Frank is Emptiness

August 24th, 2018

“Where is your faith?!”

The elderly sister asked me that question near the end of our session. She was clearly frustrated with me at this point, as I was with her. I had requested some spiritual direction, and she had tried to direct me for almost an hour. It was a hideous disaster.

Or, maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know.

I hadn’t gone to a spiritual director for a long time, at least ten years, maybe more. The last person I consulted was a Catholic priest whose guidance was impractical. I stayed away from official religious guides until just a few days ago. Lately, life has felt overwhelming, so I decided to to talk to a professional.

I am not good at taking advice. Ask anyone who knows me, they’ll tell you that. If I do accept advice, it is only after I ponder it for a while. I hate the hard sell. If a person pushes an idea on me, I automatically push back. I may come around to another person’s point of view, but only after a long period of deep reflection and grudging acceptance. I am not good at instant transformation. I am not Paul on his way to Damascus.

I am also jaded concerning official titles. People who are referred to as “Father” or “Rabbi” or “Zen Master” do not necessarily have any credibility with me. I have spent almost my entire life in organizations where rank and status gave the people in power a certain aura of wisdom. I have found many of those persons to be mere humans who do not understand life any more than I do. Some of them just fake it better than I do. Honestly, I have learned more about God from homeless people and psych ward patients than I have from priests and ministers.

My conversation with the sister was difficult for several reasons. First of all, I entered the discussion seeking guidance, but not really wanting to accept any. I am not sure what I  expected. Mostly, I just wanted to stop hurting. I suppose I could have accomplished the same thing by drinking a six pack of beer or smoking a blunt. I also wanted answers to unsolvable questions, and I thought that, maybe, this sister had some answers. I was hoping that somebody had answers.

The woman actually had answers. They just weren’t the right ones.

For her part, the sister did not listen well. I had told her about Hans and his deployment to Iraq. I told about the killing and the violence. I told her that he had come back different. 

She responded by saying, “Well, I know that you are disappointed in your son.”

“What?”

“You said that you were disappointed in him.”

“I never said that.”

She shook her head, “Okay, you said that he came back from the war different. It’s the same sort of thing.”

No, it’s not. Not at all.

I told her about other people that I love, and about how these people are deeply suffering. I tried to explain how I struggle along with them. She seemed curiously unimpressed.

At one point, the sister asked me, “Do you read the Bible? Do you have a favorite book or passage?”

I answered, “Job.”

She smiled. “Oh yes. And Job stayed true to God despite everything.”

“Uh, yeah…”

Then she asked me, “Do you believe that Jesus loves you?”

“No.”

Brief silence.

“You must believe that He loves you! You told me that you go to daily Mass with your wife. You receive the Eucharist every day. You have to believe that He loves you!”

I was upset. I spoke from the heart. “Noooo, I don’t. I don’t think that Jesus gives a damn about me, and, more importantly, I don’t think he cares about the people that I love!”

“How can you say that?! Just because you’re hurting, you think that Jesus doesn’t love you? Everybody has troubles. Not just you!”

“That makes it all better?’

“God is not the problem here.”

“Then who is?”

“These things are just a part of life.”

“God plays no part in all of this? He’s not in charge?”

“You can’t blame God for your troubles!”

“So, I should just give God a free pass?”

The sister told me, “I want you to write a letter to Jesus tonight. I want to you to tell Jesus that you know how much He loves you. And I don’t want just one sentence. I want a whole page!”

I felt defeated. “Okay.”

“Do you have writing paper?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to see your letter tomorrow. Let’s meet again to tomorrow at 7:30.”

“Yeah.”

She smiled and went on, “Before you go to sleep, I want to say to Jesus, ‘Thank you for loving me’.”

“Okay”.

We ended the session.

I remember in AA there was a slogan that said, “Fake it until you make it!” My understanding of the sentence was that, if a person didn’t yet believe in the twelve steps, the person should act like they do. The idea being that, by “faking” it, eventually the person would truly believe in the program. That never happened with me. I am utterly incapable of faking it. The whole session with the sister reminded me of that phrase from many years ago.

I went back and talked to Karin about my interaction with the sister. Karin was surprised, but not really. She is used to me getting into these sorts of arguments. I mentioned to Karin that the sister expected me to have a spiritual transformation.

Karin looked up from her knitting and said, “Well, good luck with that.”

I wrote the letter. I actually wrote two pages. Most of it was a rant. At the end of the letter, I suggested to Jesus that He open my heart and my senses to see the good in other people. I can’t love Jesus like some other people seem to do. I can’t talk to the voices in my head that way. However, maybe I can see the love of Christ in those around me, and maybe I can love Jesus through them. Maybe. It’s worth a shot. I asked Jesus to give it try. We can work on it.

