Pancake Lady

One of the obvious hard things around here is the level and amount of suffering. We all know poor people suffer many types of pain without recourse. Without the experts and the systems and the channels of access and information and the, the --- I don't know, the language, perhaps, even? Whether that means fluent English or just not sounding crazy enough for long enough to present your position reasonably articulately to someone, to be unfreaky for just the required period and at least for the specified time, and then to understand sufficiently how to proceed from the plan the person suggests to you? And then attempt to implement those suggestions somewhat coherently, somewhat promptly, somewhat... sanely? It's just not possible, in so many cases.


We have one member of the extended community, a regular diner, a lady I am absolutely in love with. The last day she was here, Tuesday, she came in pretty early in the morning, still wearing her sleeping clothes. Which is to say her sleeping clothe - a long tee-shirt. I don't presume to know how much was underneath, but I suspect rather little, and appearances suggested the same. She had to have been thrilled not to have to wear 97 layers of clothing to sleep in, if only for one day: the weather had warmed up on the one hand, and she had asked us to give her a couple blankets the day before when she stopped by in the evening. We did, and even though one got stolen (or else someone asked her for it and she gave it to him because that is how she is and just thought that theft would be the preferred explanation), she still had a fairly serious blanket that had kept her warm. So she stopped for breakfast, coffee and conversation in her nightshirt and slippers. Just as it should be, in a civilized world: if we can begin the day naked, stripped of all our pretenses, emptied of all but our beautiful souls, then just imagine what we can do later.

And that is what she gave us. The ability to continue walking naked for a while. She is crazy, and she seems to be developmentally disabled, as well, and therefore in some sense she is always naked. And yet she further bared herself at breakfast time, her ruined legs, her bulging veins, her age, her sex, her whole history writ and lisible and palpable and plaintive on her broken, beautiful body - and this gift she freely gave first thing in the morning.

How crazy is she? So crazy that every blessing she so graciously offers seems like the first blessing I ever received, like I am new baptized. So crazy that no matter which version of her story of her life she tells I see equal parts Christ the priest and Christ crucified: what is true remains true, and what is extraneous falls away; what remains is her inner light, and her beautiful human dignity, the divine birthright that no one can strip away, regardless of the hour, or the day, or whether she slept by the train tracks or at the Hilton. Being crazy in the way she is crazy is her ministry: He is right there for us in her; of that I have no question. It is not symbolic, and it is not a stretch. She suffers so that the rest of us can learn who Jesus is through her; she suffers so that the rest of us can know what humility means. And if we don't learn anything from her, that is our fault. The amount of love she has for God - her father and friend and brother and mother and book and blanket and security while she endures the latest robbing or the most recent Sorry We Can't Help You - as she understands Him, and for any person she encounters any day, ever, in her life, is astonishing. --And she is such a piece of trash that more than 99 per cent of people would not even see her as they went through their day. She is not a blessing to them; she is either invisible or a hindrance to something or other. Some of them someday will speak to a poor person; others will continue to send 50 bucks every six months to United Way or the Red Cross; and some will always continue to believe that there is something special about them that keeps them rich and others poor. In my opinion, it is something nowhere near as special as the thing which keeps our dear lady of the pancakes poor, and keeps us all hoping she'll show up again soon for breakfast and bless the beginning of our day with all the reminders of God and love she keeps tucked inside her heart, her shoes, her pants, her head, her sweater, her jacket, her cart, her blanket, her plastic bags, and her diminished expectations. She already knows where God is: where you can't see him so easily. She already trusts all day, every day. If only we could trust that we could meet a lady like her today.

Fr Tom's Funeral

Today I went to the funeral Mass for Fr Tom Kraft, OP (see his Caring Bridge page here and a lovely tribute to him on the Catherine of Siena Institute blog here) at St Dominic's in Benicia. The funeral was absolutely beautiful, and the great love which so many people from so many places have for this gentle and loving man was palpable. He will be missed terribly, but we can all hope that just a fraction of his generosity and loving kindness has rubbed off on those he touched. There was a lunch after in the parish hall, and the only people I knew weren't in there, so I was sitting by myself. An older, retired Dominican, Fr Vic, sat down by me, and we had the most beautiful conversation, and I hope I get to see him again around here! He was at Blessed Sacrament in Seattle back in the 50s or so, and he has retired three times so far, but it looks like this last one 'took.' He was a lovely man, and he also gave me a bit of Dominican history here, which was nice because it so easily gets eclipsed by the Franciscans'.

Before I left for the service, a guy, Eulices, delivered a washer for 50-. A couple weeks ago, our washer and water heaters stopped working in the same week. The dryer was already extinct by that time and, actually, one water heater was still functional, but our new volunteer, Terry, a retired union guy and still a card- (and hat- and shirt-) carrying Wobbly, told us it was a lost case, as well, and that we might only have a few more days of any hot water. We bit the bullet on the water heaters, as he said there was no point in buying used ones. He got a company to donate one completely and give us a reduced price on the second, and then he donated all the labor to move and install them.

That, however, allowed showers and dishwashing to continue, but none of our guests is employed, so using the laundromat is not feasible for them, and I've tried washing jeans and towels in a bathtub before, and let me assure you: it doesn't work. Enter me and Craigslist, and Eulices' ad wherein he mentions that he could deliver in the area! Thank God! So he came this morning, and he also said he would bring by a bike sometime for our earn-a-bike program for day laborers! It turns out he is unemployed himself, laid off three weeks ago from being a hotel manager. He has gone to many interviews with no luck, and now changed his resume (dumbed down, he called it) to sound less qualified - and therefore cheaper.

We also received an enormous TV yesterday out in Castro Valley, with two futons, a little table, lots of linens and various other stuff. The lady even rented a UHaul to move it in! Thursday happens to be our day to pick up at the food bank, and then after that our food-distribution day (we topped the last two weeks of 145 people with a total of about 160; last year at this time it was about 50 people a week), so we had extra volunteers around to help us move the stuff into the truck and then into the house. Michael set the old TV on the sidewalk, and it took about 30 seconds for someone to ask if they could take it.

All in all, yesterday was a long, busy day, but a great one. Today was sad buy joyful, and it was so good to see Fr Daniel and Jesson from Blessed Sacrament. Jesson is the amazing liturgist for the parish, but he also spent years working with the dying with the Missionaries of Charity in India, and he used that gift and experience to take care of Fr Tom in his last difficult weeks. Fr Tom's suffering is over, and he is gone, but there are many deeply, deeply beautiful people at Blessed Sacrament, and Fr Tom's charity, goodness, and profound gentleness of heart lives on in them. I hope they know how special they are, and how special a community they have made.

Like Lipstick on Schadenfreude

I don't know how people like Andrew Sullivan or Ariana Huffington do it, how they write opinion about the state of politics day after day after day. I can still get my head around the idea of a print - including electronic print - reporter amassing and distilling facts from wire services and colleagues in the field to come up with 'Polls Show Prohibition Costing Hoover Crucial Votes' or 'Hearst Deal Likely to Solidify Roosevelt's Lead.' But as truly insane and lamentable as things (what things? nearly all of them! pick one, and just see if it's not insane and lamentable!) are now in this country, and this election, I am incredulous that anyone with an analytical, rational, or even humane bent can be calm enough to render opinion on all this obscenity. Admittedly, I don't get paid for it, which might well be a great tonic for wordlessness, but I'm verklempt. Vollständig. I can't begin to think about it properly in its entirety, let alone take an opinion.

That being said, as the Sarah Palin circus grinds on twenty-four hours a day, the one thing I am absolutely certain of is that I feel sick for her, and I also feel sorry (although more mitigatedly so) for McCain. When her nomination was announced, my first reaction was that it was patently a slick and dirty tactical move: the Democratic Convention seemed very successful, galvanizing millions of exhausted and angry voters. So the Republicans timed this bizarre announcement to take a bit of that attention away.

And that succeeded. She was a crazy pick, an unknown who had figured nowhere on McCain's short list. Plus, unlike those (Above-) Average White Guys McCain was considering, she was a woman, a (rather fertile) mother, a hottie, an elsewherian, and politically quite distinct from McCain. Like Reagan or Bush II, and unlike McCain, for Palin there is a set of ideas on which she will not compromise, and which undergird all her opinions, and which must always be beyond discussion or negotiation. We have seen that there are plenty of voters who can relate to that, if, admittedly, sometimes in the 'I don't know nothin bout art, but I know what I like' manner.

My first reaction was that, being ostensibly a tactical move, it would be short lived. It would serve its purpose of notoriety, exultation, hairstyle commentary and scandal, and then when the attention had died down in a couple weeks, the McCain campaign would find a way to release her back into the wilds of Alaska and settle down with a more predictable, truly marriageable partner. Rural grassroots support for Palin would carry over to the new VP candidate easily, provided a convincing exit narrative had been contrived and managed adroitly. The new candidate would continue to mention Mrs. Palin and her values, and she would continue to be a presence in the campaign, heroic, lionized, as though she had actually died for the struggle. He would promise to uphold her - and 'the American Public's - ideals as he took up her mantle. She would live on as a Photoshopped patron saint, her all-too-human imperfections fallen away effortlessly in post-mortem hagiography and cable-news apathy.

