November 14: With God Alone, Left this World, "Jim Rummy"

Merton and Holy Week . . . 

As the week went on, the house began to fill, and the evening before Holy Thursday there must have been some twenty-five or thirty retreatants in the monastery, men young and old, from all quarters of the country. Half a dozen students had hitch-hiked down from Notre Dame, with glasses and earnest talk about the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. There was a psychiatrist from Chicago who said he came down every Easter, and there were three or four pious men who turned out to be friends and benefactors of the monastery—quiet, rather solemn personages; they assumed a sort of command over the other guests. They had a right to. They practically lived here in this guest house. In fact, they had a kind of quasi-vocation all their own. They belonged to that special class of men raised up by God to support orphanages and convents and monasteries and build hospitals and feed the poor. On the whole it is a way to sanctity that is sometimes too much despised. It sometimes implies a more than ordinary humility in men who come to think that the monks and nuns they assist are creatures of another world. God will show us at the latter day that many of them were better men than the monks they supported!

But the man I most talked to was a Carmelite priest who had wandered about the face of the earth even more than I had. If I wanted to hear something about monasteries, he could tell me about hundreds of them that he had seen. 

We walked in the guest house garden, in the sun, watching the bees fighting in the rich yellow tulips, and he told me about the Carthusians in England, at Parkminster. 

There were no longer any pure hermits or anchorites in the world: but the Carthusians were the ones who had gone the farthest, climbed the highest on the mountain of isolation that lifted them above the world and concealed them in God. 

We could see the Cistercians here going out to work in a long line with shovels tucked under their arms with a most quaint formality. But the Carthusian worked alone, in his cell, in his own garden or workshop, isolated. These monks slept in a common dormitory, the Carthusian slept in a hidden cell. These men ate together while someone read aloud to them in their refectory. The Carthusian ate alone, sitting in the window-alcove of his cell, with no one to speak to him but God. All day long and all night long the Cistercian was with his brothers. All day long and all night long, except for the offices in choir and other intervals, the Carthusian was with God alone. O beata solitudo!... 

The words were written on the walls of this Trappist guest house, too. O beata solitudo, o sola beatitudo! 

Greetings, loyal disciples.  I am still alive, in a time when I have been struggling with feelings of deep isolation and darkness.  Like the Carthusians, alone in their cells.  It has been over a month since the last time I've written any kind of epistle on this blog.  Much has happened.  I'm going to try to put a few words down here tonight, to touch the face of what I have been staring at this last 30 days.

A little over two weeks ago, on October 28th, at 8:47 p.m., my mother left this world after 90 years of labor.  I was in the room with her for her last breaths.  

But I don't want to talk about that.  What I want to talk about happened that afternoon, when I was alone with her, holding her hand.  Pressing my thumb into its skin and bone.  As I did this, I whispered to her that I loved her.  That she had been a good mother, and her work was done.  All her children were going to be fine.  We would take care of Rose, her extra-chromosomed daughter.  Dad was waiting for her.  And her mother, Bessie.  And those two kids she had to let go of--my sister, Sally, and brother, Kevin.  They were all there at the dock, watching for her boat to drift to shore.

I told her all these things before my siblings arrived and the great communal vigil began.  And I was grateful for those alone moments with her, when I could tell her how much I loved her.  By myself.  Like writing a prayer on a slip of paper, folding it into a tiny square, and slipping it into her palm so she could carry it to wherever she was headed.

A week later, we celebrated her life in church.  With a rosary.  Schubert's Ave Maria.  Pié Jesu by Andrew Lloyd Webber.  Meatballs and mostaccioli.  Everyone deals with loss in their own ways.  Grief is a private affair, and we are all, in some ways, monks in this solitary endeavor.  Saying our goodbyes.  Nursing our regrets and broken hearts.  

This cold November night, I'm staring at the Christmas tree my family just decorated, full of colored lights, crowned with a Victorian-looking Father Christmas.  I see the ghost of my mother sitting in a chair beside it, staring at all the ornaments.  Each ornament has its own story.  The branches contain the history of my marriage and family,  Nearly 30 years.

