Father Buoy

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

buoy_lighted_redAfter 35 years of this privilege and the shenanigans we call the Roman Catholic priesthood, I guess I’m entitled to some retrospect.

I’ve meet and heard about all types of us guys over those years.  There are those who want to build a moat around themselves complete with drawbridge in the kingdom they call their parish.  There are those who attend every offered conference in the hopes of gaining something, I guess, but I also guess it’s time away from the parish.  I’ve only met one who was able to serve at almost every of the 250 parishes in our diocese.  I think he gave up a suitcase and just went from one to the next and asked where the washing machine is kept.  There are those who I like to say, “take a shower with french cuffs on,” for they are plotting their next upward position as though priesthood is a Chess game when they think of themselves as knights when they are only pawns.  There are also those who are firmly planted and focused on parish or ministry needs.  The last group are the names that I cherish the most because they are most priestly to me.

Parishioners are as varied as Starbucks coffee choices.  A 90 year old came to me and said, “At my age, I guess I should be coming to church.  What do I need to do?”  I replied, “Come to church.”  I haven’t seen her since so I guess she’s waiting to be 180 and then repeat her question to the next generation of me.  (I guess I could have rented a red carpet for her.)  Another had a bad confession experience with one of mine and hasn’t been to church in over 70 years.  There are countless good stories of priests and Catholic folks and they are the most enriching for me but the weird ones seem to simmer.  At one parish I kidded the pastor saying, “We could have four people here tonight at 7:00 p.m. telling them we need to check all the rectory light bulbs.”  (He didn’t laugh.  Volunteers are wonderful people when committed to the Church and not escaping their homes.)

Is singing “We’ve Only Just Begun” at a wedding the worst thing that can happen to our centuries old institution?  Will a brick from St. Peter’s Basilica break during that wedding ceremony?  Will my monsignor ship be denied me by the those who grant it?  I’ve had good Catholic folks who told me after Mass that I missed a word or two in the prayers.  Do we now do it all over again?  Did Jesus miss our offering that day and found a more worthy Catholic parish and priest?

Father Buoy ought to be my new name as I continue this charade of “persona Christi.”  For we are all “persons of Christ” in our respective and humble walks of life.  Unfortunately other priests believe themselves to be “Christ, the “of” just got in the way, I guess.  (“Oh, how those small words get in the way…”)

A buoy is strongly buoying in the deep Catholic waters that are deeper than any of us could ever swim.  Throughout one’s priestly ministry there are many rowboats that approach this stationary but safe buoy.  One boat approaches me and I see that their oars are tattered and beaten down and unable to proceed forward.  “Let’s see what we can do about these oars of yours,” I hope I would say.  Another boat hits me with water leaking badly.  There is little I can do but place my gum in the hole until powers greater than me intercede for them.  Another rowboat approaches telling me that they are “testing the waters” to see what it feels like, what the flow is like.  I welcome them and invite them to keep rowing.  When I least expect it yet another boat floats toward me because their oars were lost years ago and there’s a ton of stories about how that happened with no solution to be had.  I scratch my head and act as though I have the answer when their ton is too much for me to carry.  Some priests would give them his oars but then he wouldn’t have any.  So what good is that?

Father Buoy, that’s me; ebbing and flowing through this mysterious but real reality we call the priesthood. “Person of Christ?”

Mothers are the “person of Christ,” with more balls in the air than Michael Jordan could handle, laborers are the “person of Christ,” in their dedication and in finding purpose in their work, those who struggle with any struggle are the “person of Christ” hoping some oars are somewhere waiting for them, the unemployed father of four who isn’t counted among the unemployed is the “person of Christ” but still has hope.  You guessed it.  My list is endless in the joys and difficulties we all handle as best we can in life using Christ as the person we hope to be.

I got my title through oil placed on my hands during a glorious ceremony attended by many.  You’ve earned your title, “Person of Christ” through life.  Unfortunately, I’m the one who gets the credit.

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Sam & Sylvia Are Me

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

AA027440I’ve had these two beastly cats for ten years now so I know their moods, behavior and movements as much as they know mine.

I have owned that they are both a part of me even though cats refused to be “owned” by anyone.  Sam, being the male, is outgoing and outpouring creature whose capacity for affection is limitless; until he tells you.  Sylvia, being female is coyer, the quiet type and hides her self the moment a moment becomes a moment for her.  (My cats hear and sense things far sooner than us underdeveloped types.)

A cordial evening meal with friends and my personality becomes Sam with my Sylvia always available inside me.  Gregarious and engaging, Sam charms those gathered while all the way Sylvia silently beckons me to quiet down and sometimes to retreat before dessert.

