PILGRIMS ALL

Pause for Reflection at Montes de Oca

We are all pilgrims.

Traditionally, a pilgrimage is an intentional journey to a destination considered sacred or significant in some way associated with a spiritual figure, an event or a practice. Many are the shrines, temples and sites worldwide to which pilgrims have travelled over the ages—many walking miles to such well known destinations as Mecca, Lourdes, Benares on the Ganges, the Wailing Wall, Deer Park, Jerusalem, Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela.
    Can the idea of pilgrimage also be symbolic of another kind of path we sometimes find ourselves on whose destination may be uncertain or unknown? Are pilgrims prepared and fit for the risks involved in stepping away from familiar landscapes—both inner and outer. All journeys offer opportunities to transform toward a heightened consciousness and greater self-knowledge, despite the risks.        
    Whether a physical journey to a destination, a path taken inwardly by intention, or one thrust upon us by chance, each journey requires  risks, resolve, courage, stamina and self-reflection. Each pilgrim would have the expectation to complete the journey successfully with a sense of accomplishment. Each may be accompanied by variety of feelings: vulnerability, uncertainty, fear, hope, sorrow, joy and often an element of surprise at the unexpected encounters along “The Way.”
    All great literature, or any story worth telling, involves the drama of a pilgrimage of sorts. Shakespeare’s King Lear unknowingly puts himself on unintentional pilgrimage when he seeks affirmation of love from his three daughters, and will divide his kingdom among them, based on the profuseness of their expressions of adoration. His youngest daughter, Cordelia refuses to honor Lear’s selfish and foolish demand and, therefore, is disinherited. His other daughters pass the test willingly with words crafted for self-gain. When they receive what they were promised, they exile him with nothing.
    All is lost—position, power and wealth. Most devastating is the betrayal, as he is thrust into the hardships of the Wilderness. He endures the outer elements of a raging storm, and the inner ones of anguish, rage, despair, blindness and madness—all unavoidable, but a necessary experience to know truth, about himself and others.
    The once-king does not know where he is or who he is, until Cordelia comes to his rescue. His inner landscape has been transformed, and he finds himself in the Promise Land of forgiveness, acceptance and unconditional love, what he had been seeking all along, but through his tragic flaw of the arrogance of ego, it could not be seen.
    Ultimately, we all long for unconditional love and acceptance, and hope to find it here on earth, but, as “faithful” pilgrims, we must  submit to life's challenges and demands, and enjoy the blessings right in front of us. For no one knows knows where our pilgrimage will take us, to the ends of the earth, or to the limits of our longing.
    One thing is certain, we will not end up where we started. If we are fortunate, we, like King Lear, can emerge from Wilderness to Promise Land.

It's Not Tomorrow Now

I visit my son's family as often as I am able on work days off, vacation time and holidays. They also visit us, but have busy lives with a young son, Finn, and visiting them allows me to be part of their lives for a time--and even lend some support with school, chores and dinner. When I visit, I always hate to leave and start looking forward to the next visit. I tell Finn when I am leaving and that I will be back soon.

On my last visit, I told him, "Nonna will be leaving tomorrow and I feel sad." 

Finn immediately said, “It’s not tomorrow now," a stunning realization for me, and, of course, he was right in his perception--"out of the mouth of babes." How foolish of me to jump ahead, and not remain in the present, not worrying about yesterdays and tomorrows. For him there was only the now.  

It’s never tomorrow now, nor is it yesterday or tomorrow now, but it is always and only NOW! 

Children are intuitive and so much wiser than we in that regard—of living in the present, and I am convinced that my grandson is unusually remarkable in his ability, not only to immediately sense that I was no in the "now" with him, but also to articulate that “deep insight,” even though it is a simple,  matter of fact reality we forget to live by. 

He was reminding me, "You and I are here together right now, so let’s enjoy our time and not think for even one second about a time when we will not be together—for that takes away from the time we do have.

I love you, Finn, for a lesson I may need to recall again and again--that in love and the best parts of life we do not live in time. 

There is only the present where "time touches eternity," and that is heaven on earth!

The Show Must Go On?

I am familiar with the night
Its silent stage
In darkness scenes open and fade

In a floodlight of memory
I re-enact my life
Animated by desire and illusion
The cold prompter, Fear, in the wings,
Fatal flaws illuminated

The Director, until now,
An invisible, mysterious, temperamental tyrant,
Alternately threatening and encouraging me
To perform.