In 2018, my mom came to my house for Christmas dinner.  The house was full to bursting with people.  Every inch of chair and sofa and floor space was full.  It was almost chaos with plates of food and cookies.  Mugs of spiked hot chocolate.  And my mother loved every minute of it.  I remember her laughter and smiles that night.

That is what I'm holding onto right now.  That memory.

At my mother's funeral, my son read a poem he'd written for her.

Saint Marty is going to let his son have the last word.  

O beata solitudo!  O happy solitude!

Jim Rummy

by:  Gideon Achatz

Jim rummy with her was one of the best
parts of both of our days. She was polite,
understood that I was a child.
She didn't always know who I was,
but I loved watching her
wrinkled hand take a card.
She had mahogany eyes,
glasses that rested on her
shell ears. Her hair was
white poplar, her face smooth
as butterfly wings.

I would pick up the deck, shuffle cards.

I crave that noise to this day.

I placed the cards on the table,

let her pick first.  I picked my card

after her.  We didn't ever care about runs

or pairs.  Sometimes she forgot

how to play, and I helped her.  That warmed me,

could warm me even if I was in the arctic.

It didn't matter who won.

It was just for fun.  For love.

I imagine her up in heaven now,

shuffling the deck.  Dealing the cards.

Playing jim rummy with grandpa.

Of course, grandma always wins.

October 12: Dat Mossel, Mistakes, Laugh Every Day

Merton encounters someone trying to atone for mistakes he's made . . . 

The secular priest with the white hair was more of a mystery. He was a big, bluff fellow, with some kind of an accent which led me to place him as a Belgian. He was not entering the community, but it seemed he had been there in the guest house for some time. In the afternoons he put on a pair of overalls, and went about painting benches and other furniture, and he laughed and talked with the others. 

As he talked, his talk seemed strange to me. In a place like this, you would expect someone to say something, at least indirectly, about religion. And yet that was a subject on which he seemed to be inarticulate. The only thing he seemed to know anything about was strength, strength and work. At the dinner table, he rolled up his sleeve and said: 

“Huh! Look at dat mossel!” 

And he flexed a huge biceps for the edification of the retreatants. 

I found out afterwards that he was under ecclesiastical censure, and was in the monastery doing penance. The poor man, for some reason or another, had not lived as a good priest. In the end, his mistakes had caught up with him. He had come into contact with some schismatics, in a sect known as “the Old Catholics” and these people persuaded him to leave the Church and come over to them. And when he did so, they made him an archbishop. 

I suppose he enjoyed the dignity and the novelty of it for a while: but the whole thing was obviously silly. So he gave it up and came back. And now here he was in the monastery, serving Mass every morning for a young Trappist priest who scarcely had the oils of his ordination dry on his hands. 

We all have done things that we regret, just like the secular priest with the white hair.  And then we have to atone in some way.  Make up for the mistakes we've made..

It has been a long time since I've written a blog post.  Much has happened.  My son turned from a 12-year-old into a teenager.  I celebrated another Saint Marty's Day, about a week ago.  No tapioca, yet.  I did receive some wonderful presents from my family.  Work has been busy.  Insane.  Lots of readings and concerts and teaching and programs.  My wife got a job and lost a job.  Life has been . . . complicated.

I have made mistakes/make mistakes every day.  I get angry.  Despondent.  I stay up too late at night.  Eat too much junk food.  (I just ate a soggy bowl of Lucky Charms.)  I watch horror films right before I go to bed and have terrible dreams.  I let my son watch those movies with me.

But I also got things right/get things right.  I helped my daughter get her car fixed.  I take my son to poetry workshops, tell him he's amazing.  I try to uplift a friend who is facing some major health struggles.  And I try to laugh every day.

That's what I have tonight.  I'm trying to be okay, and I'm trying to get back on track, especially with my writing.

Saint Marty is back.  For tonight.

September 14: Gone Out of the World, Art Award, "Gratia Plena"

Merton talks about a conversion . . .

I discovered that the young man with black hair, in dungarees, was a postulant. He was entering the monastery that day. That evening, at Compline, we who were standing up in the tribune at the back of the church could see him down there, in the choir, in his dark secular clothes, which made him easy to pick out, in the shadows, among the uniform white of the novices and monks. 