I showed the completed letter to Karin. She read it and said,

“It’s honest. And it is totally you.”

Any communication with God has to be honest and authentic. I think so anyway.

I had promised the sister to thank Jesus before I slept. I said her prayer without believing it at all. It made me feel sick.

I did not go back to talk to the sister. However, I made sure she got the letter.

August 24th, 2018

“I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
Well, I wake up in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin’ me insane
It’s a shame
The way she makes me
Scrub the floor
I ain’t gonna work on, nah
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more…”

from Bob Dylan

St. Isidore Catholic Worker Farm is tucked into the rolling hills of southwestern Wisconsin. St. Isidore is across the Mississippi River from Dubuque, Iowa. There are only a few other large towns in the vicinity.

Karin and I drove to the farm on Wednesday morning after having breakfast with the sisters at Sinsinawa. It wasn’t very far to drive. The farm is a mile or two up Clay Hollow Road, and it can be easy to miss if you aren’t specifically looking for it. St. Isidore looks a lot like other small farms in the area. There is a small sign at the entrance to the driveway, but that is also easy to miss.

The farm is built into the side of a steep hill. At the crest of the hill a person can see endless stalks of corn. Those do not belong to the Catholic Workers; they belong to their neighbors. The farmland of St. Isidore is a long, narrow stretch that follows both sides of Clay Hollow Road. There is actually a tunnel underneath the road that allows the cows to move from one pasture to another safely. That’s kind of cool.

Karin and I were initially greeted by farm’s dog, Dora. The dog is black and sleek. I don’t know the breed, but she is a beautiful animal. Dora’s barking brought a human out of the barn to meet us. That was Eric, who we met the day before. Eric lives on the farm, and he also works part time at Sinsinawa. He handles their ecological problems, whatever they may be. From my conversations with the people at Sinsinawa, it became obvious to me that Eric is liked and respected at the Sinsinawa Mound Center. Eric and I had corresponded for several months prior to our first actual meeting. It’s strange; in some ways Eric matched my expectations of him, and in other ways he seemed strange to me. I guess it just works like that.

Eric took us back to the barn, where the other members of St. Isidore had gathered for their morning prayer. They had just completed it when Karin and I had arrived.  Eric introduced to the other residents. There was his wife Brenna, wearing a t-shirt that said, “Indigenous Iowa”. There was a couple, Mary Kay and Peter, who live on the farm with their two small children. There was another Peter, who is trying to set up a new Catholic worker community in Dubuque. Another man was in attendance, but I forget his name, because, at this point in my life, I forget names.

Eric and Brenna gave Karin and me a tour of the farm. The barn is small, but very well maintained. They use it for meetings and lectures and barn dances. Behind this barn, up the hill a bit, is a dilapidated pig shed. It is slowly falling into ruin. The roof is collapsing in upon itself, and the structure looks unsafe and unusable.

The folks at St. Isidore have cows and chickens. Brenna noted that some of the hens were too old to lay, and that they would soon be slaughtered. It was hard for me to follow, but it appears that the Catholic Workers have mutual understandings with their neighbors with regard to land use. Sometimes the neighbors use the St. Isidore property for grazing, and sometimes the folks at St. Isidore have the neighbors harvest their hay. There aren’t bodies enough on St. Isidore to do all the things that need to be done. So, other people from the community have to be involved.

Eric and Brenna showed us several gardens. They grow corn, beans, and squash together, just like the Native Americans did for centuries. They do it because it works well, and it keeps the soil fertile. They also have tomatoes and cabbages. They have other vegetables growing, and they have fruit trees. The Catholic Workers have been canning food already. It is only August, but they are preparing for winter. They are farmers, so they plan ahead, always.

The community lives in a house that is quite nice. It is clean and well-maintained. In a way, it doesn’t feel very Catholic Worker. Most other Catholic Worker houses are a bit well-used. This farm house looked immaculate. I’m not complaining. It felt odd.

Karin and I have been to three Catholic Worker farms. They are all different and they are all alike. Each farm has its own distinct personality, within a Catholic Worker framework. Each community has its own culture and mission. However, each farm is really a community. People live and work together. They are like family, almost. The members of these communities are always very idealistic, and they always have the usual human foibles. They are in the world, but not of the world. They all live out the Gospel in their own ways. They struggle to create a new society.

These farms are very attractive to me. However, I know that I don’t belong in a place like St. Isidore. That is not my place. That is not my purpose. I am never really certain what my purpose is, but I always know what it is not. I need to be in the world, and I need to be working with people in my own town. It is tempting for me to withdraw to an isolated place, but that wouldn’t be right…for me.

