I lived in climate of paradise over 30 years ago. Most days, I think that leaving Arizona was the biggest mistake I ever made ... but then again, all the nice people I've met since then and dogs I have acquired... A visitor to my house yesterday (after not seeing me for ten years) summed up my activities as we toured through my house: "Bik (my nickname), you've raised birds, made wine, raised dogs, and what else ... you've done good!" I felt a bit of validation. I am both a goal-setter and an achiever, and as such, any periods of inactivity or nonproductivity make me anxious. I have to say one of my favorite religious books was The Purpose Driven Life because I suddenly felt that my desire to feel purposeful and creative was validated. We all need validation. It doesn't always come when we want it, but it happens when God knows we need it. I tell you the following stories, changing the names for obvious reasons but for sure and for certain these stories are true. And true things are worth telling.
In 1981 I bought a wooden crate the size of an end table. The crate was used to ship my belongings to myself for my freshman year in college. That wooden crate has been with me in Ohio, Arizona, Massachusetts and New York. I think it will probably always be with me, even when I am 94 and living in the nephews' garage apartment with a dog and a Siamese fighting fish named Spike.
For some reason, last week I decided to move The Crate down into the basement. I thought I knew what was in it: 40 years worth of my journals and my University diplomas and my beautiful green, gold, and black hood from University graduation. I had hoped some day to use it when I would be receiving my doctorate... but I would have to be in school again to make that happen. It seems I have been too busy living to get a doctorate. That, and learning two more languages seems daunting to me at this point. I digress. That Crate was beastly heavy so in a swoop of utter genius, I unlocked it and began to unpack the journals and carry armloads of them downstairs. And then I found a surprise: a stack of 18 letters from a variety of personal friends, dated 1987-1989 or so, bound together with a red rubber band. I made time later that evening to read them.
I won't tell you about every single one of them, but I will share lessons learned from revisiting a few of them. First of all, there were two people I had letters from that I could absolutely not put a face to the name. That disappointed me because in one of them, a woman poured her heart out to me. I looked her name up on facebook and then had a shock for myself. This is the same woman whom I saw at a NY Thruway rest stop a year or two ago. I walked up to her and said, "I don't know if you remember me, but I was on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje with you in 1988. I am sorry that I don't remember your name, but I did want to say hello to you." She was cordial and we went our separate ways. Fast forward to me reading her letter - and honestly I don't even think we had a conversation with each other when we were on that pilgrimage in the same group so maybe that's why I didn't know how to respond. Because what exactly is it, I ask you, that you say to a person who tells you in a letter to half-way across the States, that they lost their middle school child due to a hidden health condition, and that their grief was almost unbearable, and that they blamed God? It was this anger that somehow turned inside her to something that pointed her towards pilgrimage and reclaiming a faith for herself. I would have been 24 years old when I first read that letter... how could I know, at that age, what to say ... and yet ...
Another letter thanked me profusely for my support and understanding. It was a friend, probably three years younger than me, who had a crisis pregnancy and had decided to place her child for adoption so that he could have a better life. I know what I told her then, because I know what I would say now to anyone in that position: Adoption is always a better choice than abortion, but that doesn't mean it will be an easy or pain-free choice. Yet it is an unselfish, beautiful, brave step .... a step only a VERY GOOD PARENT could make, putting your child's welfare before your own emotional need. And this young woman thanked me and blessed me for being one of the few people who "got" why she did what she did... I remember how spiritually compelled I felt to write the letter of support and love to her ... and yet as I mailed it was wondering how it would be received. I never anticipated how important the letter was to her emotionally - it buoyed her up when others did not support her. That is what her letter I held in my hands last night told ME. Within two decades later, she had married a wonderful man and was living a happy life when her own health condition tanked ... and she passed away. When she placed her baby for adoption, she had no way of knowing that she would not be seeing him graduate from high school even if she had raised him herself ...
And I had no way of knowing that within two years of her letter to me, I would be standing beside a young expectant mother who was about to do the very same thing: place her son with a family that could give him the start in life that she could not. This young woman struggled every year around his birthday - one year begging me to drive to the city where he lived to attend church to see if she could catch a glimpse of him. I did not surmise that we could predict any of our reactions if we did that, and managed to talk her out of it. Now, approximately 30 years later, she and her husband have raised a wonderful family and her firstborn son reached out to re-connect with her. He has been received back to the arms of the woman who gave him life, while bringing his generous, faithful adoptive parents into an even bigger circle of love as well. Oh, the beauty of the road trodden by the brave! I am so honored to have been part of that story.
