Wabi-Sabi

When I was a kid, one of the jobs I'd have to do the day before Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter, was polish the silver. We'd fill a basin with warm soapy water, rub some pink goo over the knives and forks and spoons, rub extra hard on the little black spots where tarnish had settled and get in the thread-like grooves, or patina, that had been scratched into the silver. The patina is where the stories of the spoons and forks and knives lived. the patina was the interesting bits of the life of each piece of cutlery. So, twice, maybe three times a year, we'd rub the silver like Aladdin rubbing his lamp, and place the shiny bits on the freshly ironed linen, next to the plates and wine glasses. The company would come, and in those early years, in the years when we wore our nicest dress and the boys wore a tie and polished shoes, the silver haired relations would tell stories and hold their shiny forks and leave their imprint on the touchable pieces of family history.

I found a new word yesterday: Wabi-sabi. Two words, really. Japanese. An approximate meaning I gleaned from Wikipedia is this: imperfections that make something interesting, bring its history forward, if only indirectly; hinting, whispers.

That is, the cracks in the crockery, the stains on the linen and lace tablecloth, the patina on the silver.

Which brings me to this short excerpt from THE NARROW GATE, when Rose discovers her grandmother's attic:

From Chapter Thirty-Three

Here is a treasure trove of history in this dusty room. Sheets cover armchairs, a desk, an old bureau. There is a sled, the kind she's seen in movies, that must have been her father's and uncle's. Boxes of old clothes that weren't supposed to find their resting place here, but did because they were forgotten or outgrown when it was time to get next season's garments down. A desk with an old typewriter covered in a towel is the best find. Black enamel keys with gold lettering, the keys are stiff with disuse, bit the indentation where fingers were to be placed, round with a band of metal on each one, feels so much more important than the plastic electric typewriter her parents have.

A Good Word

My father died last week.  He was 94. His wake and funeral were the most beautiful I've ever been part of. All the testimonials, all the affection, all the gratefulness for his many, many years of service. I presented a short eulogy at the end of his funeral Mass.  I share with you an excert: Dad liked words: he liked words so much he created his own and appropriated standard words and put them to new use. He had names for us, starting with his mother whom he called Minnie, his baby sister, Alice who was Nellie Hamburger or Adrian Zilch. Our brother Gene became Jasper, MaryEllen was McGinkly Old Girl and Giggles McGuirk, Peter was Pierpont, Alicia was Lovely Leesh, the old Peach, Gerry was Reginald Von Bimburg the Third, shortened to Reggie, I was Kazook, or more fully Juli Kazool the silliest girl in Kalamazoo, Mom was Millicent, My dear and Pasta Fagioli.

When he was annoyed, Oof e gad popped out. Oof e gad was heard quite a bit in our home. When he thought his children were not acting up to their potential as his offspring we might hear “Balloon head” or "Balliftina" directed our way.

For all his affectionate naming he didn't much care for malarkey or jibberjab and he didn't have patience for a rigamarole when things became more complicated than they needed to be.

He had many qualities: he was a scholar, a thinker, a speaker, a writer, a pray-er, a husband, a father, a brother, and perhaps the quality that showed itself in brilliant colors these past six and a half years, he was a fighter.

When he landed in Marseille in December 1944 he entered what was the coldest winter on record in Europe. The temperature ranged from about zero to ten below.

The army trained him as a Mechanical Engineer and because of his sharp strategic abilities he was sent over as a scout. As he put it, he was good at the Cowboy and Indian games. This strategic ability of his coupled with his natural leadership saved the lives of countless of his fellow soldiers during The Battle of the Bulge. Because of his heroic leadership he was given a Battlefied Commission to First Lieutenant.

On March 22, 1945 German bullets caught up with him at the Siegfried Line in his head, shoulder and back. The men in his squad told him they saw who shot him and they were going to get him. He immediately said, No, Don't Do It.  He didn't know the young German kid, of course, but he recognized in him a similar fate. He didn't want to be in this bloody war any more than Dad did. He believed that boy’s mother was home praying for him just as much as his own mother was keeping her rosary warm with persistent Hail Mary’s for his safety.

You see, above and beyond all the qualities of our father, beyond his sharp wit and penetrating intelligence, beyond his movie star looks as a young man, beyond his strategic mind and leadership, Dad was a Catholic, the kind of Catholic it might be difficult to find anymore.

That order forbidding his squad to kill the German soldier who shot him uttered from a deep and true part of his soul. He took seriously the Gospel which he breathed in and out in all his years of formation at St. Elizabeth’s and St John’s and his natural bent toward holiness. Yes, holiness.

In these last difficult years he was the soul of grace, enduring, uncomplaining, through a stroke, countless infections, bouts of pneumonia, and for the last two years, a respirator, robbing him of his ability to talk.

He was a man of deep faith, his Catholicism informed every aspect of his life. I believe he was able to not only endure his suffering because of this grace, but he transcended the pain and, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, transformed his pain into redemptive suffering, a lesson learned from the crucifix.

Dad lived 94 years, something incredible in itself. 68 years ago he was all but killed on the battlefield. The Army told him he would never work, that he was 80% disabled. He said goodbye to the Army, turning down a promotion to Captian, immediately went to Law School, married my mother 64 years ago, had six children, became a NYState Supreme Court judge and retired at age 72. See what 80% disabled meant to him!

It will take a long time for me to unpack the lessons he provided, maybe the rest of my life.

Dad, I send to you a “Whack on hine, Kiss on Snout.”  We love you, you  old Curmudgeon.