I am grateful that St. Isidore exists. I am grateful that we had a chance to visit the farm. But, as much as I love the place, it could never be my home. That much I know.

August 22nd, 2018

The sisters entered slowly into the gathering place next to the dining hall. Some of them shuffled their feet as they made their way to a chair. Some walked unsteadily with canes. Some of them used walkers. They were all old, but “old” is a vague description. Some of the women had hair that was still steel grey. Others had hair that was pure white. Some stood erect. Others were bent and stooped. They all dressed in a consciously understated fashion. Their jewelry, if they wore any, consisted of a necklace with a crucifix hanging from it, or maybe a pair of tiny earrings. Some of the sisters were bright and alert. Others looked exhausted from the journey to their seats in the room. When morning prayer began at promptly at 7:45, there were probably forty sisters in the gathering space. All of them were ready to begin this new day in the same way that they have for fifty years or more.

Karin and I prayed with the sisters several times during our retreat at the Sinsinawa Mound Center, the mother house for this branch of the Dominican sisters. None of these women seemed in any way extraordinary. Many of them were quite frail. However, I was struck by the way they held themselves. They all had a quiet dignity. They were all retired from decades of service to their order. They had made their choice years ago, and now they at the tail ends of their careers, and their lives. These women were not going to leave Sinsinawa. The mother house was their permanent home now. Sinsinawa was the last stop. Every one of these women seemed to be at peace with their choice in life. That was my impression.

The Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters are a teaching order, and they work throughout the United States, and in two other countries. There are over 450 sisters total. Most of them are working in various capacities: as teachers, administrators, nurses, and social justice advocates. About 160 of the sisters are at Sinsinawa. They are the frail and elderly. Karin and I had lunch with a sister who told us that average age of a member at the mother house was seventy-nine. Seventy-nine. The latest estimate for the life expectancy of a woman in the United States is 78.74 years. Karin and I attended a birthday party for on sister who celebrated her centenary. The woman was rather spry.

Karin and I also happened to be at the mother house for a funeral. One of the sisters had died at the age of ninety-six. On Monday afternoon the casket was stationed in the main chapel. Later in the evening, around 5:00, the women moved the body of their sister to the gathering place. There was a ritual involved. Four of the sisters carried candles in front of the coffin. Six sisters served as pallbearers and rolled the casket forward. There is a large foyer between the chapel and gathering place that the women use for prayer. On either side of the foyer stood dozens of sisters in a line, like an honor guard. As the sisters with the candles and the casket walked past the these women, their comrades filed in behind them to make up a procession. All the women sang as they walked to the gathering place with the sister that they had lost. They started out with “Salve Regina”.

There is a long hallway between the foyer of the mother house and the gathering place. It is called the “Diamond Walkway” because of the shape of the windows on either side of it. I followed along in the back of the procession as it it wound into this walkway. The sisters began to sing “Immaculate Mary”. I remember seeing the candles flickering in the distance, and I heard the sister’s feminine voices chanting:

“Ave, Ave, Ave Maria! Ave, Ave, Mariiiiia!”

I didn’t sing along. I didn’t want my feeble tenor to contaminate the beautiful blend of sopranos and altos. It makes me cry to remember it.

Everyone ate dinner after the sisters left the body of their friend in the gathering place.

I embarrassed myself while going through the buffet line. Across from me was a young woman, probably in her late twenties. I asked her,

“So, do you work here?”

She looked at me and said, “I am one of the sisters…oh, and I do work here.”

Then she asked me, “Are you on retreat?”

“Yes.”

The girl smiled at me sweetly, indicating that the conversation was over.

After the dinner, we all went to the gathering place. They had a wake of sorts. It was called a “sharing”. We prayed, and then the people who knew the deceased, Sister Prudence Ludwig, told stories about her. Some of the stories were serious. People talked about how “prudent” the sister was. She was apparently an extremely competent woman: organized, clear-thinking, and focused. Others told humorous anecdotes. One sister talked about Prudence’s desk drawers, where she had everything in exact order, even the paper clips facing the same direction. That sounds like OCD do to me, but I didn’t know the lady.

It was a beautiful service. How many 96-year-olds get a wake where their long time friends reminisce about them? More to the point, how many people die among friends? Most old people die alone and forgotten, at least in our country. Prudence Ludwig did not die alone. She was taken to her final home by her friends and her loved ones. Prudence is blessed.

