A Mother Who Knew Chaos and Trusted Her Son

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I suppose, like every human being, I am riddled with contradiction. This is one of many of mine. I am a person who pursues my faith, but I am often pessimistic about the very faith I profess. In times like these that pessimism is not as tempered as I would like by my faith. In fact, I am very aware of the strong temptation to give up, if not to spin out of control.

So, it was a bit of a lifeline that my pastor mentioned a webinar by a group I had never heard of, Women in the New Evangelization. It was only an hour and a half, but it was rejuvenating. There were two specific things that resonated among others. One was the idea that God can be discerned in the chaos--something which frankly never occurs to me when I am in the middle of it.  It is ever more critical to listen for His voice particularly in these days of competing circumstances and imperfect human exhortations that surround us as we are confined to our homes. The second was a reminder of Mary, the Mother of God, as a model, a model for those of us thrust into chaos. After all, her very life was thrown into chaos, from the moment the Angel Gabriel announced that she would bear Jesus Christ. When she said "Yes" to God's mind bending plan, in, from my weak kneed point of view, not so simple trust, she was acceding to a life upended. She would endure not only the usual sufferings of the time in which she lived, but the exquisite pain of her son's suffering and death for a purpose that she could only ponder, and not completely understand until it all unfolded.

It is probably paradoxical for me to write that realizing is comforting.  I think that part of it is a realization that if I can let go of my anger, fear, distrust in times like these, stop being resistant to the storm around me, the chaos, as she did, I actually would be at peace. I fight the problem. She leaned into it. She absorbed it. Her words to the stewards at the wedding feast , "Do as he tells you," quietly but firmly uttered, she speaks to me, to you, to us.

So, here I am at the end of this Saturday in these strange times spinning a little less frantically, psychologically and spiritually speaking.

Oh, there was something else the speakers mentioned that occurs to me. Gratitude. It is important to be grateful fo r what we do have even amid the storms and stresses that bombard us. I am thus grateful that today I had this short period of emotional refueling.

This webinar is available now for view for those who did not "attend" in person. Some might find it helpful. If even one person does, then that's another thing to be grateful for, I am thinking.

As to me, and this blog, going forward, I am thinking, just thinking of adding a video component aimed largely at the faith crowd, and anyone who might want to explore faith. Now, as I say, this is just a thought. Now that I am of a certain age, and am personally in the category that the late Nora Ephron dubbed, "I Feel Bad About My Neck", I am not crazy about how I look in pictures, let alone moving pictures. On the other hand, it is a logical addition to a blog, vlog, or whatever thing is developing and has long been developing on line. But first, I have to figure out how to get the right size and be able to upload properly. We shall see.

Forward by Constantine Gochis

I think I remember the man of which my dad wrote in this story. Well, not him actually, but my father's speaking of him, and his shy knocks on the door to ask for help on the small issues of life which become very large when you get old. Then, my father was probably just in his seventies, or younger. Things change. My father has been gone for 12 years. I assume Yitzhak, if that was his real name, has been gone for much longer than that. The newspaper, The Forward, is no longer paper. As with everything else, technology has required adaptation. I doubt Yitzhak would have approved.

FORWARD

He clung, precariously, to the back of a seat as the bus driver made sudden starts and stops.  He looked fragile and lost.  We stood very close.  I could see his eyes, enlarged behind thick lenses, looking straight at me with no sign of recognition.

"Yitzhak," I shouted, ". . . you've forgotten your old friend?"

The eyes responded.  The face beamed with pleasure. He did not call me by name.  He was never able to articulate it in the twelve years of our acquaintance.  

"My friend!" he exclaimed, finally, in the way he always adressed me, with a laughing sound that stretched broadly beyond the scope of the two words.  

"So," I asked. "Vee gays du?", that is, "Where are you going?"

He teetered, challenging disaster, as he fumbled for a tattered envelope.  I knew immediately what it was.  I had seen it many times before--his gas bill.  He always paid his utilities in person.  

"Still no checking account?  You couldn't send a money order? I chided him, good naturedly.

It was a question I had asked countless time, a futile inquiry.  Yitzhak did not trust banks, or checks. "Money orders cost money," he would retort.  I frequently offered the use of my own checking account, to no avail.  He was fiercely independent and proud.  Yet, if anyone was in need of governmental assistance, it was he.  Yet he consistently disdained any help.

"I never took before.  I wouldn't take now."

Suddenly I sensed that something was amiss.

"Yitzhak," I shouted.  "You're on the wrong bus."

He was embarrassed but he laughed as he always did when he was uncomfortable.

"But it says on the envelope. . ."

