy and having discovered that the Catholic conception of God was something tremendously solid, I had not progressed one step beyond this recognition, except that one day I had gone and looked up St. Bernard’s De Diligendo Deo in the catalogue of the university library. It was one of the books Gilson had frequently mentioned: but when I found that there was no good copy of it, except in Latin, I did not take it out. 

Now it was November 1937. One day, Lax and I were riding downtown on one of those busses you caught at the corner of 110th Street and Broadway. We had skirted the southern edge of Harlem, passing along the top of Central Park, and the dirty lake full of rowboats. Now we were going down Fifth Avenue, under the trees. Lax was telling me about a book he had been reading, which was Aldous Huxley’s Ends and Means. He told me about it in a way that made me want to read it too. 

So I went to Scribner’s bookstore and bought it, and read it, and wrote an article about it, and gave the article to Barry Ulanov who was editor of Review by that time. He accepted the article with a big Greek smile and printed it. The smile was on account of the conversion it represented, I mean the conversion in me, as well as in Huxley, although one of the points I tried to make was that perhaps Huxley’s conversion should not have been taken as so much of a surprise. 

Huxley had been one of my favorite novelists in the days when I had been sixteen and seventeen and had built up a strange, ignorant philosophy of pleasure based on all the stories I was reading. And now everybody was talking about the way Huxley had changed. The chatter was all the more pleasant because of Huxley’s agnostic old grandfather—and his biologist brother. Now the man was preaching mysticism. 

Huxley was too sharp and intelligent and had too much sense of humor to take any of the missteps that usually make such conversions look ridiculous and oafish. You could not laugh at him, very well—at least not for any one concrete blunder. This was not one of those Oxford Group conversions, complete with a public confession. 

On the contrary, he had read widely and deeply and intelligently in all kinds of Christian and Oriental mystical literature, and had come out with the astonishing truth that all this, far from being a mixture of dreams and magic and charlatanism, was very real and very serious. 

Not only was there such a thing as a supernatural order, but as a matter of concrete experience, it was accessible, very close at hand, an extremely near, an immediate and most necessary source of moral vitality, and one which could be reached most simply, most readily by prayer, faith, detachment, love. 

Apprehending God concretely.  I think we all spend most of our lives trying to do that.  Some people through poetry.  Others through science.  It's all about trying to understand mystery.  Things we just can't figure out in our normal, limited, human way.  It takes a force that transcends kitchen tables and bills and jobs.  Merton hits the nail on the head here, to use that hackneyed expression.  It's about faith and prayer.  And love, most of all.

I received word yesterday afternoon that my mother has tested positive for COVID.  She's in the nursing home and has been moved to the COVID wing.  She's out of my reach.  Out of all of our reaches.  We can't visit, so we have to rely on reports from the nurses and managers.  Feeling this powerless is a painful thing.  Poet Louise Gluck writes, "From the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved.  It meant I loved."

Love.  This is where mystery comes in.  I have no idea what is going to happen with my mother.  She has terrible asthma.  Diabetes.  Alzheimer's.  Macular degeneration has taken much of her eyesight, and her hearing is almost gone, as well.  If I were to walk into her room tonight, I'm not sure she would know who I was.  Yet, I have to trust that she will be well.  Trust in God.  Poetry.  The universe.  Love.

Everything is going to be alright.

That doesn't mean there won't be pain.  To be alive means you will experience pain.  It's inevitable.  In some way, my mother will be healed.  The form of that healing is, again, out of my hands.  As with most powerful forces--hurricanes, blizzards, tidal waves, avalanches, love, healing--there is some devastation left in its aftermath.  Relief sometimes--homes spared from fire, lost children found.  Tears other times--neighborhoods blown into splinters, loved ones taken away.  It depends how the wind blows, the water rises, the healing manifests.

That is the greatest mystery that we all face.  We can try to hide from it, which is futile.  Or we can embrace it.  Open ourselves up.  Wade into the storm.

Tonight, I am waist-deep in flood water, sending faith, hope, and love to my mother.  I know that I sound like I'm paraphrasing Corinthians.  However, Saint Paul got things right every once in a while.  The greatest force in the universe is love, and all the pain that accompanies it.

Saint Marty loves.  Therefore, Saint Marty hurts.  That is the mystery.  That is the miracle.