They had the funeral Mass the following morning.  Then they laid Prudence to rest in the cemetery not far from the mother house. The vast majority of all of the sisters are buried in that cemetery. The stones are simple. They only show the date of death and the name of the deceased. In most cases, the name starts with an “M” for “Mary”. For many years the sisters chose Mary as their first name and then another name to elaborate on their choice. I saw stones that said “M. Theophilus” or “M. Benedictus”. Mary always came first. The theotokos (God-bearer) always came first. Some of the grave stones were worn away. The names are gone now, as are the memories of the dead.

Karin and I walked to the labyrinth, which is right next to the cemetery. I looked at Karin. With her short hair, and her flowing, long skirts, and her deep religious devotion, Karin could easily be a sister here. I told her that.

“You know, you belong here.”

Karin looked at me.

“Oh, I don’t mean in the cemetery.”

She hit me in the arm.

August, 22nd, 2018

“Nice beard, Man!”

A young man in the psych ward at VA hospital had called that out to me. It took me a moment to react to his comment.

The patient went on , “That’s gnarly! How long did it take you to grow that?”

I replied, “I don’t know, maybe three years or so.”

The vet smiled. “Cool. I thought it would have taken a lot longer. You braid it?”

“Uh no…it just kind of dreads itself.”

The young man nodded. “Yeah, cool.”

Karin and I just got home yesterday from a short religious retreat. We were at the Sinsinawa Mound Center, which is run by an order of Dominican sisters. Before we left the retreat house, we went to join the sisters in their morning prayer. As we were entering the chapel, an elderly sister stopped us and questioned me,

“I just have to ask you this: does your beard have some sort of spiritual significance?”

“No, I’m just too lazy to cut it.”

The woman nodded. Then she turned to Karin and asked,

“Don’t you ever get the urge in the middle of the night to turn to him and just cut it off?”

Karin smiled nervously. She had heard that exact question from a number of other women. They all seemed eager to remove the offending braid of matted hair from my chin.

After morning prayer, Karin and I went to breakfast with the sisters. I got my toast and eggs, and sat down. Karin went to get her daily cappuccino. When she came to our table, she said,

“Well, your beard is a topic of conversation. One of the sisters wanted to know if you were Muslim.”

I just shook my head.

August 19th, 2018

She looks better in blue than in orange.

I thought about that as I sat across from the girl , and looked at her through the Plexiglas divider. Yes, Navy blue suits her well, especially since her hair is currently blonde. Orange would clash too much.

“You look good”, I told her as I spoke over the phone.

She lifted one eyebrow quizzically.

I shrugged. I said to her,

“I talked to your probation officer on the phone yesterday. She does NOT plan on sending you to prison. That is not what she wants to do.”

The young woman gave me a barely detectable smile.

“So, she is working on finding temporary housing for me?”

“Yeah. She can’t cut you loose until she finds you a place to stay.”

I looked at the young woman’s eyes. She has the deepest, brownest eyes. They are almost black. She says that my eyes are hazel. Usually, mine are just bloodshot.

The jail is remarkably drab. The county must only buy institutional, soul-killing types of paint. The walls are all a bureaucratic beige. Even when the walls are clean, they look dirty.

Karin drove us home from the jail. She took Highway 32. It runs close to Lake Michigan. I could see the lake at time, pale blue near the shore, and then gradually darkening as as I looked further away.

Karin pointed out different plants and flowers as we drove along. She thinks of plants mostly in terms of how they might be used to dye fiber. She is obsessed with that. Right now, the Queen Anne’s lace and the chicory are blooming along the roadside. The chicory has small blue flowers. Karin is very curious to find out what those flowers would do.

Once we got home, Karin decided to play the alchemist. She went out to the back patio where she has her pots and jars, and her propane cooker. She put a kilogram of choke cherries into a pot of of water, along with a skein of yarn. The choke cherries grow in our backyard. She was hoping that they would turn the yarn a deep red. After several minutes of simmering of the propane fire, nothing happened.

Karin said, “Maybe I should have put the berries into the blender first!”

Later, she brought out a bottle from the basement.

“I am going to add some water softener. The last time I used choke cherries, I put them into distilled water. Maybe that makes a difference.”

I guess that it did. She called out to me that the water was starting to get a pink tinge.

Karin was also checking out some blood root that she had been fermenting for the past few days. It hadn’t turned red, but it had turned the water a deep orange. She wanted to see what the blood root would do to the wool. She was hoping for a ruddier tint.

Karin pointed some plants growing amidst the willow bushes. She asked,

“What do you think those leaves are? They are such a dark, shiny green. I bet they would make a cool green color!”

I don’t doubt that.

The goldenrod will be blooming soon. Karin is excited about that. Goldenrod always produces a spectacular bright yellow.