I have the role for life—if I choose.
Oh! I’ve convinced myself
That I modify my part from time to time
Revise my method:
A subtle gesture here
An improvisation there
The truth is I have perfected the role 

into ritual

But, no one notices
Except one critic and well-wisher,
Accompanied by the beat of my heart
Acknowledging and reminding me
That only I can draw the curtain
Close the play
Retire the part
Audition for new ones.

My critic says: “I’ll put you in touch with my son,
A fabulous agent, a miracle worker, I tell you.
He’ll show you how to reinvent yourself.
In fact, he specializes in Rebirth.”

JAMES BALDWIN SAID:

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell. It’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness. (James Baldwin)

No One Has Heard

No one can truly hear the song another sings
We cannot even hear our own
no words--only tones
rising to the rough surface
then sinking down into
the mystery of dreams

Songs of memory, songs of dread, songs of longing
Beyond this plane we have met

Will meet again
before birth, before earth
to create our themes and variations
all soul songs moving, mingling
quiet as grief

No one can hear
though it is our life's work
to listen and sing--
a choir in the blue air
among the stars

Poem at Michaelmas

I am self-contained
I bear my self within me
I am apt
I am alone

Poems and Prayers

Published in New View magazine, UK- Summer Issue 2010

Poetry is a ‘term’ often used to describe rhyming verse that expresses feelings. And, of course, anyone is free to write and call it whatever they wish; however, if a creation is to be "art," it must embody more than personal expressions. The art of poetry is in its ability to embody "living thought," in which the reader can sense the shaping, as truly as possible, of the "vision" or experience the poet is conveying. “Poetry… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts and appear almost a remembrance” (Keats).

Great poetry can often strike us just that way, as both personal and universal, whether it be a simple haiku or an epic. Gilgamesh; The Mahabharata; The Odyssey; The Divine Comedy; Shakespeare’s plays (which are all poetry); Parsifal and other literary works and represent an age or culture, and also transcend it. Together, the greatest works of the ages can be understood as a kind of history of humanity’s evolution in imaginative form, and as moral guides for those who can see and hear. To be true to a vision or experience, and to re-create them in words (which are not just words) takes some effort and some understanding.

The art of poetry must involve interest in many elements and resources, both inner and outer. One might look to the classics (or other works of art) and compare them with mere verse. Yes, it is true that we are not slaves to the past, to conventions, or to any rules per se. In fact, in our time, we feel ourselves to be individuals free from the past and standards, which we perceive as limitations. But to disregard, or, worse yet, to be ignorant of how poetry evolved (or any other art for that matter) is to be isolated from true “originality.” Self-reference only, in an effort to express one’s feelings, can result in nothing more than sentimental verse, which has neither wide appeal nor longevity.

Students of poetry can begin to build a picture of and a sense for just what makes classics and other true poetry living, lasting and essentially different from mere verse or prose. What resounds in poetry that moves us so deeply and transports us so fully? The connections of poetry to nature's rhythms and to its inherent analogies to the human being and human experiences also must be considered. The poet’s vision embodied might dawn on us as though it is our own, as Keats suggests, because we recognize the truth and wisdom in it, as its ‘revelations’ transcend the personal and touch on the universally human. One can imagine that the first human utterances, chants, stories and prayers were all music and meaning.

In James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the young Stephen Dedalus is aware of “an unsubstantial image which his soul constantly beheld.” Ishmael in Moby Dick senses “the ungraspable phantom of life.” The Romantic poet, Shelley, spoke of “The everlasting universe of things which flows through the mind.” In “A Defence of Poetry” he writes, “A poem is the image of life expressed in its eternal truth.” Implied in all of these examples is the recognition of something that stands behind ordinary experience in the sense world, whose brilliance is felt and understood, yet is paradoxical and beyond definition. “A poem is the burning bow that once could shoot an arrow out of the up and down” (Yeats). The capacity of Imagination “sees” into and beyond that world into the "deep, deep well of the past," not only to our cultural/geographic roots, but, it can be argued, to our biological, psychological and even pre-historic origins (Campbell).