September 25: The Glory of God, Infinite Loops, Love

A reflection on the goodness of God from Merton . . .

Perhaps they did not know they were waiting for all this. Perhaps they thought they had nothing better to occupy their minds than the wedding of Prince George and Princess Marina which had taken place the day before. Even I myself was more concerned with the thought of some people I was leaving than with the political atmosphere at that precise moment. And yet that atmosphere was something that would not allow itself to be altogether ignored. 

I had seen enough of the things, the acts and appetites, that were to justify and to bring down upon the world the tons of bombs that would someday begin to fall in millions. Did I know that my own sins were enough to have destroyed the whole of England and Germany? There has never yet been a bomb invented that is half so powerful as one mortal sin— and yet there is no positive power in sin, only negation, only annihilation: and perhaps that is why it is so destructive, it is a nothingness, and where it is, there is nothing left—a blank, a moral vacuum. 

It is only the infinite mercy and love of God that has prevented us from tearing ourselves to pieces and destroying His entire creation long ago. People seem to think that it is in some way a proof that no merciful God exists, if we have so many wars. On the contrary, consider how in spite of centuries of sin and greed and lust and cruelty and hatred and avarice and oppression and injustice, spawned and bred by the free wills of men, the human race can still recover, each time, and can still produce men and women who overcome evil with good, hatred with love, greed with charity, lust and cruelty with sanctity. How could all this be possible without the merciful love of God, pouring out His grace upon us? Can there be any doubt where wars come from and where peace comes from, when the children of this world, excluding God from their peace conferences, only manage to bring about greater and greater wars the more they talk about peace? 

We have only to open our eyes and look about us to see what our sins are doing to the world, and have done. But we cannot see. We are the ones to whom it is said by the prophets of God: “Hearing hear, and understand not; and see the vision, and know it not.”

There is not a flower that opens, not a seed that falls into the ground, and not an ear of wheat that nods on the end of its stalk in the wind that does not preach and proclaim the greatness and the mercy of God to the whole world. 

There is not an act of kindness or generosity, not an act of sacrifice done, or a word of peace and gentleness spoken, not a child’s prayer uttered, that does not sing hymns to God before His throne, and in the eyes of men, and before their faces. 

How does it happen that in the thousands of generations of murderers since Cain, our dark bloodthirsty ancestor, that some of us can still be saints? The quietness and hiddenness and placidity of the truly good people in the world all proclaim the glory of God.

This passage is Merton in love with the evidences of God in the world.  Yes, his story is about to plunge into the horrors of World War II, with all the crimes humans committed against each other during that conflict.  Yet, through it all, Merton says, the subtle and hidden work of truly good people--unspoken saints doing what unspoken saints do--sings hosannas to the glory of God.  It's Merton in ecstasy over goodness.

It has been a very good day.  My son is happy, went to school.  He seems lighter than I've seen him in weeks, as if, were he not tethered to the ground by gravity, he would float skyward.  That, for me, is an example of what Merton is talking about:  God's grace in action.  Sure, he is being helped by guidance counselors and physicians and therapists and medications, but he is smiling and full of light.  That is what matters today.

Now, I am not being naive here.  I know that, tomorrow or tonight or in the next half hour, things could change.  That is the nature of mental health issues.  There aren't any magical cures.  However, there are times when, after a long period of darkness, there's a break in the clouds, and the sun shines through.  This is one of those times for me, and I will take all the sun that I can get.

Tomorrow will be my son's twelfth birthday.  We will celebrate it at my mother's house, with cupcakes and ice cream and singing loud enough to embarrass him until his thirteenth birthday.  And then, on Sunday, we will celebrate it again with some of my son's friends and more family at a socially distanced birthday party.  All the young people will be locked in an Escape Room while the adults watch on iPads.  Face masks will be the fashion of the day.

But, sometime this weekend, maybe tonight, I know I will do something that will cause my son to scream at me, "You are a SHITTY dad!"  And then he will storm off to his computer and disappear into some world where he'll chop the head off an ogre that looks like me.

