February 25, 2011.
Dear God! Sometimes I don’t even want to talk to You, let alone pray. It used to be so simple between us: I talked to You, I listened to You, I talked back, You told me off, I stalked off, cooled off, came back, and we started over. No, it was better than that. We picked up where we left off. We communicated. Truly communicated. The way my mother and I used to, so there were never any jagged leftovers lying in wait to give either of us a splinter. I did so love that woman, my complicated, difficult mother. I didn’t love her weaknesses, but I didn’t take advantage of them, either. I don’t know if You have weaknesses (I suspect one or two). Regardless, you’re God. Loving and. . . mature. Why would you take advantage of my weaknesses?
Take my weakness to edit everything in sight. Here’s an example and, for the record, it’s not a small one to me.
It has to do with a prayer–and a particular pray-er. A dear friend who prays for me every day. I am someone who’s grateful to be prayed for. I am especially grateful to be in the prayers of people who are convinced that God is a good listener. While I am inclined to think that the main–and certainly salutary–result of prayer is to center the person praying, I do believe that our prayers can, may, and do occasionally move God to act.
So I watch what I pray for.
That, it turns out, is the easy part for me. What I find hard is to remember that I have no business even daydreaming about editing someone else’s prayers. Talk about chutzpah! Yet it sometimes takes every bit of my spiritual energy to push that desire down and keep it there.
I do believe that, as "Nobody’s God" belongs to no faith group, He must be adamant about the right of people to pray not only how but also for what they want to. That’s the open-minded God I pray to, right? Believe in. Check. And I know there’s no point in believing in God if you don’t trust Him. Yet whenever I think of this one prayer by my friend, I repeatedly yank back my trust. I don’t want to have to trust that God will not–to teach me a lesson, or on a divine whim–grant her prayer, I want to be sure. Because if. . . that would destroy my faith in God’s open-mindedness. Which is no lower than point three of my personal creed.
The devil is in the details? Here goes. This is not just any friend, but a friend whom I have grown to love, who prays for me on a daily basis. When another friend of mine is mired in a particular difficulty, I do not hesitate to enlist this dear friend’s prayers to accompany mine. When I find myself in a smooth-walled hole, she is the friend I ask to help hoist me up by adding her prayers to my own. I ask her because I know she really prays.
The problem is, my friend prays every day for me to be saved. To be redeemed by Jesus. She knows that I was for a time a Catholic, and maybe that feeds her hope, but I doubt it. You see, my friend definitely does not believe in "nobody’s God"–only hers. Her Jesus belongs to my friend’s "Bible-Centered Baptist church." The church is evangelical, and so is she. When we’re running an errand, she speaks of how, specifically, he is helping our day along. She’s not displaying her intimate relationship with Jesus for my benefit. He is her constant companion–in both senses. The immediacy of her faith is wonderful to witness–but also discomforting.
My friend and I do not argue theology, we don’t discuss theology. She knows by heart all she feels she needs to know about God. Including that, unless I accept Jesus as my Lord, I am doomed.
And so she prays for that, my surrender to Jesus. Every day. My head knows that I cannot revise her prayer, edit it so that she prays instead that God will guide me along my own path. Mind you, I do not ever say–even think–"been there, done that." I cannot imagine being that disrespectful of either her faith or our friendship.
Once, as we sat on my couch, for a brief visit away from my work, hers, or an errand, she said, I think your view of God is wider than mine, mine is narrower than yours. I waited, hovering on the cusp of joy. But she stopped there. She is happy with her narrower view. She loves her church. Her Bible-study guide. Her Jesus. And because she loves me, she prays for me to surrender to them all. Because, she tells me, the prospect of missing me in Heaven makes her sad.
I do not tell her that I believe Heaven is bigger than she thinks, or that God is. Let Nobody’s God fend for Himself. I am learning. Learning there is nothing I can say to my friend. Learning that what I can do is pray that my love of God will lead me to Heaven. And that when my friend and I come face to face there, we will embrace wordlessly, as loving friends do when they meet up.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Nobody's God
February 18, 2011.
One part of writing I especially like is the process of shaping words and phrases into accessible, clear sentences. Sentences a reader can enter without being scratched by verbal brambles. Sentences a reader can feel free to respond to, confident that he understands what I meant to say. When I work as an editor with other writers, I talk about clarity and accessability more than any other topics. But I see that, in this blog I have been less diligent about its shape than the shape of its individual parts. So it’s time to "shape up." Every other week, I will discuss how I see my belief that God "belongs" to no one group of believers playing out in real life. Alternate weeks, I will share an experience or person or book that became part of the path which led me to the conviction that God is "nobody’s God."
