Author: frankisemptiness

October 20th, 2022

“We wrote a hundred letters, and you did not write an answer. This, too, is a reply.” – Zauqi (Sufi scholar)

I have a friend. Perhaps he is no longer my friend. I told him something that I am certain offended him. I thought for a long time before I said what I said.

Before I say anything else, let me make it clear that my friend is a good man. He’s outgoing and generous. He’s passionate about his work. He tries to be a good Christian.

My friend is a missionary for an Evangelical organization. He has been living in Germany for at least a decade, doing something or other. After all these years, I still don’t understand what he is trying to accomplish. Before he became a missionary, he worked in corporate management positions. The religious group he’s with now seems to operate under an American business model. They are all about telling people about Jesus. In a sense, my friend is one of the organization’s German sales reps. He likes to talk about spreading the “Word” to the population of a country “that has forgotten that they have forgotten God”. He uses a lot of Evangelical buzzwords and catch phrases which probably elicit an immediate response from his coworkers, but they mean nothing to me. He goes to seminars and conferences, and he plants churches (whatever that means). He’s marketing Christ, and I don’t really comprehend that.

I have known other missionaries, and I know what they do. The ones I have met live in the same abject poverty as the people they serve. They share the struggles and suffering of those around them. They bring Christ to their neighbors by being Jesus to them, as opposed to talking about Jesus. Maybe my friend does that too. I don’t know. He’s never indicated that is part of his mission.

My wife and I got together with him quite often before he started his missionary work. He hosted a German Bible study group at his home. The message there was that we were all brothers and sisters in Christ. The implication was, at least in my mind, that we cared about each other in a deep and personal manner.

My friend returns to the United States every autumn. He spends a month or so in the local area. He has made a habit of meeting with us once during his visit. He is a gregarious man, with a busy social calendar. He tries to squeeze us in between his other appointments. Our meetings are brief, maybe an hour or so in duration. As the years have passed, these contacts have felt more and more perfunctory. He acts like he wants to be with us, but his mind is often elsewhere.

For a long time, I wrote snail mail letters to him while he was overseas. I sent him emails. He seldom wrote back to me. If he did, he almost never asked us how we were. He would tell me about some adventure he had, but I didn’t get the impression that he was concerned about us. During this last year, I think I got at most one or two emails from him.

As usual, my friend contacted us after he got to the U.S. He asked if we wanted to meet for coffee and catch up on things. I was underwhelmed by the idea. so was my wife. She made the comment, “He only cares about his mission.”

That’s true. On the flip side, we only care about our mission.

Our mission is to care for Asher, our toddler grandson. We are his legal guardians, and he is our responsibility until he reaches adulthood. There is nothing else in our lives except for that little boy. If we meet with somebody, Asher is always with us, and we will talk endlessly about him. Karin and I have other interests, but they are all subordinate to our connection with Asher. When we get together with my friend, he likes to talk about his grandchildren, who he sees for a couple weeks once a year. I guess he figures that his relationship with his grandkids is on par with what we experience. It’s not. That is comparing apples to oranges. Our roles are exponentially more intense than his is. He doesn’t see it that way.

My friend tries to connect with us by talking about all things German. That worked twenty years ago. My wife is from Germany, and I lived there for three years, courtesy of the Army. Back when we were part of the Bible study group, the participants were almost all German speakers. Germany was important to us then, but as the years went by, the relationship to “die Heimat” grew more and more tenuous. Our friend is still deeply concerned with Germany, obviously, but my wife and I don’t really care anymore. We have other things on our minds.

Does our friend care about us? I don’t think so. I told him that in an email. I also told him that we could find the time to meet with him, but we don’t want to. I said that there was nothing to talk about. That may not actually be true. Perhaps, the truth is that there is too much to talk about. We can’t reconnect over a cup of coffee. To really get to know each other again, we would need at least a day to discuss things and get to the serious topics. When we meet with my friend, we never get past the froth and the fluff.

Do I care about my friend anymore? Maybe. If I didn’t care at all, I wouldn’t be writing this essay.

A person could easily say to me at this point, “That was dick move! Why say that stuff to him?”