Because that's what being a parent is all about.  Supporting your kids.  Doing everything you can to give your kids the best life possible.  Wanting your kids to be happy.  Then, when they want to do something stupid or unsafe, you have to use that dreaded word:  No.  And an entire lifetime of mediocre-to-good parenting is wiped out in an instant.  Sort of like the dinosaurs being snuffed out by a meteor.

And you start rebuilding.  It's an unending process.  An infinite loop.  When I was studying Computer Science as an undergrad, I got stuck in a lot of those.  My programming caused a lot of computers to crash.  Now, as a father, I'm trying to program my kids to do the right things, to grow up into good people.  Reflections of the glory of God in this world, as Merton would say.  But kids are a lot harder to program than computers.  They don't speak binary.  And they're wiring is a lot more unpredictable.

However, I do know where to start with my son and daughter.  I know the first line of their programming code.  And it's a line that's looped infinitely, from now until the day I pass from their lives.  It consists of one miraculous word, repeated over and over and over and over:  Love.

Saint Marty sees the glory of God every day in his kids.

January 14-15-16-17: Leave Me, Abandonment, Puppy Moment

More on Merton's life in Bermuda with his father:

When Father left the boarding house, I remained there, and continued to live in it, because it was near the school.  He was living in some other part of Somerset, with some people he had met, and he spent his days at work, painting landscapes.  In fact, after that winter in Bermuda he had finished enough work to have an exhibition, and this made him enough money to go back to Europe.  But meanwhile, I was going to the local school for white children, which was next to a large public cricket field, and I was constantly being punished for my complete inability to grasp the principles of multiplication and division.

It may have been very difficult for Father to try to make all these decisions.  He wanted me to go to school, and he wanted me to be with him.  When both these things ceased to be possible at the same time, he first decided in favor of the school:  but then, after considering at length the nature of the place where I had to live, and the kind of talk I heard there, all day long, with my wide-open and impassive understanding, he took me out of the school, and brought me to live where he was.  And I was very glad, because I was relieved of the burden of learning multiplication and long division.  

The only worry was that my former teacher passed along that road on her bicycle on her way home, and if I was playing by the road, I had to get out of sight for fear that she would send the truant officer around and make me come back to school.  One evening, I did not see her coming, and I was a little late in diving into the bushes that filled a deserted quarry and, as I peeked out between the branches, I could see her looking back over her shoulder as she slowly pedaled up the white hill.

Day after day the sun shone on the blue waters of the sea, and on the islands in the bay, and on the white sand at the head of the bay, and on the little white houses strung along the hillside.  I remember one day looking up into the sky, and taking it into my head to worship one of the clouds, which was shaped at one end like the head of Minerva with a helmet--like the head of the armed lady on the big British pennies.  

Father left me in Bermuda with his friends, who were literary people and artists, and went to New York and had an exhibition.  It got good press and he sold many pictures.  His style had developed, since Mother's death had delivered him from landscape gardening.  It was becoming at the same time more abstract, more original, and simpler, and more definite in what it had to say.  I think that the people in New York did not yet see the full force of his painting, or the direction in which he was going, because the Brooklyn Museum, for instance, bought the kind of pictures of Bermuda that might be thought remotely to resemble Winslow Homer, rather than the things that indicated Father's true originality.  And anyway, there was not much in common between him and Winslow Homer, except the bare fact of having painted watercolors of sub-tropical scenes.  As a water-colorist, he was more like John Marin, without any of Marin's superficiality.

After the exhibition was over, and the pictures were sold, and Father had the money in his pocket, I returned from Bermuda, and found out that Father was going to sail for France, with his friends, and leave me in America.

Merton has just lost his mother to stomach cancer.  Now, his artist father achieves some modest success with his paintings and decides to leave Merton in America while he pursues a bohemian existence in France.  I wouldn't be surprised if Merton suffered from abandonment issues for most of his adult life.  The two most important people in his childhood leave him--his mother, not voluntarily; his father, completely voluntarily.

Everyone, young and old, experiences loss.  Sometimes, it's simple:  losing a tooth.  Sometimes, it's complex and devastating:  the end of a life, a marriage, a job, a friendship.  We all face the same struggles.  And, like many self-help books will tell you, it's how you react to these struggles that define who you are.

