Monday, February 23, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Annette Remembered
Many years ago, when my love for Molly was blossoming, I wrote her a story. This literary effort coincided with a trip I was planning to meet her in Prague. She was a student, touring through Europe; I was a poverty lawyer living with my recently widowed mom.
The story went like this: an organ grinder's monkey, trained to secretly enter homes, businesses, churches to steal for her master, comes upon the famed Infant of Prague and falls in love with it. The monkey snatches the statue away, southward to the Baltics. The ending? A newspaper article about the statute, found years later, perched high in a pear tree, by three children playing in a war.
I wrote the story in installments, sent to my faraway traveller bride-to-be. The conclusion came days before my Atlantic flight to meet her. For Christmas, while dabbling in water paints, I painted a picture of a monkey and a statue sitting in a pear tree. It hangs in our bathroom now. I see it every day.
It reminds me of a perplexing question that arose out of the effort: which one of us is the monkey and which is the Infant? My answer for the moment is this: I am the adoring monkey, under the spell of unspeakable beauty and magic of a beautifully adorned Child of God. You are the miracle icon, a master to your willing subjugate, equally innocent and inaccessible, who considers this worship unworthy.
You may have a different answer.
The other day, my brother stepped out of bathroom and asked, "Is that a squirrel and a puppet in the tree in that painting?"
No, I replied. It's a monkey and the Infant of Prague.
The story went like this: an organ grinder's monkey, trained to secretly enter homes, businesses, churches to steal for her master, comes upon the famed Infant of Prague and falls in love with it. The monkey snatches the statue away, southward to the Baltics. The ending? A newspaper article about the statute, found years later, perched high in a pear tree, by three children playing in a war.
I wrote the story in installments, sent to my faraway traveller bride-to-be. The conclusion came days before my Atlantic flight to meet her. For Christmas, while dabbling in water paints, I painted a picture of a monkey and a statue sitting in a pear tree. It hangs in our bathroom now. I see it every day.
It reminds me of a perplexing question that arose out of the effort: which one of us is the monkey and which is the Infant? My answer for the moment is this: I am the adoring monkey, under the spell of unspeakable beauty and magic of a beautifully adorned Child of God. You are the miracle icon, a master to your willing subjugate, equally innocent and inaccessible, who considers this worship unworthy.
You may have a different answer.
The other day, my brother stepped out of bathroom and asked, "Is that a squirrel and a puppet in the tree in that painting?"
No, I replied. It's a monkey and the Infant of Prague.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Strawberry Letter # 24
“Martin Sheen, Steve McQueen and Jimmy Dean,” Stipe sings.
A new American trinity, it might be said. Masculine, sensitive, subversive. A president, a prisoner, a rebel. One has endured, the others cut out too early. One cut out very early. Husbands everywhere, take note: You can be cooler than you are, right now. You must only pay attention.
I began paying attention at a very young age. I had a trinity of my own in childhood: Roots, The Holocaust and Helter Skelter. I watched them all before my ninth birthday. Roman Polanski throwing up at the sight of his slaughtered Sharon. Naked bodies shot into mass graves. Whites whipping blacks. I knew the world was filled with horrors. I knew suffering and anguish and insanity and rage at an unripe age. But I was enlightened enough to know the purpose of this study: to make sure such horrors can be avoided, that each of us has much to contribute lying dormant within us, that you judge a society by how it treats the least among its citizens.
I fell in love several years ago, and am getting married in October. I think marriage is one topic that I’m always allowed to be thinking about, according to her. Marriage is a public declaration of love. Love is a psychological construct based in biology. Biology requires reproduction. Reproduction requires a partner in love.
Love is not a word. It is not an emotion. It is all there is. Descartes was wrong. It’s not cogito, ergo sum, it’s amo, ergo sum. I love, therefore I am. Love doesn’t really require thinking. You can love without thinking. In fact, most people really in love often love without thinking.
Love has its trinitarian aspects, itself. Proximity is a part of love, longing for closeness. A chemical, subatomic yearning for closeness. Communion is a part of love, the desire to share together. Sanctuary is a part of love. You might be tempted to add Sacrifice, but that is merely an unintended consequence of love. Proximity, Communion, and Sanctuary pretty much cover all the bases for me. I find each of them in abundance in my love for Molly.
One of Christ’s lesser known miracles occurred when Simon came to him, lamenting the temple tax he could not pay. “Go, throw your line in the water. The first fish you catch will have a gold coin in its mouth worth twice the temple tax.”
I ask you this, Molly: how much temple tax shall I have to pay?