Good question. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Maybe I just should have ignored him. Maybe I should have made up some bullshit excuse that sounded plausible. Instead, I told him the truth as I saw it.

Years ago, I worked with a guy named Scott. We talked a lot and got to know each other well. He retired shortly after I did. I wanted to stay in communication with him. I sent him an email, and he replied by saying that he was busy with family issues, and he was going to ignore me. He did. I never heard from him again.

That bothered me a lot. However, I knew that he had stuff going on that was serious, and he probably needed to focus entirely on those problems. After a while, I grew to appreciate his candor. At least, he told me what he was doing and why. Too often, people have cut me loose without giving any reason. That hurts more than having somebody give it to me straight.

I gave it straight to my friend. He sent me a response. I never read it. I just deleted it. We’re done.

As Zauqi said, “That, too, is a reply.”

October 19th, 2022

Our son, Stefan, came over to our house yesterday evening. He brought a gift with him for his little nephew, Asher. It’s not winter in Wisconsin yet, but Stefan was thinking ahead, and he had a cold weather jacket with him for Asher to wear when the snow falls and the wind blows out of the north.

Stefan bought Asher a lined, insulated coat from Carhartt. Carhartt mostly makes cold weather gear for adults who spend their winter months outdoors. Carhartt clothing is top of the line. All the guys that ever worked for me on the loading dock wore Carhartt coats and coveralls during the months of mind numbing cold. I didn’t realize that Carhartt made clothes for toddlers, but Stefan found a jacket for Asher. The coat was expensive. It cost $70. An adult work jacket sometimes costs double that amount.

Karin thanked Stefan for being so generous. He said,

“I’m making money. I can afford to get Asher something good.”

He has been buying Asher good stuff. He got the boy some good shoes for the cold weather. They are toddler-sized versions of Stefan’s work boots.

Stefan looked exhausted when he came into the house. He had on a sweatshirt, jeans, and his work boots. He sat down on a bench and rested. He had been out at the construction site all day in the wind and the cold, doing his Ironworker thing. I remember how it was when I worked my entire shift in the cold. That wears a person out. When you finish the job, all you want to do is eat something warm, take a hot shower, and sleep like a dead man.

I asked Stefan how it was at work. He has been doing a welding gig at the power plant on the shore of Lake Michigan. I could tell by his face that he had been windburned. He showed me an image on his phone. He had a video of the whitecapped waves on the lake crashing into the rocks on the shore, throwing up geysers of spray.

We talked for a bit. Asher was wound up. He was throwing his toys, even after we told him not to do that. Stefan watched the boy, and then he got up and seized Asher in his hands. He tossed the little guy in the air and caught him again. That got Asher’s attention.

Stefan smiled at his nephew, and said, “Hey punk, what you gonna do now?”

Asher briefly squirmed in Stefan’s arms and then gave up the fight. Asher is a strong lad, and he’s smart. He knows when to back off. He also knows that Stefan loves him.

Stefan set Asher back on the floor, and the boy ran to Karin, his “oma”.

Stefan got up to leave. He grinned and said, “Asher was a little surprised when he went up in the air. I get edgy too when I’m up high on the lift and it bounces a little. He’s okay. No damage done.”

I told Stefan, “He’s a boy. He’ll get banged up now and then.”

Stefan looked at Asher and noticed a bit a road rash.

“Yeah, I see he’s got an early start on scrapes and bruises. He’ll be fine.”

I replied, “If a boy grows up without getting a scar or two, he ain’t doing it right.”

Stefan smiled, “I got a few of those.”

That he does.

October 17th, 2022

This last week has been a struggle. Tuesday evening was an ugly scene, and we have spent the following days cleaning up the resulting mess. A traumatic event doesn’t just end. It is radioactive with a half-life like that of plutonium. It takes time for nerve endings to stop quivering, and there is edgy alertness that just won’t go away. It would be nice to be able to flee from all the emotional fallout, but that can’t happen. Life goes on, and problems still need to be solved.

I told a number of people about what happened at our house that night. Several responded to me and offered their sympathy and prayers. I am grateful to each and every person who contacted us. There really wasn’t much that they could do for us in any practical sense, but they at least indicated that they cared. Some of our friends understand our troubles quite well, and their words were very meaningful and heartfelt.

