It's been longer than a day now that Bern's been back.
I know I'm wearing you out with how much I want her near me, in a different room, most of the time, but it is so true.
I'm so much more centered now than those long days she was gone.
I think I need to ponder this connection, what it means to me, after all these years.
Just knowing she's down the hall upstairs while I'm writing this makes me feel more 'who I am' than I felt while she was away.
Have we become 'too close' in all these years?
Have I disappeared into her?
I don't think so, having thought about it a lot. We've become symbiotic in a way, connected at a subconscious level as well as a physical level.
We have our own lives, clearly. But there's something powerful and good about being near each other, in different rooms but still connected.
At least that's what I think.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Beyond priceless....
I don't do 'children's sermons' any more. The last one I did I wrapped a present which had a mirror in the bottom of the box. The sermon was about the best Christmas gift and the kid was supposed to say "that's me!" Instead, he said, "it's just a dumb mirror".
Before that, in an Easter Children's Sermon I held up an Easter egg and asked what someone could tell me about it and Courtney White, now a Med student at George Washington University, said "boiled eggs smell like poop". So much for children's sermons. But this is the best reason I ever heard not to give them.
Before that, in an Easter Children's Sermon I held up an Easter egg and asked what someone could tell me about it and Courtney White, now a Med student at George Washington University, said "boiled eggs smell like poop". So much for children's sermons. But this is the best reason I ever heard not to give them.
What is Resurrection?While the priest was presenting a children's sermon, he asked the children if they knew what the Resurrection was.
Now, asking questions during children's sermons is crucial, but at the same time, asking children questions in front of a congregation can also be very dangerous. In response to the question, a little boy raised his hand.
The priest called on him and the boy said, "I know that if you have a resurrection that lasts more than four hours you are supposed to call the doctor."It took ten minutes for the congregation to settle down enough for the service to continue.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Yae Bashem
I had coffee this morning with Cherry, who is newly back from time in Israel. I asked her, as I ask everyone newly back from Israel, if she had been to Yae Bashem?
Yae Bashem is the Holocaust memorial up on a hill in Jerusalem.
One of the things there is a children's memorial to the one and a half million children who died in the Holocaust. In that hall there are a small number of candles lit behind a glass wall and a complicated series of mirrors that reflect those real candles a million and a half times. I took that for granted because Israeli's wouldn't say it about dead children if it wasn't true. The rest of the memorial, broken pillars in front, shoes of victims in one hall, walking above a map of the camps...is all life-altering.
I wrote two poems about that experience in 1999 and shared them with Cherry. I share them with you as well.
Visiting the Children's Memorial at Yae Bashem
(12/10/99)
In an ancient land of broken pillars,
snapped by wars, long smothered by
Time's debris,
these were splintered most cleanly,
cruelly.
And their brokenness breaks my
heart in three.....
Break my heart, for this shimmering landscape
of eternal pain--loss of childhood's dream.
Break, my heart--the many mirrors' reflection
reveal our Souls more twisted than they
seem
in sunlight--outside--beyond
candle glow.
Break a third time--only
broken hearts redeem.
I scarcely breathe--my
breath may blow the candles out
or else fan them into revenging
flames
nothing could ever quell: All God's
Justice
nor our pity can pay
these infant's claims.
In thick and gathered darkness
I straddle
their Universe to the limits
of sight.
Wholly Innocent--holy suffering:
dying to prove that Evil's
grasping Might
cannot reach them, cannot
put out this Light.
Coming down from
Yae Bashem
(12/10/99)
Soul gutted as wadis gut the desert,
I ride in silence, deep within
the rocky, arid heart.
Yae Bashen--the syllables hang
in the air
like incense buring
in the Third Temple that is not.
Like the smell of flesh singed
and the odor
of rotting intentions--
the incense curls up
to the God who
seemed not to care
when her children died
in piles of flesh
and
mountains of bones.
Rachel wails again,
keening her lament
for no one to hear.