For a couple of days it was that way. Practically the first thing you noticed, when you looked at the choir, was this young man in secular clothes, among all the monks. 

Then suddenly we saw him no more. He was in white. They had given him an oblate’s habit, and you could not pick him out from the rest. 

The waters had closed over his head, and he was submerged in the community. He was lost. The world would hear of him no more. He had drowned to our society and become a Cistercian. 

Up in the guest house, somebody who happened to know who he was, told me a few facts about him, by way of a kind of obituary. I don’t know if I got them straight or not: but he was a convert. He came from a rather wealthy family in Pennsylvania, and had gone to one of the big Eastern universities, and had been on a vacation in the Bahama Islands when he had bumped into a priest who got to talking to him about the faith, and converted him. When he was baptized, his parents were so incensed that they cut him off, as the saying goes, without a penny. For a while he had worked as a pilot on one of the big air lines, flying planes to South America, but now that was all over. He was gone out of the world. Requiescat in pace. 

The young man with the black hair has made a great sacrifice for his beliefs.  Given up everything to follow his faith.  That's pretty much one of Christ's biggest messages in the gospels.  The apostles did it.  Martyrs and saints do it.  Anyone with passion and devotion does it.

Yes, I am still alive.  I offer no excuses.  My life has been busy and complicated these last few weeks.  Pretty much, by the time I get home and sit down on my couch, I want to do nothing more than grab a pillow and take a nap.  And I don't see my life becoming uncomplicated for several months.  So be it.

A couple days ago, something amazing happened.  I was presented and award for Arts Advocate of the Year.  I learned that I had been chosen for this recognition back in July, and I was sort of flabbergasted.  I love art.  All art.  I love artists.  All artists.  Sunday night, I was surrounded by my peeps, and I felt like I really belonged.

I've made sacrifices in my life to follow my heart for sure.  I gave up computer programming.  Been teaching part-time at a university for over 25 years because I love teaching young people about writing and literature and film and myth.  And I've been writing poetry.  A lot of it.

Along the way, I've made some amazing artist friends who have helped me and upheld me through many difficult times in my life.  And I have tried to do the same.  I believe in using my gifts and talents to somehow make the world a better place.  That, I guess, is my motto as an artist.  Art for art's sake is not for me.  Art for kindness and compassion and generosity and change--that's more my style.  Art for the sake of grace.

This past weekend was the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. Watching the ceremonies, I was reminded again of the power of grace, through art, to bring healing into troubled times.  Art reminds us that we are never alone, even in moments of great isolation and pain.  If I can be a part of bringing hope and light into the world through art, even in the smallest of ways, I think my life has meaning.

Saint Marty is one really luck guy.

A poem I wrote for this past weekend's awards ceremony . . . 

Gratia Plena: Full of Grace

by:  Martin Achatz

September 11, 2021

I imagine Van Gogh was, as he stood
in that field in Arles, paintbrush
in his hand, or Gershwin at his piano
while cobalt spilled from his fingertips.
And think of Emily in her room, stitching
her words together as she hummed
“Amazing Grace.” On this day,
twenty years later, after listening
to 2,983 names spoken, violins,
bells, silences, it hangs in the air
like tinseled firefly light. This
is what I know about grace.
It’s in that roll call on this blue
September morning, each syllable
blessed and blessing, from Aamoth
to Zukelman, winged on their way
by music, poem, charcoal rubbed
across paper until letters float
to its surface, like a face
emerging on a Polaroid.

This is grace, what we do
each day to lift each other up, help
each other remember, be remembered.
Painter, piano player, poet,
Mother, father, son, daughter.
All sunflowers. All rhapsodies. All
Angels in the early morning
Stooping, plucking, smiling, flying.

August 27-30: Hidden in the Anonymity, Silent Heroes, Pandemic

Merton encounters anonymous heroes at the monastery . . .

When the church had practically emptied after the second round of Masses, I left and went to my room. When I next came back to Church it was to kneel in the high balcony in the far end of the nave, for Tierce and Sext and then None and the Conventual Mass. 