"Never mind," I insiste. "It's the wrong bus. Shnell, Yitzhak, let's get off."

The bus driver had stopped the vehicle too fare fro the curb.  We descended with great difficulty.  Yitzhak assured me throughout the process, "I can make it. I can make it."

We made the return trip together.  I could not abandon him in his manifest disorder  By my calculations, he was bordering ninety years of age.

It was the "Forvetz", the then Yiddish news weekly, now printing an English edition, called the "Forward" that brought us together.  We were neighbors.  Every Tuesday I would encounter him waiting for the mailman.  Tuesday was when the "Forvetz" arrived.

One time, when the mailman came, the "Forvetz" didn't.  It is difficult to describe his dismay. I have seen major tragedies that produced less reaction.

"So you go to the corner. They carry the weekly."

"They charge a dollar, thirty five."

"Maybe it will come tomorrow," I reassured him.

"Tomorrow," he moaned in a dirge like like tone, "Tomorrow."

It did not come that week, nor he next.  He was inconsolable.  I had to intervene. 

I called New York, one of the newspaper's distribution points.   We were promised delivery, for sure, the next week, with a replacement of the missing issues. He was only partially mollified.  Then he was suspicious.

"Maybe someone is stealing. . ."

"Who reads Yiddish in this neighborhood?" I asked.

I then made a cardinal error.  I bought a copy of the latest issue from the news stand and offered it to him. He was not pleased.  Had it been anything other than the "Forvetz" he would have refused it.  His mental struggle was visual.  He glanced alternately at me, then my offering.  The newspaper prevailed, barely.

In tie, I learned the importance to him of the weekly. It was his only pleasure.  He seldom went out, except to shop, or to wheel his invalid wife to her doctor.  He spoke of children, but I rarely saw any evidence of filial attachments.  He was not gregarious.  He was solitary except fo that wife who sat perpetually before a television set, too bent out of shape for surcease from trial.  He had no interest in soap operas. There was no music.  He busied himself with household chores and waited for Tuesday.

We talked in a melange of pidgin English, some Yiddish, though his deafness precluded a real two way conversation.  I listened, mostly, understood with difficulty, and waited for a polite interval that would allow me a gracious retreat.  Yitzhak was painfully repetitive.  

In those twelve years I lived in the building, his hesitant knock on my door came frequently.

His problems were not major.  A letter from Social Security terrified him though usually it was nothing more than an advisory. He would never sit when he visited.  He was ashamed of having to ask for help.  Frequently, he had problems with his bank. He was sure they were underpaying interest on his meager Certificate of Deposit.

There was no room for proligacy.  He and his wife subsisted on an aggregate Social Security of seven hundred dollars a month.  The rent took more than half.

He was fourteen when the Germans left ony rotting potato skins for the staving Polish populace in 1914.  After the wafr he took his fabric weaver with him to Argentina, married, witness the antics of the Peronistas, removed to America for more years of privation.  He related these sadness without rancor, sotically, almost as if he accepted a Divine Judgment, an immutable predestination.

We shared our tales of privation, my own, in the Great Depression, not as horrendous as his.  We talked, that is, he talked of the trials of his beloved Israel, quoted the latest from that beacon of light, the "Forvetz".  It was his "Aliyah" to the promised land he would never reach.

For casual conversation we spoke of the weather and those occasions when chicken was selling for forty-nine cents a pound.

One day his familiar knock again summoned me to the door.  It was a Tuesday.  He did not want to come in.  He was smiling. There was no sign of travail.

"I got something for you," he said, his eyes glinting and enlarged behind his thick glasses.

"Today, I get two "Forvetz", one in English.  He unrolled the paper revealing the masthead.

"This one is for you," he said happily.  He was sharing a part of himself.  He did this every week subsequently, with the very same ceremony.

When next his subscription came due, he allowed me to use my checking account for him.  He was happy when I enrolled also.

"The only newspaper that writes the 'emmes'." 

The other day, I went by my old building, and inquired after my old friend.

"They moved, a long time ago," I was told.

I don't really want to know any more than that.  I like to think that every Tuesday he ispacing, with usual apprehension, before the new mailbox.  He is stopping now and then to peer into the distance for the mailman.  His eyes are wide and expectant for the news that links him with the world of his "emmes", his truth, his dream.  

Moving On to Happy Days

I have been very distressed by various threads I have read, some in which I have commented and responses to some of which I have initiated since I returned to Facebook at Easter Time. I should say, I am more distressed than usual. Disagreement with the prevailing opinion means being labelled "stupid" or "uncaring". I don't think I am either. But it is of no moment. I was sitting outside in the warm afternoon sun, thinking, attempting to pray. And then it occurred to me.



