Tag Archives: Strangers

Oniontown Pastoral: Too Late Smart, Too Soon Old

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Oniontown Pastoral: Too Late Smart, Too Soon Old

Driving from Erie to Oniontown and back a few times per week, I have lots of time on my hands. I listen to podcasts that help me prepare sermons. Over my nearly seven years as pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church, I’ve spent hundreds of hours on audiobooks, mostly biographies of United States Presidents. A month ago I met my goal of covering all of them—provided they are safely under the sod. When my brain needs to rest, Jussi Bjorling or Bach or Elizabeth Cotton takes the dashboard stage. Now and then, it’s just silence.

The common denominator is listening, which leads to thinking, even when James Buchanan is messing the country up before Lincoln takes the oath or Cotton strums her gentle guitar left-handed, upside down. My ears are open, mouth is usually shut, mind flirts with this idea or that and heart often migrates to my sleeve.

The other day, when the only sounds were the engine’s mumble and tires sighing on the road, longing came over me. Of all the exegesis, literature and music I take in and treasure, what I want to hear most is silent as soil.

I miss my Mom. I miss my Dad. Grandparents and aunts and uncles, too. But miss is a milquetoast word. My belly had the blues and my eyeballs were heavy. Dear God, let me ask them questions and receive their stories.

My dad: Nice look.

When folks say they have no regrets, I keep my own counsel. Regrets? You better believe I have them. A full accounting will have to wait for another day.

As retirement inches toward me, I realize in my blood, bones and tears how much I love my late elders and how starved I am for their company. Three or four decades ago it never occurred to me what a sacred use of time it would have been to sit close to, say, my mother or my Aunt Mart in their last years and gather the fullness of their lives up into embrace. But something always seemed pressing—a pleasure to chase down, a duty to meet. If only I had known that the biographies I needed far more than Andrews Jackson or Johnson were Grandmas Miller and Coleman. And if Uncle Kenny were alive, I’d have bottles of Koehler Lager on ice and a pack of Lucky Strikes at the ready. He and I would clink those glass bombers, and I’d gladly sit still for what he’d have to say.

Grandpa Miller: I’d like to ask him, “Um, Gramp, what were you thinking?”

Fortunately, my regret comes without recrimination. A parishioner of mine passed along to me a great saying one of his elders told him: “Too late smart. Too soon old.” Back when the voices I incline my ear toward in memory were talking, I had better things to do. That’s the sad truth. I know too much about human frailty and foolishness to punish myself. Anyway, those lovely faces—all the more dear to me for their wrinkles and jowls—would say, “Oh, John, don’t you worry.”

Aunt Mart: Does this look like an elder who would have you worry?

They’d probably also encourage me to relax, for heaven’s sake. I’m trying. For one thing, wise and vigilant advice from childhood no longer works for me: I now talk to strangers.

People asking, “How you doing?” don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. My recent responses are as follows: “Vertical,” “I think I’ll pull through,” or “Any better I’d be twins.” That last one is stolen, but I can’t remember from where.

Strangers having a casual conversation in public had better keep their voices down when I’m near. Just yesterday wife Kathy and I were in a toiletries store, and two young women were teasing a third that she thrusts her hip to one side when shifting her weight—like she was trying to look glamorous or cool or whatever. It was all in fun. After paying, I stopped and said to the glam girl, “You know, they’re just jealous because they didn’t go to finishing school.” A moment’s repartee ensued, which granted us the healthy exercise of laughter.

My mother: Speaking of glam.

Best of all, during a recent heat wave, the dew point was 73 degrees, which is considered miserable. I was walking to my car and spotted a couple older than I making slow progress toward the store. They looked to be slogging under water, the man leaning hard on his walker.

“So, is it hot enough for you?” I said. Not exactly original but it earned a response.

The guy kept on walking, but looked over his shoulder at me: “No! In fact, I’m going home to put on a sweater.”

I thought immediately, “Lord, he sounds just like Dad.” For a minute the late Denny Coleman was near, and my soul felt light all the way home.   

Roar on the Shore 2017: The Parade

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Roar on the Shore 2017: The Parade

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not a motorcycle guy. Where wind rushing through what’s left of my hair is concerned, my Hyundai Elantra’s sunroof is more than enough.

What I can’t get enough of, though, is witnessing bliss, so for the second year in a row, wife Kathy, grandson Cole and I stood on Glenwood Park Avenue to wave at the motorcyclists in parade as part of Erie’s Roar on the Shore celebration. My sister Cathy and her wife Betsy Ann joined us on the berm for half an hour of rumbling, infectious joy.