Words can be helpful. They can be healing. However, words can only do so much.

On Saturday, Karin and I were busy with many things. We still felt troubled in spirit. I had just come home from shopping, and Karin was trying to put our little grandson, Asher, down for nap. It was warm outside, and I had left the front door open. I had to let the dog out, or maybe let her back in. I can’t remember anymore. My thoughts were everywhere and nowhere. In any case, when I went to the door, I found something unexpected.

It was a bag full of food. There was a loaf of rye bread, a package of sliced ham, a bottle of whole grain mustard, and a glass jar filled with sliced red onions in vinegar. There was also a picture book for Asher that told the story of a construction worker.

The bag looked like this:

I looked at it, and I knew immediately that it was from Chris, one of our Buddhist friends in the Zen sangha. The circle is a Zen symbol, and the words on the bag are classic Zen:

“Only this, this!”

Zen is about being in the moment and focusing what is happening right here and right now. The fact is that there really is “only this, this!” The craziness and chaos of previous days don’t matter. The fears for the future don’t matter. The words and the gift cut through the confusion in my mind and brought me back to the present moment. It was (and is) a good place to be.

Chris never rang the doorbell. She didn’t want to bother us. She did what she needed to do and did it without words.

It was silent gift.

October 12th, 2022

When the paramedics come to our house, they always arrive with an ambulance and a fire truck. I guess it’s just their standard practice. They showed up at around 9:00 PM. The police had already been in our home for almost half an hour. The fire truck was parked in front of the yard, its red lights flashing in the darkness.

Asher stared through the window at the fire truck. I was holding him in my arms. I told him softly,

“Look at the red lights. Can you see them? I’m sure that everyone else in the neighborhood can.”

Asher had been sleeping, but not anymore. Chaos is not restful.

I had been talking with one of the police officers about Asher’s mom. She was the reason for his visit. It was strange. A couple hours earlier, things had been fine. The young woman had bathed and dressed Asher for bed. She was going to put him to sleep for the night. I had a bottle warmed up for him.

Then she started drinking. How long did it take for everything to unravel? Five minutes? Thirty minutes? Things got scary. Very scary.

I texted Karin to come home from her guild meeting after the young woman got drunk. Karin just wanted her to sleep it off, while we cared for Asher. That didn’t happen. It never happens like that. These episodes never end quietly. They also reach a feverish pitch of craziness, and then I call 9-1-1.

The young woman agreed with a cop to go to the hospital. She left with only her bathrobe, her phone and charger, and a head exploding with alcohol. Asher watched her walk out the door. Then he cried.

Asher is not quite two years old, but he understood. At some level, Asher knew that bad things were happening, and he cried. Karin told him,

“It’s okay. Mama is sick. She’s going to the hospital.”

That was all true, but it didn’t make Asher feel any better. It didn’t make anyone feel any better.

The boy cried. He cried, and he cried, and he cried.

We eventually put him into his stroller to take a walk. It was dark and wet outside. The wind blew drizzle on us. The houses in the cul-de-sac were ablaze with Halloween decorations. Asher enjoyed looking at them. Somehow, the scene was appropriate in a macabre way. After all, we were living in a horror movie, for real. Asher slowly settled down. We cried again when we got home.

Karin and I both laid down with him in bed. He swung like a pendulum between us. He cuddled with Karin, and then with me. Then he hugged Karin again. Then he held on to me. He wanted warmth and safety, and we provided what we could, but we didn’t feel safe either. It’s hard to give what you don’t have.

Asher gradually grew quiet. His breathing became calm and regular. His small fingers unclutched and released their grip on my hand. The boy slept.

He and Karin are still asleep. I woke up from the lightning in the sky and the sound of the distant thunder.

It’s not over yet. There is still a storm coming.

October 10th, 2022

Asher is going to be baptized. It has taken a while for us to get to this point. Typically, a child is baptized within a few weeks of their birth. Our grandson, Asher, is nearly two years old. We needed to make sure that his mama was on board with the decision. She is. The prospective godparents are willing and able. Now, we just have to wait for the Catholic Church to approve of the baptism. The Church is a creaky organization where the wheels turn slowly. Perhaps that’s a good thing.