But that didn't happen. Or it hasn't happened yet. And while I do not for a second believe McCain should have picked her (nor that it was McCain who did), nor that she should have accepted, her precipitous rise to stardom based, apparently, on looks, maternity, domestic oil production, and an antagonistic relationship to northern fauna, has, in addition to showing how little news is actually possible to unearth on a 24-hour news station, catapulted this very average madonna-executive into the vicious world of international sarcasm. Every aspect of Sarah Palin to which we have access has been vilified ad nauseum. Even her pregnant daughter and her jock boyfriend/sudden fiance are global laughing-stocks. I may find the boyfriend an atrocious little boy personally, but that is of course irrelevant for very many reasons (just to start, neither of them are running for anything except cover, and neither are responsible for the choices of their elders, let alone the Republican Party), and I would have known nothing about him, his (18-year-old's) stance on matrimony, his sporting preferences, his measurements, his academic record, his misogyny, or his apparent willful ignorance had McCain's handlers not proposed this wild scheme to Palin, nor she accepted. We are all idiots, sinners, bad friends, worse enemies, and only cautious good-doers: that two average rural high-school students are now in the position of being lampooned and excoriated globally for being two average rural high school students is disgusting, and something that should trouble us all.

***Break in the middle of this long post: Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Atlantic said something similar and different here, so if you are tired with my position, or my crappy way of expounding it, you can go there, and have a different exposition of a different argument which comes out to a similar injunction: to not be so bloody mean. Or something. Close.

Part of my point is that we're all imperfect, and we all do stupid things, immoral things, and tasteless things. The majority of us are fortunate in that usually only about twenty other people know about them. And while I do not think Mrs. Palin is without culpability in any of this - she is an adult; she could have said no - whatever it is that motivated her assent does not mean that what she is experiencing now, as arguably the most famous person on earth, is to be relished. It is as lamentable as the rest of the heretofore unimaginable crap which daily assaults us.

For me, it was terrible to see her with Katie Couric. She looked at times like she was going to cry, and she was so nervous that even with her notes she frequently couldn't form complete sentences. Instead, she strung together repetitive dependent clauses and catch-phrases that had nothing to do with the question asked. For me it wasn't sport; it was rather like canned hunting. She may be a nice lady, or she may be an execrable human; she may be bright, and she may be utterly incurious; she may be both, always, at the same time. And it may be the case that it was nothing but hubris and a thirst for self-aggrandizement at any cost that drove her to accept the nomination. Manifestly, however, whatever her innate and cultivated aptitudes, and however much one agrees with or loathes her values, she is not ready for Vice- or real Presidency.

McCain is old enough to have said,' What, wait: --who??' and insist that the Party let Palin's family, her political experience, and her global curiosity mature a decade or so before inviting her into national politics. And McCain, as the Presidential candidate for the Party, the person who would have to work with the Vice-President for up to eight years, would, under ideal circumstances, have been able to, expected to, and insistent upon, personally vetting all potential candidates. She, likewise, could have reiterated the famous 'thanks but no thanks' and gracefully suggested that she had a few years more of study, and a few family matters to attend to, before taking the national stage. But, as fame now consistently outscores looks, smarts, and likability in polls of what Americans would prefer to have, her acceptance of the nomination is well within the bounds of normal American behavior. It may be sad, but it is hardly counter-cultural.

And it is because of that fact, the fact of her more strident, obvious, palpable, and less Photoshoppable humanity (especially as versus 30-year political veterans) - not because I agree with her on international or domestic issues, not because I see myself in her womanhood or motherhood, not because I, too, have a complex family, have made mistakes or misjudgments, have succeeded at some things at the expense of others, or have neglected to cultivate parts of myself - that I deeply empathize with her and her family right now, being the brunt of jokes no normal person (even a gorgeously postmodern, outlandishly cynical, Liberal one) could ever have never imagined, every detail of her life scrutinized in absurd fashion, her sartorial choices alternately mimicked and lampooned, her marginal, symbolic, token, silent role as envisioned, extrapolated to its (not entirely illogical) end as potential Ruler of the Last Great Empire.

I hate the whole thing. She shouldn't be there. She is suffering, her family is suffering, friends of friends of her family are suffering. And the country, all the millions and millions of us who are doing no-so-very-well-thank-you-at-the-moment-already will suffer tremendously should someone of so little curiosity and rationality end up as head cook, let alone Captain, of this blighted Narrenschiffe. -- Look, Margaret Thatcher was unique. Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto, Tansu Ҫiller, and Megawati Sukarnoputri were unique, and I'm only picking up the notable notables. There doesn't have to be a woman, or a black guy, or a gay guy, or an ex-bishop, or a prole, or relative of a prole, or a person with a disability, or a person with a large family, or no dependents, or a preference to baklava over awamat -- or a Poodle-studding business or a temporary obsession with lapidary. There just has to be a truly exceptional, historically grounded, ethically centred, utterly visionary, multiply capable, unfailingly prudential and unwaveringly calm individual of whatever genetic or gonadic makeup.

Do I think it was a brilliant cynical move? Sure: it got them what they wanted, which was attention. Do I think we all suffer when those in power think tactically rather than strategically, and of Party rather than country or world? You bet. And I'll see you in Paraguay!

The Genius of Compassion

Part of what excites me about the company I'll be working for is their belief, consonant with mine, that we are all utterly, radically, equal in worth. I think most Americans can sign on to the notion that a guy with two hands is not of substantively greater ontological standing, or possessed of significantly richer human dignity, than the guy next door who lost one of his in a boating accident. Where I think they stop acceding in large part is the point at which the argument includes individuals with little perceived 'productive' value. We have on the one hand an instinctive fear of anything different, which can certainly be overcome by rationality, personal experience, and openness. Unrelated to that, however, is a troubling enculturated rating scale of humanity particularly present in the United States with its historical emphasis on productivity and industriousness and the lionization of the self-made man. In this schema, someone who doesn't or can't earn as much as another is quite literally worth less than him. The problem arises when this purely financial equation is applied to other realms.

I know with deep certainty from my own experience that we all have our gifts and disabilities. The array is unique to the individual. We are thus all people-with-disabilities. Put in outdated terms, we are all in our own ways 'disabled persons,' 'retarded' relative to others in certain areas. Every genius has things he will never be competent at, just as every person with more limited intellectual abilities has areas in which he can excel. I think most people can calmly accept that a million-dollar football player could be great at running and tackling but less adept at theoretical cosmology, and that a person with ALS in a wheelchair might be stellar at the latter but wretched at the former. The point at which I think it becomes difficult is when the argument for equal inherent worth and dignity includes people who are limited in both physical and intellectual pursuits. We can see that Stephen Hawking is clearly earning his keep; so, too, is the running back whose physically punishing job will have health consequences for the rest of his life.

But I think that when we look at the gifts which we ourselves are most grateful to have, those that bring the most richness to our lives, they are seldom either grandiose or superficial ones, like having a knack for making millions, being able to run marathons, being a genius in one area, or having impeccable taste. The gifts we feel most grateful for, and which we tend to believe are in fact constitutive of our deeper selves, are the small, everyday ones, like tolerance, patience, sincerity, fairness, trustingness, and empathy. And those sorts of little yet profound gifts are present in every sort of person.

They are, moreover, productive - if, admittedly, not necessarily in a financial, or secular-Calvinist sort of way. People who are able to empathize readily with others produce a different atmosphere - in the home, at work, in friendships, and in the larger society. Those who are able to trust produce reciprocal trust in others, leading to honest communication and genuine communion. Anyone who can accept others as they are, without condescension, judgmentalism, or fear, stands a great chance at creating meaningful ties with others, which in turn can produce a better, fairer, kinder, more decent world. I don't think it takes a genius to see that.

Institutions vs. Institutionalized Strengthiness

I got a new job, which I am very excited about. It is as Job Coach for people with disabilities, for a great, passionate, very cool organization, whose values mesh up with mine very well. I had applied for a similar position with a different organization previously - and, I don't know, something, or, truly, a few somethings just weren't right as I went through parts of the interview process. And neither my passion nor my political or intellectual position on issues related to the job mattered at that place: it was to be a Job and nothing more. After having worked in many, many restaurants and seen the kind of ardor, dedication, and self-sacrifice routinely demanded of even those on the lowest rungs of the kitchen ladder, it was quite disturbing to find that, in a position where human psyches and human hearts would be affected as much by my approach as by my execution of the position, neither actually mattered. I still knew that I would rock at the job and be a great asset for the individuals I would support if hired, so I waited to see if I was called to the final level of interviews. But I wasn't, and I felt it was all to the best.