I’m Sylvia at home and Sam at work.  I guess it works because it has to.  To reverse the roles would make me a teenager again and not a good employee.  (Sam at night in my 20’s was enough for me!)  Driving home from work Sam slowly drifts away and Sylvia reemerges.  (I can actually feel the Jekyll/Hyde switch about 2/3 into my drive.)  They are both great cats, low maintenance compared to me but the mixture of their lives within me life intrigues me.

People are great but they often get in my way (Sylvia).  I have friends and I enjoy their company (Sam) but their stories take forever to be told with needless details (Sylvia) which finally makes a point (a relieved Sylvia) but my attention was already lost at the story’s third tangent (Sylvia).

The cleaning lady arrives when I’m gone.  Sam greets her and Sylvia skirts for closet’s corner.  Believe me, Sylvia’s bladder can outlast any Thanksgiving dinner at my house.  I’ve witnessed it when my family decides on one more round before rounding themselves home.  Sylvia’s relief must be what we aging guys sometimes feel.  Sam, however, has been a part of the entire evening weaving in between legs and rubbing around whomever and whatever is stationary.

I’ve known people who are purely Sam and I don’t know how they do it.  After a few minutes, I’d be exhausted.  I’ve also known Sylvias’ and feel sorry for them for their quiet intensity at privacy.

I like the mix and I think I’ll keep it.  Sam at work with a hint of Sylvia in my mind; and at home it’s totally quiet Sylvia with an eager Sam waiting for tomorrow.

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“Vicarious”

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

vicarious@2xIf, for just a moment, we could be that someone who is not us.  A part of us realizes that the investment is temporary but during that transient period we substitute ourselves for “that person.”

Each generation has those to choose from.  Today it’s just easier because of the media overload covering their inches instead of broader strokes.  I just need to say, “Kim” to someone in their 20’s and they know her last name.  Beyonce doesn’t need a last name, just those who wish to be her for a day, a week or a month.  Madonna had a last name but dropped the Italian one to be the opposite of her namesake.  (Talk about vicarious!)

Generations ago how many women wished they could give a come-back-line as biting as Bette Davis and not flinch or show a facial expression of Joan Crawford’s wrath and not blink.  The men had their assortment of substitute-personalities in Tryone Power or Erroll Flynn or Sean Connery who in his tux smugly says, “Shaken, not stirred.”  Rock Hudson had everyone fooled with his hetero presence hiding his homo personality and balancing the two for decades.  (That’s being duo which can be deadly, vicarious can be fun and helpful.)

Think of those you’ve admired and then you’ll know the vicarious lives we like to live.  The modeling is the best vicarious of all because of the qualities we can take from someone – imaginary or real.  One quality derived can help you in your life.

I remember a priest while I was in the seminary who at gatherings had this knack of making scripture connections to contemporary life.  He did it with such ease that it caught my attention.  I never forget how quickly he was able to make something ancient fresh.  How many years later I still remember him and smile when I’m able to do the same thing.

It’s fun and it may even be helpful to be the action hero or the lonely soul who finds his way; those guys in the movies.  If a personality – imagined or real triggers something within you – go for it.  Just remember where your shoes are when the vicarious adventure is over.

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Uncovering Your Passion

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

i-wish-300x253Imagine someone asking you, “How can I find my passion?” as though you have the answer to a question that is already living and breathing within the questioner?   I hope that you would just smile at the person and kindly say, “I wish.”

You do not find passion, it finds you.  You are presently unable to articulate it but that’s what makes it a passion.  Passion is an energy and force that stirs, reoccurs and slowly simmers until attention is paid to it.  Passion will be paid.  To ignore passion is a greater price to pay than to name it.  To begin to identify passion is to begin to toy with it as a cat does a cloth mouse.  “How does it feel?”  “It is real?”  “How can I know that it’s real unless I play with it a while?”  And play as cats do, so I did.

Circa 1964, a pretend radio show in my bedroom surrounded by pictures on my walls of TV shows of that time.  Pretend microphone, pretend audience, pretend music talking to my walls for sixty minutes faithfully for two years until high school begins.  A string connected to a stick with a golf ball at its tip may have caused other parents to seek support or at least a depressing drug to depress this lonely, bedroom-ridden son.

Weekly Catholic Masses promptly began at 11:00 a.m. in 1962 because I just returned from the “real” Mass but now needed to do it myself.  Plastic vestments, a dictionary for the Bible and the church bulletin for my homily – I made my way through this weekly ritual that no one was allowed to observe.  (I even clicked a nonworking light button to summon my imaginary congregation.)  Drugs anyone or passion?

I hung around the local radio station and got to know the radio announcers.  The manager said, “I don’t hire part time employees.”  Circa 1969, junior in high school.  He hires me for Saturdays, 6:30 p.m.-Midnight and Sundays, 6:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.  My passion and I are finally communicating.

