Reflections: On Faith and Friendship

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I have again been neglecting this blog due to a combination over-involvement in Facebook and emotional set-backs in my “real life.” One of the few things that I’ve managed to do during this period is slowly read an interesting little book loaned to me by the University Archivist. The book has the non-mellifluous title: Go Back, You Didn’t Say “May I”: the Diary of a Young Priest. The author is Thomas Jackson.

Through his words, I have come to truly love Thomas Jackson, a young Episcopal priest, who comes to this town, Athens, Ohio, to serve at the United Campus Ministry (UCM). He comes in the late summer of 1969 when the campus of Ohio University is experiencing the unrest of the civil rights and anti-war movements—the summer after I graduated from the University of Michigan and got married for the first time. My parents had moved to Athens two years prior to this, so I had several times visited the Athens to which Thomas Jackson has arrived at the beginning of his diary, and was well aware of the milieu about which he writes.

Jackson, as he presents himself in this memoir, is the kind of man I admire and would like to have as a friend. When he errs in his ministry, he errs on the side of being too Christ-like for the local Christian bourgeoisie to tolerate. He has previously been fired by a congregation for this kind of “fault,” and feels a similar fate coming on in Athens after he’s been here for some months.

In his work with the student body, he has gone through what they refer to locally as “the Troubles” – the student uprising following the national guard killings of the students at Kent State, and the closing of the University. There has also been a constant string of crises on a smaller scale, such as pregnant coeds seeking abortions; troubled faculty marriages; jailed students.

As time goes by, Jackson begins to feel less and less effective in his efforts; more pressured by the University administration; and less appreciated by the local citizenry, including the Christian community. His best friend, and most effective colleague, Tom Niccolls, has recently left Athens to pursue other career interests. Finally Jackson comes to the decision that he, too, should move on to new pursuits. He has, therefore, written an article for the campus newspaper, the Post, expressing his decision to leave UCM, and Athens.

What I have chosen to excerpt here is Jackson’s entire diary entry for February 3, 1971. I chose it because it expresses an idea which I have felt very strongly, and very consciously, in my own life, but which I have never seen so openly expressed by anyone else:

February 3

            A deeply personal, loving letter today from Tom Niccolls, regarding the article in the Post last Friday about the future departure of the Jacksons, ended with this quote:

               “Somebody placed the shuttle in your hand:

somebody who had already arranged the threads.”

                                                          Hammarskjöld

Weave well.

                                                                    peace,

                                                                         Tom

            I wonder, Tom Niccolls, if I would be planning to leave Athens if you were still here. I wonder if I will ever again work with someone who understands my thoughts almost before I think them, or with whom my personality and hopes and quirks mesh so well. You and your crazy Calvinism!

            If this is truly the Age of Anxiety as Auden describes it, then I begin to think that the anxiety comes from our constant departures one from another. We occasionally find that human being with whom we can share so much of life, and before the celebration of it can get very far, we move on to another place, and our relationships are then carried by postage stamps and weary mailmen.

            Why in hell do we leave? Are we driven by some sort of “success” motive which demands that we scamper up the ladder of fame and profit, regardless of what and whom we leave behind? Do we move on simply because we are out of control, pushed on by the very mobility of our society, moving because everyone else is moving? Or is this one of those Big Lessons in Life that I am supposed to learn: to grow is to move, to move is to grow.

            I wonder if the article in the paper last week was really, finally a fraud. I don’t know why I want to move. I simply know that I don’t want to be left alone in this job, facing all of these people without support and hope and rest. That is cowardice, I suppose.

            Maybe I’m leaving, or at least trying to leave, only because of cowardice.

Indeed. Why isn’t good friendship enough to anchor us in a community? Why can’t we ever be content with what we have, even when it is good? Why do people always pursue that clichéd green grass beyond the proverbial fence? Of what are we so afraid that we run, not really knowing if there is actually something chasing us? We say that we value friendship above nearly all things, yet we cast it aside for a new job that we soon grow weary of, only to start looking to move on again. I don’t understand it, and I never will, because I’ve never felt it.

I end this already long discourse with a poem I wrote some months ago, touching on this theme:

Contentment

A thing the world hates

                         
                         and fears -- contentment:

that a man could be happy

plowing the same field

year after year, hoping

not for more, but

simply for enough.

Sufficiency is not

a thing that is suffered

by the world gladly,

for it is seen as virtuous

only to strive for abundance.