So now, I am excited. I met one woman I'm going to work with, T. She lived, for thirty years, in one of those horrific institutions we imagine don't exist anymore, only recently having been placed into community living. She was so great at her job in the institution's sheltered workshop that she earned about four times what she was 'supposed to' every month. Now, she has her own home that she decorated in her own style, a social life, hobbies and interests she can pursue, assistants who help her out with things she can't do for herself, and she is soon to get a job at a department store, where I will liaise between her and the company, and work to help her understand her responsibilities and succeed at her position.

The day I met her, my new boss and one of T.'s supported-living assistants were with us as we walked around the mall, but a major point of the trip was to see if T. and I would be a good match, so I hung back by her and tried to let her and her curiosity about the new person lead the interaction. After soliciting compliments on her new shoes, T.'s first real question to me was what I thought a person should do when someone is harassing or being mean to him or her. I asked her what she thought someone should do, and she said she would just ignore them, that some people just do mean things and you have to accept that and try not to let it bother you.

Alright, it's a simple truth. Fine. Ignore mean people and your day goes smoother. But being harassed or made fun of in the way T. meant it, in the way she has experienced much of her life, simply because she looks and acts as she does, is not something most of us have to contend with. Nor are our experiences with it so much a part of how we view the world, and our place within it, that we would want to bring it up with someone we had just met. It's not pressing for us. Being rejected in some fashion multiple times a day is simply not a risk most of us face.

But then, neither is that sort of open, heartfelt communication something most of us are willing to risk. Many of our disabilities are such that they keep us bound up inside our own perspectives, our own minds, in a functional isolation paralleling T.'s decades-long real isolation, but in our case masked by an abundance of superficial relations. We can't bear the risk of being truly ourselves and truly vulnerable with others, so we frequently fail to achieve true communion with them. We refuse, even after much time with a person, to lay our fears and weaknesses bare to even a fraction of the extent to which T. was willing to do unreservedly from the very start. We close those parts of ourselves off - the weak and the small and the yearning and the sad parts - that people with obvious disabilities are more often unable to hide. We are just as weak, and just as dependent on other people and community, as 'they' are, but out of our own fears of rejection we steadfastly refuse to present that side of ourselves to others.

Hopeless Causes, Claretians, and Charisms

'La caridad me urge, me impele, me obliga a gritar.' -St. Antonio Maria Claret

'You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.' - St. Bernard of Clairvaux

'To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience.' - St. Teresa of Avila

'Arm yourself with prayer rather than a sword; wear humility rather than fine clothes.' - St. Dominic



With all that being said, in regards to my statement in the last post about there being no one-fits-all spirituality, I do not mean to say that some truths cannot be universal, nor either that admiring and utilizing elements of other traditions is inherently wrong or fatuous. But trading one inadequately-investigated tradition for superficial adherence to another, one set of misapprehended truths for another yet more confusing system, is every bit as goofy as Chesterton makes it sound. Familiarity is a no more sufficient basis for renouncing a spiritual tradition than it is for divorcing a spouse or vowing never again to read Dostoevsky or eat ice cream.

Augustine defended his use of Plotinus by likening it to the Jews taking the gold out of Egypt, and varied things from different sources may have especial resonance to individual seekers. What is necessary when confronted with all these sparkling jewels is a determined refusal either to make lead out of them or to appropriate what seems convenient or commonsensical while gravely mistaking its essence.

In that vein, there are as many different spiritualities available within Catholicism as there are Catholics. John Dunne, John Dear, John Main, and the fourteenth-century Dominican John Tauler have not only the same name but a shared focus on contemplation and meditation that would not be entirely unfamiliar to a real Buddhist. Martin de Porres, Vincent de Paul, Francis of Assisi, Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Antonio Claret, Cesar Chavez, Jean Vanier, and Simone Weil can give anyone a good start who wishes he could combine his love of the poor and the suffering with his love of God.

And this is where the saints come in. There are two primary ways to look at the saints. One is as Friends of God. They did so well in this lifetime that they have God's ear in the next, so while you are praying to God directly that the Red Sox please, please, please take the pennant this time, you can also suggest to St. Jude that this may be the sort of hopeless case worthy of his attention as an advocate. If you are struggling in school, you can ask a brilliant scholar like Aquinas to help you along, or you can petition someone who battled the same challenges to at least give you the courage to keep plugging away diligently.

The other way to see them is as Heroes for Grownups. Saints can indeed be intimidating: they were saints, after all, and we are probably not. But each is as memorable for what he or she overcame as for what s/he accomplished, and meditating on those struggles is often where we can gain the most. They were also individuals, with distinct tendencies and temperaments, walking very different paths toward union, and just as we feel greater sympathy toward particular people we meet in daily life, so, too, will different saints' stories seem more or less apropos of our own journeys, strivings, and weaknesses.

I don't know why people are scared of saints. I think particularly if we refuse to idolize them, to make them into something they were not (i.e., perfect), we can see in their examples how far a small, flawed, and eminently human being - possibly a human being who shared some of our own fears and failures - can get in this life by not letting those fears and weaknesses surmount him.

"'Et tu, Brute,' rief Er auf Lateinisch

--wie est dort die Landesprache war."

I've apologized once, and I've apologized twice, and I've apologized more than that, too, for when my rhetoric verges over into the preachy ~

~ See, the thing is, much as I might love Dominicans, I grew up when and where I grew up, none of which admittedly were the best of all possible places or times and any of which maybe should have been the thirteenth or fourteenth or seventeenth century but were not and, accordingly, while I have absolutely no bad feelings whatsoever about 'prædicare' since I can't speak any Latin other than 'Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat,'* I cannot help but wince, shake a little, and discreetly and in an eminently ladylike fashion vomit inside my mouth from smelling the imagined leeching vapors of petroleum by-products from obstreperous and designed-to-impress synthetic altar-flower arrangements basted with 'Inspired-by-Nature' 'fresheners' at 7 AM sharp every Sunday anytime I find myself within 26 miles of 'preachy'~

So it is that every time I go off on caritas, agape, empathy, compassion, love, the Beatitudes, the Song of Songs, Bernard of Clairvaux, Nagarjuna, Dostoevsky, Avalokitesvara, or even Common Decent Neighborliness, I always feel as though I have too much product and too many extensions in my hair, too overwhelming a desire to restate endlessly the obvious with an ever-increasing lack of delicacy, decency, and eloquence, too great a tendency to tripthongize my dipthongs, and a garish and enormous Daughters of the Confederacy pin tacked to my (it would be, under the circumstances) abundant bosom.

So, as a sop to myself and those of you who find my exhortations as tiring as I do, here is a panel from my favorite comic strip writer, Peter Blegvad, whose Leviathan ran in the Independent and to which I was as addicted when I lived in Greece and Suffolk as I was to Gauloises Bleues and those pull-out, frame-able sections about minerals, indigenous beetles, and traffic patterns in the Sunday El País.


*'It's not the heat; it's the humidity.'

More from our Correspondent in Geneva

Well, very excitingly (to me, anyway) today is St. Jane Frances de Chantal's day. It is exciting to me not just because I love her and her story, but because also this not only brings us back to Savoy (yikes! who would have thought!) and Geneva and all its Calvinists, and gets back to that issue of historicity that I snarkily mentioned a few posts back. Which I'll get to a few lines down, or a few posts down the road, but first: St. Jane Frances, or Ste. Jeanne Françoise, if you like your French names to stay in French.


She is sort of another St. Francis' St. Clare: his student, his peer, his friend, his spiritual companion, and his travel partner on a long and profound journey. This time, it is a François-Francis instead of a Francesco one, the sixteenth century instead of the thirteenth, the Renaissance rather than the Middle Ages, and a Francis born of Savoyard nobility rather than of wealthy Umbrian merchants. This Francis, Francis de Sales, was a carefree and competent student, then lawyer, and then a bishop, rather than an apathetic student turned playboy-dandy turned mendicant, and before joining and guiding Jane Frances on her spiritual journey, he set out like Francis of Assisi on a way of life quite unlike that his family had intended for him, turning his back on his wealth like Francis, but going over to Geneva to convert Calvinists à la St. Dominic instead of founding an order à la the Franciscan Francis.


Both St. Francis de Sales' and St. Jane Frances' stories are stories of waiting. Francis felt a strong vocation before he went to law school, but he waited and waited, wanting to make sure it was truly a vocation rather than his ego leading him. St. Jane was a young devout widow with children when she felt overcome with a desire to serve God more fully. When Jane asked the now Bishop Francis to undertake her spiritual direction, he counseled her to patience: 'I had to know fully what God himself wanted. I had to be sure that everything in this should be done as though his hand had done it.' Just as he had waited for his calling and for his Calvinists, and as he would later for his new sister's convent, Francis counseled Jane again to wait when she told him of her overwhelming desire to take vows: 'Be patient until you get the wings of a dove, and then you can fly. I am very much afraid that you are a little too ardent and headlong, that you pursue too many desires rather too eagerly. Courage, my dear sister; if our will belongs to God, we ourselves are surely His.'