I have an opportunity here and I have been fighting the problem. In these times of home confinement I can stop resisting what has been offered, essentially a life of retreat, not the running away kind, but the spiritual kind. And if ever or whenever the time of official "stay in place" ends, hopefully I will have developed a new pattern that is no longer jarred by the babel of daily life.



It remains to be seen, of course. I am very weak as all created beings are.

But, I shall take one step at a time. I begin by returning, once again, to my father's stories. I happened to be going through a cupboard and ran across my binders full of them, along with a variety of other memorabilia which, if I do not record them here, will end up in a dumpster after I am gone, my being the end of this line of our family.  That is what is important. His personal history is history worthwhile.

So, here is a one pager from my late father.

HAPPY DAYS

A lot depends on when an event took place.  In the autumn of my years, some happenings long ago that seemed of supreme memorability become pale and forgettable in retrospect.  Still, there are some memories so epiphanic in scope that they still engender a tingle or two.

I left the confines of an autocratic parochial school and entered the public school system in the last year of the elementary stages.  Actually, I did not leave their confines. One might say I was expelled.

The precipitating cause of my ejection was a "Waterman" fountain pen.  It was mind, a treasured item in those historic days before the "ball point" variety of these banal days of superfluity.

As proof of my ownership, I painstakingly carved my initials at both ends of the pen.  It was stolen nonetheless. 

One day, during a test, I saw the item in the grubby hands of Spiros Tryforos, the scion of the owner of a chain of flower shops. When he refused to return my property to me, I beat him severely. This caused Spiro Tryforos, Sr. to enlist the intervention of our Principal, who was also the venerable pastor of our flock, in the name of justice.

I received several whacks with a wicker rod, and was told not to return to school unless I was accompanied by my father.

It would have been foolhardy to bring my father into this dispute.  The patriarchs of this community never disagreed on matters of discipline.  I brought my mother.

Mother did not speak Greek, but on this occasion, she berated the Principal and the flower vendor, who was also in attendance, with sufficient English articulation to cow them both.

"How dare you beat my child!" she expostulated. 

She then asked for a refund of unused tuition and said that I would not return to a school where the leaders were barbarians, I thought the word "barbarian" apt in that it is of Greek origin and used as a caustic negative to those who were not Greek.

It was one of the happiest days of my life.  

Easter in the Time of Coronavirus

I admit it. I am not feeling it. It is Easter. The commemoration of the day the Lord rose after the ignominy of crucifixion by we who do not deserve Him. 

Yesterday was a pretty day after several of rain. It is a rain that California needs, so I am grateful for that, even though my terrace is corroding and one of the companies that was to come and look at it cancelled because of the modern plague. But today it is back to weatherly gloom.

I attempted to get on line for my parish Easter celebration, both last night for the Vigil, and this morning for the main empty Church Mass, but the live feed kept freezing and my internal disposition was turning to impatience and anger from plain old discontent and utter distrust of my own society.

I will find a Mass to watch later. It doesn't matter when I go, after all. Watch the thought that follows next. . . .it is the Devil cavorting around--it doesn't matter if I go, as I cannot go in the first place. What was once holy obligation according to the history of the Church from and after 2000 years ago, such that people met in the catacombs to celebrate the Eucharist, to receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord, (in the face of certain death)  is no more, at least for the always extended duration of whatever history will describe this set of events to be. All I  can think with ever rising rage is how readily the Bishops found no other way to serve the faithful than to close it all up because the secular world said it was a must. (But kudos to the priests who sought ways to do what their leaders failed to do).  I know. I hear the objections. But. . . .But. . . .you don't care about who dies. I am not going to argue. Here is my question back to you. Do you care about the millions of lives (example, the over six million who have lost their jobs) that are being destroyed by the reflexive closing of the entire society? And we are talking literal death here as well. If a person loses a job, there is no support for the family, there is less food, there is loss of home and hearth. There is despair. There is death. One can care and disagree about the solutions. Of course, you and I aren't in a position to advocate. We are merely prohibited and restricted and required to accept what is proffered, in all its contradictory glory.

As you can see, my thoughts are all over the place. Anyway, I took my mandated mask, made in China, as that was all I could get on line, and went out to the local supermarket.

As I was walking I thought of something a friend of mind often says about life. Don't know that it is theologically sound, in fact, I am pretty sure it isn't, but it is an understandable emotional default, one that I am feeling today, well at least so far, today. "Too much Good Friday; not enough Easter Sunday". 