I went outside with Shocky, and I saw that Karin had hung up some skeins of yarn on the clothes line to dry. There were several loops that had an intense rust color, with a hint of orange.

I told her, “I like those.”

She smiled, “Yeah, I like how the color is not consistent all the way through. It’s not so boring that way.”

It was nearly evening. The moon was already high. It looked cold and white. Soon, the shadows would lengthen. The light would dim.

The colors would fade.

August 18th, 2018

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Hebrews 10:31

Karin and I had a friend, Joe Tripoli, who was wise and well-read. He also had a low tolerance for nonsense. He used to teach a religious education program for adults at our church. He would quote Hebrews 10:31 when a member of the class would get all warm and fuzzy about their relationship with the Lord. He tried to make the point that a true relationship with God can be comforting and reassuring, but it can also be scary as hell. Most people, Christians at least, want the sweet Good Shepherd who is most often found in the stain glass windows. They want the God who will give them hugs and smiles.

It doesn’t work like that.

There are very few examples in Jewish or Christian scriptures of God telling people what they want to hear. Generally, when God speaks to somebody, it is to say “Hey! I have a job for you!” or “You need to get your shit together!” Even when God or his angels announce the “Good News”, it comes in the form of a challenge. In the Beatitudes, Jesus talks about “Blessed are the poor in Spirit” and “Blessed are those who mourn”. Hmm…those words do not sound the Prosperity Gospel. There is no example (that I have found) in the Hebrew Bible where somebody willing accepts a task from the Almighty. All of the prophets initially ran for cover, or made lame excuses to get out of the job.

Any direct contact with the Divine seems to entail some kind of work, often of an unpleasant sort. Even in non-Abrahamic traditions, this is obvious. In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna converses with the god, Krishna, and finds out from that deity that his job is to fight and kill his relatives in battle. That’s not so good.

Prayer and meditation are often avenues for connecting with God, or something. Unfortunately, prayer and meditation do not guarantee a blissful experience. Thomas Merton makes this plain in his book, Seeds of Contemplation. Meditation is not the spiritual equivalent of lighting up a blunt. Sometimes there is a sense of peace and well-being. Sometimes there is nothing.

My relationship with God is tenuous at best. I get the most intense feeling of God when I read from the scriptures in front of the congregation during Mass. At times I cease to exist, and God speaks through me. I am not saying the words any more. Somebody else is in control. That does not happen very often, but it happens enough that it freaks me out. When I finish reading, I step down from the pulpit feeling exhausted. Sometimes I break down in tears. It can be frightening.

On Tuesday I went for coffee at the Fuel cafe with my friend, Ken. I know Ken from the synagogue. Years ago, Ken would make the priestly blessing on certain holy days. The process is called “duchining”. He told me that sometimes he would feel a power working through him. It had the same effect on him as the reading does on me. It freaked him out.

This following link explains the Jewish ritual. It is from Chabbad. It’s best for you to learn about it from people who actually know something.

https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/676133/jewish/Birchat-Kohanim.htm

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

August 16th, 2018

I woke up at 3:30 AM. That isn’t all that unusual for me. At best, I sleep fitfully. Shocky, our border collie/lab mix, was making restless noises in the bedroom. She needed to go out, and I certainly wasn’t going to doze off while the dog whined in the dark.

I took Shocky for a walk. We went for a mile or so down Oakwood Road, and then back home again. We wandered past the cornfields and the subdivisions. There are not many streetlights along Oakwood. Shocky and I walked part of the way in the dark. It wasn’t complete darkness, because there is no such thing where we live. It is impossible to get away from lights entirely. However, there is a portion of the road, alongside the marsh, where vision fails and the other senses take over.

When I cannot see, then I hear things, and I smell things, and I feel things. I heard the cricket chorus. I could hear the flap of the heron’s wings. I heard the sound of a muskrat diving into the water near the edge of the street. The air was musty and sweet. It had the faint scent of over-ripe fruit, as if summer was tired, but autumn was ready yet to to take its place. Even at that time of the morning, well before dawn, it was warm and humid. I could feel my t-shirt stick to my body. The hot season was clinging to me, refusing to let go.

There was already some traffic on the road. People driving off to work at 4:00 AM. I remember doing that. I used to get up at one in the morning to start my shift. I would be barely conscious when I was behind the wheel of the car. I took care to be seen as I walked with Shocky this morning. Some of those folks on their way to their jobs were probably not terribly alert.