Yae Bashem--the words
fall somewhere between
a lament and heaven's resignation.
Some tears cannot be seen
nor crying heard
in the dark shadow
of the forgetting.
Coming down from Yae Bashem
I see these things:
and old woman wrapped
in her shawl,
beating her rug as if
getting it clean would
bring Messiah. I love her.
Two old men--doubtless
veterans of some war...
comrades, dear friendsk--
lunching on a balcony
taking turns drinking
from a tall brown bottle
of beer. I love them.
A child of eight or nine,
unselfconsciously flipping
back her raven hair
(so dark it drinks in
the sun and shines it back again).
The breeze up from the valley
catches her hair
and she looks as if
she could fly. I love her.
A young man,
pale as the desert rushing
through traffic--
black coat trailing like
a tail, curling locks
bouncing by his chin--
no doubt hurrying
breathlessly to study Torah.
And I love him.
These things I saw, coming down
from Yae Bashem.
Perhaps when I've seen more
life (and loved some more)
I can
believe
in
God
again.
Yae Bashem is the Holocaust memorial up on a hill in Jerusalem.
One of the things there is a children's memorial to the one and a half million children who died in the Holocaust. In that hall there are a small number of candles lit behind a glass wall and a complicated series of mirrors that reflect those real candles a million and a half times. I took that for granted because Israeli's wouldn't say it about dead children if it wasn't true. The rest of the memorial, broken pillars in front, shoes of victims in one hall, walking above a map of the camps...is all life-altering.
I wrote two poems about that experience in 1999 and shared them with Cherry. I share them with you as well.
Visiting the Children's Memorial at Yae Bashem
(12/10/99)
In an ancient land of broken pillars,
snapped by wars, long smothered by
Time's debris,
these were splintered most cleanly,
cruelly.
And their brokenness breaks my
heart in three.....
Break my heart, for this shimmering landscape
of eternal pain--loss of childhood's dream.
Break, my heart--the many mirrors' reflection
reveal our Souls more twisted than they
seem
in sunlight--outside--beyond
candle glow.
Break a third time--only
broken hearts redeem.
I scarcely breathe--my
breath may blow the candles out
or else fan them into revenging
flames
nothing could ever quell: All God's
Justice
nor our pity can pay
these infant's claims.
In thick and gathered darkness
I straddle
their Universe to the limits
of sight.
Wholly Innocent--holy suffering:
dying to prove that Evil's
grasping Might
cannot reach them, cannot
put out this Light.
Coming down from
Yae Bashem
(12/10/99)
Soul gutted as wadis gut the desert,
I ride in silence, deep within
the rocky, arid heart.
Yae Bashen--the syllables hang
in the air
like incense buring
in the Third Temple that is not.
Like the smell of flesh singed
and the odor
of rotting intentions--
the incense curls up
to the God who
seemed not to care
when her children died
in piles of flesh
and
mountains of bones.
Rachel wails again,
keening her lament
for no one to hear.
Yae Bashem--the words
fall somewhere between
a lament and heaven's resignation.
Some tears cannot be seen
nor crying heard
in the dark shadow
of the forgetting.
Coming down from Yae Bashem
I see these things:
and old woman wrapped
in her shawl,
beating her rug as if
getting it clean would
bring Messiah. I love her.
Two old men--doubtless
veterans of some war...
comrades, dear friendsk--
lunching on a balcony
taking turns drinking
from a tall brown bottle
of beer. I love them.
A child of eight or nine,
unselfconsciously flipping
back her raven hair
(so dark it drinks in
the sun and shines it back again).
The breeze up from the valley
catches her hair
and she looks as if
she could fly. I love her.
A young man,
pale as the desert rushing
through traffic--
black coat trailing like
a tail, curling locks
bouncing by his chin--
no doubt hurrying
breathlessly to study Torah.
And I love him.
These things I saw, coming down
from Yae Bashem.