Years ago, when our own kids were infants, it was customary for them to be baptized. It was a family tradition and an integral part of Catholic culture. There was never a question if the child should be baptized. The main questions involved when and where it would happen.

Karin and I took time and care when choosing godparents for our kids. The Church wants the godparents to help raise the child as Catholic. There is an emphasis on teaching the youngster to believe the tenets of the faith. The people we chose as godparents made an effort to keep their charges on the straight and narrow path. However, now that thirty years have gone by, it’s hard to describe any of our children as traditional Catholics. I think all three of them believe in something, but I’m not sure what exactly.

Honestly, there are parts of the theology of baptism that I struggle to accept. For instance, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church it says:

“1250 Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called.”

It’s the “original sin” thing that bothers me. I’ve never been able to see the justice in the concept that every human comes into the world as damaged goods because our primeval ancestors screwed up mightily. It fascinates me that the Church relies heavily on our biblical traditions, but there is absolutely no notion of original sin in Judaism. In fact, two online sources say this:

“There is no concept of “original sin” in the entirety of the Tanakh. We are all capable of choosing to sin or not sin and we are all capable of returning to God and have our sins forgiven.” – Derech HaTorah

“Jews do not believe in the doctrine of original sin. This is a Christian belief based on Paul’s statement, “Therefore just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). The doctrine was fully developed by the church father, Augustine of Hippo (354-430).” – Gerald Sigal

Original sin is a purely Christian idea, and not necessarily a good one. The idea that we are all born sinful and depraved makes no sense to me. However, this concept has persisted throughout Christian history from Paul to Augustine to Calvin to Cotton Mather and to us. It is obvious that humans are frail and often in error, but that is not the same as believing that we are scum. Asher often gets on my nerves, but it never occurs to me to think of him as being sinful. He’s just a little kid, and basically, we are all just little kids.

Another thing… the Church says that baptism is necessary for salvation. See the passage below from the Catechism:

“1257 The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation.”

Okay, the implication is that the vast majority of the world’s population, those who are not baptized, will not be saved. I probably won’t mention this to my friends who are Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim. I especially won’t talk about it with the ones who plan on coming to Asher’s baptism.

However, the Catechism also says:

“1260 “Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery.” 63 Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.”

A good lawyer would be able to get almost anyone into heaven with that statement. So, I’m not too worried about my non-Christian buddies making the cut.

Why have this baptism at all?

In Asher’s case, there is compelling reason for it. Asher does not have a father in his life. Stefan, our youngest son, has agreed to be Asher’s godfather. Stefan has further agreed to serve as Asher’s mentor and male role model. Stefan may not be the most devout Catholic, but Asher needs his uncle to guide him through his life. Asher needs Stefan on his journey to find God. I suspect that Stefan will need Asher too.

Stefan is willing to be Asher’s godfather, not because he likes the Church, but because he loves Asher dearly. Stefan wants to be there for Asher, now and in the future. Stefan is willing to make that commitment in public for all to see and hear.

That is enough reason to have the baptism.

 

October 8th, 2022

I had a friend.

We knew each other for quite a while. We worked at the same place for many years. We knew each other’s families. We shared our struggles and concerns. We used to meet regularly, or at least talk on the phone. I liked the man, and I admired his musical talent. He was, and probably still is, an excellent blues guitarist. I cared about him, and I treasured friendship.

About a year and a half ago, shortly after Karin and I started caring for our little grandson, Asher, the relationship I had with my friend ended. It ended abruptly. He hung up on me during a phone conversation, and then I never heard from him again. He wouldn’t return my calls or answer text messages. For all purposes, he ceased to exist as part of my life.

I tried to regain contact with him, but I never received any response. I have no idea what I did to alienate him. I don’t know why he severed the connection. Very possibly, I offended him, and perhaps he is right to ignore me now. But I don’t know that. I don’t know what happened.

Two days ago, I visited another friend, a fellow writer, and we talked and drank beer at his house for a couple hours. On my way home, I drove in the vicinity of the home of my former friend, the one who cut me off. I impulsively drove to his house and rang his doorbell.