I’m going to start with the second kind of post, and ask you to return with me to my experience, in childhood, of Yiddishkeit. When, long before I came to believe that God is nobody’s God, I was part of a family where He was indeed nobody’s God.
Had anyone asked my parents whether they were more Jewish than American–or the reverse–my father would doubtless have shaken his head and smiled indulgently, while my mother would have pointed out, fairly politely, that it was a foolish question. Like asking someone if he valued one leg more than the other, she might have added. To my parents, being Jewish was why they came to America. My father came first, AWOL from the czar’s army; my mother arrived a few years later, leaving behind a job as supervisor of secondary evening school in the Ukraine. Louis Stein never finished fifth grade; Zelda Zam had completed the work for a doctorate at the University of Kiev. She was tall, quite stunning, and too serious; he was short, closer to homely than plain–and a champion charmer. In Chicago, the two of them met, fell in love, and married. Only in America.
With both arms, my mother wrapped her Bronx-born daughter warmly–in love and Yiddish lullabies, Yiddish songs, and Yiddish stories. They put me in a Jewish pre-school, where Yiddish was the lingua franca. My vocabulary was entirely Yiddish, and not short on words; but at two and a half, I stubbornly refused to combine words into a sentence. Until the afternoon, desperate for a push on the swings which the pre-school director calmly refused to give me until I asked in a complete sentence, I grudgingly emitted: "Zeit azoi gut und gib mich a shtup"–which may belong in Ripley as the longest first sentence ever, at least in Yiddish.
When I graduated to an Arbiter Ring shule, we studied the teacher’s own version of our formation as a people, a version from which God was somehow entirely absent. Who knew? It was a good story, anyway. I even went for a year of weekends to a Jewish High School–but God wasn’t part of the curriculum there either.
Only one element was lacking from my intensely Jewish upbringing: God. Mind you, neither of my parents ever said a word against God. God was–simply?–never mentioned. Instead, Truth was raised to the level of The Ultimate. To tell the Truth always took the top spot in my family’s creed. Not once did it occur to me that either of my parents might lie. They lied. My father lied continually about the health of our family’s finances–especially their prognosis. My mother, as proud as she was smart but determined that we’d eat, lied about taking a job scrubbing the floors of the common rooms in the Amalgamated, the housing project in which we lived. My father lived his life entirely encapsulated in fantastical thinking. My mother The Realist created fantasies to keep my childhood happy. Once, when Con Ed had had it with us, and turned off the electricity, my mother lit candles on the kitchen table, declaring it a holiday. Our holiday meal was smelts. Smelts by candlelight? It worked. Proof: the first time I ever went to the 21 Club, I saw smelts on the menu, and ordered them–my forever idea of celebratory fare.
My favorite of the lies my mother told me was repeated whenever she managed to purchase theater tickets. As she led me upstairs to the $1.80 seats, she would, step after step, say "best seats in the house, best seats in the house." Once we were in our sky-high seats, and she had caught her breath, she would–each time–explain that these were the best seats because the people who sat there loved the theater. When I was twenty-four and she dead for six years, I sat in house seats for the first time. When the curtain came down on the first act, I cried out "My mother lied to me!" And then I laughed. Laughed with pride at my mother’s brilliance. What a wonderful lie to tell a child–a lie thickly laden with truth. Lack of money alone would not supply stamina enough to hike all the way up to the second balcony. It would take love.
I got a lot of that. My Yiddishkeit childhood was happy. In the snapshots of me, my one dimple is unmistakable.
One part of writing I especially like is the process of shaping words and phrases into accessible, clear sentences. Sentences a reader can enter without being scratched by verbal brambles. Sentences a reader can feel free to respond to, confident that he understands what I meant to say. When I work as an editor with other writers, I talk about clarity and accessability more than any other topics. But I see that, in this blog I have been less diligent about its shape than the shape of its individual parts. So it’s time to "shape up." Every other week, I will discuss how I see my belief that God "belongs" to no one group of believers playing out in real life. Alternate weeks, I will share an experience or person or book that became part of the path which led me to the conviction that God is "nobody’s God."