As most of you know, 2019 was not a good year for me.  Lots of upheaval and loss.  I couldn't wait to have all 365 days behind me, never to be thought of again.  Memory doesn't quite work that way, however.  I find myself returning to the last days of last year with a bit of retrospective falsification at work.  When the present becomes the past, the human psyche has a way of whitewashing the experiences, polishing them until the rough edges are gone and all that's left is beautiful and shining.  It's how flawed childhoods become "the good old days."  How flawed human beings become saints.

I'm sure, in about 11 months, I will be looking back fondly on the events of this past Christmas season.  Although, financially and emotionally, it was a difficult December the 25th, I will always have one golden memory:  my son and daughter finding out that Santa was bringing them a puppy for Christmas.  The joy of that moment will be with me for the rest of my life.

Really, that's what happiness is all about.  Pushing away the feelings of abandonment and focusing on the puppy moments.  It's a choice.  This evening was the culmination of the promise of Christmas, 2019.  We went a picked up the newest member of our family--an eight-week-old female Miniature Australian Shepherd named Juno.  My son and daughter took turns holding her on the way home. 

Juno is a beautiful blue merle, and my kids are in love.  I haven't been a dog owner for about 18 years.  When my daughter was first born, we had a crazy Cocker Spaniel named Nick.  Nick was . . . well, crazy.  Highly protective and snappy.  Somewhat aggressive.  As soon as my daughter graduated from crawling like a turtle to toddling, I made the decision to give Nick up to the Humane Society for adoption.  That was one of the worst days of my life.  And I pretty much vowed that I would never put myself through that kind of grief again.

I maintained that vow until this past December.  Now, I am the proud father of a four-legged, blue-eyed fur baby.  My kids couldn't be happier.  (My daughter kept looking at Juno tonight and saying, "She's perfect."  My son practiced his trombone without a major meltdown.)  My wife, while anxious about raising and training a puppy, is in love with her, as well.

Me?  I held Juno in my arms as she slept for 45 minutes tonight.  I swear I felt my blood pressure decreasing as I listened to Juno's sleeping breaths, felt her heartbeat against my chest.  I felt calmer that I have felt in months.  It was a moment of unconditional surrender, trust, and love.

Saint Marty hasn't had one of those moments for a while.

September 27-28: Bored and Depressed, Lulu and Marvin, Love

Marvin, the depressed robot, reappears . . .

Ford could sense it and found it most mysterious--a ship and two policemen seemed to have gone spontaneously dead.  In his experience the Universe simply didn't work like that.

The other three could sense it too, but they could sense the bitter cold even more and hurried back into the Heart of Gold suffering from an acute attack of no curiosity.

Ford stayed, and went to examine the Blagulon ship.  As he walked, he nearly tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in the cold dust.

"Marvin!" he exclaimed.  "What are you doing?"

"Don't feel you have to take any notice of me, please," came a muffled drone.

"But how are you, metalman?" said Ford.

"Very depressed."

"What's up?"

"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."

"Why," said Ford, squatting down beside him and shivering, "are you lying face down in the dust?"

"It's a very effective way of being wretched," said Marvin.  "Don't pretend you want to talk to me.  I know you hate me."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do, everybody does.  It's part of the shape of the Universe.  I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate me.  Even robots hate me.  If you just ignore me I expect I shall probably go away."

He jacked himself up to his feet and stood resolutely facing the opposite direction.

"That ship hated me," he said dejectedly, indicating the policecraft.

"That ship?" said Ford in sudden excitement.  "What happened to it?  Do you know?"

"It hated me because I talked to it."

"You talked to it?" exclaimed Ford.  "What do you mean you talked to it?"

"Simple.  I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed.  I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin.

"And, what happened?" pressed Ford.

"It committed suicide," said Marvin, and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.

It's pretty difficult dealing with chronic depression.  Yes, even a robot with chronic depression is difficult, even though you can simply deactivate or reprogram it.  It takes a lot of energy to combat the constant barrage of darkness.  Having dealt with my wife's depressive episodes, and dealt with my own depression, I understand both sides of this equation.

At the moment, someone I care about very deeply is dealing with someone who seems to be dealing with depression/anger issues.  (Yes, this is going to be one of those posts where I write in veiled terms and changed names, like a psychiatrist writing a case study for the American Psychiatric Association.  It's not my place to reveal this person, or her personal business, to the virtual world.)  Let's call my person "Lulu," just because I like typing that name.