Imagination “subdues to union all irreconcilable things” (Shelley) and lifts the veil on a world often hidden to ordinary vision, which can become clouded by the intellect. The intellect categorizes, analyzes and separates. The imagination grasps the unseen and reveals the underlying patterns and forms which appear and reappear throughout the universe, nature and in the human being. It perceives those inherent relationships and similarities among things and unifies. It goes to the origins of things, which are the sources of inspiration, and the “sources of our strength” (Carson).

Behold the plant;
It is the butterfly
Held prisoner by the earth.

Behold the butterfly;
It is the plant
By the whole cosmos freed. (Rudolf Steiner)

For the true poet (and for us), insights like these are not simply ‘metaphors’ or mere ‘poetic devices’; they are revelations. They are realities to be recognized by the poetic "mind soul." Coleridge describes imagination as, “the living power and prime agent of all human perception in man’s infinite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite ‘I am’.”

Inspiration may seem fleeting, but can be trained. When poets are inspired, they are breathing in what they behold, whether it be a leaf, an insect or an idea radiating from within. They see, not with their eyes, but through their eyes, which Plato describes as the "windows of the soul." Therefore, they see with an extraordinary clarity. That which may appear distorted, common or uninteresting is transformed in the breathing out of the poet’s pen. The poet takes the “forms of things unknown” and “turns them into shapes and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name” (Shakespeare).

Intuition is a way of knowing what is true. It is “the intellect’s being where and what it sees.” We might think of it as what Emerson called "self-reliance," that is, an inherent trust in experience and the inner voice that says, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string….The Eternal is stirring at our hearts, working through our hands, predominating in all our being." Poets are inspired, in touch with imagination and trust their intuition.

Though I mention Wonder last, it is the prerequisite capacity, without which the other capacities would not be as available. Wonder is an openness to beauty, goodness and truth, which we naturally have as children. When children are allowed and encouraged to experience beauty, they develop a sense of awe and reverence, which can not be taught. Look at a mountain peak; a blanket of stars in a dark sky; the "leaves of grass"; a child's shining face, "holding wonder like a cup" (Teasdale).

Conversely, an emerging sense of wonder can easily be crushed or thwarted if it is met with cynicism or negativity or other circumstances in a home or community. One can see its opposite in disrespect, a lack of sensibilities or in destructive tendencies and apathy, or just plain detachment from the immediacy, intimacy and impact of those sources of strength. Increasingly, all of these capacities are at risk of lying dormant with the use of and dependence on technology, which at the most basic, but essential level, separates or isolates children from the very experiences that can develop and build these capacities.

“Ah!” (an open vowel sound) emerges from us – in all languages – when we stand in awe and simply behold that which "is."  Something in us opens, fills a void, and may emerge in ways we could never have imagined--perhaps, as Wordworth suggests in his poem “Tintern Abby,” as "little unremembered acts of kindness of love," and for the poet (and us also as creators), as creations of beauty in all forms. The Greeks knew that wonder is the beginning of wisdom-- a foundation for creation of the beautiful. Dostoevsky went so far as to say that beauty would save the world, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” (Keats)

Poems that convey a sense of the “living Word,” must emerge from poets as prayer calling upon the capacities of Wonder, Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. Whether or not we think of ourselves as artists, we can all be creators with an understanding, an appreciation and a practice toward development of these capacities.

Tribute and acknowledgement go to Christy MacKaye Barnes, a master Waldorf teacher of students and teachers, for some of the thoughts conveyed in “Poems and Prayers.” She was an inspirational mentor who freely shared and passed on her insights, knowledge and love of language to many.

MYTHOLOGY AND CONSCIOSNESS

Upon the completion of The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell considers his 12 years of research in comparative mythology as confirmation, “of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony,” with “worldwide distribution” of such themes as, “fire theft, deluge, land of the dead, virgin birth, and resurrected hero…appearing everywhere in new combinations..." Commenting further on this phenomenon of common themes across cultures, which are expressed locally in endless variations, he suggests that, “No human society has yet been found in which such mythological motifs have not been rehearsed in liturgies; interpreted by seers, poets, theologians, or philosophers; presented in art; magnified in song; and ecstatically experienced in life empowering visions….Every people has received its own seal and sign of supernatural designation, communicated to its heroes [and prophets], and daily proved in the lives and experience of its folk." 