His daughter came to the door. She must be in high school now. She looked at me and said,

“My dad is at work now.”

I told her, “Okay. Tell him that I love him.”

She gave me a funny look and asked, “Are you okay?”

I gave her an honest answer, “No, I’m not okay. Just tell him I love him anyway.”

I turned and walked away. I drove home.

I have not heard anything back from my old friend. I don’t expect to hear anything. It was pointless to go to his house. I’m not sure what I wanted there, maybe a reason, maybe some kind of closure.

I guess I just wanted to tell him, or tell somebody, anybody, that I still cared about him.

I needed to do that.

October 8th, 2022

“If you have money, consider that perhaps the only reason that God allowed it to fall into your hands was in order that you might find joy and perfection by throwing it away.” – Thomas Merton, from his book Seeds of Contemplation

Every now and then, I go online to look at the entries to the record of our checking account. Karin and I have a joint account, and I scanned the list of recent purchases. One of them puzzled me. It was for Great Clips, the place where I usually get a trim. The debit was for $60.00. I couldn’t figure out how the haircut could have cost that much. I have hardly any hair left to cut. I happened to have a rumpled copy of the receipt. After I read it, I thought to myself,

“Oops.”

Later that day, Karin and I were taking our grandson, Asher, for a walk. As we we wandered down the street, I told Karin,

“Hey, I screwed up when I went for my haircut.”

Karin gave me a puzzled look, and asked me,

“How?”

“I made a mistake when I gave the stylist a tip. I typed one too many zeroes.”

Karin laughed, and asked me,

“So, how much did you give her?”

“I wanted to give her $4.00. I gave her $40.00 instead.”

“How much was the haircut?”

“$20.00.”

She rolled her eyes, “So, you gave her twice what the haircut cost?”

“Uh, yeah.”

We walked a bit further. Karin became thoughtful.

She said, “Maybe the woman needed the money. Maybe she was struggling to pay some bills, and you happened to give her what she needed.”

“That could be.”

Sometimes throwing away money is okay.

October 6th, 2022

I don’t sleep well. It probably has to do with the fact that I worked third shift for over twenty years. I’ve been retired for over six years, but my sleep cycle is still a mess. As one of my former coworkers told me,

“You’ve been ruined.”

That’s true. I wake up in the middle of the night, every night. Since I am caring fulltime for a toddler, it doesn’t matter that much, because little Asher wakes up dark and early too. I can’t remember the last time that I slept the whole night through. I don’t see it ever happening again.

I worked the graveyard shift at a local trucking company. I was the supervisor who ran the early dock operation. For the first few hours of the night, I was often alone in the office. I was busy setting up routes and organizing hundreds of shipments. I was always sleep-deprived on the shift. I drank lots of coffee or Mountain Dew, but those beverages only helped for a short period of time. After a while, caffeine is no longer a stimulant. It is just a diuretic. I used the bathroom quite often during my time at work.

The dockworkers on my shift started coming in through the door around 5:00 AM. Prior to that, I was on my own. Once in a while, I would get a visitor. The people who showed up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning were generally a little odd. It just goes with the territory.

My company shipped freight all over the country, however we didn’t always have our own drivers haul the trailers. There were several cross-country lanes that simply were not economically viable if we had to pay the wages that own employees normally received. So, the corporation hired owner-operators or drivers from other companies who would haul the freight for less money. These carriers would pick a full load from our facility in Milwaukee for a specific destination, like Los Angeles, or Atlanta, or Dallas. They showed whenever they felt like it, and often it was in the wee hours of the night.

We had all sorts of people come into the building. One night, a driver walked slowly into the office, and waddled up to where I was working. He had a scraggly beard and obviously had not showered in recent memory. The guy wore a long mu mu and flip flops. He probably tipped the scales at about three hundred pounds. He was out of breath from the short walk from his tractor to my section. The man leaned heavily on the counter. He said,

“I’m (gasp) here (cough) for a load (hack) going to LA (wheeze).”

Note: this was before COVID.

I gave him the paperwork for his trailer. I had already decided that if he keeled over in the office, and needed CPR, he was going to die on the floor.