Then there were two letters from young women, friends from college, sharing with me that they were engaged. I am a big fan of marriage - even though I have not yet married (while there is breath, there is a hope) - and I remember two different occasions where people told ME before anyone else that they were getting married, saying, "we just knew how happy you would be for us!" The two "engagement letters" were quite different from each other. While they were newsy and friendly to me, the notice of moving toward marriage was a much more stunning piece of the letter. In Sandy's letter she admitted that while her beau was a faithful, good man - and I know they loved each other - she was "afraid" to get married. I don't think I ever knew or asked her why she was afraid because that certainly isn't the thing you should be wrestling with while you are saying, "I do." Perhaps the tremendousness of self-donation for sixty years going forward was on her mind. The fear of the Great Unknown, as it were. Or maybe it was the laying down of her arms as a self-sufficient woman of the age that seemed daunting, or maybe it felt like putting a white flag up and losing independence that she couldn't wrap her brain around. I think it is fair to say that most men of this age have no IDEA what the women's liberation movement did to the female psyche. While Gloria S and her friends set out to "liberate" women from domineering, chauvinistic stereotypes (where I agree), they also set out to emasculate the other gender and destroy the institution of marriage (ideas I strongly oppose) in order to give women a very distorted freedom, which turned out to be in fact a bondage. Freedom is always closely linked to the responsibility that comes with it. You cannot do what you want, when you want if it is going to hurt other people ... or be self-destructive.
The second engagement letter had a mountain inside it. Jocelyn was marrying a man who had spent time in seminary and figuring out what his next career would be. He was thinking of becoming a counselor, but practically moving towards a blue-collar job that would more readily support his wife and future family. While it made sense to us as young adults, her parents were not on board with it. This is the part of the story where all of us want Roma Downey and Della Reese to appear as two angels and straighten the parents out and show them how young love will eventually mature if we give it light and room to grow. I guess if I had a daughter, the angels would have to visit me personally to let me agree that any man was good enough, or noble enough, or smart enough to take her for a wife. So I guess I get that cautious or oppositional spirit of her parents, but I am aware, even though I have not communicated with the couple since those days, that: a) they did get married; and b) they are still happily married ... and that is what we had all hoped for... without knowing the particulars of how it ironed-out along the way.
I do not know why I answered some of these 18 letters, and did not answer others. Over time I developed a habit of turning a letter over and writing a date on the back of the envelope that indicated when I responded to them. I know at least three of the people who sent me letters now have an Eternal Address where the USPS cannot deliver.... which brings me to the 3 Priest Letters.
It sounds like the start of a joke, doesn't it? There were 3 Priests walking by a river and one of them said .... (You get the idea). And these three men were completely different from each other - not cookie-cutter in any way. One of them I never met but his sister and I rented a house together for a while. I know I had written an initial letter to him saying hello, and asking him for prayers ... because that is what hermits do for a living, so I wanted to put him to good use! He was a member of a religious order that was cloistered away from the world on a cliff somewhere wonderful. He sent me cartoons, thanked me for the ministry I was doing at the time, talked to me about nothing much, assured me of his prayers that I find a husband, and invited me to visit ... by now I imagine he is in his 70's.
The second Priest's letter contains a postcard from a beautiful European country which he returned to when he left the States. When I was in college, he came to teach Theology on our campus for a semester. There was just one thing that made me feel kind of sorry for him: we had world-class evangelists and famous people also teaching in that department. So much so that if you weren't a known conference speaker, it made me wonder, who would take your class? So I signed up for his class on The Letter of St. Paul to the Romans just to see if he was saying the same thing that my true Theology Saint (Fr. Francis Martin) was teaching. He was an unusual person with a European haircut, either that, or he cut his own bangs with a bowl on his head like the mothers in the depression did for their kids. And he asked me after class if I would save a dance for him at the student mixer that night. I was surprised. I didn't know priests were "allowed" to dance. I also think I kind of had a crush on him. So here was this letter telling me of his life in Europe (1989) hand-scrawled on a piece of paper 3inches by 3 inches with a photocopied note on the other side to other friends. And that is pretty much all there is to say about that. We all have a cache of friends we reach out to and we hope they are glad to hear we are alive & well, and have taken up skiing on the Swiss Alps and have a very nice prayer community to which we belong. And for a brief moment, I was part of the cache... and it seems I didn't respond to that letter either.