Last year Cole watched in stunned silence, but yesterday he about lost his little ginger head. “Oh my goodness,” he said, wiggling in Kathy arms and adding his rosy-cheeked glory to the evening’s pageantry. Hearing that three year old chirp over and over “Grandma Kathy, look!” and “Pop, hey Pop, did you see that?” was reason enough to take in the parade.

Grandma Kathy and Cole

But to tell the truth, hanging out beside a road in soul smothering humidity as thousands of riders slowly process by, revving the ever-loving crap out of their engines is not this pop’s scene. Picture artist-fartist. Think staring at a Jackson Pollock and wondering what he was getting at or savoring the hush of appreciation after Mary Oliver reads a poem. If anything is going to make a lot of noise, let it be crowd-pleasing end of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto.

And then there’s adventure. My idea of risk-taking is sailing on the Victory Chimes, which slips along calmly off the coast of New England, protected from serious waves by the islands, and serves smoked salmon, cream cheese and capers on deck at 4:00 p.m. In two weeks, when Kathy and I board this schooner that graces the back of the Maine quarter, the only splash I expect is that of a decent Chardonnay making a whitecap in my long-stemmed glass.

Part of me would love to love downhill skiing or bungee jumping or straddling a Harley, but the one thing worse than being sedate by nature is pretending to be wild and crazy. Besides, the spectacle of bikers can’t be a hit without non-bikers lining the route. We need each other.

We really do—at least I do. This fact wasn’t clear to me until the roaring began in earnest and giddy faces passed by and suckers and Tootsie Rolls landed at the children’s feet.

The hundreds of riders getting a rush from their vroom vrooming probably had no clue that they were blessing me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people raising peace signs toward the sky in thirty minutes’ time. As that universal symbol of two fingers forming an amiable V greeted me again and again, I found myself praying, “Oh, my Lord, let it be so. Let there be peace—in my heart, between people.”

I also found myself looking my fellow human beings rumbling by in the eye. Their transportation may as well have disappeared. The close air and racket, too. Honest to goodness, it was just me and them. My wave said to them, “I see your bliss. Get all you can. Never let it end. I’m glad for you.”

Oh, those faces. Some of them got my message. I could tell. When I laid one of my big sloppy smiles on them, they often sent one back, and it was as if we two strangers recognized each other. The whole deal got me choked up, probably because right then and there the word stranger exited the English language.

The traffic never stopped this year for a good photograph, so these smiling faces are from last year. I still remember them all, like old friends.

Taking its place, I now understand, was a sweet word: hope. Am I waxing poetic? Don’t you believe it. We human inhabitants of planet Earth are increasingly cranky, thinking and acting from our reptile brains, and our venom is crazy lethal.

Where is our hope? I saw it at the Roar on the Shore’s motorcycle parade. I saw it most of all on one man’s face. He was nothing remarkable, just a gray-haired dude with a wide smile rolling north on Glenwood Park Avenue.

I caught his eye and waved, and he nodded to me and mouthed, “Thank you.” Moving on, he nodded to others, as if the reason thousands of Erie-ites showed up was to see him and him alone pass by. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Of course, this guy wasn’t having delusions of grandeur. I think his nod and thanks were, in prosaic fact, the hope of the world: “Thank you for noticing me. Thank you for smiling back.”

And thanks to Roar on the Shore. If we keep nodding to each other, then the adventurous, sedate and all those in between can be sure that our parade doesn’t have to end as long we refuse to be strangers.

No strangers

Waking from a Dream of Separateness

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Waking from a Dream of Separateness*

In the midst of shamatha—calm abiding—lately, I’ve been having Fourth-and-Walnut moments. Thomas Merton (1915-1968) enthusiasts know what I’m talking about. One of the famous monk’s most beloved writings comes from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, which Thomas Moore calls a “mind-bending collection of short pieces”:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness . . . .

As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

But even if it were possible to tell a friend or stranger, “You know, I see past your skin and know we’re family. Do you understand that you’re beautiful?” it wouldn’t be advisable. First, I would appear to be on an acid trip. And second, I would stomp all over the moment with my inadequate words.

It’s better to stay quiet, as I did last evening over a few Lucifer Belgian ales at the Tap House with old college teaching colleagues. One guy, who has been retired for over ten years but looks in better shape than I do, nursed his beer and held forth at length. But this wasn’t a self-indulgent, drunken monologue. Behind my friend’s animation I witnessed his soul’s lightening. He is engaged in a life-long lover’s quarrel with the world: what he loves, he loves recklessly; when he rails, he rails through clenched teeth. He has got the universe caught up in a fierce embrace.