I’m going to start with the second kind of post, and ask you to return with me to my experience, in childhood, of Yiddishkeit. When, long before I came to believe that God is nobody’s God, I was part of a family where He was indeed nobody’s God.
Had anyone asked my parents whether they were more Jewish than American–or the reverse–my father would doubtless have shaken his head and smiled indulgently, while my mother would have pointed out, fairly politely, that it was a foolish question. Like asking someone if he valued one leg more than the other, she might have added. To my parents, being Jewish was why they came to America. My father came first, AWOL from the czar’s army; my mother arrived a few years later, leaving behind a job as supervisor of secondary evening school in the Ukraine. Louis Stein never finished fifth grade; Zelda Zam had completed the work for a doctorate at the University of Kiev. She was tall, quite stunning, and too serious; he was short, closer to homely than plain–and a champion charmer. In Chicago, the two of them met, fell in love, and married. Only in America.
With both arms, my mother wrapped her Bronx-born daughter warmly–in love and Yiddish lullabies, Yiddish songs, and Yiddish stories. They put me in a Jewish pre-school, where Yiddish was the lingua franca. My vocabulary was entirely Yiddish, and not short on words; but at two and a half, I stubbornly refused to combine words into a sentence. Until the afternoon, desperate for a push on the swings which the pre-school director calmly refused to give me until I asked in a complete sentence, I grudgingly emitted: "Zeit azoi gut und gib mich a shtup"–which may belong in Ripley as the longest first sentence ever, at least in Yiddish.
When I graduated to an Arbiter Ring shule, we studied the teacher’s own version of our formation as a people, a version from which God was somehow entirely absent. Who knew? It was a good story, anyway. I even went for a year of weekends to a Jewish High School–but God wasn’t part of the curriculum there either.
Only one element was lacking from my intensely Jewish upbringing: God. Mind you, neither of my parents ever said a word against God. God was–simply?–never mentioned. Instead, Truth was raised to the level of The Ultimate. To tell the Truth always took the top spot in my family’s creed. Not once did it occur to me that either of my parents might lie. They lied. My father lied continually about the health of our family’s finances–especially their prognosis. My mother, as proud as she was smart but determined that we’d eat, lied about taking a job scrubbing the floors of the common rooms in the Amalgamated, the housing project in which we lived. My father lived his life entirely encapsulated in fantastical thinking. My mother The Realist created fantasies to keep my childhood happy. Once, when Con Ed had had it with us, and turned off the electricity, my mother lit candles on the kitchen table, declaring it a holiday. Our holiday meal was smelts. Smelts by candlelight? It worked. Proof: the first time I ever went to the 21 Club, I saw smelts on the menu, and ordered them–my forever idea of celebratory fare.
My favorite of the lies my mother told me was repeated whenever she managed to purchase theater tickets. As she led me upstairs to the $1.80 seats, she would, step after step, say "best seats in the house, best seats in the house." Once we were in our sky-high seats, and she had caught her breath, she would–each time–explain that these were the best seats because the people who sat there loved the theater. When I was twenty-four and she dead for six years, I sat in house seats for the first time. When the curtain came down on the first act, I cried out "My mother lied to me!" And then I laughed. Laughed with pride at my mother’s brilliance. What a wonderful lie to tell a child–a lie thickly laden with truth. Lack of money alone would not supply stamina enough to hike all the way up to the second balcony. It would take love.
I got a lot of that. My Yiddishkeit childhood was happy. In the snapshots of me, my one dimple is unmistakable.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
nobodysgod
February 11, 2011.
As I wrote my last post, I was pleased to be able to recall readily the details of my confirmation by Cardinal Bea. But after the blog was posted, my brain fastened on the fact that while red-letter events of my years as a Catholic are vivid to me even now, I remember little about, specifically, what I believed–and thought–then. I remember how ardently I believed in God, but all that says to me now is how passionately I believed in my belief itself. But what about when I thought about God, Jesus, being Jewish, chastity, the "meaning of life"–what was I thinking? (Please note that the emphasis is not on the last word, as in "What was I thinking?)
Curiosity nagged at me. Not being able to remember, that nagged at me even more. By concentrating hard, I could recall a feeling–and then the thought–that nothing around me looked the same once God was in my life. Nothing was "everyday" any more. But while I was determined to become a person whose life reflected her faith, I was equally determined not to change. To remain my parents’ daughter. Beyond those tissue-thin recollections, I could remember only extraordinary joy, which was barely tempered by a sporadic sense of anxiety about going all the way, so to speak, and being baptized.