We, in the 21st century can still turn to myths and stories for edification and enlightenment, yet, they can also have negative ramifications when they are understood as exclusive and literal. While myths and stories form the basis for rituals and traditions of hope and comfort to communities, they also can (and have) become ideologies to be imposed on others who are seen as unworthy, lost and/or "less than." Don't we have many historic examples, as well as current ones, of marginalization, discrimination, and even violence against those who do not conform to the laws and doctrines of particular faiths, books or traditions deemed the ultimate and absolute truth?

Campbell reminds us that these stories and “revelations” have inspired many “who bow with closed eyes in the sanctuaries of their own tradition...[yet] rationally scrutinize and disqualify the sacraments of others...." If we were to look objectively, as he has, at the various traditions and mythologies of the world, we would see that these common themes and images are ubiquitous, and have developed “according to local need…” all over the world, as the ground of belief and values. Campbell finds that humanity has "chosen, not the facts in which the world abounds, but the myths of an immemorial imagination—preferring even to make a hell for themselves and their neighbors, in the name of some violent god."

What, then, could be an approach apropos to our ever-expanding, global consciousness? At this stage in humanity’s development, Campbell calls for an imagination of a “broader, deeper kind than anything envisioned anywhere in the past…” It would seem that it is now possible to embrace and embody the ambiguity, inclusiveness and paradox which is everywhere reflected in the universe, nature and human experience. James Joyce, an inspiration and subject of sudy for Campbell, articulates this possibility in Finnegan's Wake: "Utterly impossible as are all these events, they are probably as like those which may have taken place as any others which never took person at all are ever likely to be". 

We can only ponder what shape that imagination would take.  

Would it be a kind of “spiritual science,” an approach which both affirms the subjective, intuitive, human soul experience of life, and, at the same time, integrates objectivity and current realities? This approach would require standing outside one’s own soul self, and simply beholding. James Joyce clearly defined this experience in his theory of aesthetics, which does not require an intellectual analysis of art or beauty, but, rather a holding two or more things as possibly true and relevant to our own individuality, as well as in a wider sense applicable in other contexts.

Campbell laments that there is currently no mythology which fits the times. Things are changing too rapidly for a relevant mythology to develop. He also believes that any future mythology would have to be about the earth. This may seem obvious, but wouldn't it also involve humanity on the earth? It is, after all, humanity that is the "voice of the earth" and, at the same time only species that continues to endanger the earth, squander its resources, and marginalize, enslave and endanger other humand for its resources. Still, it is only humanity that can create a world worth living in, speaking for, and ultimately dying for. Clearly we are not at a stage of consciousness en masse. Only an earth-threatening crises could force us to move in another direction. Many believe that climate change will be the impetus to get us there, but hopefully before it is too late (some believe it is already too late). 

     Campbell makes reference to Black Elk, a Lakota holy man, one of the last of North American indigenous peoples who had lived in harmony with nature for thousands of years. In the mid 1930's John Neibhardt interviewed Black Elk in his effort to record a way of life that was that once existed before European contact. In Black Elk Speaks, we hear Black Elk say:  “I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it….It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit."

As a young boy, Black Elk had a vision:  “I saw more than I can tell and I understand more than I saw, for I was seeing in a sacred manner” (50). He spoke of seeing the “sacred hoop” of his people,...one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father, and I saw that it was holy." He refers in part to the rapidly and tragically transformation of the West, forcing Indian peoples on to reservations, with all the grief, loss and confusion that ending a way of life must entail. Black Elk laments that in his old age he felt the loss and the betrayal of his early vision with the slaughter at Wounded Knee: "I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, you see me now an old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer and the sacred tree is dead."

     In the introduction to the 1989 edition of Black Elk Speaks, Vine DeLoria, also an Oglala Lakota (Sioux), notes, “If the old camp circle, the sacred hoop of the Lakota, and the old days have been rudely shattered by the machines of the scientific era, and if they can be no more in the traditional sense, the universality of the images and dreams must testify to the  emergence of a new sacred hoop, a new circle of intense community….”