I am getting lots of Easter greetings on my phone. I hope that later in the day I will be able to muster the will to send greetings back. Right now, not so much. In fact, right now, I feel a lot more like Mary Magdalene at the Tomb. These are moments when I understand Peter's denial, and even Judas' betrayal with complete clarity.

It was starting to drizzle when I went out. I didn't wear the mask until I got closer to the store. Up to getting to the corner I had seen one car, and one person walking, so I wasn't feeling too much like a criminal. Once I got to the corner, I put the thing on, and as usual found breathing difficult as I took back in my warm exhalations. "Don't think about that too much!" I said to myself.  And for the first time in years, because it would make a spectacular mess, I am not applying lipstick!

There was a small line. Everyone was pleasant. That was nice. I now have supplies. I felt the urgent need to have Hot Cross Buns, perhaps because they spoke of normalcy. But now, looking back, those Hot Cross Buns reminded me of something, and maybe as the day wears on and I find a Mass to watch, as I will after I make this entry, will turn this mood around.

There is that Cross again! So, here's the thing. I think this is theological. Christ indeed has risen! But the Cross is the ever-present road to our Resurrection following after His. What has changed from before and after the Crucifixion and Death? The reality of Resurrection. My feelings are irrelevant to reality. I must endure those feelings, as I cannot control them, but persistence in faith, despite the feelings, despite the jaunty efforts of the Devil, is the solution. Will I not stay with Him?

I sense the contradictions in my writing. I am betwixt and between in belief and unbelief.

Lord, I believe, help my unbelief! This is what today I must recite over and over.

He went into the depths of human depravity and reconciled with us. Surely I can bear my disordered feelings du jour. The alternative is separation from God. I would do anything to avoid an eternal bad day.

Just hold on. Look! He is there, just behind us.

And the Phobic Shall Inherit the Earth. And the "Experts".

Dr. Anthony Fauci seems like a nice man. The other nice experts who have pronounced inconsistently from January to date have somehow become our society's gods. They speak the word, well, many words, and our local and federal governments impose a series of proscriptions and prohibitions on the citizenry. Our input is not welcome. Actually, our input is irrelevant. Objection is not welcome either. Actually, objection is roundly rebuffed. Shut up. Wear your mask. Stay at home until we figure out whether it is forever or not. And until no one dies ever again from the virus. 

It is what it is. Being herded by other human beings is nothing new. But there is a silver lining.

From CNBC.com (and other news outlets) we have this on April 9, 2020.

"Dr. Fauci says handshaking needs to stop even when pandemic ends--other experts agree".  

Wait. There is more.  

"Speaking on the Wall Street Journal podcast on Tuesday, Fauci said Americans will have to 'gradually come back' from this pandemic and won't be able to jump back into their regular lives' with both feet.  The 'new normal' he says, will include 'compulsive had-washing and the other is the end of handshaking.'"

I hope Dr. Fauci and the other experts will remind people not to spit on the streets, throw their trash out of car windows, and in the case of our homeless, who are still on the streets while the rest of us are confined, defecating. But I digress.

The good news. Those of us who used to be considered, let's say, "odd" for shying away from human touch at greater or lesser degrees, we turn out to have been right all along. The experts have confirmed it. 

I don't know that I would be considered phobic about touch, but I was raised in a nuclear family that did  not hug, or kiss. Over the years, people were amused at my reluctance. As I have gotten older, I may not have extended my hand or initiate a hug, but if presented with the inevitability, I conceded to the couple of seconds of greeting. At Mass, where we were all compelled by progressive faith to exchange handshakes at the Sign of Peace, I did my part, always happy when some priests simply waved or bowed. Too many handshakes, far and wide,  I have found were wet. Let me say it. It always creeped me out. 

Thanks to Dr. Fauci and the other experts who are leading us, the compulsive hand washer, or the avoidant hand shaker, have been proven right. What was mental aberration yesterday is wisdom today. We are free, even compelled, not to touch. That is a freedom I am happy to give up. The rest of our freedoms, not so much. But that is a rant for another day.

I noted that recently, the mantra of these Coronavirus times, which had been "social distancing" has morphed into "physical distancing". I suppose someone in the Orwellian word smithing business realized that they didn't want socializing to end, only the touching part of socializing in the public square. To be social doesn't require, someone must have realized, physical proximity. It can all be done on line. We can have our religions, our family gatherings, on line and on our big screens. And this way, we can be assured that the experts and our leaders, like Mr. DeBlasio in New York, or Mr. Garcetti in Los Angeles will have access to our homes and minds. It's all very Farenheit 451. Nice.