And this moderation was an essential element of the institute, and then order, the two founded in 1610, the Order of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin. So that religious aspirants of older age or less robust health, 'strong souls with weak bodies,' might be able to fulfill their calling, Francis and Jane dispensed with the sort of physical austerities Poor Clares and other orders endured. St. Francis advised the community's new members and superior, 'Let your humility be boundless; let it be the source of your virtues; let it be manifested in all your actions, till gentleness towards your neighbor become natural to you by force of your frequent use of it.' Later, St. Jane described the charism of the order as essentially 'a spirit of deep humility before God and of great gentleness toward our neighbor.'

This gentleness was modeled already by Jane the wife and widow as she fed the town's poor and sick, and in the very gentleness of the rule itself: St. Jane accepted into the order a woman in her eighties and those young and old women whose infirmities would have barred them from religious life were it not for the inclusiveness of Salesian spirituality and its insistence that all people, regardless of health, wealth, status, occupation, age, or education, are called to love and holiness, and that we can manifest our love in small but profound acts of mercy and compassion. As Thomas Dailey said in Praying with Francis de Sales, 'Enabled and ennobled by this love, human beings are capable of much more than might well be imagined. They are capable of living a true life of devotion in the midst of worldly pursuits. They are capable of giving birth, through faith, to a new culture of life and of love.'

Also, unlike Savonarola, Francis de Sales in The Devout Life reveals that he thought games and jokes and dancing were okay, if in moderation: 'I am inclined to say about balls what doctors say of certain articles of food, such as mushrooms and the like--the best are not good for much; but if eat them you must, at least mind that they are properly cooked,' and 'if you would dance or play rightly, it must be done as a recreation, not as a pursuit, for a brief space of time, not so as make you unfit for other things.' I like anyone who has bad things to say about mushrooms.

'Humility Is Attentive Patience.'

-Simone Weil

I am entirely aware that sometimes on here when I go off on a tirade about compassion, my diction can get a bit too soaring or florid. Sometimes both, frankly, and when I get to the inestimable consequences of compassion my tone is apt to run from hortatory to incantatory through beatific and on to splenetic long before righting itself and sticking nicely to the pragmatic.

However.

My excuse is that what I am talking about is every bit as powerful as I make it seem. It is like a drug: its effects are that shocking, marked, and fast acting. And yet, most of us do not avail ourselves of it, except perhaps with those closest to us. And that stands to reason. Family members are on the one hand easier to understand than those we know less well; on the other, our hobby and pool of defendants would quickly evaporate were we to spend all our time divorcing and disinheriting our relatives. Given that fact, it makes sense at some point simply to accept that Aunt Jane always talks to much about Shih-tzus and Cousin David will probably never fully surmount his persecution complex.

Fine.

But leaving aside altruism (which we already were, anyway; admit it), it benefits every individual's own psyche to stop seeing others as failed versions of ourselves. Even if we share some similar goals - getting ahead in the company, working on our marriages, shopping less, not drinking anymore, being more involved in the community, cooking at home more often, working out again, whatever they might be - we are going at them with radically differing histories, distinct personalities, weaknesses, and strengths, and perhaps for vastly different reasons in the first place.

It was probably Thérèse of Lisieux who had this additional insight into handling difficult interactions with irritating interlocutors, particularly those whose failings seem most obvious to us, those whom we know enough about to wish instinctively to judge in their failure: Yes, maybe he did do it again -- but what about all the times he succeeded, and we weren't there, and he was too modest to gloat, or even tell us quietly of his unnoticed, private success?

I think looking at the evident weaknesses of others from that perspective is profound. We don't even need to do any uncomfortable self-inquiry to come up with something we ourselves recently struggled with, which is an equally useful but more obvious and labor-intensive strategy. We just have to acknowledge that we can't possibly know everything about another, and that that other might well be doing some rather good stuff while we're not around. And, that he might additionally have the virtue of humility, and thus even be worth emulating in that respect!

I say it is like a drug because whatever method we use to get there once we feel a sympathy with our brother and his situation, the anger dissolves just as surely as morphine kills pain. If you can imagine that someone is driving aggressively (I use driving so much because it does truly render people insane when they are trapped in their little boxes and feel so powerless about many factors and any little thing can seem a tremendous injustice) because his wife just had a baby or because he needs to throw up, you immediately lose the anger. If someone's stereo is playing crappy music too loud, it's not much of a stretch to recall that most of us were young at one time, too, and wanted to be cool and to display our coolness when possible so that it could be validated by others, as coolness, just like wit, style, or 'success,' is a cultural commodity which can only be conferred on an aspirant by the recognition of its presence by a consensus of the relevant audience. He's young, the music's bad, I'm not his target audience: so, so what? After the next light I can go back to listening to the riveting story about heirloom orchids in Florida.

I like the Thérèse suggestion because even if we were never young ourselves, and even if we can come up with absolutely no failings of our own to gain us conditional entry into some grandiose vision of the Mystical Brotherhood of Common Human Frailty, we can easily imagine that the individual tiresomely prattling on to us about the after-market package he bought for his Lexus could just have donated to the Red Cross, and is thus as short of sense as he is glucose and the blood to carry it to his brain.

The Peasant, the Blizzard, and the Rock Star

I was talking on the phone today and mentioned an ad I saw on TV: Dairy Queen is giving 100% of profits from sales of their Blizzard dessert on one day, August 7, to Children's Miracle Network. I said how great I thought this was, as usually such promotions run something like this: 'Come in and buy a Grande Meal/auto detail package/living room suite and we'll donate fifty cents/twenty-five cents/ten percent from your purchase to Children's Hospital/breast cancer research/flood victims.' It sounds good; they're giving something, but just as I don't notice ten or twenty percent off when I buy something on sale, a couple shekels in that context is a negligible contribution. Dairy Queen's drive is only one day, and it's only on one item, but the Blizzard is a best seller (and a delicious one!), which means that there are millions of people who would already be buying one that day. Moreover, there are millions more potential buyers such as myself, who don't tend to eat Dairy Queen except on road trips, who might be persuaded to drive out of our way on that day and enjoy one, knowing that it is going to benefit not only our tastebuds but children with birth defects.

The person on the other end of the line agreed that one-hundred percent was unusual and good. She then said that what got her disturbed sometimes, beyond the transparently less-than-altruistic twenty-five-cent contributions, was benefit rock concerts. She reasoned that rock stars, being rock stars, had millions and millions of dollars at their disposal, so why ask their less-wealthy fans to chip in for a donation which they could cover themselves quite easily? I said I was sure some do, but even with those who do not, the same principle applies as in the Blizzard case: rock fans, being rock fans, are already going to go and see their favorite star, so why not give the money away when they do? Moreover, there is the other demographic of those who would not have bothered to go were the money not going to the flood victims or the domestic violence program. Admittedly there is a dose of self-serving in either case: the band, restaurant, or furniture store looks good by donating anything, and that may have an effect of residual good-will amongst future customers - but that does not diminish the reality of the good done by the financial contribution made in the company's name. There is still an additional $100,000 or $1,000,000 in the coffers of the charity.

Additionally, none of us can do everything, not even rock stars. It may be a bit counter-intuitive and, well, creepy, that the members of the Black-Eyed Peas have more money than most people I will ever encounter, but not everyone is called to poverty, and not everyone has to give all their money away, or even the bulk of it, to do good. For those of us who are quite concerned about social issues, it can seem bleak and hopeless at times, since there are so many problems, and so many needs. We wish we could solve everything everywhere in the world, when in fact we cannot as individuals solve even one problem in one area. You can either sit and lament this fact and cry into your Chianti, driving the bartender insane with your self-indulgent whining, or you can resign yourself to there being great needs in many areas and then picking one to focus on. You can resolve to do what you can, finite, inadequate, and perhaps unsatisfying as your abilities and means may be.

If you think poverty is nasty and unnecessary, however deep your disgust at the global status quo you are statistically unlikely ever to hand over the keys to a new donkey to a Kyrgyz peasant. And you, not being a rock star, presumably lack the millions in startup money to found a new charity devoted to bringing donkeys to Central Asians. There are, however, millions of struggling people right here, and thousands of ways to do what you can in a way that makes sense with your life and fits in with your other obligations.

Let's take Poverty, since we're already there. There are both causes and effects; you can't solve them all, so you can pick one. Education, literacy, hunger, addiction, homelessness, violence, mental illness, loneliness, lack of health care, etc.: maybe one feels more urgent to you; maybe one seems more related to your existing skill set; maybe one would really push your skills in new directions and stretch you as a person. In any event, however small your contribution, you could make it today, rather than waiting for a donkey, a saddle, and a ticket to Kyrgyzstan to drop through your roof.

