Our Lady of Perpetual Hope

They have been there forever. Sometimes I wonder if they were there before the church was built. From my first day as an altar boy in the 4^th grade, I can remember them, sitting out in the darkened pews before 7:00am mass, praying silently on their rosary beads as I went about my chores getting the altar ready. Setting out the water and the wine, lighting the candles, waiting for the nicotine smell of Father coming in from the rectory to turn on the lights. I could see them out there in the darkness, stiff as statues, silently rubbing their wrinkled hands over the time worn beads, their lips moving slightly to the imperceptible repetition of the prayers.

I always seemed to draw the 7 am mass, not because of an affinity for rising before dawn, but because Fr. Fred knew my Mom could be counted on to get me there. I hated being woken from the warmth of my bed before the sun had risen, and be driven to St. Joe’s to serve. Sleepily buttoning my black cassock, and pulling a white surplus over my head, I would go about my rounds fifteen minutes before Mass was due to start, but already they were there. They were always there.

I served for six years, until I was so tall the altar boys cassacks no longer fit. By the time I stopped, I had grown from a shy fourth grader into an awkward teenager. My schedule was taken up with practices, and high school sports, and I was embarrassed to be seen by girls at Sunday Mass. Quitting was a relief. Mass had become tedious to me. Something I did by rote. The mystery of the ritual, and the tradition had long since grown stale, and  become yet another thing I slept walked through, like preparing the altar in the pre-dawn dark. Surely those old woman sitting out there in the pews were sleep walking too. How else could they be there, day after day, repeating the prayers, and reliving the mysteries for literal decades.

As I grew older, I drifted further and further away from the faith, until a funny thing happened. As I turned thirty, and began a family of my own I started returning. Slowly at first, but eventually with deeper and deeper hunger to understand. Not just to sleep walk through the mysteries, but to understand them intellectually, and spiritually. Like a diver swimming at a great depth, I could sense a lightness above me, and I began to swim toward it.

Sometimes lethargy overcomes me, and I need to consciously shake myself from sleep to overcome it, but I have returned to the surface of the faith now, and I can’t see myself ever straying from it again. One day, entering the Chapel early for an Ash Wednesday service, I was startled to see them. There they were, as old as I remembered them. Kneeling and sitting quietly in the dark, counting the prayers as if they had never left.

In St. Joseph’s, St. Anthony’s, St. Mary’s, Sacred Heart, and in churches far beyond Batavia, they still kneel in the dark, praying. They are older now, which is hard to imagine, as they seemed ancient then. Stoop shouldered from years of carrying around the weight of their families on their backs, they have suffered long, and silently. They have watched their children fade, and disappear, from the pews beside them, like swimmers slipping beneath the waves. They have buried parents, husbands, children, and even grandchildren, but still they come each morning to kneel and pray. Sitting there quietly in the dark, their fingers work slowly on their rosaries. Knitting their prayers together, one bead at a time, until the mysteries reach like fishing lines, stretching back through the cold, dark years, their crosses like hooks glistening in the predawn candlelight, tethering us to a past we have long since forgotten, if we ever truly knew it.

 

(Originally posted – Nov 12, 2009)

Quo Vadis?

The rain drips down on the tin roof of the neighbor’s garden shed.  I close my eyes, and hope the day will pass me by.

Not me Lord.

Not today.

Just let me lay here in bed listening to the rain like a Mother’s heartbeat.

But I surrender to the yoke of responsibility, and climb from my sleep warm bed, to face another day.

The rain falls steady against the windshield. As soon as the wipers swab them clear, they return, to run in rivulets of tears.

The city is just a shadow behind a veil of green water. The clouds float like grey bubbles in a dishwashers sink. I drive on beneath them, leaving plumes of water like rooster tails behind me.

Wash us clean.

Let our tears soak like raindrops into the loamy soil. Let them water our love.

We live.

We suffer.

We love.

This is what makes us human.

Turning willingly, towards our cross,

This is what makes us divine.