Coincidences are not part of my belief system. Checking for possible clues in the bookcase where I keep old drafts, I noticed a bulky brown envelope. At once, I knew that manila envelope held poems from the time immediately before my baptism. I am no poet–but even as I held the unopened envelope in my hands, the reason I wrote those poems blithely bounced back into my head.
I laughed. I had written these poems because there was a gap in my days I needed to fill–not among the top ten reasons a poet writes poetry, I’m pretty sure. But it was mine–because seven months before my rescheduled baptism, I lost my job. With no movie-going or meeting-a friend-for-lunch money, I had to find some way to occupy myself that didn’t cost anything. Chastity was writ large for this catechumen, so any "filler" activity had to take place sitting up. That was why, every day when I returned home from noon Mass at St. Paul the Apostle, I would–I remember now!–read a little of some confident convert’s autobiography. The rest of the afternoon hours, I filled by writing a poem. Then, or more likely, later, I stuck the lot of them in the manila envelope I now held.
I opened it. Dozens of pages came tumbling out. On each was a poem, typed on unemployment-thin paper. I gathered them up from the floor and braved them.
My first observation was that the poems confirmed that any gift I have for poetry is scrawny indeed. Far more importantly, reading them did reveal some of what was on my
mind back then. They offer evidence of how serious was my determination to remain myself. One promise kept. Another find:: once an asker of questions, always an asker of questions. The poems are stiff with questions. Chronically curious, I wasn’t cured of that happy ailment. Moreover, even when I was in the early-days-heat of my love affair with God, I made jokes. Making jokes is something I do a lot now–but was surprised to find poems that are funny. Well, I was did have to amuse myself. Nonetheless, the poems, both decent and pretty dreadful, reveal how quickly I understood that having a relationship with God wasn’t a joke. Or easy.
That I knew that is evident in this very short poem, titled "On the Nature of Faith:
Have faith.
Have half of this peach.
Have fun at the beach.
Have faith.
Here’s a short one on "The Eucharist":
Bland blessedness,
Muted and dim:
Five real wounds less
Than wholly Him.
I was not a believer long before I understood how deceptive religious language can be. As you read the next poem, called "Sweet Jesus," picture a mother in the park, whose child has fallen and cut open his knees. See in her outstretched arms the sweetness of her love?
Impaled upon the cost,
Your coaxing arms uncrossed,
That welcome is not lost
Upon us, Sweet Jesus.
Heart-long toward that grace
We race, to take our place
With You–and find spared space
Up there. Thus.
Sweet Jesus.
The next poem was written after making the Stations of the Cross. It’s about the tenth station, which shows Jesus being stripped..
Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who is the barest one of all?
In any Catholic church, the Virgin Mary is always in sight. My curiosity, disinclined to pause for breath anywhere, had "A question for our Lady":
Mary, ever virgin, in life before in name,
Didn’t it hurt you, girl, to miss that dazzling pain?
Here’s one called "An Old Tree,"which hints to me that I might have given some thought to the risk-laden tree in the Garden of Eden:
The rings around the trunk, they say,
Are the way to gauge an aged
Tree’s longevity. But how, pray,
Calculate when the tree’s engaged
In backing up a dying God?
Yet see that tree on Calvary,
Those are no soft twigs, those die-hard
Planks nailed tight to Sanctity.
But the heart of an bold old tree
Which would have chosen otherwise
Than thus revive cold memory
Of when it stood in Paradise.
I’ve said that I was in need of "free" amusement during those money-tight months before my baptism. "Conversion: One Version" was obviously written for that purpose:
Becoming a Roman,
When a full-grown woman,
Holds lots of surprises.
But I think first prize is
Snatched from the myriad
By a late period.
Quelle temptation to pander
To delusions of grandeur.
And last, another serious poem, written from my lifelong desire to understand more than I can.
Calvary
It is hard as nails
To grieve a God. First-born
Price God set impales
Himself. Unadorned, worn
Thin by slim hope held tight,
A prophecy comes true
To death: accounts set right
By a diligent Jew.
In squinting toward the kill,
Our eyes blink smarts enough
To salt that wounded hill.
But tears strike blindman’s buff
At truth, for all faith knows
Of how God comes, or goes.