Now, Lulu has a significant other who is much like Marvin the robot at the moment.  His view of the universe pretty much mirrors Marvin's view.  People (and robots) who are depressed can't help it.  It's all about brain chemistry.  Speaking as a person who has suffered from episodes of depression, I understand where Lulu's significant other is.  Nothing seems bright.  There are brief vacations from the darkness, times with family or friends that make you laugh and forget for a little while.  But, when you return to your normal day, your normal routine, the darkness is always  there waiting for you.

Sometimes, when you're depressed or unhappy, those emotions can mask themselves as dissatisfaction with your significant other.  Because you are feeling inadequate, you find inadequacies with your significant other.  You question their loyalty or love.  Trust becomes difficult.  Remember, all of this exists only in the mind of the depressed person.  Love and loyalty and trust have nothing to do with it.

Lulu has done nothing wrong.  She loves her Marvin very much.  Yet, Lulu is struggling to remain happy and positive around Marvin's constant negativity and self doubt.  These are two really good people who have been committed to each other for several years.  I can't do anything for Lulu but offer love and a open ear, if she wants to talk or vent or complain.  The same goes for Marvin, but he is less likely to open up to me about what he's going through.  Emotionally, he's a little closed off.

So, I offer you my case study:  Lulu and Marvin.  Two people who love each other but are being wedged apart by depression.  More than likely, they will be okay.  Marvin will come out of his depression, as he's done before, and realize all of his perceived trust issues are simply that.  Perceived.  Not real.  The product of his current state of mind.

I'm sending some positive energy out into the universe for them both.  For some sunlight and happiness.  As I've been saying quite a bit over the last few months in this blog, I firmly believe that love always wins.  In the face of depression.  Addiction.  Adult financial or work problems. Teenage hormone problems.  If love guides your actions, it will always win.

But don't take Saint Marty's word for it.  Try it yourself.  Send some love out into the world.  See what happens.

August 31: Last Day of August, Trust, "A Penny Saved"

And a poem for this last day of August, on the last weekend of real summer.  It's all about trust for me today.  I need constant reminders of that right now.

When I was looking for a poem to share today, this one sort of jumped out at me.  I think I've shared it before, a long time ago.  But, for some reason, I feel the pull to share it again.

Saint Marty wishes all his disciples love this sunny Upper Peninsula morning.

A Penny Saved

by:  Martin Achatz

My daughter hands me the penny,

Says, “Put it in your pocket,”

Pressing it into my fingers.

It’s hot, feels like it’s sweating.

Lincoln looks newly elected,

Before Chancelorsville and Shiloh,

Second Manassas and Antietam.

I put it in my pocket, with keys,

A rosary, black-beaded and broken,

Christ’s arm snapped, dangling

From the branch of the crucifix

Like a maple leaf in autumn.

She won’t ask for the penny back,

Trusts me to keep it precious and shiny,

The way she trusts me at night

When I lie beside her in bed,

My hand on her chest, feeling her

Rabbit heart against my fingertips.

Before she was born, in the swell

Of my wife’s belly, those beats sounded

Like gunshots underwater, the steady

Explosion of a cannon miles distant.

When Lincoln’s son Willie died of typhoid,

Lincoln held his shell hand,

Whispered over and over, “My poor boy,”

As if calling Willie back, begging

Willie’s still heart to return to battle.

Holding the broken and bloody Christ

In her arms, Mary, I’m sure,

Wanted to press her lips to His,

Breathe life into His mouth,

Hold His hand and feel His fingers

Tap like fat drops of rain

On the continent of her palm.

I want to give my daughter’s penny

To Mary, point to the alphabetical halo

Above Lincoln’s head, to the words

“In God We Trust,” remind

Her of those moments with her child,

When He slept beside her

In the dark, trusting her arms

Like a sparrow trusts the sky.

August 8: Any of My Secrets, Joy and Sadness, Lovely Messes

Zaphod and Ford and Trillian are still trying to unravel the mysteries of Zaphod's brain . . .

The scene around them was currently plunged into gloom.  Dark mists swirled round them and elephantine shapes lurked indistinctly in the shadows.  The air was occasionally rent with the sounds of illusory beings murdering other illusory beings.  Presumably enough people must have liked this sort of thing to make it a paying proposition.