Perhaps when I've seen more
life (and loved some more)
I can
believe
in
God
again.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Missing Bern
Bern is in southern West Virginia, staying in Princeton, where my parents moved when I went to college. I had a room I slept in in the Princeton house, but it wasn't MY Room in any real way.
Today they went across either Peel Chestnut Mountain or Keystone Mountain (probably the latter) to Uncle Frankie's funeral in Our Lady of Victory RC church in Gary. It's where Bern and I were married in one of the shortest wedding services in human history. The priest didn't know quite what to make of one of his good Catholic girls marrying an Episcopalian who was a student at Harvard Divinity School. So, it was quick.
I think there was snow in the mountains today, so re-crossing them in the funeral procession to Bluewell, where I believe Frankie will be buried, might have been iffy. I haven't heard from Bern yet today so I don't know.
She's only been gone since early Saturday morning and it's 6 p.m. on Monday and I am astonished that I miss she so much.
We're old married people (44 years in September) and often we'll spend the whole day without being in the same room for more than a few minutes until dinner. And I never realized just knowing she was in the house had such a soothing and comforting effect on me. Usually, when we're apart for a few days, it's me that's gone to lead a workshop somewhere so I know, since I'm in NYC or Ireland or somewhere at a retreat center, that she's not around. But with her gone, a rarer occurrence, though her women's group does go on a weekend retreat every year or so, the house seems empty.
Also, I have to take the Puli to the Canal for his long walk. I take him for a walk when the two of us get up (Puli and Man) usually after Bern, and I take him for 'the little walk' around 4:30 every afternoon and a very short walk before going to bed. But every day but Monday, Bern takes him on the Canal walk along the old C&O Farmington Canal that has been turned into a 6 mile horizontal park from Cheshire through Hamden to New Haven. On Mondays I take him because she's writing checks for our bills. (Imagine, we still write checks--or Bern does--I haven't written more than three checks a year for 20 years....)
What is it about this woman, I ponder, that makes her physical presence in the house, make me feel so much better than I've felt the last two days and nights?
Why do I long to hear her puttering around downstairs while I type this?
Maybe it's just habit. Or, more probably, it's just love.
Maybe absence does, after all, make the heart grow fonder. (The cynical form of that is "absence makes the heart go wander"....)
But I'm not a cynic. Sardonic and Ironic certainly, perhaps too much so, but not cynical. I just love the girl, that's what this emptiness is about....
Today they went across either Peel Chestnut Mountain or Keystone Mountain (probably the latter) to Uncle Frankie's funeral in Our Lady of Victory RC church in Gary. It's where Bern and I were married in one of the shortest wedding services in human history. The priest didn't know quite what to make of one of his good Catholic girls marrying an Episcopalian who was a student at Harvard Divinity School. So, it was quick.
I think there was snow in the mountains today, so re-crossing them in the funeral procession to Bluewell, where I believe Frankie will be buried, might have been iffy. I haven't heard from Bern yet today so I don't know.
She's only been gone since early Saturday morning and it's 6 p.m. on Monday and I am astonished that I miss she so much.
We're old married people (44 years in September) and often we'll spend the whole day without being in the same room for more than a few minutes until dinner. And I never realized just knowing she was in the house had such a soothing and comforting effect on me. Usually, when we're apart for a few days, it's me that's gone to lead a workshop somewhere so I know, since I'm in NYC or Ireland or somewhere at a retreat center, that she's not around. But with her gone, a rarer occurrence, though her women's group does go on a weekend retreat every year or so, the house seems empty.
Also, I have to take the Puli to the Canal for his long walk. I take him for a walk when the two of us get up (Puli and Man) usually after Bern, and I take him for 'the little walk' around 4:30 every afternoon and a very short walk before going to bed. But every day but Monday, Bern takes him on the Canal walk along the old C&O Farmington Canal that has been turned into a 6 mile horizontal park from Cheshire through Hamden to New Haven. On Mondays I take him because she's writing checks for our bills. (Imagine, we still write checks--or Bern does--I haven't written more than three checks a year for 20 years....)