Another shining spirit is a woman I saw at church this morning. I won’t name her because she would be embarrassed, but as she volunteers with more efforts than I probably realize, she gives off life. We had a belly laugh when she showed me a potless plant. Obviously somebody had broken the pot and put the dirt and root system back in the stand. There’s no way I can imagine being alien from this friend.

Yet another church friend hangs his paintings in the office. Parish Administrator Michelle and I love the work of this self-taught guy whose basement is full of decades of canvasses. He and his wife are getting on in years, but their gentleness glows. Being with them for ten minutes can bless a whole morning.

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Hanging on the church office at Abiding Hope

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Taped to my office door, a portrait of me by Meghan, a kid who emits showers of sparks. I especially like my nostrils.

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Barista Abbey wearing a little girl’s crown

Of course, Thomas Merton was talking mostly about strangers in his Fourth-and-Walnut epiphany, and the more I’m able to give myself to the refreshment of siestas and the sanity of prayer, the more I notice great light all around me. Some time ago here at Starbucks, I saw barista Abbey knitting as a young friend made crowns. The kid was happy, proud of trying to fashion power and might out of construction paper. As I talked to them for a few seconds, we belonged to each other.

Unfortunately, sometimes shining people cause sunburn. A young woman here at Starbucks just had a lover’s quarrel of her own via cell phone. After a short, tearful fight, she retreated to the restroom, where I imagine she is crying some more. I’ve never seen her before, but have an empathetic pit in my stomach for her. And now she is gone, out into the 90-degree swelter with her puffy eyes, damp cheeks, and upset heart.

I’m still here in the air-conditioned shamatha of 4:02 p.m., glad that the sad girl was mine and I was hers (though she knew nothing about it). Most of all, I’m grateful not to suffer from the dream of separateness. I belong to everyone. Everyone belongs to me.

*This post first appeared in slightly different form on A Napper’s Companion in July of 2013.

If You Were My Daughter

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By the time you took your first sip of coffee, a cop had already shown up, taken information from barista Tony, and loaded two pet carriers and bag of cat food into his cruiser. I didn’t see the woman pacing in the parking lot, trying to stay calm through a frantic phone call. I didn’t see her throw her arms up in the air, hop into her car, and speed off. Somebody else did, though, and got her license plate number. Now she is in trouble. You don’t leave a cat, dog, and Meow Mix in Starbucks’ parking lot and hope for the best.

If you were my daughter, I would have told you the whole story as soon as you sat down, ending with how sorry I felt not only for the pets, but also the woman. As if thinking out loud, I would ask what crisis led her to that moment and say as an aside, “Ah, hell, I guess we all do things we can’t take back.”

If you were my daughter, you would already know that I always want love and understanding to have the last word, which often makes my heart like a mutt the neighbors let bark outside hour after hour, the temperature sinking on a December night.

But you’re not my daughter. You spoke on your phone so quietly I could tell only that the language wasn’t English. The likelihood of my offspring randomly sitting down next to me and having a conversation in, say, French, is remote. And, of course, I wouldn’t have been stopped short at first by your beauty. I would know your birthday, where you are in your twenties.

You didn’t stay long, ten minutes and out the door. I watched and wondered. What car is yours? Where are you off to? But you walked so aimlessly, taking pictures of God-knows-what, I figured maybe you weren’t headed anywhere. Not to the bulky old Buick or maroon minivan, not to the Fox and Hound English Pub and Grille or Shoe Carnival or Ollie’s Bargain Outlet.

I stood to see you off. Your leather knapsack—almost empty?—was finally a black dot against your jean jacket. Then you were gone, and I couldn’t decide whether to be happy or worry. Going no place in particular can feel like grace if you know how to be alone and you’re not shouldering much weight.

If you were my daughter, I would be glad we didn’t talk about what you missed: the woman now rushing from suffering to punishment; the long-haired cat with eyes wide and still, waiting to slip from a carrier to the warm, bright sleeping spot on the back of the couch; the cop transporting animals, both trying not to be thrown by sharp turns, both able to remember and love.

If you were my daughter, you would probably say, “Damn, Daddy, lighten up.”

“Yeah,” I would say, “you’re right.”

But I might not be clueless about your next stop. Hopeful? Desolate? Either way, we could meet for lunch, and I would say, as if thinking out loud, “When a father loves his daughter, she always has at least one good place to be.”