The commuters probably weren’t very happy either. They all seemed to be in a hurry to get to a place where they didn’t want to be. Drivers on Oakwood, especially a bit later in the morning, tend to be a surly lot. There are no sidewalks on the road, so when I am walking the dog, I take up a couple precious feet of asphalt. If there is traffic going both ways on the street, then sometimes a driver is forced to stop momentarily to keep from hitting me and Shocky. I’m glad that I don’t often see their facial expressions. If looks could kill…

The sky was overcast when we started our walk. As we came home, the clouds parted overhead, and I when I looked up could pick out some stars. I could briefly see Cassiopeia, Perseus, and Pleiades.

Shocky didn’t look up. She was sniffing at a dead frog.

August 13th, 2018

“Brain Damage”

Is the universe rational? Are people rational? Am I?

Does it even matter?

Humans are thinking creatures. That is how we are hard wired. We cannot not think. In Zen we are sometimes told find to the “mind before thinking”. We might as well try to find the body before breathing. Thinking is who we are. It is an essential part of our being.

There is clearly a value in seeing the world as it is without judging it, or critiquing it, or even trying to make sense of it. There is a value in just seeing the color red, or just feeling the raindrops on the skin, or just tasting a fresh peach. There is a value in just being. 

I over-analyze almost everything. I try to figure things out. I was trained to do that from a very early age, and usually I am quite good at it. However, it is a dead end. Logic can only take me so far. Reason slams into the brick wall of chaos. Eventually, my mind can no longer find the results that I seek. In particular, I can not answer the question “why?”

Complete understanding is impossible. I will never understand the world. I will never understand other people, or even understand myself.

I might be able to love what I can’t understand.

Throughout history, there have been men and women who have loved in ways that made no sense. I am thinking of Francis of Assisi and St. Clare and Hildegard of Bingen. I am thinking of Hafiz and Rumi and Ibn Arabi. I am thinking of Maximilian Kolbe and Sophie Scholl and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They all lived in times and places that made no sense at all. They acted in ways that seemed completely irrational. They all did the right thing.

I took our daughter’s dog outside this morning at 4:00 AM. I looked up at the sky and found the constellation Perseus. I saw a single shooting star. The burning stone in the sky had no meaning. It was only beautiful, and it was only there for a moment.

It was the only thing that mattered.

August 12th, 2018

I sat on a bench outside of St. Rita Church this morning. A woman walked up to me and said,

“You really look tired.”

I rubbed my eyes, and replied, “Yes, I am.”

Two days ago, when I was sitting with the Syrian kids and reading stories, Nizar said the same thing,

“Hey, Frank, you look tired! Are you tired?”

Earlier I had mentioned to Nizar’s mom that I was tired, in Arabic. (“Ta’abaan”)

I do feel worn out. I look into the bathroom mirror and red eyes stare back at me.

I am convinced that most of this weariness is the result of the interactions I’ve had with the girl we love, especially during the last several weeks. Since the end of June, my life has been chaotic. So has Karin’s. We have gone from one crisis to another with scarcely a pause in the action. It feels like an Indiana Jones movie. It has been nearly impossible to plan ahead, and we cringe every time the phone rings. In particular, the last week or two have been brutal. At one point we did not know if the girl was alive or dead. We have spent days talking with cops and the young woman’s probation officer. We grow weary. At least, I grow weary.

Yesterday Karin and I attempted to celebrate our thirty-fourth wedding anniversary. We were married in Karin’s home village in Germany back in 1984. A lot has changed since then. Maybe everything has changed. I am hard pressed to think of anything that has remained constant other than the fact that somehow we are still together.

Karin and I had simple plans for our anniversary. We wanted to go to Mass together in the morning, and get a blessing from our priest. Then our ways would diverge. Karin wanted to go to the State Fair grounds to look at the sheep and wool exhibits. I wanted to go to the synagogue to pray, and then to have a long-postponed kosher lunch with my friend, Ken. In the afternoon, we were thinking of going to a German restaurant for dinner. Karin had suggested the idea. Karin had also bought a bottle of Riesling for later in the evening. As background, Karin was raised in the Taubertal, a wine-making region of southern Germany. We didn’t have a Riesling at our wedding, but we drank something similar. We had numerous bottles of Markelsheimer Propstberg, a slightly-sweet, full-flavored, fruity wine. I remember it well.

Mass on a Saturday morning is a bit odd. Most churches do not even have a liturgy at that time. The only reason that it is available at St. Rita is that the parish is run by a group of Augustinian priests, and they have a school for novices on the site. Saturday morning Mass tends to be an intimate affair that draws mostly an older crowd ( a much older crowd). There are sometimes a few younger people in attendance, but they tend to have a peculiarly intense sort of Catholic religiosity that is both impressive and rather irritating. Father David, the new novice director, celebrated the Mass. He’s a thin man of fifty years who wears large, horn-rimmed glasses that give him an owlish appearance. He’s a quiet man who displays a quiet sort of compassion toward others.