Enough. Indeed, probably more than enough of my "brown envelope" poems. Though I had packed these poems away with small if any intention of ever looking at them again, what I discovered in reading them now was that, even in the early days of my belief, I hadn’t packed my mind away. That’s the main reason I’ve shared them. But also because putting them out in the blogosphere makes me feel gutsy.
As I wrote my last post, I was pleased to be able to recall readily the details of my confirmation by Cardinal Bea. But after the blog was posted, my brain fastened on the fact that while red-letter events of my years as a Catholic are vivid to me even now, I remember little about, specifically, what I believed–and thought–then. I remember how ardently I believed in God, but all that says to me now is how passionately I believed in my belief itself. But what about when I thought about God, Jesus, being Jewish, chastity, the "meaning of life"–what was I thinking? (Please note that the emphasis is not on the last word, as in "What was I thinking?)
Curiosity nagged at me. Not being able to remember, that nagged at me even more. By concentrating hard, I could recall a feeling–and then the thought–that nothing around me looked the same once God was in my life. Nothing was "everyday" any more. But while I was determined to become a person whose life reflected her faith, I was equally determined not to change. To remain my parents’ daughter. Beyond those tissue-thin recollections, I could remember only extraordinary joy, which was barely tempered by a sporadic sense of anxiety about going all the way, so to speak, and being baptized.
Coincidences are not part of my belief system. Checking for possible clues in the bookcase where I keep old drafts, I noticed a bulky brown envelope. At once, I knew that manila envelope held poems from the time immediately before my baptism. I am no poet–but even as I held the unopened envelope in my hands, the reason I wrote those poems blithely bounced back into my head.
I laughed. I had written these poems because there was a gap in my days I needed to fill–not among the top ten reasons a poet writes poetry, I’m pretty sure. But it was mine–because seven months before my rescheduled baptism, I lost my job. With no movie-going or meeting-a friend-for-lunch money, I had to find some way to occupy myself that didn’t cost anything. Chastity was writ large for this catechumen, so any "filler" activity had to take place sitting up. That was why, every day when I returned home from noon Mass at St. Paul the Apostle, I would–I remember now!–read a little of some confident convert’s autobiography. The rest of the afternoon hours, I filled by writing a poem. Then, or more likely, later, I stuck the lot of them in the manila envelope I now held.
I opened it. Dozens of pages came tumbling out. On each was a poem, typed on unemployment-thin paper. I gathered them up from the floor and braved them.
My first observation was that the poems confirmed that any gift I have for poetry is scrawny indeed. Far more importantly, reading them did reveal some of what was on my
mind back then. They offer evidence of how serious was my determination to remain myself. One promise kept. Another find:: once an asker of questions, always an asker of questions. The poems are stiff with questions. Chronically curious, I wasn’t cured of that happy ailment. Moreover, even when I was in the early-days-heat of my love affair with God, I made jokes. Making jokes is something I do a lot now–but was surprised to find poems that are funny. Well, I was did have to amuse myself. Nonetheless, the poems, both decent and pretty dreadful, reveal how quickly I understood that having a relationship with God wasn’t a joke. Or easy.
That I knew that is evident in this very short poem, titled "On the Nature of Faith:
Have faith.
Have half of this peach.
Have fun at the beach.
Have faith.
Here’s a short one on "The Eucharist":
Bland blessedness,
Muted and dim:
Five real wounds less
Than wholly Him.
I was not a believer long before I understood how deceptive religious language can be. As you read the next poem, called "Sweet Jesus," picture a mother in the park, whose child has fallen and cut open his knees. See in her outstretched arms the sweetness of her love?
Impaled upon the cost,
Your coaxing arms uncrossed,
That welcome is not lost
Upon us, Sweet Jesus.
Heart-long toward that grace
We race, to take our place
With You–and find spared space
Up there. Thus.
Sweet Jesus.
The next poem was written after making the Stations of the Cross. It’s about the tenth station, which shows Jesus being stripped..
Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who is the barest one of all?
In any Catholic church, the Virgin Mary is always in sight. My curiosity, disinclined to pause for breath anywhere, had "A question for our Lady":
Mary, ever virgin, in life before in name,
Didn’t it hurt you, girl, to miss that dazzling pain?
Here’s one called "An Old Tree,"which hints to me that I might have given some thought to the risk-laden tree in the Garden of Eden:
The rings around the trunk, they say,
Are the way to gauge an aged
Tree’s longevity. But how, pray,
Calculate when the tree’s engaged
In backing up a dying God?