Wrap Your Mercy

I have a favorite song. The title is Last Six Hours of Summer, but I always refer to it as the mercy song. You might get a better feel for why it is my favorite if you heard the music, but that I don't know how to do in this space.    Wrap your mercy around me.  Bury me in light.

   All the days get older and older then die every night.

   Last six hours of summer,  driving 'round the lake,

   Silver lights dance over the water 'til day starts to break

                Follow me back home, let the daylight into our bones

                Starts and it stops, breaks all the locks, there'll be peace

                when the morning comes

   Take these chains from my body, hang them over your door

   I don't want to carry the weight  of my sins anymore

   Give me back to the water, lay me down across stone,

   Let the moon call all her waves back to shore,  take my bones

            Follow me back home, let the daylight into our bones

           starts and it stops, breaks all the lock there'll be peace

           when the morning comes.  Repeat

(© Mike McCullagh)

I've been part of a Tuesday Morning Prayer Group since we moved to Texas more than twenty years ago. We were, at the time, a gathering of mothers with young children. Now, twenty years on, our kids are grown and some of us are grandmothers. For all these years, we have been with each other through good times and tough times, through births and deaths and struggles with faith, with life.

Just this week we had an emergency meeting to pray for one of our mothers and her family because they are going through a terribly difficult time. Seven mothers were able to attend, seven mothers praying the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary with the hope and faith of sending hope and faith and relief to this family, who are dear to us.

These small communities of faith are perhaps the best kept secret of the Church. Many times they are the only face of the church that its members can belong to, for a very, very long list of reasons. Dark nights of the soul, family troubles, illness, depression, confusion, spiritual warfare, just to name a few. The struggles of life that many of us might succumb to if we didn't have a manageable faith group to catch us. There's the Church and there's the church, the small gathering of saints and sinners meeting in each others homes, holding each other together in prayer and fellowship.

Wherever two or more are gathered, you know.

Light that Darkness Cannot Overcome

It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness At Christmas, New Years, winters solstice there is much talk of darkness and light

The days are short and the nights are long and in this time between Christmas and the new year the trees are still lit and the houses and lawns with their angels and reindeer and wreaths of light still shine in the darkness.

We begin again tomorrow. A fresh start. Take it from the top.

And we carry this past year, and all our past years, forward, with memories, with smiles, with tears, with love and forgiveness and the million moments of grace that once in a while we sit still long enough to feel, and be grateful: graceful.

I have written before of the prayers of monks and nuns whose job it is to keep the lights on. They are professional pray-ers. I am grateful for them and their quiet unseen work, raising incense and chanting prayer with their whole being to God, arguing our case to keep the lights on a little longer. And so far God has agreed.  Despite. In Mercy. In love. In the light that darkness cannot overcome.

In my fivety-five years of living, through all the trials and heartache and joys and uncountable blessings, through loved ones deaths and the miracles of birth, I believe.  I believe in the power of prayer, in the graces waiting to be poured out to us for the asking, and yes, of course, even if we don’t have enough faith to ask, the blessings still flow.

How can I say these things in light of war and starvation and fiscal cliffs and the gunning down of kindergartners and their teachers, and all the misery that only scrapes by the daily news programs?

Because there is love. Love in the little acts of kindness, in the big acts of generosity and heroism. In the blankets wrapped around shivering shoulders. In the gentle touch of my mother’s hand on my cheek, so long ago.  In conversations with my father, who now cannot speak, tethered to a respirator and feeding tube. In the squeals of delight when my grandchildren call out “Mamaw!” when they see me. In the cup of coffee my husband sets up for me each morning.

It is these small acts; all the small acts of love and tenderness, of generosity and forbearance, in kind words and hands held. The list is endless, the love is boundless.  In the face of darkness, we light a candle. And then another and another until we are bathed in the light of love, in the midst of pain, in the midst of tragedy.  It is these small acts of love, of prayer, of faith, of struggle that rise like incense to our God who came to live among us and open our hearts to love beyond understanding.

Keep the lights on. 

Better Angels of Our Nature

The mystic chords of memory…will yet swell the chorus… when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.  From Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address Good ole Abe Lincoln with his quotable words. One set of words that often runs through my mind is from the last paragraph of his first inaugural address: “the better angels of our nature”.

The progression went something like this--I was praying for people, and naturally, on my list were folks who have died, such as ancestors, friends, family, others I have never met in this life. And that led to thinking about who we are once we have passed from this world to the next (‘cause, well, I don’t know about you, but my life experiences and energy attest to the conclusion that life goes on in some form after we have left this flesh behind).

Do we lose all the nonsense when we die and become our better selves? Do these ‘lesser angels’, our baser inclinations to sin versus our better invitations to holiness, joy and love, get sloughed off in the transition between this world and the next?

Then I wondered, hoped, that once we pass on to the next life, in some process I can barely grasp at, like vapors of a dream, I think we will become our better selves. Ourselves, yes, but better. Shinier, more true, unencumbered by faults and sin. Unencumbered by jealousy and resentment and anger, lust and greed. All the big and little faults that separate us from a more perfect life.

And, “mystic chords of memory” in that same speech. Ah, what a beautiful confluence of words. How brilliant was this American saint, this secular holy man of history? Isn’t it memory and imagination that builds us, feeds us, gives us strength to draw on and reminders of what to avoid? Memory girds us when we feel bereft of comfort; it brings to the foreground those moments when we once felt, whether fleetingly touched by the divine or filled with light in every cell of our being. Thus armed, we can endure, we can hope, we can pray.

And, become, the better angels of our selves.