When I was at the animal shelter this was something we all struggled with all the time. We were there because we realized the enormity of the problem and we really cared about animals. We only worked four days a week because the work was so awful that management felt that three days of spiritual and emotional detox were necessary to keep us halfway sane. Still, we were there because we cared for all animals, wanted to do what we could - which was never enough even with the limited number of creatures under our direct care. What kept me going (for as long as it did, at any rate), despite the awful knowledge that we weren't making a dent at all in the larger picture of animal abuse and neglect, was the reality that with these particular individuals at this exact moment we were making a difference, and that their time with the other volunteers and staff and me was far, far better than what they had been subjected to previously.

And that's all we can do: pick a problem, then pick an aspect of the problem, and then roll up our sleeves and set to, in full realization that although we are not omnipotent, we are each truly invaluable. You can't beat yourself up for not curing cancer when you were busy bringing a housebound old lady her food-bank delivery and perhaps sole human contact for that day.

'Dear Prudence

And in the tradition of Sunday posts wherein WNYC's 'On the Media' on the way home from church always seems to relate directly to whatever I had been thinking earlier in the day, here goes:

'On the Media' was on the Internet today. Well, it's always on the Internet if you want to find it, at http://www.onthemedia.org, but this time it was on the subject of the Internet. Here is the link for 'On the Media' on the Internet, on the Internet.

The show was an exploration of aspects of 'digital democracy,' in which such issues as maturity, anonymity, restraint, tolerance, hate, and even my old stand-by, compassion, arose. Surely our print selves, even with name attached and bound in book form, are not identical to our living, feeling, physical, social selves; the relationship between the two is, in many cases, increasingly tenuous the further away from the nexus of social reality, relationships, name, and reputation the writer gets. And anonymous comments on the Internet are about as void of social context as anything could be.

Some people cleave to politeness and consideration regardless of venue. On the other hand, while Ira Glass on the show told of vicious, hurtful things written anonymously to the subjects of a sad and deeply personal vignette on the 'This American Life' comments section, I've seen shockingly and unconscionably mean postings on web forums about religious life and vocations, in which troubled individuals pour out their hatred by calling non-habited religious, or religious of this or that community, all sorts of disgusting things. In the latter case, I should think the self-selection involved, in which all readers are presumably hoping for and working toward the same thing, would have precluded such puerile and nasty behavior.

And yet anonymity, and by extension all the Web, seem to offer an unlimited license to let the Id run free, to discard normal conventions and even ethics in pursuit of untrammeled expression of whatever caliber. I don't know that it's gotten worse in general, or that there are simply so many more people using it, but it does seem like now a greater number of rational arguments than before in every type of venue quickly degenerate into 'You're just stupid,' to which the counterargument these days runs, succinctly, 'F- you!'

...greet the brand new day.'

'It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.'

Said Benjamin Franklin (and you already know I love him recklessly), who preceded it with 'Poverty often deprives a man of spirit and virtue' and a semicolon, and tonight on the local NPR station KUOW a host had a brief interview with a Mercer Island pastor who wants to host a new Tent City at her church (and thought she was going to). The host asked Rev. Leslie Ann Knight, the United Methodist minister on whose church's property the encampment would be sited what she thought of the residents' protestations that such use of the church's property would force Mercer Islanders to look at portable toilets and showers. The reverend answered that those objections were not factually accurate, as the camp would be situated on the church grounds such that those facilities would not be visible from the street. She then went on with a bit of the humanitarian stuff one would anticipate and hope for, but I just want to climb under the covers into my pulpit for a minute here and attempt to digest the inhabitants' basis for resistance.

The interview was on today because Mercer Island residents have just filed a new lawsuit attempting to prohibit the city from allowing the camp within its borders. From court documents quoted in the Olympian newspaper: "Neighbors will be forced to look at Honey Buckets, temporary shower facilities, tents and an array of equipment necessary to serve the camp," the lawsuit says. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer likewise reports that residents complain 'the homeless camp would endanger the "comfort, repose, health and safety" of nearby residents, in part because the camp would be a "visual blight" on neighboring homes. It also asserts that the city of Mercer Island issued a permit for Tent City in violation of city law.'

The 'health and safety' issues have indeed been addressed by the Mercer Island authorities - including law enforcement, which will have a regular presence at the encampment including 'routine walk-throughs' - and by all previous host jurisdictions of Tent City's various incarnations, and it is patent that neither is adversely affected by the temporary residence's presence. That, however, is a factual matter, and thus easily resolved. At least in theory.

'Comfort and repose,' however, are less amenable to objective measurement, and I believe the good citizens when they assert that they will be made uncomfortable by the presence of poor people visibly in their midst. I take them at their word that being 'forced to look at' so thin a veneer of civility, in the form of a portable toilet or camp shower, only feebly veiling the most basic and physical of human needs would perturb their repose.

But what else are we 'forced to look at' everyday? Thousands of things! Why should poverty be the one we refuse to admit into our line of sight?

Well, it's not. We see, if perhaps not look at, the poor every day. But unless you ride the bus or work at DSHS or the public defender's office or county hospital, the poorest of the poor are often conveniently arrayed in groups of one, thus obviating any need to register them consciously as part of a pattern. It's a lot like shoes: until you hang them over every door in the house by the 10s or 20s or 30s to prove a point to yourself, you don't really have to know you have 12 pairs of semi-identical square-toe black 2 1/2-inch-heel sling-backs.

And if you don't feel like proving a point to yourself, it might be hard to find a justification.

Unless the justification antecedes and supercedes the apparent matter-at-hand, such as mercy, or love, or compassion, might. And this is where I get cranky. I am not lying or exaggerating when I say the law-and-order issues are a straw man. All that stuff has been (tediously, thoroughly, exhaust/ingly/ively) covered in every 'concerned citizens' meeting ad nauseum since Tent City began. This is all about aesthetics, and not-in-my-backyard, and solecism, and apathy, and a terrible, horrible, blindingly unskillful misunderstanding of what Poverty in its deeper sense really looks like.

Poverty is saying 'I can't bear to be reminded of poor people having to shower, or poop.' Poverty is thinking 'My happiness is so brittle I can't risk it by looking on suffering.' Poverty is knowing that your late-summer luau-themed barbecue's ambiance would be utterly ruined by the sight of a homeless man shuffling back to camp eating a Slim Jim with two litres of Fanta (always cheaper than Coke!) tucked under his scabby arm.

Poverty is knowing the value of your house, but not the value of a man.

Again, I reiterate, every day we are forced to look at all manner of things. They may not register fully, as with one homeless person, or one stupid billboard, but in either case, the nature of vision being what it is, the majority of what gets processed by the optic nerves and the brain is information we haphazardly encounter, not stuff we asked for. I was 'forced' to look at three Hummers today. I think they are hideous, I think they offend terribly my refined aesthetic sensibilities: what redress do I have? The Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles more than once involitionally entered my field of vision: I am certain I shall never recover fully. I have likewise, despite my best efforts to the contrary, ocularly encountered orange plastic shoes, orange plastic flowers, 'Country Geese' as a decor element, 'Tuscan' toilets and 'Tuscan' subdevelopments, Unitarian lady ministers in pseudobatik two-piece ensembles with 'chunky' earrings, reality TV, 1960s architecture, 'flip-flops,' and people wearing their inside clothes outside.

Not to mention the green dumpster against which I was raped, the Albanian laborers in Athens serving as human donkeys with three-foot-high stacks of bricks laden on their bent backs, irreparably abused pets queued up for euthanasia at the animal shelter, the shooting we drove past on our way to register me for sixth grade at my new school, the three men beating up one guy on the freeway exit as I attempted to make it to a Nick Cave show in LA, the clear pure blue East Coast morning of September 11th, the black and hideous aftermath, the lover's hands reaching out to circle my neck, not caress my cheek: none of these I asked to see. None of these shall I ever fully surmount. --And these guys are worrying about Porta-Potties???

So the Bartender Says to the Horse --

Why the long face?

Alright, so I explained why I like and respect thinky atheists. But there are plenty of stinky atheists, too, and my bonhommerie is as stressed in thinking about them as it is with the feelgood self-help pseudopagans who take their spiritual direction alternately from 'Prosperity Gospel' quacks and shrink-wrapped plastic 'I Ching' sets from Barnes and Noble.

Part of the stinkiness I can't bear is their frequent supercilious meanness. Anybody who believes anything is dumb, not just different, wallowing smugly in willed ignorance, so restraint isn't called for: the idiots won't get the joke, anyway. Of course, religious people can be just as intolerant as this in their rhetoric, as well -- and knowledge of that fact is sometimes fodder for the mean atheists' lack of consideration. But for now I'm leaving uncharitable believers alone, since they really make my head bleed, and sticking with the angry atheists.