Yet see that tree on Calvary,
Those are no soft twigs, those die-hard
Planks nailed tight to Sanctity.
But the heart of an bold old tree
Which would have chosen otherwise
Than thus revive cold memory
Of when it stood in Paradise.
I’ve said that I was in need of "free" amusement during those money-tight months before my baptism. "Conversion: One Version" was obviously written for that purpose:
Becoming a Roman,
When a full-grown woman,
Holds lots of surprises.
But I think first prize is
Snatched from the myriad
By a late period.
Quelle temptation to pander
To delusions of grandeur.
And last, another serious poem, written from my lifelong desire to understand more than I can.
Calvary
It is hard as nails
To grieve a God. First-born
Price God set impales
Himself. Unadorned, worn
Thin by slim hope held tight,
A prophecy comes true
To death: accounts set right
By a diligent Jew.
In squinting toward the kill,
Our eyes blink smarts enough
To salt that wounded hill.
But tears strike blindman’s buff
At truth, for all faith knows
Of how God comes, or goes.
Enough. Indeed, probably more than enough of my "brown envelope" poems. Though I had packed these poems away with small if any intention of ever looking at them again, what I discovered in reading them now was that, even in the early days of my belief, I hadn’t packed my mind away. That’s the main reason I’ve shared them. But also because putting them out in the blogosphere makes me feel gutsy.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
February 4, 2011
Friday, February 4, 2011.
Holiness is like pornography. Because Justice Potter Stewart’s comment applies. As when you’re faced with pornography, when you’re faced with holiness, you know it.
I met a holy person once, and meeting Augustin Cardinal Bea was a blessing I cherish to this day. Two biographical facts back up my view, I think.
First, Pope Pius XII made Cardinal Bea his confessor. Of course, the seal of confession covers that relationship. But when I discovered how much of Cardinal Bea’s late writings were about the Jewish people, I found the possible connection irresistible.
Second: When the theologically conservative Pope John XXIII was inspired to convoke a new Vatican Council–opening Church windows which had long been tightly shut–the first person he told was Cardinal Bea. During the Council, Cardinal Bea not only played a major role in drafting Nostre Aetate, the document which declared that the Jewish people was not guilty in the death of Jesus Christ, he also pushed very hard to get it passed. John Borelli, an historian of Vatican II, is quoted in Wikipedia as saying, "It took the will of John XXIII and the perseverance of Cardinal Bea to impose the declaration on the Council."
But in the spring of 1964, not quite a year after my baptism, passage of the statement on the Jews did not look at all like a sure thing. I was both too angry and too hurt to be confirmed in the Church.
Then something happened. One night, I noticed a two-line Reuters dispatch saying that Cardinal Bea, whose efforts on behalf of Nostre Aetate I had been reading about, would be visiting Cardinal Cushing the next few days. At one a.m., I sat down and wrote Cardinal Bea a letter. First thing in the morning, I asked the librarian in my office how to address a cardinal and to help me find out Cardinal Cushing’s address. I filled in the blanks in my letter and mailed it.
In those days, mail wasn’t by pony express the way it is now, and the following morning I received a phone call from Cardinal Bea’s secretary, a Jesuit named Stefan Schmidt, saying that if the cardinal had to return to Rome the next afternoon, but if I could come up to Boston in the t morning, "his eminence would be delighted to confirm you." My boss, a lapsed Catholic, instructed me to take the rest of the day off to hunt down a proper outfit–my arms completely covered, he explained. I laughed at the notion that my arms might be a problem for the cardinal who was in his late seventies, but bought an elegant white suit at Bendel’s and a big white hat to "top off" my proper outfit. The following morning, I flew up to Boston.
The man who walked slowly toward me in a "palatial" public room was bent over, physically an old man. But when he lifted his head to greet me, I saw his eyes--astonishingly clear eyes in a face road-mapped with wrinkles. I felt as though those eyes could see right inside people, yet they were heart-warmed. Declining to have his ring kissed, the cardinal invited me to sit. He sat down near me and asked me questions, some about me but also about my parents. He seemed not curious so much as interested in my Jewish background. Through an archway, I could see people waiting for an audience, yet our conversation went on and on until his secretary firmly urged us to proceed with the confirmation ceremony, and hastened us into Cardinal Cushing’s private chapel.