Although DeLoria seems to be referring to the community of Lakota peoples, we could, as Campbell does, think of the "community" as the future global community, whose members understand and experience life as something, “far more fluid, more sophisticated than the separate visions of the local traditions, wherein those mythologies themselves will be known to be but the masks of a larger….timeless schema' that is not a schema." The consciousness that could create such a community must be both subjective and objective, taking Black Elk’s imagination of the hoop of the nation and DeLoria’s "new circle" as a potential reality and not just a metaphor. In this way, a new mythology will hold the treasure from the past, respecting the local and specific traditions equally with the global, universal ones.  May it come to pass!

It is clear that Campbell’s research and insights went to the foundation of myths, way down into the "deep, deep well of the past," not only to their cultural/geographic roots, but to their biological, psychological and even prehistoric origins. He found that wired into our psyche and physiognomy is our ability to both create and respond to images, symbols and stories which are metaphors for our experience of being alive. Could it ever be that humanity will arrive at a point in its evolution of consciousness to live “decently, without rancor or revenge” on this green earth—the only place we have to share in the here and now? Will we ever take time in our lives fraught with distractions—of pop culture, of politicians shaping their own version of reality; of manic technology/ social media, to acknowledge the legacy of mythology as a “timeless schema”?  Perhaps not yet universally, but certainly we, as individuals can commit to live, not by some narrow interpretation of one or another book or ideology, but rather in support, affirmation and validation of all that is truly human, good, beautiful and true in story and myth.

Then, might we be able to live, not by the stories/myths, but with them and allow them to live in us.

REFERENCES

Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. 1959. New York: Viking Press, Inc.1959.

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. DVD. Mystic Fire Video, 2001.

Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux as told through John G. Neihardt.1932. New York: Williams Morrow Company, 1989.

HOUSE ON SIXTH AVENUE

Maria and Antonio DiGuilermo (Williams)

 outside their row home on Sixth Avenue

in Conshohocken, PA

This is what my father-in-law told me happened to him when he was boy living in on Sixth Avneue, Conshohocken, a small town outside of Philadelphia: “When I asked my father for a dime, he picked me up and heaved me against the wall.”

His father worked hard in a cement factory, and at other menial jobs for long hours in the cold, sometimes away from home for periods of time. An Italinan immigrant, he, like so many others lie him, left what was probably a rural poor village with no education, skills or prospects for the future. He came with a wife Maria and their one child at the time in1903. The family grew each year quickly include eight other children. Their small back yard was a garden of tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, fruit and herbs, and grapevines to make wine--all to sustain them through the winters.

There was always dinner on the table when the man of the house came home and took his rightful place as lord and master of his domain. However meager, inadequate the "kingdom" might have been, it was likely the only place he could command respect and deference, while women took their designated places caring for as many children as were conceived and everything else involved in managing a household.

For immigrant families all over America, their homeland would became a misty but precious memory in the new world without the familiarity and warmth of land and language, the villages and an extended family for support. In the old world at least there were the beauty of landscape, the blood ties, evenings with friends before a hearth fire and maybe there was a song to comfort, temper and deepen a young soul. While here in America there may have been other opportunities, the comforts were few. Of course, neighborhoods then tended to be of one or another ethnic group around a parish church, which allowed the immigrant residents to gather togehter for some for cultural and social customs and traditions.

My father-in-law was the youngest of the nine brothers and sisters. I never heard him speak a word against his father, whom he obviously respected (but maybe also feared as a child?). Antonio DiGuielermo was a proud, hard-working, man who had lived his short life as best he could, fulfilling his responsibility to provide the bare necessities for his family after arriving in a foreign land to start over. Maybe that is all that this father, uneducated and unskilled, living day to day could manage in his life, if he was lucky.

Considering the hardships involved, providing the necessities was a deed in itself. He and others had to move swiftly, unawares, from childhood to adulthood, sometimes without even the bare of necessities—let alone the reflection for self-awareness and empath. He must have struggled mightily to bring those necessities to his own family.

Everyone else assumed their parts, as well, some no less challenging then the father's role. The wife's: to bear children, work day and night to care for and feed them; wash and sew clothes by hand; keep the house in order; tend the garden, put up harvest for winter; and wait on the father when he was home. There may not have been much understanding at that time that children are individuals with their own experiences, minds, desires, hopes and potential. Rather, they were hungry mouths to feed and sturdy bodies to put to use--and they were to be "seen and not heard."