"Ford," said Zaphod quietly.

"Yeah?"

"Just before Yooden died he came to see me."

"What? You never told me."

"No."

"What did he say?  What did he come to see you about?"

"He told me about the Heart of Gold.  It was his idea that I should steal it."

"His idea?"

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "and the only possible way of stealing it was to be at the launching ceremony."

Ford gaped at him in astonishment for a moment, and then roared with laughter.

"Are you telling me," he said,  "that you set yourself up to become President of the Galaxy just to steal that ship?"

"That's it," said Zaphod with the sort of grin that would get most people locked away in a room with soft walls.

"But why?" said Ford.  "What's so important about having it?"

"Dunno," said Zaphod.  "I think if I'd consciously known what was so important about it and what I would need it for it would have showed up on the brain screening tests and I would never have passed.  I think Yooden told me a lot of things that are still locked away."

"So you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain as a result of Yooden talking to you?"

"He was a hell of a talker."

"Yeah, but Zaphod, old mate, you want to look after yourself you know."

Zaphod shrugged.

"I mean, don't you have any inkling of the reasons for all this?" asked Ford.

Zaphod thought hard about this and doubts seemed to cross his mind.

"No," he said at last, "I don't seem to be letting myself into any of my secrets.  Still," he added on further reflection, "I can understand that.  I wouldn't trust myself further than I could spit a rat."

A moment later, the last planet in the catalog vanished from beneath them and the solid world resolved itself again.  

They were sitting in a plush waiting room full of glass-top tables and design awards.  

A tall Magrathean man was standing in front of them.

"The mice will see you now," he said.

Zaphod knows he can't be trusted.  That's why he performed surgery on his brain, so that he could hide memories from himself and others.  It's a way of protecting himself from himself, if that makes any sense.  A way to erase things from his mind that may be dangerous.

Memories are sometimes gifts; other times, they're curses.  There are absolutely some things in my life I would prefer to forget--failures and disappointments, moments of profound despair.  Those memories only provide pain to me when they flash through my brain.  They include things like the deaths of my sister and brother, my wife's struggles with mental illness and addiction. 

Of course, there are also moments that, if I could, I would relive again and again.  These include kneeling in the snow on Christmas Eve to propose to my wife; the day we married, and all the people who were there to celebrate with us; and the births of both of my children.  These are memories I call upon on my dark days, when joy is in short supply.

Don't start hunting for your bottle of Prozac.  I'm not about to lapse into a post of suicidal depression.  My point is actually fairly simple.  You can't have the good without the bad.  How would you know joy if you don't know sorrow.  That is one of the great struggles of life.  Life can't exist without death.  Love can't exist without heartbreak.  Rest can't exist without work.

On my way to Mackinaw City this week, my kids watched the film Inside Out.  I was driving, so I mostly listened to it.  There comes a moment near the end of the movie where the main character--Joy--realizes that she can't exist without her friend, Sadness.  Think about it.  Whenever you've cried over something--a lost job or a failed school exam or whatever--you immediately afterward experience a sense of calm.  You've walked through a dark forest, and you've reached the other side.  At least, that's the way I think of it. 

My life--everyone's lives--has been a series of encounters with both Joy and Sadness and their friends--Anger, Disgust, Worry, and Fear.  That's the way things work.  If we're not feeling all of these things, then we aren't really experiencing the whole gift of the universe that God gave us.  One experience calls up a whole multitude of emotions.

Try it out.  Step outside tonight, look up into the sky at the moon and stars.  You may feel joy and loneliness together.  Or sadness and awe.  Maybe a little fear.  That's what it means to be human.  We are just a bundle of contradictions.  Sometimes messy contradictions.  Happiness is messy sometimes.  Sadness, too.  Love, in particular, can be really messy.

But I wouldn't give up any of these emotions, whether they're joy or sadness or anger or disgust or loneliness.  The day you stop feeling is the day you stop living.  if you're really lucky, you have someone who's willing to join you on that journey.  Someone who will be there to laugh with you.  Someone who will pick up the pieces when you're falling apart.  Someone who will share in the messes of life.

Saint Marty has made some really lovely messes these past few days in Mackinaw City.