About the ceremony I remember only being surprised that the cardinal’s secretary seemed to be more familiar with it than the cardinal. I saw this as a sign of the forgetfulness which often accompanies age. But when told by his secretary to slap my face–which I knew was an integral part of the ceremony–the cardinal shook his head. A whispered debate ensued. Finally, the Cardinal nodded, apparently giving in. He came over to where I knelt at a rather ornate prie-dieu, raised his hand–and slowly caressed my cheek.
When the ceremony was over, instead of taking his leave, the cardinal led me back into the reception room. He asked if I would like a photograph of him, and had it sent for. Need I say I have it still? Then, apparently enjoying himself, he went further, and called for a photographer. Apparently there was one in house. In the picture of the cardinal and me, my large white hat floats like a huppah over the two of us.
I saw the Cardinal again the following year, when I was invited to Fordham for him to celebrate Mass for me. But it’s something that happened during our third and last meeting that I need to share. By then I had heard thirdhand that the reason the cardinal spent so much time with me when first we met and later sent me several gifts, was that he had never confirmed anyone before. I was told that the esteemed scholar, who had never had a pastoral assignment, was very pleased to have been asked to do something outside his ordinary activities.
But to our final meeting. In 1967, like many Jews (though probably not many of them were, as I was then, also a Catholic), I flew to Israel to see the Wall. My trip home would include a stopover in Rome, so I shopped for a kipah to give the cardinal as a memento. Invited to visit him on Saturday evening, I showed up at his palace–this one really was a palace–promptly at the appointed hour. When I gave my name, I was immediately taken to him. He was alone, working, seated at a huge desk in a huge room with many doors. After he asked about my trip for a few minutes, not wanting to take too much of his tme, I presented my modest gift of two kipot. Both were the correct red, but neither was utterly plain. I had looked high and higher in Jerusalem, but the best I could come by were kipot with very narrow silver borders. He thanked me and said they were beautiful. Then, very softly, he asked, "But are they for boys?" I so wanted him to think they were not totally inappropriate. So I pointed to the skirted bottom half of his cassock and said, "Eminence, are those?"
He looked down at himself, then back at me–and laughed. Loudly. Very loudly. Instantly, four doors opened and four Swiss guards came running in. Swiftly, still laughing, he sent them away. But I was stuck in the moment before. How could they have mistaken a laugh for a scream? Had none of those guards ever heard the cardinal laugh?
That made me sad–but later birthed a thought I’ve never told until now. Cardinal Bea was a holy man with a Texas-sized laugh he obviously didn’t get many opportunities to let loose on the world. Maybe, I thought, to be completely holy, you has to have laughter inside of you. Maybe the ability to laugh was the ultimate imitatio dei, because it allowed a holy person to be like God in that way, too.
(Now I know why I started blogging–to have the chance to type imitatio dei for the first time in my life.)
Now, tell me. Have you ever met a someone with outsize goodness and wisdom, untarnished by a gloss of humility? Who possessed grace straight up? And who had a terrific laugh? If you have met someone like that, you know yourself to be as blessed as I.
Holiness is like pornography. Because Justice Potter Stewart’s comment applies. As when you’re faced with pornography, when you’re faced with holiness, you know it.
I met a holy person once, and meeting Augustin Cardinal Bea was a blessing I cherish to this day. Two biographical facts back up my view, I think.
First, Pope Pius XII made Cardinal Bea his confessor. Of course, the seal of confession covers that relationship. But when I discovered how much of Cardinal Bea’s late writings were about the Jewish people, I found the possible connection irresistible.
Second: When the theologically conservative Pope John XXIII was inspired to convoke a new Vatican Council–opening Church windows which had long been tightly shut–the first person he told was Cardinal Bea. During the Council, Cardinal Bea not only played a major role in drafting Nostre Aetate, the document which declared that the Jewish people was not guilty in the death of Jesus Christ, he also pushed very hard to get it passed. John Borelli, an historian of Vatican II, is quoted in Wikipedia as saying, "It took the will of John XXIII and the perseverance of Cardinal Bea to impose the declaration on the Council."
But in the spring of 1964, not quite a year after my baptism, passage of the statement on the Jews did not look at all like a sure thing. I was both too angry and too hurt to be confirmed in the Church.
Then something happened. One night, I noticed a two-line Reuters dispatch saying that Cardinal Bea, whose efforts on behalf of Nostre Aetate I had been reading about, would be visiting Cardinal Cushing the next few days. At one a.m., I sat down and wrote Cardinal Bea a letter. First thing in the morning, I asked the librarian in my office how to address a cardinal and to help me find out Cardinal Cushing’s address. I filled in the blanks in my letter and mailed it.