What is it about this woman, I ponder, that makes her physical presence in the house, make me feel so much better than I've felt the last two days and nights?
Why do I long to hear her puttering around downstairs while I type this?
Maybe it's just habit. Or, more probably, it's just love.
Maybe absence does, after all, make the heart grow fonder. (The cynical form of that is "absence makes the heart go wander"....)
But I'm not a cynic. Sardonic and Ironic certainly, perhaps too much so, but not cynical. I just love the girl, that's what this emptiness is about....
Friday, March 14, 2014
Frankie's RI wake
I'm taking Bern to the train in New Haven tomorrow. She's driving down to West Virginia with Josh and Cathy and the three granddaughters on Sunday. They're going to Uncle Frankie's funeral.
I couldn't go because I have to present Mike Carroll for ordination on Saturday and do church in Killingworth on Sunday. So I went, yesterday, to Frankie's Rhode Island wake.
Tony, who has lived with Frankie for 8 years and taken care of him, and Fran are his son and daughter. Son Frankie, Jr. lives in Virginia and will be at the funeral. Dan, my brother in law, is a RC priest and will do the funeral mass.
The wake in RI was wondrous. Frances had done a photo/music collage on her laptop and it was playing with a Harlem choir singing. Funeral homes will do this for you for a price, but Fran, God love her, put it together, she told me, in an hour or so.
Fifty or sixty people came all told, Fran and Tony's friends and friends Frank had made in RI. Two of his doctors and two of his dialysis technicians were there. Physicians and medical folks don't, in my long experience, come to wakes. A wake means they've failed. But there they were, tears in their eyes.
That is what Frankie was like.
There were also neighbors from RI--and elderly woman and two guys that looked like bikers among them. That was Frank's magic, he had no 'judgement' about him. He met you as you were and honored you for that.
Fran and Tony had asked me to say a few words and pray a prayer. I told the people there how Frank and Annie had welcomed me 49 years ago (a WASP dating their Italian/Hungarian niece) with no question. Frank and Anthony had come to church where I was presiding and Tony said, interrupting me as I spoke, "we committed a mortal sin coming to mass at your church!" I said, "I think God will get over it," in reply.
Then Cindy spoke. She's Fran's partner/wife. And she talked about how Frank and Annie hadn't blinked when she came into their lives. She said Frank accepted her as a daughter and she gained a second father.
That's the way he was. Just like that. No judgment, no evaluation, no assumptions. If his daughter loved Cindy, so did he.
Then Tony and Fran spoke. They are both devastated by their father's death. Tony especially. He not only lost a father, he lost his companion for the last 8 years.
I realize it might be hard to imagine Frankie was really so open, accepting, hospitable as he was.
And he was. No kidding. One of the best people I've ever know. And it was humbling and profoundly good to have shared some of the journey we're all on with him.
His funeral is on Monday. Drink a glass of good Italian wine to his memory. Nothing would please him more....
I couldn't go because I have to present Mike Carroll for ordination on Saturday and do church in Killingworth on Sunday. So I went, yesterday, to Frankie's Rhode Island wake.
Tony, who has lived with Frankie for 8 years and taken care of him, and Fran are his son and daughter. Son Frankie, Jr. lives in Virginia and will be at the funeral. Dan, my brother in law, is a RC priest and will do the funeral mass.
The wake in RI was wondrous. Frances had done a photo/music collage on her laptop and it was playing with a Harlem choir singing. Funeral homes will do this for you for a price, but Fran, God love her, put it together, she told me, in an hour or so.
Fifty or sixty people came all told, Fran and Tony's friends and friends Frank had made in RI. Two of his doctors and two of his dialysis technicians were there. Physicians and medical folks don't, in my long experience, come to wakes. A wake means they've failed. But there they were, tears in their eyes.
That is what Frankie was like.