On the other end of the spectrum was the Cowboy. A guy walked in one night and sidled up to the counter like he was going to order a sarsaparilla. He wore a Stetson. He had on a shirt with the little metal tips on the ends of the collar. His jeans were pressed, and the creases on them were so sharp you could shave with them. He had a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate. His highly polished boots were cockroach killers. He looked at me and drawled,

“Ah’m here to pick up a trailer. Y’all got a load going down to San Antone?”

We did.

There was one shift when I was extremely tired, and it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. I ability to focus on my work was limited. I was at the counter struggling with my planning. I was staring blankly at some paperwork. Then I glanced up.

“Sweet Jesus!”

I was looking at a guy who belonged in movie, “The Hills Have Eyes”. The guy had absolutely no hair, and his eyes were dark and protruding. The man had zero percent body fat. He spoke in a voice reminiscent of Peter Lorre,

“Sorry to startle you. Do you have a load ready for Chicago?”

I gathered my wits and replied, “Yeah. Sure. Here. Here’s the paperwork.”

He stared at me, “Do you want me to hook up the trailer, and then tell you that I am leaving?”

“No! It’s okay. Just hook up and go.”

“Do you want me to dispatch myself here in the office?”

“NO! I’ll do it! It’s fine! No problem!”

He left silently. I had to sit down for a minute.

One late night visitor was not a driver. It was around 3:00 AM on a warm summer night and I was sorting through paperwork. I heard a man’s voice in crying in the darkness, “Help me! How do I get out of here!”

I was alone in the building. I was sorely tempted to ignore that voice. Then I heard the guy yell again, and I heard him running outside. Against my better judgment, I went out to look. I didn’t see anyone, so I figured things were okay.

Then I saw him. He was a young man without a shirt, running around the building like a maniac. I walked up to him, and he stopped. He was panting hard, and he was covered with sweat. I asked him,

“Soooo, are you okay?”

He looked dazed and drunk. He replied in a panic,

“I was with my buddies at the strip club down the road. When the place closed, they left me behind. How do I get out of here? This place has a fence all around it!”

Our facility had a large chain link fence surrounding it. However, there was one big open gate. I walked him to the gate and said,

“See this?”

“Yeah.”

“Go through it.”

He did.

An hour or so later I heard him howling again in the distance. I called the cops. They asked me, “What’s your emergency?”

I gave them my name and address. Then I said,

“Uh yeah, there is some guy about half a mile from here. He has no shirt. He’s running around screaming.”

“We’ll take a look. How will we recognize him?”

“He’s running around screaming.”

The police hung up after that. I assume they found him.

I did my part.

October 2nd, 2022

I got an award many years ago. I still have it. I found it lying at the bottom of my dresser drawer buried under a layer of old t-shirts. I guess I could hang up somewhere, maybe in the basement next to the water heater. The award is from Walker’s Point Youth and Family Center, and it was given to me for my work with the center’s Family Support and Empowerment Program (aka the Nurturing Program). I don’t remember how long I volunteered at Walker’s Point. The award was presented to me in 2010 for seventeen years of service, but I was still with the organization for several years after I got the plaque. I was involved with the Nurturing Program for a really long time.

The Nurturing Program was an odd sort of project. It was designed to educate families with troubled teenagers. The program brought several families together for meetings every week for about three months. There was always a team of four volunteer facilitators and one lead facilitator to run the program. The volunteers came from a variety of backgrounds, and the lead facilitator had some kind of social work experience. There was a curriculum for the program that, over time, changed and evolved. As facilitators, we were teachers, and we were also leaders who refereed group discussions. The program was never boring.

We used a rather loose definition for the term “family”. The people who came to us did not usually fit the traditional family structure (a dad, a mom, 2.5 kids). Back in the 90’s, we had a lesbian couple raising a teenage boy. That was pretty wild for those days. We had all different combinations of adults and children staying in the same home. We agreed that a family was simply a group of people living together and loving each other.