And now the church was full of light, and the monks stood in their stalls and bowed like white seas at the ends of the psalms, those slow, rich, sombre and yet lucid tones of the psalms, praising God in His new morning, thanking Him for the world He had created and for the life He continued to give to it. 

Those psalms, the singing of the monks, and especially the ferial tone for the Little Hours’ Hymns: what springs of life and strength and grace were in their singing! The whole earth came to life and bounded with new fruitfulness and significance in the joy of their simple and beautiful chanting that gradually built up to the climax of the Conventual Mass: splendid, I say, and yet this Cistercian liturgy in Lent was reduced to the ultimate in simplicity. Therefore it was all the more splendid, because the splendor was intellectual and affective, and not the mere flash and glitter of vestments and decorations. 

Two candles were lit on the bare altar. A plain wooden crucifix stood above the Tabernacle. The sanctuary was closed off with a curtain. The white altar cloth fell, at both ends, almost to the floor. The priest ascended the altar steps in a chasuble, accompanied by a deacon in alb and stole. And that was all. 

At intervals during the Mass, a monk in a cowl detached himself from the choir and went slowly and soberly to minister at the altar, with grave and solemn bows, walking with his long flowing sleeves dangling almost as low as his ankles... 

The eloquence of this liturgy was even more tremendous: and what it said was one, simple, cogent, tremendous truth: this church, the court of the Queen of Heaven, is the real capital of the country in which we are living. This is the center of all the vitality that is in America. This is the cause and reason why the nation is holding together. These men, hidden in the anonymity of their choir and their white cowls, are doing for their land what no army, no congress, no president could ever do as such: they are winning for it the grace and the protection and the friendship of God. 

I think that the world is full of anonymous heroes.  People who go about their daily business--praying or nursing or teaching or first responding--without a whole lot of fanfare.  They aren't looking for awards or fame or money.  They have a calling to do what they do, and that's it.  For Merton in this passage, it's the men wearing white cowls, praying deeply,  And he is feeling the call to become one of them.

It has been a long week of teaching and work.  Classes have begun again at the university, and COVID is on the rise in my neck of the woods.  Currently, all the other counties in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are in red on the map.  That means high transmission.  My county remains in orange.  For the time being.  And nobody seems to be doing a thing to control the spread.

School superintendents don't want angry conservative parents pounding on their doors.  Businesses don't want to shut down.  Restaurants want to keep serving food.  Movie theaters want to keep showing movies.  Regardless of the fact that children are going to get sick, and immunocompromised people are in danger.  It's politics and economics versus science, and science is losing.

Of course, science has been losing out pretty much since the pandemic started.  Thus, we have hospitals being overrun again, and medical professionals who are at their breaking points.  There are not enough nurses and doctors and ICU beds to go around.  The silent heroes are tired and fed up with the pandemic of stupidity that's spreading faster than the coronavirus.

Yes, this post is a bit of a rant.  It's also a salute to those people who continue to put themselves in danger to deliver medical care and educations and groceries.  I think everyone could be silent heroes right now.  It's easy.  Put on a mask.  Stop complaining.  Accept the science.  Realize that COVID doesn't care whether you're Republican, Democrat, or a Jedi.  What heroes do is simple:  they don't think of themselves first.  Heroes think of the needs of others first.  For my Christian followers, I believe that was one of the most important messages that Jesus Christ delivers in the gospels.  Over and over and over and over.

So, if you're not wearing a mask, if you're attending school board meetings and screaming about your rights being infringed upon, if you're railing against vaccinations, realize this one fact:  you are NOT a hero or a patriot.  You are a selfish, self-absorbed moron who is perpetuating this pandemic, not bringing it to an end.  Sorry, not sorry.

Yes, Saint Marty is wearing his angry eyes right now.

NOTE:  This post was written a few weeks ago.  I didn't publish it until now because I thought it was too angry.  Perhaps too confrontational.  Now, I don't think it's confrontational enough.  The whole United States is blowing up with COVID again.  So, shut up.  Put your damn masks on.  Get your vaccinations.  Stop being assholes.