There were also neighbors from RI--and elderly woman and two guys that looked like bikers among them. That was Frank's magic, he had no 'judgement' about him. He met you as you were and honored you for that.
Fran and Tony had asked me to say a few words and pray a prayer. I told the people there how Frank and Annie had welcomed me 49 years ago (a WASP dating their Italian/Hungarian niece) with no question. Frank and Anthony had come to church where I was presiding and Tony said, interrupting me as I spoke, "we committed a mortal sin coming to mass at your church!" I said, "I think God will get over it," in reply.
Then Cindy spoke. She's Fran's partner/wife. And she talked about how Frank and Annie hadn't blinked when she came into their lives. She said Frank accepted her as a daughter and she gained a second father.
That's the way he was. Just like that. No judgment, no evaluation, no assumptions. If his daughter loved Cindy, so did he.
Then Tony and Fran spoke. They are both devastated by their father's death. Tony especially. He not only lost a father, he lost his companion for the last 8 years.
I realize it might be hard to imagine Frankie was really so open, accepting, hospitable as he was.
And he was. No kidding. One of the best people I've ever know. And it was humbling and profoundly good to have shared some of the journey we're all on with him.
His funeral is on Monday. Drink a glass of good Italian wine to his memory. Nothing would please him more....
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
How stuff sometimes works....
So, I was doing next to nothing (which I do well!) and thinking about next to nothing (another talent of mine) when suddenly a though appeared in my mind. This is what it was: "would my parents be proud of me?"
I hadn't had that thought since I was a teenager.
My mother died when I was 25 and my father when I was in my 30's somewhere (always the issue of linear time for me).
Where did that wondering come from?
I pondered it for a while and realized it must be because 'uncle Frankie' died. I've known Frank Pisano for nearly 50 of his 91 years. I started dating his niece, my wife, in 1965, and I've known him ever since. He became, over nearly a half-a-century 'uncle Frankie' to me as well as Bern. I loved him mightily. He is the last of Bern's 'blood' uncles and aunts one the Italian side to die. She has a couple of aunts by marriage left on that side and an uncle on the Hungarian side..
I have only Aunt Elsie Ours. Not even an uncle or aunt by marriage left. Aunt Elsie was my mother's youngest sister. Younger by a lot though she must be in her 80's or more by now. I contact her by letter or phone two or three times a year. She lives in Dunbar, West Virginia, just north of Charleston.
I hereby resolve to contact her more often. She is the last contact I have with the generation before me. And I've always loved her. I used to go from rural MacDowell County to spend a week with her and my uncle Harvey each summer when I was young. It was 'going to the city' in my mind.
With uncle Frankie's death, Bern is the ultimate generation of her blood on one side. Aunt Elsie is the last of my blood on either side still living.
So I wondered, approaching my 67th birthday next month, would my parents be proud of me.
I've been married for 43 years, have two children and three granddaughters and have been a priest since 1975, serving three wondrous parishes full time and now three wondrous congregations part time. I have no felony or misdemeanor charges against me. I am, as far as I know, a person of honor and integrity and openness.
So probably they would be, Virgil and Cleo, 'proud of me'.
My hope that there is a heaven somewhere is driven by hoping my parents could somehow read this post and know I loved them and appreciated them more and more the longer I lived and hoped they were proud of me in the Kingdom.
That would be the best I could hope for.
Which is probably why it's called 'heaven'--that reality we hope for....
I hadn't had that thought since I was a teenager.
My mother died when I was 25 and my father when I was in my 30's somewhere (always the issue of linear time for me).
Where did that wondering come from?
I pondered it for a while and realized it must be because 'uncle Frankie' died. I've known Frank Pisano for nearly 50 of his 91 years. I started dating his niece, my wife, in 1965, and I've known him ever since. He became, over nearly a half-a-century 'uncle Frankie' to me as well as Bern. I loved him mightily. He is the last of Bern's 'blood' uncles and aunts one the Italian side to die. She has a couple of aunts by marriage left on that side and an uncle on the Hungarian side..