To drift easily on the current

when others are compelled

by greed, by pride, by fear

to struggle against it,

compelled always

to get there first,

to have first grab

at whatever is there,

no matter where ‘there’ is;

                       To win the humbling regard

that is the child of brother love,

rather than a grudging respect

engendered by fear and envy;

To eat in response to hunger,

rather than to dine or feast

in obedience to appetite;

To take what one needs

in preference to that which

one imagines oneself to want;

To choose solitude

over popularity;

To seek knowledge

rather than entertainment;

To pay attention

rather than employing the senses

to troll for distractions;

To love oneself enough to feel

secure in one’s own company;

To seek to discover the joy

inherent to each moment of existence,

even while being battered

by the shit-storm of scorn

with which an offended world

requites one’s loathsome contentment:

Let this be your prayer and your mission.

Thank you, Thomas Jackson, wherever you are…
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Reflections: To Be, or...Well, whatever...

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Albert Camus puts it quite nicely near the beginning of The Myth of Sisyphus:

... Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit [of living], the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.
...What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be  seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death.

Rock on, Albert: "This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting..." Exactly. Exactly that.
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Reflections: Counting Apples Instead of Sheep

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Somebody posted the following quote on Facebook recently, and I clipped it:

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”


sxxxxx~ Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

The quote inspired me to read a book of her poetry. I had intended to read one of her novels as well. But, now I think I will count apples instead.
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Readings: Body of a Dancer('s Ex-)

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I don’t know if this blog has gone into hibernation, or if it’s in a coma. It may be in a persistent vegetative state. What follows will be a forced attempt to prove that it is not quite ready to be taken off life support. I will base this attempted resuscitation on a book. What else, right?

The book’s title is Body of a Dancer. It was brought to my attention by Facebook friend, Diana Hart Johnson. This memoir was written by a woman with the exotic moniker, Renée E. D’Aoust. It was, in part, that “E” which grabbed me. It distinguishes this particular Renée from all the other D’Aousts out there, clamoring and throwing elbows, in order to position themselves to collect their richly-deserved fifteen minutes. Renée was wise not to disclose the full name for which that “E” stands as a monument, thereby to sound like a political assassin, or serial killer. The book, upon reading, discloses Ms. D’Aoust to be a very good writer.

My Facebook friend, Diana, was, some years ago, a dancer with the Martha Graham Company. So was my first wife, Christine. Not so surprisingly, our author, Renée E. D’Aoust, also has a Graham connection. (If you see a pattern forming here, you are still with me; if you don’t…abandon all hope and go watch some reality TV.) Much of the book, Body of a Dancer, concerns the time Ms. D’Aoust spent in New York City, studying the Graham technique as a pretender for a spot in the company. As a man who functioned as a devoted fifth wheel to my ex-wife’s career cart in the world of Grahamdance for over a decade, I can attest that Ms. D’Aoust (whose experiences therein begin a little more than ten years after mine ended), captures that world with a precision and insight that is as painful to vicariously relive as it is delightful to appreciate for its intelligent mastery of the art of writing.

Have I endorsed and promoted this book as a thing you should buy and read? Yes, I have.

One of the reasons I decided to read the book, after having it brought to my attention by D.H. Johnson, was my expectation that there might be some anecdotal material in the book concerning my ex-wife. As it turns out, she is mentioned only once, in a footnote concerning three other Graham dancers, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Donlin Foreman, and Terese Capucilli, who together with Christine Dakin (saddled forever with my patronymic, as a professional necessity) formed an independent dance company.

Jacqui Buglisi was our first friend when we moved to New York City. We knew her years before the advent of Mr. Foreman. Chris and Jacqui met through their work with Pearl Lang’s school and company. They danced together in the chorus of a YiddishTheater production of Sholom Aleichem’s comedy, “It’s Hard To Be a Jew” which Pearl choreographed. For several months, while otherwise unemployed, I worked as an assistant to Pearl’s business manager, a guy named Bill Gatewood (no relation to your office computer). This included going to Italy on a tour of Pearl’s company. Through this association I also had the pleasure to spend some time with and around Pearl’s husband, the wonderful actor, Joseph Wiseman.

Terese Capucilli was relatively new to the company around the time my association with that world was dying a protracted death. She was in the company as a rising star in 1979, when I was a trailing spouse on a Graham Company tour of Europe and the Middle East.