These are the impressions I had from the stories my father-in-law told over and again through the years, some as subconscious burdens, no doubt, to bear through a lifetime. And I heard no other stories to displace the ones of a stern, unforgiving father, with not a glimmer of warmth (if there was time for such). I had, however, heard my father-in-law's fond memories about his mother, who lived into her 90's. I was fortunate to have met her when I came into the family. Still, there was an unspoken sense that any transgression on the father's part toward his wife or children could be rationalized in the context of the hardships of his and maybe existence in general.

Decades after the father man had crossed the threshold from earthly trials, probably inhis 50's to whatever lay beyond, my husband and I took my father-in-law, already in his later years, along with Rosie, one of his widowed sisters, to visit Mary, the oldest living sister and her husband Lou. There was a warm welcome, a huge meal, and later time to sit around the table to reminisce with laughter and tears. The topic turned from childhood memories of their neighborhood, to long-ago holidays spent all together at the small row home on Sixth Avenue, to their early married years with young children Then, inevitably, the conversation turned to Carmen, the youngest brother who had died at age sixteen.

There are always memories or stories repeated in families, some happy, some tragic, which have a way of casting a certain mood that can fills the inner and outer spaces of a gathering. This was such a one. I had heard about Carmen many times, but now I heard about him from Rosie, who revealed her own experienc of being a little girl in that house. Perhaps it was the first time her brother and sister heard about her recollections. Rosie was a sweet, delicate women, almost bird-like in her movements and child-like in her demeanor and speech—an open, generous soul. She became somber as she remembered the events surrounding Carmen's death.

One day, over 60 years ago, she was getting ready for school. It was a bitterly cold morning, and the innocent, young girl was doing what girls do joyfully, combing her hair and singing a song. Her father stormed in and shoved her out of the bathroom. Carmen was still asleep, having been ill the night before. She remembered that her father shook him awake and dragged him out of bed despite his illness, so he wouldn't be late to walk the distance to the dairy farm, where he would work outside all day.

That afternoon, walking home from school, Rosie said she heard a voice, “Who do you want to lose, your father or your brother?” As she got to this part of the tale, her face transformed into that of a grieving madonna, with confusion and pain she must have felt at that very moment so long ago. She said she the thought, and said outloud to us, in her characteristic way, “Ooo, I can’t choose between Pop and Carmen.'”

She didn’t have to.

When she got home, she found that Carmen had died that day (later they found of pneumonia). Rosie didn't say what that questioning voice she heard may have been: her conscience, her fears, her wishes to have family harmony, ESP, or even the prophetic voice of God. She just told the story, and we listened. I was stunned, trying to comprehend the effects of on the rest of the family, carried through a lifetime. Nothing was said in response to Rosie’s story that day about questioning voice. There was a silent moment when we all took in what she had shared and also to honor the memory of their lost brother. Then the mood, meaning and images evoked by Rosie slowly faded.

I had the sense that my father-in-law and the others had to ignore, at least outwardly, the implication that their father was as cruel as the facts of Rosie's story confirmed, and that his sister, as well as the other siblings may have been as deeply affected by their childhoods and the loss of a brother that could have been avoided.

What did it mean, I wondered, that the family never openly spoke to each other about the relationship of Carmen’s death to his having been forced to work on that bitter cold, last day of his young life. At the least, it meant that no blame was openly attributed in order to preserve the family mythology and to have avoided the open reckoning of it.

Whatever may have transpired after Carmen's death, I have no knowledge of, but I do know that people, in general often do not question the what, how and why of their lives (including myself) to avoid the pain, and maybe it is better that way in some cases. Still, I can only hope that there was also tenderness, love, and yes, the pain of remorse felt in the heart of the father, head of the household on Sixth Avenue— if not seen by others. Even if only brief moments of doubt before sleep, or upon waking--the way a small shaft of light and warmth edges its way into a dark room through a door left slightly ajar.

On the Pitfalls of Fundamentalism (of any kind)

God and Satan were walking down the street one day; the Lord bent down to pick something up.

He gazed at it glowing radiantly in His hand. Satan, curious, asked, “What’s that?”

“This,” answered the Lord, “is Truth.”

“Here," replied Satan as he reached for it, "Let me have that--I’ll organize it for you.”
(Ram Dass)