It was often difficult to recruit families to join the program. The families had to straddle a fine line. They had to hurting enough to want help solving their family issues, but they also needed to function well enough to show up for the meetings. We seldom got families who considered themselves to be okay. Why come to a program if everything is going smoothly? We generally played host to families that were on the ragged edge of despair. Some of them could barely keep things together. Their lives were filled with chaos and confusion, but somehow, they joined us almost every week. The family members who managed to make it through the program were people who loved each other and had not given up hope that things in their homes could be better. They were strong.

We tried to teach skills during each session. We discussed things like how to communicate without screaming and yelling (or hitting). We talked about feelings. We talked about values. We talked about building trust. We explained how to set up family rules, and then follow them. Some of the stuff seemed extremely basic, but for many people, it was all new. I learned a lot even as I was instructing the family members.

The Nurturing Program often turned off prospective participants because it sounded touchy-feely. It was really hard to get men to get involved. As facilitators, we tried to welcome and encourage families, but the program was by no means warm and fuzzy. We encouraged family members to be open and honest, and by God, they were. We provided a safe environment where parents and their teens could say what they really meant. Often, a parent would look at their child and tell them, probably for the first time, that they were really scared for their safety. A teen might tell his parent that he just wanted to be heard, nothing more than that. People got very, very real.

I was usually the only male facilitator. I was usually also the only one with a military background. The women tended to be comforting and soothing with the participants, and some folks responded well to that. I wasn’t soothing. I was always brutally honest, and sometimes that worked. Different people needed different approaches.

I got sucked into the drama. It was impossible for me to remain aloof when people were opening their hearts to me. The parents, especially, once they let down their guard, spoke frankly about their fears and their pain. They wanted to do the right thing by their kids, and it was all turning to shit. Some of the adults I wanted to hug. Some I wanted to slap.

The kids are the ones who got to me. Yeah, there were some punks in the program, the kinds of young people that can really push your buttons. There were kids who acted tough, probably because they never had an adult to love and protect them. There were boys and girls in the groups who had grown up far too soon. However, there were innocents there too. I remember one boy, barely an adolescent, who seldom spoke in a group. I asked him about his father. He gave me a blank stare and said,

“I have never met my dad. He doesn’t want to know me.”

I wept.

I often wondered if we did any good. Can you change a life in twelve sessions? Probably not. I got to the point where I decided that I was just planting seeds. Maybe I couldn’t fix a particular family, but I could perhaps leave an idea with them. Maybe the next generation would have it just a bit easier. All the years I worked with these suffering souls, I did it on faith. Only once did I ever get any feedback from a family. It was years after I had worked with them, and they thanked me for the help. That kept me going.

In my own family, we made it through the teenage years relatively intact. After that, all hell broke loose. One son went to war and stabbed a man to death in Iraq. Another of my children went to prison. The third got into some bad stuff, but I never really found what it was. I made it clear to him that I don’t ever need to know.

I am convinced that all those years of working with families that were struggling with horrendous problems prepared me, at least a little, to deal with my own crises. The fact is that these families, with all their dysfunction, also had some hard-earned wisdom. They taught me how to survive and overcome.

I don’t need the plaque. I never did. I got what I needed.

September 22nd, 2022

On the back cover of Shawn Chapman’s new book, it says, “Come to Mary’s House invites you to imagine that you are with the Blessed Mother”.

So, who exactly is the author this book inviting?

In her introduction, Chapman asks the reader if they “long for Mary”. That implies that the reader knows something about the Blessed Virgin. Or maybe not. Sometimes people long for someone that they do not yet know. Falling in love can be like that. However, most likely the person paging through Come to Mary’s House will be a devout Catholic. I would say “devout Christian”, but there are Christians who find the Catholic devotion for Mary to be at best puzzling, or at worst blasphemous.

I remember years ago talking with Mike, a co-worker of mine, about Mary. Mike was a Black man and a rock-solid Baptist. He asked me,

“Frank, what is with you Catholics and Mary? Why do you pray to Mary? She’s just a woman. Why don’t you pray to God?”

Some questions are difficult to answer. I replied,

“Mike, sometimes, when you are in bad trouble, you want to talk to Mama before you talk to your dad.”

Mike shook his head and laughed.