Sleepless nights is a clue.  Unlikely associations of your passion to something entirely different else is another.  Preoccupied with these thoughts, yet another.  Carefully taking to people of about your suspicious passion was a risk when they confused the words “cemetery” for “seminary.”

Circa 1972.  “We’ll give you a try,” says those in charge to me who’s been pretending Mass for years now.  Passion.

If you dismiss it, it will haunt you with whatever recourse your choose.  If you repress it, passion will only bite you into maturity and the fulfillment of what passion provides.

We say to folks, “What is your passion” as though it is a cause.  Perhaps it is a cause but it is personal.  Passion is you.  Radio, priesthood?  God-chosen or me-chosen?  Need there be a difference and if there is then can it not be reconciled and united?

Circa 1980.  I was ordained a priest, I had two religious programs for 14 years on commercial radio and 35 as a priest.  Passion fulfilled?  Not quite.

I’m still doing it today but I think that now the audience/congregation is real.  I think it’s better that way and I think my “passion” agrees with me.  “I wish.”

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“The End”

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

the-end-3Those two words appear on the screen but you still have some popcorn left so you watch those rolling names that usually appear in your back as you leave the theater.  Except this time the rolls include everyone you’ve known since the doctor announced your gender to the awaiting world and your sweating but relieved mother.  The doctor assures mom that all five are where they are supposed to be but now on the black screen those numbers have exaggerated by the number of your lived years.

Kindergarten teacher, the neighborhood grocer check out lady; including relatives, loved  or tolerated twice a year.  You finally know what a “best boy” does in a movie when you see a familiar name attached to the title.  The movie’s crew caterer is obvious to you all these years later since it was that sweating but relieved woman in the bed with you.  The moving list continues as you munch, containing every grade school friend and the playground bully and moves onward as high as you went in education.  Neighbors, co-workers are all listed as you attempt to place the name against your forgetful memory which is not easy since the list continues to move upward.

A tear is easily released into the remaining kernels as the names persist and you wonder how many people touched, brushed or enveloped your life.  In our minds the villains are the easiest to spot because they’ve lived within us the longest.  It’s the smaller names that test our memories – the man whose car you dented but smiled and said, “I’ll take care of it myself,” or that walk to your car carrying your child when the milk fell out and she quickly picked it up for you.  Those were nameless encounters whose names now appear on your rolling life.

You begin to wonder if you have enough popcorn to see till “the end” of these credits.  Credits.  That’s what they’re called in movie parlance.  They’ve been credited for making this feature film what it is but who spends time watching this roll roll upwards?  All the names are up there including the music that made this film, the film that it is.  Musical titles are always listed at the bottom of the roll but for me they’d appear before the stars names because much of my life is associated with music and the people I spent time around it.

Interestingly, you recall now that part of the movie was in black and white while the rest was in color.  “I wonder how that happened?” you say to yourself as the last of the popcorn is gone and the credits finally shown copyrights and steep fines for duplication.

You don’t mind because you know that the copyright is your imprint and the only fines rendered are your own because of a missed opportunities, second thoughts or hesitations that you’d love to duplicate now, if you but had the chance.

I remember a movie that begins with the statement, “It may not have happened this way but this is the way I remember it.”  What a great way to remember the memories of our lives.  So what if we add a little extra to our past or shave and soften a little off of that experience.  After all, “it’s my memory.”

But to see your entire life slowly rolling upward showing those you have met either by circumstance, heritage, choice or random  – what a joy, what fulfillment, what satisfaction; again, what a joy to behold.  Not hold but to behold.

Your popcorn box is empty, the other theater folks didn’t stay for your closing credits but you stayed behind to relive – those with names, those without – all – who helped forge your life and who made you smile, laugh, tear and enjoy the last of your popcorn in an empty theater.

“The end.”

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“Grace”

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

SIM504SimplyWordsGraceIt’s tasteless, odorless; you cannot hold or grab it and it’s not for sale in spite of indulgences (one of the darker Catholic moments).

It’s the word that’s as beautiful to say as it is to experience.  Grace.  There’s something lovely both in the concept and in its reality.  Reality.  Who’s to say?  It may be profane to compare but grace is like pornography when the Supreme Court declared, “You know it when you see it.”

We could use the word “energy” but that’s not spiritual enough.  Grace is in a league of its own.  The Catholic Church, always a stickler for details, needed to divide this beautiful word into “sanctifying” and “actual.”  Why the distinction, I don’t know except I’m sure it kept bureaucrats busy for centuries trying to think up those two words.  The former is achieved through the seven sacraments and the latter just comes in doses when needed.

We say “Grace” before and after we eat, grateful for the food before us.  We ask God for it before an exam or the tenth job interview.  Parents seek its companionship for eighteen years, sometimes thirty years depending on the job market.