Icarus

for Francesco

The buildings rise like wooden blocks stacked one upon the other, clinging to this impossible slope. The afternoon sun warms the stones, and peeling stucco. You run your hand across their rough face, and feel the heat burning like blood within. In this shimmering summer heat, people take refuge in the oasis of shadows under doorways, and passages. The streets so narrow, even a donkey would struggle to pass.

As you climb, your foot slips on the dusty cobbles, rounded smooth from the passage of feet, and time. The slap of the fountain echoes down the alleyways, as the women gather around to collect cool water from deep within the mountain. At the end of this crooked lane lies the steps to the Castello, overgrown with weeds. No one goes there now but children, and dreamers.

You climb the last few steps past the walls of the town, and turn, looking out over the cracked red tile roofs. The patchwork green of the valley is ringed by a crown of hills, set against the faded blue of the cloudless sky.

Rolling up from below, the peel of the church bells tolling the Angelus. This is the noon hour, the axis of the day. Women bless themselves above the wash tubs, and pause to pray. Even the barefoot children stop their clamor, aware of something watching from above.

You look beyond the crown of hills, to the bald mountains rising in the summer haze. No snows are left to feed the rocky streams, just the seeping of springs, like blood from within the stones.

High above a hawk is turning in the sky, rising on the warm breath of the village as it exhales.

You close your eyes against the brilliance of the sun, and dream of flight.

Monuments

I wrote this post over a year and a half ago. I am reposting it today in honor of a friend’s father who passed away this weekend. David, our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.

Photo copyright Doinhinchcliffe @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionhinchcliffe/3978031624/

When we are infants they are giants to us. Booming voices that echo around the periphery of our Mother’s world. We come to learn their smiles, and their laughter, and the feel of their rough hands.

When we are toddlers they are the kings of the world. All knowing, and all powerful. They can swing us over their heads, and make us laugh like no other. As we grow we come to learn their place as Atlas, holding up our world upon their backs. They are gone from us more often than Mom, but we learn to listen for the sound of their car in the driveway. We become aware that there is something hard in their world that takes place when they are gone, even if we can’t understand it. We see the exhaustion and the pain slip out when they are too tired to hold it in. We become little weathermen, reading the moods that blow like weather systems across the map of their face.

They teach us not with words, but with action. How to start a lawn mower, handle a tool, drive a car. They are the silent owners of the mechanical world, masters of a knowledge that isn’t taught in school. We are in awe of their ability to restore everything to wholeness.

Once we become teenagers we see that they are human, and we never forgive them for it.

As we ourselves age, they become part of the background of the family. Like the house, and the car, and the great edifices upon which the history of the family is acted out. They become an anachronism, a source of laughter for the way they dress, talk, and act. Men out of time, in an age they no longer understand. We begin to see their frailties. We roll our eyes and sigh.

Then they begin to appear like ghosts in the mirror. We catch glimpse of them in the corner of our eyes. Slowly we come to understand what it must have been like. We find a new appreciation for the sacrifices that they made, that we never knew, because they never once complained. If we are lucky, we have time to say thank you before they are gone.

All too soon, they are gone, and we are left with a face in the mirror that conjures up memories. So we smile through the tears at the memories, and dig deep within us to live up to the example that they set before us when we weren’t looking, like granite monuments to inspire us. We hope that somewhere they can see us, and know. And we pick up their shop worn tools, close our eyes, and using our memory of those strong hands, we set to work chiseling out our own monument.

Ash Wednesday

Bethlehem, PA - Photo by Walker Evans - Nov 1935 from the Library of Congress FSA collection

We search the windblown fields, and the coal dark forests. Stand on the edge of wide oceans of tears, and rend our clothes.

It’s been 50 years, and we still don’t know her name.

“Calcium”, the wind whispers.

Waves lick at the shore, tires wash up on the rocky beach. I put a bottle to my mouth to keep the fire inside.

The broken windows of the mills peer down, the blackened hulks of the furnaces turn a darker shade of rust. Lives poured like molten steel from the ladles, and love flamed red around the edges. In less than a century it all fell dark. Now only the weeds remember.