Now, before you say, 'And what about all those rants about Calvinists on here, Vif?', let me remind you they were not about real Calvinism nor even about John Calvin. When I go off on Calvinism it is about the entrenched and invisible secularized vestiges of Calvinism that underpin so many of our attitudes, habits, and neuroses here in the U.S. It's a bit like Althusser's ideology, a bit like Barthes' mythology, and a lot like a troublesome patch of morning glories which, despite having all the flowers and stems and leaves mowed down, are just as present as ever because their roots have already spread widely through the garden. You don't have to believe in the existence of God or John Calvin or even Geneva in order for these Calvinistic assumptions or aspirations to affect your view of culture, commensality, kindness, pleasure, and success. You just have to live in the United States for a while.

So, that having been resolved to all parties' satisfaction, my stinky atheist of the day is Mr. Eddie Izzard, who appears to believe that declaring his atheism over and over earns him a de facto Genius rating and the right to make jokes ridiculing the most heartfelt and sincere of beliefs. He likewise lampoons God and Jesus themselves in extended fashion as bumbling idiots, with Jesus as a sort-of sad sack sucker-Messiah who doesn't know what he is doing and doesn't much care.

Honestly, there are ways to do religious humor. I've seen plenty of stuff that succeeds mightily and yet doesn't offend even when it pokes fun at or contrasts particular beliefs or practices. And I don't just mean brilliant Jewish insider humor, but as well stuff from outside that yet manages to convey a level of respect for the subject. It is not impossible, not at all, but it requires subtlety, maturity - and compassion.

When people cry 'Is nothing sacred anymore???' they seldom intend their lament literally. Rather, it is a wish for a return to some measure of delicacy, consideration, and politesse: what most mean is 'Is nothing off-limits anymore? Is nothing private anymore?' and 'Is nothing beyond the bounds of decency and common courtesy anymore?' It has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with politeness.

And this is where Izzard's juvenile monologue about idiotic Creators and half-wit sons loses my interest. It was, and should have remained, settled a couple centuries ago that the natural sciences can tell us little of value about religion, and that religion likewise can tell us much about the cultivation of the soul but rather little about geology, or geometry, or cattle-breeding. That an individual has come to this epiphany in the 21st century and is shocked to find religion lacking in scientific insight (as in Izzard's version of Noah) just seems odd to me. A person can find himself unmoved by religion for various reasons, but that there is inadequate discussion of thermodynamics in John of the Cross is one, were it me, that I would feel slightly silly proffering as the crux of my atheism.

But I would also say that even if the individual believes the experiences of John, or Jonas, or Rumi or Rahman Baba to have been 'all in their heads,' ridiculing their interior experience, in addition to being uncharitable, mean-spirited, and thus indefensible morally, is also simply as stupid and pointless in a pragmatic sense as making fun of a friend who thinks he looks better in his new haircut than he does: it's his haircut; let him live in it. You have a right to your own path of haircut self-discovery, and if on it you decide you prefer to continue with the tried-and-true No. 3 in perpetuity, you absolutely are under no obligation to get a copy of your friend's style.

This reactionary approach moreover conduces to the sort of us-v.-them mentality that - you guessed it! - religion is famous, and endlessly parodied and excoriated, for: they're stupid, we're not, so join our club. That an atheist presumably above the fray should resort to the same dirty tactics he would quickly condemn in others is, while not shocking (since we're all only human) still lazy - and, again, puerile. I would cringe and wince and undoubtedly throw up a little in my mouth if I had to read my high school journals filled with every pithy quote from Camus and Gide and Rimbaud that I felt could serve to prop up my (age-appropriate, let me add) stance that Religion is idiotic crap for crappy idiots who like crappy things. Thank God no one gave me a microphone, because in my defensive and angry posture I, too, sounded a bit like a crappy idiot.

Although it helped me terrifically with French!

'Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past

Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus' --T.S. Eliot

So, on the day after the prudential judgment talk, while Fr. Fones was still at Blessed Sacrament (where you can attend a real live Dominican Rite Mass on 8.8.8), when I cornered him (which is what I do - when I can muster the courage, which is most of the time these days - with anyone religious or otherwise who is living out his or her vocation), he brought up Mother Teresa's view of those she served: that what she saw was the suffering and wounded Christ in each and every one of them.

She said it numerous times to different people, as that was precisely what compelled her to do what she did. But the version it brought to my mind was when a journalist asked her if she didn't have an ethical problem, or wasn't in some way in conflict with her faith, serving those who were dying of AIDS. Mother Teresa said something about not even understanding what he meant, and repeated that all she saw was the suffering Christ.

And a couple different aspects of that interaction really strike me as relevant to issues we face when addressing the problems of poverty and homelessness. One thing that is just terribly sad is that the reporter (I don't recall at all if it was a secular or religious reporter, big-time, small-town, male, female, or anything else) appears to be trying to create two classes, to separate himself and Teresa in their righteousness on the one hand from the dying sinner on the other. (Again, no idea whether he was really feeling that, or just playing devil's advocate to get a good quote, or perhaps even a gay man himself really hoping she was indeed as loving as he wanted to believe.)

The other issue it brought to my mind was how we look at 'those sorts of people' in general. I think very, very few, even among believers in Christ, manage to see glimpses of Him in the wretched of the earth. Fine: very few of us are saints, so that stands to reason. But we tend not even to see ourselves in them! That should be a much easier leap - and yet we so frequently see their suffering as proof not of our unity, shared longings, and common fears, but as clear signs of the gulf between us. To their fallenness we contrast our responsible jobs; to their lack of restraint we contrast our calm demeanor and good relations with coworkers; against their battles with addiction and petty crime we recall our sober investment practices and our determined, successful New Year's Weight-Loss Resolutions.

But I will repeat that any one of us is a finite number of tragedies away from our own version of just that level of despair. Some of us are broken more easily, some require decades of horror and abuse in order finally to abandon hope. And we can never know what it would take until we, too, are there ourselves. Just as the invisibles on the street didn't know. Just as they never hoped for the day when their suffering would be so inconsequential that most people wouldn't even see it as suffering, but justice, judgment - or simply an inconvenience.

I am not a pessimistic person, but I see a few bad winters ahead. With gas, electricity, and heating prices rising, the elderly in many places are not going to be able to heat their homes. With the mortgage crisis continuing, more families will be displaced. With food prices rising along with all other bills, contributions to already overtaxed food banks are diminishing - and thus, so, too, will access. My 'positive' spin on my fears is that, with more 'normal' people finding themselves on the margins, it may become easier for the other normal people to begin to see poverty not as a moral failing or a vice but a complex state of affairs brought on by many factors. Perhaps the struggling banks and airlines and weak dollar could be held up to the sceptical as examples that bad things can indeed happen to good people (well, corporate 'persons,' at any rate). Perhaps a negative $200,000 downturn in the value of one citizen's home could serve as testimony that if external conditions could affect one life so dramatically, they or a different set of circumstances might well be able to operate in a similarly striking fashion elsewhere.

In other words, I am hoping that all the nastiness that is still to come will help people to realize it could happen here, and it could happen now, and it could happen to me. Maybe for one person it will take a job loss, for someone else that and the loss of home, too, and for the very strong maybe no job, no house, a DUI conviction and a departing spouse. But if Mother Teresa could pray for years with loneliness and despair in her heart, I think many, many people in the coming years will receive the gift of brokenness. I hope it helps them see the humanity, and the divine, in the rest of the wounded.

Four California Farmworkers Dead in Four Weeks

Ramiro Carillo Rodriguez, 48, Thursday became the second farmworker to die of heatstroke in the past week and the fourth within the last four weeks in California, following Wednesday's passing of Abdon Felix Garcia, 42, and before that, Jose Hernandez, 64, and pregnant Maria Isabel Jimenez, 17, whose fiancé had finally saved up enough money and bought a wedding ring.

There have been laws in place in California since 2005, when the state under the leadership of Gov. Schwarzenegger became the first in the nation to attempt to provide heat protection for farm laborers. However, any law is only as good as its enforcement, and so far the past legislation has failed due to lack of implementation and oversight. In the midst of California's current heatwave, Schwartzenegger announced a more vigorous and comprehensive training program for employers. Failure to provide minimal heat protection such as access to water, shade, rest, and a trained first-aid response to symptoms is wanton cruelty and nothing more. If four dentists, politicians, or lawyers had died in four weeks from identical, foreseeable, and preventable work-related injuries, I can only imagine that we would have seen a flurry of civil and punitive action. My hope is that the recent spate of needless deaths - of human beings every bit as worthwhile as dentists or lawyers - will result in more vigorous and comprehensive punitive measures if employers continue to neglect their legal, not to mention ethical, obligations

The last link is to a news story about the new measures; here is the UFW's piece:

Ramiro Carillo was the fourth farm worker in the last two weeks to die of heat stroke and the second this week alone!