At the end of the service Father David called Karin and me forward. He announced to the congregation that we were celebrating our thirty-first anniversary. Thirty-one years? Thirty-four? At this point in life, does it even make a difference? He gave us a blessing, and then he said to me,

“You may now kiss the bride!”

Karin and I kissed.

It was a nice touch.

I dropped Karin off at the fair grounds. The girl we love was supposed to have a phone interview with a local sober living house at about that time. She was calling the sober living house from jail. I had set up a pre-paid phone account in order for her to do that. I was hoping that it would all go well, and that the folks at the house would allow the girl to join them. Karin hoped the same thing. Once I stopped at the curb, Karin walked away from our car in search of sheep, and maybe cream puffs.

I drove across town to the synagogue. As I parked, I got a series of text messages from Karin. Apparently, the phone interview had not gone well. The residents of the sober living house were not entirely convinced that the girl really wanted to stay sober. In one text, Karin asked me if we should visit the young woman at the jail in the afternoon, between one and three o’clock.

I groaned. Can’t we be left alone for even one day? This meant that I couldn’t have lunch with Ken because Shacharit in the Shul goes until at least 12:30. I texted back to Karin and reluctantly told her, “Yeah”. Odds were that our girl was expecting us to visit, even if Karin had not actually promised that. There was no way to let the young woman that we were not coming, since we couldn’t call into the jail. The girl could only call out. Karin told me to pick her up at noon.

I figured that I had about an hour and a half to spend at the synagogue. I put on my black yarmulke and walked inside. (Side note: Karin had knit the yarmulke for me. She does that sort of thing.) When I got there, they were still waiting for enough Jewish men to make up a minyan. They were momentarily disappointed when I showed up. I’m not Jewish, so I literally don’t count. The guys were happy to see me, but not as happy as they would have been if I could have been a Jew for a day.

I stopped to talk with Ken. I told him that lunch was not happening. He was okay with that. I wasn’t. I was upset, partly because I had been looking forward to a meal and conversation at his house, and partly because I knew that, as an Orthodox Jew, Ken has done all the meal preparation the day before Shabbat. All his culinary efforts had gone to waste. Ken knows about the struggles that Karin and I are having. He spoke to me about how God never places too heavy a burden on to a person, but it sure feels that way sometimes. He gave me a quick hug.

A couple more congregants showed up, and they could get the service rolling. Yesterday they read the Parsha Re’eh from the Torah. I have only a minimal understanding of Hebrew, but I know enough that I can follow along with the English text in the Chumash. I can usually also keep up with the prayers in the Siddur.

In the text from yesterday, Moses said to the Hebrews, “I place before you today a blessing and a curse.” Somehow that struck me. I don’t know why.

The reading of the parscha is interrupted briefly after the first three aliyahs. At that time the rabbi prays for those people who are ill. The Jews always pray for our young woman. Every Shabbat, without fail, they pray for her healing. They don’t even know her (well, Ken does), but they say her name each and every week. Every time they pray for her, I feel like crying.

I had to leave after the reading of the Haftorah. I think it was from Isaiah. On the way to the Fair Park, I had to stop at a traffic light. There was a young man on the side, holding a sign saying that he was homeless. He was munching on blueberries. I called to the young guy. Then I pulled out some cash and handed it to him. He thanked me.

I asked the guy, “What’s your name?”

“Tim.”

“I’m Frank. So, how did you get to be homeless?”

Tim replied, “I have a drinking problem. I lost my job a year ago, and I’m trying to get my act together.”

The light turned green.

“I hear you, Man. I got to go.”

I drove off.

I got to the State Fair, and picked up Karin. I was in a foul mood. She noticed that quickly. She has known me for a while. It is an hour drive from State Fair Park to the jail in Kenosha. That gave me plenty of time to stew. As an added benefit, traffic sucked hard.

We had been to that jail many times in the past, so Karin and I knew the drill for getting to see our loved one. We filled out our paper slips with the stubby pencils provided by the Sheriff’s Department.  We slipped the papers and our ID’s to the woman behind the Plexiglas window. She had issues. She had to make a couple calls and consult with  a number of people. She finally told us,

“We can’t let you visit this woman. She is under a suicide watch.”

“You got to be fucking kidding me. Now what happened?” (This was thought, but not spoken.)

She gave us back our ID”s. The woman continued to speak in her clipped, bureaucratic voice,

“Next time you should call ahead before coming.”