In those days, mail wasn’t by pony express the way it is now, and the following morning I received a phone call from Cardinal Bea’s secretary, a Jesuit named Stefan Schmidt, saying that if the cardinal had to return to Rome the next afternoon, but if I could come up to Boston in the t morning, "his eminence would be delighted to confirm you." My boss, a lapsed Catholic, instructed me to take the rest of the day off to hunt down a proper outfit–my arms completely covered, he explained. I laughed at the notion that my arms might be a problem for the cardinal who was in his late seventies, but bought an elegant white suit at Bendel’s and a big white hat to "top off" my proper outfit. The following morning, I flew up to Boston.
The man who walked slowly toward me in a "palatial" public room was bent over, physically an old man. But when he lifted his head to greet me, I saw his eyes--astonishingly clear eyes in a face road-mapped with wrinkles. I felt as though those eyes could see right inside people, yet they were heart-warmed. Declining to have his ring kissed, the cardinal invited me to sit. He sat down near me and asked me questions, some about me but also about my parents. He seemed not curious so much as interested in my Jewish background. Through an archway, I could see people waiting for an audience, yet our conversation went on and on until his secretary firmly urged us to proceed with the confirmation ceremony, and hastened us into Cardinal Cushing’s private chapel.
About the ceremony I remember only being surprised that the cardinal’s secretary seemed to be more familiar with it than the cardinal. I saw this as a sign of the forgetfulness which often accompanies age. But when told by his secretary to slap my face–which I knew was an integral part of the ceremony–the cardinal shook his head. A whispered debate ensued. Finally, the Cardinal nodded, apparently giving in. He came over to where I knelt at a rather ornate prie-dieu, raised his hand–and slowly caressed my cheek.
When the ceremony was over, instead of taking his leave, the cardinal led me back into the reception room. He asked if I would like a photograph of him, and had it sent for. Need I say I have it still? Then, apparently enjoying himself, he went further, and called for a photographer. Apparently there was one in house. In the picture of the cardinal and me, my large white hat floats like a huppah over the two of us.
I saw the Cardinal again the following year, when I was invited to Fordham for him to celebrate Mass for me. But it’s something that happened during our third and last meeting that I need to share. By then I had heard thirdhand that the reason the cardinal spent so much time with me when first we met and later sent me several gifts, was that he had never confirmed anyone before. I was told that the esteemed scholar, who had never had a pastoral assignment, was very pleased to have been asked to do something outside his ordinary activities.
But to our final meeting. In 1967, like many Jews (though probably not many of them were, as I was then, also a Catholic), I flew to Israel to see the Wall. My trip home would include a stopover in Rome, so I shopped for a kipah to give the cardinal as a memento. Invited to visit him on Saturday evening, I showed up at his palace–this one really was a palace–promptly at the appointed hour. When I gave my name, I was immediately taken to him. He was alone, working, seated at a huge desk in a huge room with many doors. After he asked about my trip for a few minutes, not wanting to take too much of his tme, I presented my modest gift of two kipot. Both were the correct red, but neither was utterly plain. I had looked high and higher in Jerusalem, but the best I could come by were kipot with very narrow silver borders. He thanked me and said they were beautiful. Then, very softly, he asked, "But are they for boys?" I so wanted him to think they were not totally inappropriate. So I pointed to the skirted bottom half of his cassock and said, "Eminence, are those?"
He looked down at himself, then back at me–and laughed. Loudly. Very loudly. Instantly, four doors opened and four Swiss guards came running in. Swiftly, still laughing, he sent them away. But I was stuck in the moment before. How could they have mistaken a laugh for a scream? Had none of those guards ever heard the cardinal laugh?
That made me sad–but later birthed a thought I’ve never told until now. Cardinal Bea was a holy man with a Texas-sized laugh he obviously didn’t get many opportunities to let loose on the world. Maybe, I thought, to be completely holy, you has to have laughter inside of you. Maybe the ability to laugh was the ultimate imitatio dei, because it allowed a holy person to be like God in that way, too.
(Now I know why I started blogging–to have the chance to type imitatio dei for the first time in my life.)
Now, tell me. Have you ever met a someone with outsize goodness and wisdom, untarnished by a gloss of humility? Who possessed grace straight up? And who had a terrific laugh? If you have met someone like that, you know yourself to be as blessed as I.
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