Mary is our mama. Of course, she is more than that. Below I quote from a book called Civilisation by Kenneth Clark, an art historian. He comments on the relationship between Catholics and Mary during the Reformation. He says:

“The stabilizing, comprehensive religions of the world, the religions which penetrate to every part of a man’s being – in Egypt, India, or China – gave the female principle of creation at least as much importance as the male, and wouldn’t have taken seriously a philosophy that failed to include them both. These were all what H.G. Wells called communities of obedience. The aggressive, nomadic societies – what he called communities of will – Israel, Islam, the Protestant North, conceived their gods as male. It’s a curious fact that the all-male religions have produced no religious imagery -in most cases have positively forbidden it. The great religious art of the world is deeply involved with the female principle. Of course, the ordinary Catholic who prayed to the Virgin was not conscious of any of this, nor was he or she interested in the really baffling theological problems presented by the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. He simply knew that the heretics wanted to deprive him of that sweet, compassionate, approachable being who would intercede for him, as his mother might have with a hard master.”

What I think Clark is saying is that Mary embodies the feminine aspect of the Divine. Catholicism, as a religion and as a culture, could not exist without Mary. Even Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, remarked about the incredible importance of Mary to the faith. Mary gives Catholicism balance. To a certain extent, our worldview is based on our understanding of the Blessed Virgin.

Mary was just a woman back in the 1st century, but she has since acquired a cosmic significance. She is a lot of things. With regards to Mary, we Catholics want it all. She is both virgin and mother. She is a simultaneously a Jewish peasant woman and the theotokos, the God-bearer. Mary is the teenager who is unwed and pregnant. She is also the first and best disciple of Christ. Mary’s presence satisfies deep-seated human needs.

When bishops sent men to convert the pagan peoples of Europe a thousand years ago, these priests found that the locals had places sacred to their earth goddesses. Almost overnight, these locations became Marian shrines. Those missionaries were savvy fellows.

There is a temptation to treat Mary like a goddess. We often refer to Mary as the “Queen of Heaven”. To the casual observer, that term sounds a lot like a reference to a deity. In some ways she almost seems like one.

When I first read the title for the sixteenth chapter in Chapman’s book, it made me think of Kwan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion. The title of the chapter is “Hear with Mary the Cries of the World”. In the Buddhist world, Kwan Yin does that too. She is the incarnation of love and mercy in the East. Kwan Yin (aka Avalokiteshvara) seems to do for Buddhists and Daoists what Mary does for us.

Why have I written all this? I want to make it clear that any author who has the temerity to write a book about Mary has their work cut out for them. Shawn Chapman skillfully juggles the various aspects of Mary’s being. Chapman ensures that the reader knows that Mary was a real woman living in a real world, experiencing most of what the rest of humanity experiences. She also makes it clear that Mary is different from us. She has the ability to make this unique individual relatable. That is impressive.

Chapman has several chapters based on her life experiences and her encounters with Mary. These are chapters 26 through 30 (“Incognito”, “Do You Want to Live?”, “Mary Elaborates”, Living Reparation”, and “Annunciation House”. I find these chapters to be the strongest in the book. The author comes across as being utterly authentic, and intensely moving.

Chapman describes Mary as being “sneaky”, in that Mary quietly and subtly enters a person’s life. The author is pretty sneaky herself. At no point in the book does she attempt a hard sell. I have often been turned off by religious books that push the message too hard. Chapman invites the reader to meditate with her, but she does no more than that. She leaves it for the reader to decide if they want to enter Mary’s house.

Shawn Chapman uses a guided visualization to facilitate meditation. That doesn’t work for me. I am a student of Zen, a practice where visualization is not generally used. In Zen a person sits silently and tries to empty their mind. The goal is to have a mind that is “clear – clear like space”, and then to be able to see things as they really are, without judging or condemning. If I can have a clear mind, then I can recognize suffering and act with compassion. Using Chapman’s technique, the practitioner eventually sees the world through Mary’s eyes. I expect the results are the same with both methods.

There are parts of Chapman’s book that don’t resonate with me, not yet anyway. Perhaps they will in the future. The Blessed Mother is a being who can never be fully understood. She is an ocean of grace. Come to Mary’s House is also an ocean. No matter how many times a reader dips into it, they will never get to the bottom.