The third Priest's letter was again mostly about ministry (because that is what I was doing for a living) and very kind. His story bears a bit more telling though. He was one of those evangelists I mentioned above, teaching at University. And he was known throughout the world for being fantastic with young people. He wrote books, gave conferences, held healing services. He was all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips. But the one thing I related to about him that I guess I never realized to this day is that he had scars on his face. Growing up, I had scars left behind by the chicken pox, and subconsciously I think I related to this person. I knew what it felt like to be trying to make something of your life, but feeling like I could never forget being called "moon face" and "crater face" in Junior High. And while I hated - truly - my own junior high experience and never wanted to work with teens in a million years, I can tell you that my favorite and best jobs were the ones where I worked with teens, particularly the junior high crowd... because they loved me. What I thought would be horrible, ended up being a very healing experience. At the first parish where I worked, I had kids that would buzz around me like bees around a very sweet flower. I just remember loving them from my heart and they loved me right back. And somehow over the years, most of the scars on my face have faded. I still struggle with the ones inside my heart, as most of us do, so I never quite forget how it feels to be imperfect, and that's just how life is.
So this priest told us he was retiring to the mountains to live a life of prayer and penance. He had years ago been a counselor - probably a psychologist - and then he became a university professor, and then just as I began my ministry career, he was wrapping up his. I reached out to him to come give a presentation at a school where I was teaching. He came and brought a deacon to travel with him, and very graciously went out to dinner with a group of teens and adults later. It was a stellar day and then a few years later I started to understand what else had happened in his life.
I remember the day in Pastoral Guidance class where he referenced the then-popular movie Prince of Tides. He bellowed across the classroom - just to be sure we didn't miss his point - "Do not EVER think you are doing a client a favor by sleeping with them! It is against the very heart of not just Christian teaching but ethical counseling practices." It struck me as an odd outburst. I don't even know if it had anything to do with what we were talking about in class that day. But he made a strong point.
Fast forward to almost two decades later, and the Bishop of his home diocese made a sweeping case to lift the statute of limitations on clergy accusations to a broader band of time. And all of a sudden I realize why my ministry hero, my friend, my teacher is no longer in a parish, school, or conference agenda. What I choose to believe about that is this: perhaps when he was younger he made the Prince of Tides mistake, and it caught up with him. That would also explain his loud declaration in class that day. I don't think his situation was anything other than that, but those kind of mistakes got swept into the Zero Tolerance Zone established by the USCCB. Whereas, I am not the picture of Compassion when I hear about child molesters and I tend to get very, very outspoken about the importance of victims' rights to see their assailants convicted and jailed, I also believe that every man is, proverbially, "due his day in court." The legal system of our country rests on the concept of "Innocent until proven guilty." Our Media - which exists only to promote itself, not to propel unbiased truth - has twisted that to "Guilty until proven Innocent," because that is what sells news. That is also why I only buy newspapers to line my bird cages with.
My fallen hero has since been laid to rest beneath the green carpet of grass. This year, I learned that he passed away six years ago - without fanfare. I think about the countless people he has helped spiritually - and there have been many. I remember the days when he would call up to the phone in the hallway of my dormitory (and the others on campus as well; before we had cell phones) and I would answer it and he would say, "This is Father So-and-So, I am sending pizza up to you all - can you see to it that it is fairly distributed?" Yes. Was this kindness or atonement for sins of a past life? Maybe. Life is complicated. Somehow in our human hearts, even the greatest of generosities of a repentant heart can never quite seem to equal one serious evil act. And I know if he was alive, and I actually was talking this through with him, he would immediately point out what we both believe to be true: The one act of an innocent man dying on a cross for a world of sinners was enough expiation in the eyes of God who is Father of all. In the end, we have to trust that God is going to sort it out more justly, and in other cases, more mercifully than any of us could. I'm hanging my hat on that.
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