So, I was not able to wallow in any dirt about my ex- as shoveled from the pages of this book. I was, however, surprised learn that the Buglisi-Foreman marriage is no more. I still have a leather belt buckle that Don Foreman tooled for me as a gift, back in the day. And, in closing, here is a poem I wrote long ago about an afternoon spent with the beautiful Ms. Buglisi:


Jacqui


We toured amongst the Fauves.
I discussed her art in terms of mine.
She fed me meat and bread and oranges.

She verbally caressed the sanctity
of the human form until
I was ready to scream -- or worship.

She guessed eyes, but I confessed
it was her mouth I watched
when shapeless words ceased to satisfy.

I sipped my Jack Daniels
as slowly as possible, but
her Grand Marnier was forever emptied.

When she guessed at the time
she was an hour short --
I was more than two.

It is April already.
The days are getting longer.
God knows, I shouldn’t look at her at all.


Ah, well. Enough is enough. This is now making me sad. But the blog is up and running. If you skipped over the embedded links, go back and read them. And read the book.
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Reflections: Plus ça change…

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The only remarkable thing about this quote from the novel, Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins is that the book was first published in 1990:

Conservatives understand Halloween, liberals only understand Christmas. If you want to control a population, don’t give it social services, give it a scary adversary. Communism might have become a passé bugaboo, but ah, now there were the hobgoblins of terrorism and drugs with which to frighten and subdue the unthinking masses.

Twenty-plus years prior to our current preoccupations with socialist take-overs by an alien POTUS, Mexican drug cartels and Islamofascists, the rubes were already being herded toward the polls with the same prod that the super PACs and their puppet politicians are wielding via the media today. Feelin’ a just a tad Merino, are ya?
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Reflections: Leap Day, 2012

Having not posted anything here for many days, I feel that I cannot in good conscience let a Leap Day pass without being dated by a brief post.

I have felt for several days that radiation from the recent solar storms has been affecting my body chemistry and my brain waves, bringing me strong dreams by night and a sometimes almost unbearable sense of dread in my waking hours. It is not as though real-time circumstances on the ground haven't been sodomizing me for real; but it's been more than that. And I blame the sun and his tantrums for my distress. It helps me to have that target.

Please admire the portrait of this old man, donated to the cause by my Irish FaceBook friend, Fiona Clements, a.k.a. F3. If you want to know why that alias is, you'll have to ask the lady.

Check out this tiny piece by Leonard Cohen from his Book of Longing:

WORK IN PROGRESS

he's going to get sick
and die alone

he is the main character
in my little story called

The House of Prayer

That says it all. Just wait. You'll get old, if you're lucky. Or whatever.

So, it's Leap Day. But I'm afraid of heights, so I'm not jumping into anything. Just waiting.

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Rants: The Current Rage

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The rant below is one of my comments in a thread at Vox Nova concerning the recent controversy over mandated birth control in health insurance coverage provided to employees at Catholic institutions, such as hospitals and universities. I first quote an excerpt from another readers' previous comment, and then launch into my own screed:

@ Henry Karlson –

“This is also something constantly forgotten when bringing up religious liberty: it is not just our religious beliefs that are in the nation.”

The fact that you even need to point this out, and the fact that the whole discussion of the issue is entirely pointless without this fact in mind, is precisely indicative of the type of Catholic exclusionary thinking of which I have been complaining with regard to the question of the closed communion.

If it is not possible to be a good Catholic in a secular and pluralistic society, then perhaps this is not the best society for Catholics to inhabit? I say this seriously. This nation was originally founded by Protestants. And the Calvinists (and other Protestants), against whom I continually hear some Catholics railing, founded it in order to be able to live according to their own beliefs.

Maybe the Church should just get out of the hospital business? I’m sure that for-profit corporations will buy them out. Maybe Catholics should not be running colleges and universities if they necessarily need to be employing non-Catholic staff who will want to live according to their own religious beliefs (or lack thereof?) Or maybe they need to shrink to whatever size a fully-Catholic staff will be able to support?

Nobody is asking Catholics to use birth control (although apparently they do so anyway.) Nobody is asking Catholics to have abortions. The idea that it’s fine and dandy to use medieval Scholastic verbal gymnastics such as “material cooperation with evil” to try to control – in very fundamental ways – the lives of non-Catholics, is just wrong. In this country, it’s wrong. And I’m not sure in what country it might be right. Can you think of one?
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