I mumbled, “Yeah, okay…”

She kept talking, “I didn’t ask for this. Don’t be upset with me.”

I sighed deeply, “Yeah, fine…”

“Just call next time, and make sure that she is available.”

“Ooookay…”

I wanted to strangle a puppy.

Karin and I drove home. My mood was black: a rancid combination of anger, sorrow, and fatigue. I radiated Sith energy. I let Karin know that I really didn’t want to go out to eat.

We kept away from each other for a couple hours. I laid on the bed and read parts of The Healer of Shattered Hearts, a book of Jewish spirituality. Reading that often helps. Somehow, Jewish spirituality feels so real. It just does, especially with regards to suffering.

In the evening, Karin asked me,

“Do you want me to open up the bottle of Riesling? We could have a couple glasses, and eat some snacks.”

“Sure.”

So, Karin and I sat in the kitchen. We lit the wedding candle that we got from her Onkel Kurt and Tante Aga back in 1984. We light the candle every year. It might be the only thing we still have and use from the wedding. Well, the wine glasses are from then too. We filled those with the Riesling.

Karin wanted to look at old photos. Those are melancholy for me. Many of the people in those pictures are long dead. Those who remain alive are very different now. Karin and I are very different now. We only vaguely resemble the newlyweds from three decades ago.

We sat and talked, as old married couples do. We are an “Alte Ehepaar”, as the Germans would say.

I asked Karin, “You want to watch a movie?”

She brightened up a bit. “Sure, what?”

“Kung Fu Panda.”

“Oh, that’s on Netflix.”

“Good, let’s watch it. We need something like that.”

And we did.

August 10th, 2018

Earlier today, I was driving slowly south on Cesar Chavez. It was late in the afternoon. Traffic crawled. I downshifted from second to first gear. I looked up ahead, and I could that the light was still red at the intersection with Greenfield Avenue. There were about ten cars ahead of me. I probably wasn’t going to make it through the intersection when the signal finally turned green.

As I waited, I checked out the stores along the street. One of them had a flashing sign that said, “Abierto”. I tried to read some of the Spanish advertising. I know only a minimal amount of Spanish (“un poquito” ). However, I know what “panaderia” and”carniceria” mean. I like to eat, and bread and meat are of interest to me. The corner of Cesar Chavez and Greenfield is the beating heart of the Latino neighborhood in Milwaukee.

In a way it’s odd that I know this area so well, especially since the people I visit here speak Arabic. My Syrian refugee family lives only a block from the intersection. I was on my way home from a session of reading with the kids. They were glad to see me. I had been gone for a few weeks. Yasmin insisted on showing me how well she could read. Her little brother, Yusuf, sat next to her and giggled. Um Hussein brought me hot, sweet tea. Ibrahim, Nizar, and Nisrin watched TV. They didn’t want to read today. That’s okay. They will probably read the next time I come.

As I sat in traffic, I suddenly remembered a phone call I got a few weeks ago from somebody that I love. As usual, the caller was in a state of utter panic when she phoned me. It’s strange, but I am getting used to that.

The girl called me at home. After I picked up the phone, she cried out,

“I’m lost! And I have to be back at the sober living house in forty minutes, or I’ll miss curfew, and they will kick me out!”

I hate calls like that.

I tried to remain cool and collected. I asked her, “So where do you think you are?”

She yelled over the phone, “I’m somewhere in Little Mexico!”

“Okay…okay…are you outside?”

“Yeah”, she replied sobbing.

“Is there a street sign?”

“Yeah”, more sobbing.

“What does it say?”

“Hang on, let me look.” (pause) “It says ‘Scott Street’ “.

“Scott Street. I know where that is. So, Scott Street and what?”

“Huh?”

“What is the cross street?”

“Oh, let me check…”

“Okay, tell you what…call me back when you know exactly where you are.”

“NO! Don’t hang up! I’ll ask somebody!”

There was the sound of muffled voices for a minute or so. Then,

“Scott Street and Cesar Chavez.”

“Okay, you want me to get you?”

“Can you get me to Riverwest by 6:00 PM?”

“Hmmmmm, I get you close.”

More sobbing. “Okay.”

I told her, “Just wait there, I’ll leave home right now and pick you up.”

More sobbing. “Okay.”

I was pretty stressed at this point. I told Karin that I was on a mission. I got in the car and headed toward Milwaukee. Two minutes later, my cell rings. It was the lost girl.

I answered, “What?!”

She spoke calmly, “I got a ride.”

“So, now you don’t need me?”

“No, but thanks anyway.”

I turned around and went home.

Now, whenever I am near Cesar Chavez and Scott, and I cannot help but recall that conversation. It’s burned into my memory.