In hot Latin countries penitents still beat their backs with branches, until drops of blood bloom like roses. Here the flowers push their heads through the concrete, and declare their victory.

No longer watched, the gates lean on their hinges. Three generations passed through and never returned. Their sins remain only as rumors.

The roofs collapse, the concrete cracks, not even the pigeons come here anymore. In the end, there is only bone and sky.

The fire gone, the night cold,
I kneel on the ground, and stir the ashes.

The Dance

We catch our breath as the song comes to an end. In the steamy winter heat of the gymnasium, I can feel the sweat running down my ribs. The D.J. cues up a slow song, and the dance floor begins to empty. This is our first dance together, and our arms interlock like two clumsy wrestlers, struggling for position. She leans close, and I can feel her breath upon my neck as I look over her shoulder at the couples, turning slow circles around the gym. Eyes closed, arms around each other, they turn like planets in orbit around a newborn star.

My sweaty hand slips slowly down the back of her sweater and I can feel the heat radiating out from her body. Red and green beams turn like searchlights through the dark of the gym, as we dance our slow circles. I feel her hands pressing tight around my shoulders, and her dark hair clinging to my sweat beaded cheek. I feel her breasts rising, and falling against my chest, as she takes a deep breath. As the song ends, we turn our heads and our lips meet.

Her head tilted down, towards my shoulder, my eyes are open as we kiss. I am gazing into her right eye, the one which she has told me has been sightless since she was three. I am self conscious, but I cannot stop staring into its brown depths. I know she cannot see me, and yet I feel as if her eye is looking through me. Does it see my doubt, or my worry? Does it see my longing, and my fear?

As the D.J. plays another slow song, I taste the soft warmth of her tongue and I search her eye for answers. Secrets hide within its fathomless depths, but it will be years before I can raise them, like a fortune teller from a crystal ball. Tonight I see only the reflection of the disco lights as they search the room, like the spotlights of a guard tower, combing the dark, looking for the innocence that is dying to escape.

The Porch Swing

As the blizzard of the century is bearing down on the Midwest, and the bottom falls out of our thermometers in Minnesota, I think it is time for some warm happy thoughts.

To hell with February! Today we will pretend it’s not winter. So put on your Members Only jacket, and your Ocean Pacific T-shirt, and come with me back to the summer of 1984.

(PS – Don’t forget to tuck a comb in your tube sock)

The streetlights cast a long shadow across the porch as we sit on the wooden swing. Only four more days until school begins. In some ways it cannot come quick enough, but in others I dread the start of school. What will become of us? Will this become just another summer romance? How will we manage to see each other once school is added to sports and work?

We sit quietly in the darkness, holding hands, and swinging back and forth. The lights of passing cars spin our shadows around us like the hands of a clock. It’s getting late and I will have to go home soon, but for now I am grasping for each moment with all my strength.

A breeze blows through the trees, and the velvety green leaves seem to breath all up and down the length of this sleepy street. Soon Fall will chase us inside. At fifteen, privacy is a luxury we do not have. Where will we go to kiss when the porch swing is covered in snow?

I pull her close, our hands begin to search. We are like two little kids flipping the pages of a book we are too young to understand. The shadows of the porch envelop us. We have no idea what might be waiting within our reach, and for this moment we no longer care.

There is no sound but the slow groan of the swing as we sway back and forth, teetering on the brink of a chasm whose bottom we cannot see. Our fingers interlock as we kiss, fumbling for a grip on the cliffs edge. Every creak of the swing sounds like her parents footsteps. Our hearts pound faster now. The swing keeps time like a pendulum. Wet mouths part and meet again.

With our eyes closed tight, we open our hands and let go.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine trees crusted with snow
- Wallace Steven’s

T.S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month, but I disagree. For my money, I think it is February that tortures the soul the most. It may be the shortest of months, but the toll it takes upon us is the greatest because it lacks the one thing that sustains us. Hope.

February will go as it comes; in a stinging wind.

We drove an hour North for 20 Prospect Jr.’s hockey game yesterday. Out across the flat, turf farms, and swamp land north of the city. The sunlight diffused through a gauze of clouds, not bright enough to wear sunglasses, not dark enough to open your eyes, the sky and the snow blurring into one another. Only the trees stood out against the gray light; small brown brushstrokes on a canvas of white.

