Dismissals

Long-ago, I watched Juan fix the brakes on his ’53 Chevy. The car was on blocks. Juan knelt in the dirt. His toolbox was spare: pliers, screwdrivers, hammer, cold chisel, hacksaw … and accumulated parts from other cars. At noon we walked to the parts store to ask questions. Late in the day, on a country road, the windows rolled down, Juan let me drive. The car was mine. My first. Juan fixed the brakes the same way he practiced his faith: Start early, work straight through, ask questions and never lose heart. God rest you and keep you, Juan.

I don’t recall quite where I came across these words … they are the good fortune of aimless scrolling. I have a shirt pocket archive for such writings. Therein, these words of The Rt. Rev. Morris K. Thompson, Jr., Bishop of Louisiana: “Let us resolve to respect the dignity of every human beginning today, and when the sun comes up tomorrow let us once again resolve to respect the dignity of every human being and again the next day until God tells us we are free from our sins. For this is the work God has called us to practice.” Amen!

I’ve had some wild-eyed notions over the years … impractical, unworkable ideas. As a kid, I tried selling ice cream cones from my bike on a summer day, pedaling through neighborhoods as the ice cream dripped onto the pavement. My ideas are some better now. I question … experiment … I proceed slowly and ask the advice of others. Still, there’s a hidden risk: If I tell someone what I’m going to do, they might run my idea into the ground with a dozen reasons why it won’t work … and I might not get out of bed the next morning. Still … onward!

I’d been dispatched on an errand to the medical complex. Doctors’ offices, X-rays places, laboratories, a lot of people milling about looking for their doctor or the exit. I had in hand what I was sent to get. I looked around, got my bearings, and headed for the exit. An old man, maybe my age, appeared to be looking for something, so I asked, “You OK?” He said, “Trying to find the men’s.” I walked with him. Slow going, but we found it. He said thanks. He meant it. I went on my way, feeling some better about life. 

My father was a literature major (Dartmouth, 1923). I inherited his love of the classics and made my way through a fair number. Some were terrific, others not so much. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick has remained a mainstay for me, a work I return to from time to time. Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim … not a favorite … save for one sentence, near the book’s end, an instruction to Jim from his father, a churchman, that Jim should, “Trust Providence as the established order of the universe.” Those words come to me, from time to time, as if from my own father.

It was cold out and I had the heater turned way up on that old Plymouth Fury police cruiser. Round and round the village I went, a quiet night until I chanced to stop by the laundromat. A man sat on a milk crate, his bare legs sticking out from a poncho he had pulled tight around him. I asked him, “Watcha doin’?” He tilted his head. “Only clothes I got is in there.” A few threadbare bits of cloth spun around in the dryer. I dropped a dime in the payphone and asked the chief what I ought to do with this desperado. Chief told me to hold the fort, he’d be over directly. The chief came with an armful of clothes and what looked like his old hunting jacket and gave them to the man. Chief said to me, “I sincerely hope this crimewave don’t last past spring.”

They were my friends of many years and not a little surprised when told that I was to be ordained deacon. They came to my ordination but didn’t know quite what to make of it… all that highfalutin ceremonial stuff was not their thing. Still, I was happy they were there and sorry I didn’t have time to spend with them just then. They left when the service ended. I’d meant to call but time went by. Then came a package from them … a gift for this deacon … a Benedictine Prayer Book. I keep it close. It’s a good world.

Implicit in a promise to write letters to a prisoner is the likelihood that you will be drawn into the life of another. In the main, I understand boundaries … but I also understand the responsibilities that go with caring for someone who is, most certainly, one of the very least among God’s children. I write letters … I send him a few bucks to buy something … I visit him … write to his kids … and I talk to his lawyer. Maybe I don’t understand boundaries after all … but I’ve been well repaid for whatever I have done for Mike … and for others.

There was a time when I believed that a better world would come about through systemic effort. If we just fix the system, the lowly will be lifted, justice and mercy will prevail. That may be true, though I never saw it happen. I tired myself out and sat on the sideline. Then Sr. Kathleen, an Ursuline nun, introduced me to a young man in the sixth grade. He could barely read. His arithmetic, history and geography were shaky. I knew that stuff, or a fair amount of it. Together we worked through it … we both discovered a new world.

Jesus often spoke in parables … The Good Samaritan … The Faithful Servant … The Pearl … The Mustard Seed. As Jesus’ followers, we might take up a parable … most any will do … retire to our inner room and ponder the parable … hold it close … let it do its work within us … live with the parable … test it and keep it close until the parable becomes a light within … an inner light to stand against darkness and uncertainty. And so we will grow, in spirit and strength, becoming ever more able to build the Kingdom … one brick … one prayer … one parable at a time.

“Racism tends to attract attention when it’s flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping — positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry; they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace; they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead to change the subject and straw man.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, writer and former journalist at The Atlantic (born 1975)

I cannot recall just how it came about, but I had befriended a man who led a troubled life. He never accounted himself worthy, only barely got by. Then, one day, the particulars lost to time, the man saw a child standing before him. And the child spoke to the man. Wise words, so the man told me, simple words, each word manifestly true. The child turned and was gone, but the words were all that was required to lift the man from the nothingness of his doldrums into a new way of being. He never saw the child again.