E-mail Gov. Schwarzenegger today!

Ramiro Carrillo Rodriguez, 48, father of two, died in Selma, CA on Thursday afternoon after working all day for Sun Valley Packing in Reedley thru a farm labor contractor. Ramiro had complained being sick from the heat. He was taken home by his foreman. He passed out almost as soon as he got in the house. By the time an ambulance got there he was dead on arrival. He leaves behind two children ages 13 and 16.

Ramiro's death makes two farm workers dying of heatstroke last week, four farm worker heat deaths in the last 8 weeks and the 13th farm worker heat death since CA Governor Schwarzenegger took office.

Something needs to be done immediately to prevent more needless deaths. Please help.

Click here to send a fax to California Gov. Schwarzenegger (if you live in California, a cc of your e-mail will also go to your legislators) and tell them this has to stop now.

Ramiro Carrillo Rodriguez's death follows the deaths I told you about on Thursday. 42 year-old farm worker Abdon Felix Garcia, father of three, died on Wednesday after spending the morning and early afternoon working for Sunview Vineyards in Arvin. The coroner says Felix's body core temperature was measured at 108 degrees just 13 minutes before his death. 64 year-old Jose Macarena Hernandez died during a record-breaking heat wave on June 20 while harvesting butternut squash in Santa Maria on land owned by Sunrise Growers. UFW President Arturo Rodriguez attended his funeral yesterday. And then there was the heat death of 17 year-old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez who died while laboring in the Stockton area grape vines.

Governor Schwarzenegger came to Maria Isabel's funeral and said he would do everything possible to prevent this from happening again. Has he done everything he can? With the recent deaths of Ramiro Carrillo Rodriguez, Abdon Felix Garcia and Jose Hernandez it is clear the state does not have the capacity to protect farm workers.

As California's summer sizzles we must do everything we can to insure that no more farm workers fall victim to the heat because the laws written to protect them are not enforced. Speaker Emeritus Fabian Nunez has introduced legislation which has moved out of the assembly and which is now in the state senate. It will make it easier for farm workers to organize and enforce the laws that the state cannot enforce.

Please take action immediately and click to fax California Gov. Schwarzenegger (if you live in California, a cc of your message will also be e-mailed to your legislators) and tell them something needs to be done NOW. It’s time to put a law in place that will allow farm workers to protect themselves!

Thank you for caring.

Arturo S. Rodriguez
President

http://www.ufwaction.org/campaign/heatdeath13

Avalokitesvara Meets Aristotle, or Metta in the Modern World

The other night we were talking about the Fifth Commandment. As with everything else, Catholics have a rich understanding of the larger meaning of this rule. One direction it got me thinking, since it has always been the focus of my own spiritual path, is about compassion, or gentleness, or love, as one's abiding principle. Though this is not a specifically Catholic position, there is room for it within orthodoxy. I can believe the Church's position on just war, for example, but in searching my own conscience find no examples in history or current events in which this doctrine has been put into action.

But sticking (at least for the moment) to absolute orthodoxy, within the Catechism itself the Commandment's proscription against murder is understood to extend to anger. Anger construed in its active sense as wishing another ill is, I think, fairly obviously the opposite of charity/caritas, which is itself the active version of love or, viewed differently, the inevitable fruit of compassion. In this view, there is some transactional quality behind even the impulse to charity, inasmuch as it would seem to me that, lacking the ability to feel the other's position, being therefore unable genuinely to embrace empathy or compassion, there is no soil for mercy or charity to grow in. It is not simply a matter of 'If A then B,' which is, if you believe it, rather a lot by itself, making charity not merely a result but an inextricable concomitant of compassion and love. It is as well the understanding that 'If not A then not B,' -- and 'If not B then clearly not A.'

In this framework, my good works evidence my love, and lack of love, by contrast, confers a quite different meaning on ostensible works of charity. I argued tonight that once someone internalizes this comprehensive compassion there are certain acts that the person will never be able to do, there are certain choices that will never again have to be made. It is a different way of being, a different way of interacting with the world. If one has reached the point of being able to see the Divine, the Buddha-nature - or in Quaker terms, the Inner Light - within others, the point of being able readily to relate to another's suffering, it is not a matter of choosing not to strike. Certain reactions do not arise, and therefore certain responses are precluded a priori. They are precluded unconsciously, actually, since the mind does not have to go yet again to the point of laboring intellectually over a matter which was in fact long ago decided.



And this is all very pressing to me, given my own particular road of spiritual development. On my path, compassion, tolerance, and gentleness have always seemed the most necessary bedrock, the attributes without which other virtues are either meaningless or impossible. Moreover, in order to attain those three, one must start with the very first stone, which is humility. One cannot understand the struggles of another, let alone wish to ease the other's suffering, if he cannot first comprehend - viscerally, completely, in the profoundest depths of his soul - the truth of 'there but for the grace of God go I.'

My view is simple: there is no species of human suffering that is the province only of one type of human. The paths that lead to suffering are as diverse as the people who choose them and who are thrust into them, but in the end, sadness, loneliness, and fear are experienced as the same thing by us all, at whatever age, in whatever country, with whatever level of education or wealth. Whatever someone else is feeling, the specifics of his or her situation notwithstanding, is something each of us has, will, or can feel ourselves.

It is easier to feel compassion and thus be giving when the stakes are low, when the issue is something like rude and aggressive driving, or getting overcharged by a mechanic, than when it involves actual hatred or violence -- but that is where the principle is proven. That is where a person either lives his truth or renounces the core of his beliefs. Responding calmly to mild stress is one thing; very, very, very few of us even consider running over pedestrians on a crosswalk because they are making us late for a business meeting. In situations of real violence or deliberate victimization, literally turning the other cheek is a significantly deeper commitment.

One of the things I take greatest comfort in within Catholic spirituality is the huge emphasis laid on individual discernment, on prudent use of one's own conscience to determine the correct path in novel circumstances. This is likewise one of the things I most respect about the Friends; both share a belief that with prayer and devout listening we have it within ourselves to hear God's will, an amazing God-given power of judgment. In Catholicism, obviously there is more dogma and doctrine than with the Friends, but if after the best use I can make of my conscience I find in that something I cannot fully accept, or one element, such as mercy, the necessity of which outshines all other imperatives, that is between God and me, so long as I don't portray my actions as being representative of all official Church teaching.

And that is a tremendous gift of spiritual liberty, borne of a deep respect for the many ways we in our wondrous diversity can inhabit God's Word. If this catholicity of gifts and spiritualities were not recognized, then in a manner of speaking either the Carthusians or the Franciscans would have to be 'wrong.' Either the noble soldier serving his country or the grandmother in the Peace and Justice Ministry would be a heretic, and somebody or other would have to chuck either the thinky Chesterton, the silent John Main, or the loving Jean Vanier off the proverbial Train to Glory. I'm glad we get to keep them all!

There Is No Time in Space

So, for those of you who are following, the story:

He brought a bird into the house in his mouth. I couldn't tell if it was alive, but now that is becoming the default selection. I claim ignorance, and I should, but I have read about as much regarding domestic cat behavior at this point as someone with other obligations can be asked to. I understand what he is doing, I respect its origin, and I hate its consequences.

Anyway, ultimately I got the bird, and it was still living. Prior to that, I heard sounds issue from the cat's mouth which I hadn't been aware cats could make, sounds more reminiscent of a low-rent lion or a big dog than a small domestic longhair. Eventually I found a way to scruff/disable the cat with one hand and scoop up the bird gently with the other. I found the bird a box and a sweater, put all three in the washroom, and called the wildlife rescue.

Since I can't understand direction, I only vaguely know where anything is. I didn't expect anyone to be there, but I hoped there would be a rescue box in the manner of unwanted-baby 'drop boxes' in some hospitals and fire stations in some countries in some centuries, including ours. The website and the phone message didn't mention that, but since I was shaking I called back a second time to see if perhaps I had missed something, and I got a human being, which was definitely something I had missed on the first go-round.

He said he was still going to be there for a while and that I could bring the bird in. I prayed the whole time and I knew my gas would hold out. But he (John) (of PAWS in Lynnwood, WA) showed me all the things that were wrong and told me he would have to put the bird to sleep. The bird was very injured, but I had nothing to offer it other than a slow death, with a predator pacing and moaning on the other side of the door. He at least had peace to offer at his disposal; I had only pain and more fear to give the little sparrow.

But he at least showed me a box of bunnies, with their eyes still not opened. A lady had accidentally ruined their little nest, and when the mother returned, she noticed that and left. They were thin and long, and John had fed them once so far, and the one he was concerned about was looking more lively. I sat in my car and cried for the sparrow, that this John could return to its tiny broken body very soon and alleviate its suffering, and for the little rabbits, that their bad start might be forgotten with a long life of surreptitiously ruining lettuce crops in Lynnwood. Or Issaquah, if they prefer microgreens.