It made me think of days in my youth, out walking on Dan’s farm. We’d put on our Sorrels, and parkas, and tramp back through the corn stubble to the woods, like arctic explorers. Step after step, our boots would crack through the crusted snow, as the wind cut into every sliver of exposed skin. Squinting, and stumbling, we’d reach the shelter of the woods at last. There the birches, and fir trees would break the wind, and we could once more open our eyes.

All around that gray wood, the north side of the trees were covered in a rime of ice. We’d search for the remains of an old Model T, rusting somewhere deep within the wood. I loved the woods in the winter time, it seemed so much larger than it did in the green folds of summer. With no leaves to block our view, and no swamp to wet our feet, the whole woods belonged only to us, and the few deer that watched us as we pushed silently through the thickets.

We’d walk for hours, until frozen and hungry we’d make our way back towards the old red barn in the distance. Our stomachs would groan, and ice would form around our scarves, but we knew that warmth, and home, were waiting.

Like those walks through the winter woods, these days of February seem to be an endless exploration that begins where it ends, in a chair inside the kitchen, with a hot mug to warm our hands. I could ask “what is the point?”, but I already know the answer. Some journeys exist just to test our strength.

February will winnow the strong from the weak like it always does. This is not an expedition for which we will be awarded with treasure. The only point is to finish, and live to walk through the woods again.

As I look out the window of the car on our way home, the sun has faded even more, as a froth of gray clouds descends from the north. The weatherman on the radio is warning of more snow to come. Already the first flakes have begun to fall.

Eyes half closed to keep out the wind, we search in the distance for the woods.

The Shepherd

The stars blink on in the cold clear air. Already the sunset has faded, and the indigo night descends on the desert.

The shepherd warms his hands over the fragile flicker of flame, and adds another branch to the fire.
The sheep huddle close, bleating petitions into the dark. Mothers warm their lambs beneath their wooly affection.

In the distance a dog barks, and a murmur runs through the flock.

Tongues of flame lick the fresh wood, and the light flares. The shepherd lifts his eyes away from the fire toward the sound of the barking.

The sheep stir around him, and pull closer to the circle of light. Reaching into his bag, he pulls out a stone, and turns it over in his hand. It’s smooth surface, having long since lost the memory of midday sun, is icy to his touch as he slips it into his sling.
Grabbing his staff, he rises and walks slowly towards the sound. It is growing now, but drowned by the nervousness of the sheep. Squinting into the abyss of night that has descended, he sees a glow of light coming from beyond the crest of the hill.

 

No wolf he’s known can light the darkness. He thinks of staying with his flock, but cannot draw his eyes away from the golden light. His feet move of their own will, and even the rocks seem to beckon him onward.
The darkness recedes as he reaches the summit, and the sound of the sheep has faded into the distance. Far below in the valley

he hears

singing.

Letters in the Snow

I walk slowly and methodically across the clearing. Placing heel to toe, trying not to leave any snow unbroken.

I can’t stop thinking about her.

Her eyes are like a deer’s, so wet that they always seem on the verge of tears. I have no idea why she makes my stomach flutter the way it does, I just know that I can’t deny it any longer.

The snow cracks as I break the icy rime on its surface. I place my boots at 90 degree angles, and turn a corner.

She sits so quietly at the front of Mrs. Maier’s 5th Grade classroom, that I have trouble remembering her voice. Day after day amongst the pencil shavings and chalk dust, I search for the courage to speak to her, but spoken words aren’t needed to write this message.

The black skeletons of the trees circle the blank white page of this clearing. This hilltop is the place I have chosen to make my proclamation.

I look out and down upon the rooftops of the city, the December sun sleeps far above the woolen permaclouds. My message is almost complete.

I leap across from one word to another, landing on one foot. The buckles of my boots jingle like the harness of a reindeer.

To the gods above, and the crows that sit like sentinels in the tree tops, this message must be clear;

Tom + Holly