Thank you Mr. Fauci. Your advice coincides here with my natural tendency. I shall, henceforth, bow, and smile to those I greet. I might even observe the six feet physical distancing "rule" for the rest of my life. 

To be a phobic (wherever you are on the bell curve) will be to be politically correct. Until someone is offended, then the debate will begin anew. 

The Selective Compassion of the Mainstream Media

When I was in college at a time when there were still only three main networks, I read a book, the cover of which is pictured above. "News From Nowhere".  I can't remember if I was assigned to read it or I picked it up on my own. Probably, it was the former reason. The thesis was that what was on the news, governed, and directed by corporate goals and necessity (largely I would think financial) was not to inform the populace but to stir them up, to cause excitement, so that the viewer would continue to view. Reality was not a value. I saw examples of the validity of the thesis when I worked as an intern at a local news channel WOR, in New York. I went out on a couple of stories, both in the Bronx. One was about a hospital in danger of closing. We got to the site. There were a few people mingling, unhappy with the possibility of the loss of the hospital. There was one child, in a stroller. The camera lens focused on the child. To watch the story, edited from the mass of film taken, was to stir the heart about the heartless minions of corporate greed. Another story was at Bronx Community College. There was some sort of takeover of a building. When we got there, the kids were playing frisbee and eating lunch. Once the news were there, the protests began, or resumed with the concomitant shouting appropriate to activism.

These weren't big stories, and the stakes weren't terribly large. But I remember thinking that the editing process and the reporter's charged words changed the essence of what the consumer would see. The facts would be muddled, and the tone and tenor of the event and its consequences were made dire.

I can tell you that some 47 years ago, the book and my small experience had profound effects on me. With the explosion of technology, cable, the internet, digital everything, the goal of the mainstream media has not changed, while truth and reality have been turned utterly on their heads, along with the mental health of many American viewers.

I thought that the media had reached its nadir with the Kavanaugh hearings. But there is always a little lower human nature can go.

The media posits great care of Americans who have died (possibly, there is news, if one can believe, that the CDC told hospitals to label deaths coronavirus related even if they aren't sure of it) from the coronavirus, and the health of those who may be infected. They label right wing anyone who might say a word about the economy being trashed every time "Breaking News" is presented, even though it is the average American suffering most from the busting economy--another group for whom they pronounce great concern. I think I heard CNN's ratings went up during this last month, when before, unlike the economy in February, it was in the dumps. Life is good for the reporters who did not lose their jobs, except of course for the ones like the FOX reporter who dared to suggest that the coronavirus crisis was being manipulated into another episode of the nearly four year long "impeach Trump" show. It doesn't mean anything, I suppose, that Ms. Pelosi and friends are seeking to create some new governmental group to investigate how Mr. Trump has handled the virus containment process.  Anyway, Fox is not immune from the "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality, and watching the bottom line rather than support for the marketplace of ideas. And as to Mr. Trump, his a lot of death comment doesn't help. Anyway here's a number. 

Approximately 40 million American adults — roughly 18% of the population — have an anxiety disorder, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Safety, health and finances seemed to be the greatest sources of anxiety, according to the APA poll.

And, depression? Another 16 million, about 6 percent of the population. So nearly a quarter of Americans struggle with a condition that one could say might be exacerbated by the never ending speculations, projections, models of worst case scenarios thrown at them from the exponentially increasing news desks and news sites. And just as happened with the SARS outbreak years ago, when the coverage was increasing but was by no means like it is today, people began to feel suicidal. 

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/covid-19-is-likely-to-lead-to-an-increase-in-suicides/

If the media is all about drama and excitement, like it was 47 years ago, like it was I suppose back in 1898 when "Remember the Maine!" was all the rage (but when all there was were newspapers) then I guess the anxious, the depressed and the suicidal are out of luck. The media can't be expected to care, unless it means great ratings and oodles of money. And they complain about the 1 percent. 

And then, add in ye old social media. I haven't read any posts on my page for the last nearly 40 days, though I have posted this blog and the odd article.  Nor can I still watch the news channels. I do read articles, left and right, and possibly in the middle (even what is in the middle is debated information these days) and I have to know when it is safe to go out again after all? But when I left that forum it was Lord of the Flies for adults. 

It would be nice if the mainstream media just gave information as new facts developed--facts, we used to know what you were--rather than pounding at us like, well, this is what it feels like to me, "torturers". 

I do not believe that the media seeks to inform the public. I haven't believed that since I was 19. If you think that they are wonderful, objective, compassionate, well, we just have (yet) another difference of opinion--until differences of opinion are forbidden by law, rather than by mere political correctness.