Even though I needed to, I felt a bit odd sitting in a car outside an animal rescue and crying, so I put on the GPS and pulled out. I wasn't really looking or listening, though, so I just turned onto the first 'highway' sign.

About a half-hour into the trip, though, I started to feel unfamiliar. I didn't know the street signs; I didn't understand why I was seeing the exits for the cities I was seeing; I had no idea what either Diane Rehm or her guests on the low-playing NPR or 'Aonghus' on the GPS had been saying; I realized a tour bus, of all things, had actually passed me for going too slowly; and I wondered which direction I might be going in and, indeed, on which highway. I looked at the gas meter: it was E, but not really less than E, although I don't know from firsthand experience that there is on this car a visual cue signaling in an unmistakable manner 'less than E.' I looked around: it was indeed a highway, so in terms of speed, I could shoot for somewhere between 50-70 MPH and be considered to be driving reasonably. And, frankly, since less than 50 had served me (not necessarily 'well,' but then, I hadn't been noticing) thus far, rather a good part of me hoped that my lack of speed would signal a dangerous lack of confidence to any nearby highway patrolmen, who might be enlisted, after having pulled me over, to tell me where, precisely, I happened to be at that moment.

I would insert 'But thank God for GPS' right about here into this narrative, were such an interjection not so patently disingenuous. Aonghus kept telling me to take all sorts of terrifying side-routes, winding backtracks, and rural byways which, though scenic enough in the daytime to justify all manner of diversion, are nonetheless potentially fraught with peril at one million o'clock in the night for a failed practitioner of feline behavior modification, a crying and hopeless bird rescuer, a sleep-deprived owner of what is, in fact, the most comfortable and ridiculous bed in Seattle, a geographical and spatial ignoramus, and a girl still in the same just-fine-at-4PM kitten-heeled mules and red sweater set at one (1 AM) in the morning, hoping against hope, praying for the safe passage not simply of the broken sparrow, the tiny, stupid, closed-eyed bunnies, the unknowing, inappropriately grateful, un-Buddhist cat, but everyone who broke all of those, and all of us, and for everyone who is yet to come and break or be broken, just to get home somehow, someway, sometime, soon enough to make it to Prince of Peace tomorrow by at eleven.

Okay, twelve-ish.

And on the way home, once I figured out where I was and had been and could be headed if I made some judicious choices I pointed south and then took the 520 bridge back. Once I figured out how to get there. And four seagulls lined the way across on my side, where I've never seen birds sitting like that before.

I don't think anyone is afraid to die; I think only they are afraid that when they go, no one will be there to pet their head. It's that moment, not what comes after. And really, dog, cat, parrot, sparrow, or human, it is that touch that tells us that we were really here, that we really belonged. That we were known, and we were loved, and that we can leave now, knowing our imprint never vanishes, and our life was never for nothing. Hold me tight, and fast, and gentle, and true - now, only now, whatever you've done before. Only this moment exists, and I can die on the streets alone, or I can die in your arms. Don't offer me absolution; offer me Love -- and then you, and I, and God, can do anything. This is what keeps me coming back to 'soup kitchens' (sorry, Bill, for the 1930s vocab) - to meal programs: the sparrow. The broken, the small, the weak, the wounded. The mild, the frightened, the too-trusting, the untrusting, and the never-yet-to-be-begun. Open your arms and you'll be surprised what falls into them; lean back into the unknown and you'll be shocked at who cradles your fall.

God Only Threw the Humans Out of Paradise

The rest we insisted upon banishing with our own hands.

Well, now it's one million o'clock here in Dhaka or wherever my time-zone stamp says I am. It would be earlier, or, more accurately, I wouldn't know it was later, were it not for the three-hour middle-of-the-night drive to the wildlife shelter with a wounded house sparrow on a sweater in a box by the floor heater.

And I am spent with this. It is not my cat. I don't own a cat, the proof being a) I never went somewhere looking to get one and b) the fact that the cat who comes here also goes outside. If I had a cat, I would have had to get one, and if I had a cat, he would live with me. Clear, my friends, as an unmuddied lake.

Despite the stark reality of my owning no cats, in the last week alone I have had to try to rescue three or four animals brought into my house by a cat. And the reason the cat is here is the same reason I try to save the other animals: I care about them, and I don't want any to suffer needlessly. Hence, when the people who adopted the cat locked him outside in the summer heat and the winter snow, when I saw him huddled under cars for shade and hunched up on warm hoods for heat, I wanted to give him shelter. Sanctuary. I wanted to prevent his suffering. When one day I came home to find him outside my window on the balcony, I slashed the screen to rescue him then, but left it slashed to allow him constant access to shade, heat, caring, food, and water.

Now, I know of course that animals die in the wild all the time. But the reality is that indoor-outdoor cats wreak havoc on already-precarious urban wildlife - and all of that killing is unnecessary and directly attributable to human choice, which is not the case with robins and earthworms, or raccoons and salmon smelt. And yet I have no standing with this cat. I don't own him by law, so I would be stealing if I were to confine him. And I would likely be condemning him to death by lethal injection, since he is adult, if I were to lie about his provenance and commit him to a shelter.

--And I know from shelters! I have to live with myself for the rest of my life knowing I killed many, many discarded animals - sometimes with no greater justification than that we simply had no more room left for more unwanted pets. Sometimes we had completely run out of foster homes (meaning that all the employees and volunteers, as well, had more than we could take care of), so we had to kill animals because they had the canine or feline equivalent of head colds: it made them 'less adoptable,' and we could only afford to keep the most adoptable...

Any 'progressive' shelter will tell you they don't 'kill for space.' Some shelters will claim to be fully 'no-kill' shelters. But imagine what that means: if every 2.2 seconds a companion animal in this country is being euthanized, it is not happening all in one place. Given that people throw away their pets and their unneutered pets' offspring at a shocking rate, in order to be in any way accurate about being 'no-kill,' a shelter must never accept a discarded animal who is less than 100% ideal in temperament, age, species, breed, and health, and thus brilliantly, stunningly, immediately adoptable -- or Fido or Caesar or Bijou with his limp, or his greying muzzle, or that trace of kennel cough, is taking up valuable kennel space that could be turned over quickly by some eight-week-old smush-face Cavalier King Charles, thus boosting adoption statistics and 'proving' no-kill claims.

What this means in reality is that a no-kill shelter is in reality one of two things: a 'refer-kill' shelter, or a shelter so hideously selective that almost nobody gets in. In the first case, if predictions about your marketability prove untrue, you get shipped off to somewhere else more accustomed to difficult choices and unpleasant ends. You'll get killed in the end, perhaps, just not at the same place your story of rejection began. In the second case, God help you if you look a bit too much like last year's 'Beethoven' just as this year's '1001 Dalmatians' comes out.

So it was that I started out as a volunteer at a humane shelter, cleaning cages and cuddling puppies, insulated from the reality that divided volunteer from employee. But my enthusiasm for the cause was commensurate with my compassion, so I went up the next level. Whereupon reality set in. We were a private, not municipal, shelter, so some individuals above four months old survived. Just not a lot of large breeds, active breeds, sight hounds, scent hounds, or animals who bore the stigma of their past abuse. If you had been beaten down, we didn't have time to raise you back up. We didn't have the money. We didn't have the foster homes. But at least, I told myself, in your last hour, in your last minute, you had me, and you had a hand on your shoulder, and a kiss on your head, instead of another kick. You went gently, and I loved you.

But there is no justification for killing what shouldn't be killed. However fearful or even dangerous an animal in our shelter had become before he reached us, he had become so not through his nature, but through man. And I might be easing you gently into death, but had you only been loved you would have had ten more years of running and playing, ten more years of returning thousandfold the comfort you had been given.

Anyway, ultimately I couldn't do it anymore. Four and five litters at a time, needing to be dispatched ASAP, of three-week-old diseased and deformed kittens born in bad conditions from feral and domestic cats on the property of the same man who year and year again refused to let us trap and spay and release - free! at no cost to him! with no more litters needing to be born only to be killed immediately! - was one of the things that did me in. So, too, was falling in love over and over with little guys too scared of everything by that point to be sufficiently predictable so as to be good pets. Guys whose natural reaction to everything they had experienced condemned them. Guys who deserved, not death, but a meadow and some soft food and a slow, slow building of trust so that one day, years in the future, when they were completely ready, they could roll over and get the best damned belly rub they had ever had.

That's what ended my animal-welfare career. In brief format, at any rate. But back to tonight. Except not now, when I have already made this entry far longer than I had intended, by unintended digressions, which I can only hope were illustrative of something -- if not, necessarily, my intended topic.