I have only Aunt Elsie Ours. Not even an uncle or aunt by marriage left. Aunt Elsie was my mother's youngest sister. Younger by a lot though she must be in her 80's or more by now. I contact her by letter or phone two or three times a year. She lives in Dunbar, West Virginia, just north of Charleston.
I hereby resolve to contact her more often. She is the last contact I have with the generation before me. And I've always loved her. I used to go from rural MacDowell County to spend a week with her and my uncle Harvey each summer when I was young. It was 'going to the city' in my mind.
With uncle Frankie's death, Bern is the ultimate generation of her blood on one side. Aunt Elsie is the last of my blood on either side still living.
So I wondered, approaching my 67th birthday next month, would my parents be proud of me.
I've been married for 43 years, have two children and three granddaughters and have been a priest since 1975, serving three wondrous parishes full time and now three wondrous congregations part time. I have no felony or misdemeanor charges against me. I am, as far as I know, a person of honor and integrity and openness.
So probably they would be, Virgil and Cleo, 'proud of me'.
My hope that there is a heaven somewhere is driven by hoping my parents could somehow read this post and know I loved them and appreciated them more and more the longer I lived and hoped they were proud of me in the Kingdom.
That would be the best I could hope for.
Which is probably why it's called 'heaven'--that reality we hope for....
Monday, March 10, 2014
Frank Pisano 1923-2014
Bern's Uncle Frankie died this morning in his 90th year.
His son Tony told Bern tonight that Uncle Frankie got to see WVU beat Oklahoma on Saturday and told Tony and Frances, two of his three children on Sunday, "whatever happens, I'm in a win/win situation. I've had a great life and today I'm with family."
That pretty much sums up who Frankie was.
He had a great life and he loved his family--including his niece Bern.
Bern and Mimi and Tim and I were at his 90th birthday party last year in a semi-good Italian restaurant with lots of people who loved him. And he was gracious and funny and hospitable as he always was. I've known him for almost 50 of his 90 years and he was, to my knowledge of him, always gracious and funny and hospitable.
Talk about a great life.
I'll go to the wake in Providence and Bern will go to West Virginia for his funeral, flying to Pittsburgh to ride down to the southern part of the state with her brother Dan.
That's how we'll do it.
Bern said tonight, "I really hope there's a heaven so Frankie can be there."
And after a long pause, thinking of him meeting up with Annie, his wife, who he loved like a rock, loved in a way that would fill your heart up to the brim, I said, "If there is a heaven, Frankie will be there."
And I mean it. I really do.
Frank Pisano was one of the best people I ever knew.
May he rest in peace.
Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord.
And my light perpetual shine upon him.
Amen to that. And amen again.....
His son Tony told Bern tonight that Uncle Frankie got to see WVU beat Oklahoma on Saturday and told Tony and Frances, two of his three children on Sunday, "whatever happens, I'm in a win/win situation. I've had a great life and today I'm with family."
That pretty much sums up who Frankie was.
He had a great life and he loved his family--including his niece Bern.
Bern and Mimi and Tim and I were at his 90th birthday party last year in a semi-good Italian restaurant with lots of people who loved him. And he was gracious and funny and hospitable as he always was. I've known him for almost 50 of his 90 years and he was, to my knowledge of him, always gracious and funny and hospitable.
Talk about a great life.
I'll go to the wake in Providence and Bern will go to West Virginia for his funeral, flying to Pittsburgh to ride down to the southern part of the state with her brother Dan.
That's how we'll do it.
Bern said tonight, "I really hope there's a heaven so Frankie can be there."
And after a long pause, thinking of him meeting up with Annie, his wife, who he loved like a rock, loved in a way that would fill your heart up to the brim, I said, "If there is a heaven, Frankie will be there."
And I mean it. I really do.
Frank Pisano was one of the best people I ever knew.
May he rest in peace.
Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord.
And my light perpetual shine upon him.
Amen to that. And amen again.....
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