I don’t so much seek it but recognize its presence when it arrives.  I would describe grace as an extra portion of peace added to my already peaceful feeling living in the present time.  I guess the difference between “energy” and “grace” is that grace transcends the fleeting flight of feelings.  If grace were a feeling, it would be considered shallow instead of the hidden power it releases.

Did you ever have an ordinary meal with a friend but walk away knowing it was a “graced moment?”  Not planned or organized, the conversation just drifted into important matters that needed either to be said or listened to by one or both parties.  Then as a new week progresses that one “moment” continues to live within you until it no longer is a moment, it was grace.  St. Aquinas says, “grace builds upon grace.”  Of all the fancy statements I could have remembered from the seminary that simple statement has stayed with me.  So perhaps there is an energy in this grace stuff.

A simple time or experience of grace builds upon itself until it becomes a guiding light or pilot light that lights doubtful times, trying situations, a conflict of any kind becomes bearable or at least understood a little better because of this simple and beautiful word that gracefully graces our lives: grace.

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Of My Cats and Mine’s Minds

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

AA027440My two cats can only be who they are, no more or less.  The controls of their lives are controlled by instincts that we can only sometimes admire.  You can try to train them for small feats or even discipline them but they will only react against their environment and never betray who they are, cats.  They comfortably live out their nine lives with me (thanks to my benevolent nightly shoveling) and end up where they began: as cats.

Moving to our supposed all powerful selves and discover through life that the ego that has forged most of it is but a pea in an ocean.  Mixed metaphor?  Not really because it’s accurate.  This small pea which we firmly believe authors our life’s thoughts and actions floats on top of a deep and wide ocean that is the unconscious.  Defined as yet to be defined the unconscious is the mind’s fullest self, combined with the pea.

Our brains are developed in our 20’s and the pea takes on all of life’s tasks as though it’s in charge.  Reach 4o, 50 or 60 and you ought to have discovered an undercurrent of other stuff going on in this marvelous mind of ours.  Life is rarely what we see and hear but is filtered by the supposedly powerful pea and greatly influenced by the mighty ocean.

I serious joke I tell is to avoid a driver with a left-sided dent.  Guess where his next car accident will be?  Yep.  Left side, dented.  You can bet your Apple stock on it.  Married twice?  Have drinks with her and she’ll have both of them all figured out, complete with useless stories, without ever using the pronouns, “me” or “I”.  The peas for these folks are in control, or so they think.

Why the divide between pea and ocean within our beautiful minds?  It’s beyond my pay grade but I know that it exists.  If a union of the happens through personal revelations, all the more power to you.  If it occurs through life’s experiences, as it surely will again and again, then you’ve better buy some oars because the water’s deep.

The natural American question now is, “What can I do about this?”  “How can I unite my pea with my ocean?”  “What drugs are available?”  “I already exercise!”  That’s the pea talking and it’ll keep coming up with solutions so long as the ocean is avoided.  The wonderfully, powerful solution is anti-American but works every time: you do nothing.  I know we like to do nothing until we get bored but this nothing empties us and reduces the already small size of the pea.

Underneath in this vast ocean lies our common humanity as well as our uniqueness.  It’s not that the pea and ocean that are in conflict with each other, it’s a matter of awareness.  You cannot plan “nothing time” as though a miracle will occur in your humble home.  “Nothing” finds you and when it arrives will you allow it in even with all its doubts and confusions?  I shouldn’t say “even,” but “especially.”  I love when people approach me and use those words as though cancer was just diagnosed.  Doubts and confusions are the minds gift to us to pause, sift, ponder, ponder again and possibly arrive at a new perspective, a new insight, a twist from our former way of thinking.  For Christians, death and resurrection can only happen through, well, death and resurrection.

We search for peace, fulfillment and contentment as though the search will never be achieved.  These qualities of life are available to us throughout our lives.  They are the rewards that “nothing” brings to us.  The “nothing” that enlightens the dented-left guy to realize.  Realize what?  That’s his journey, that’s his problem.  My twice divorced friend?  Guess where marriage three leads her unless a little ocean waters her pea.  (Please don’t take that sentence out of context.)

My cats are both sleeping now, happy and blissful.  I don’t know if their happiness is the same as mine but mine can be gained through life’s homework, done each day and handed in on time.

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“What Did You Say?” – Hearing Aids & Me

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

LyrichearingaidListening and hearing the Word of God is pretty 101 for a Catholic priest but what if those verbs are diminishing?  With Baby Boomers booming into old age, if I could invest it’d definitely be in a hearing aid company.  All of those front row seats at concerts would handily pay off for someone born after 1946.

Most friends blame it on my radio announcing days wearing headphones and letting “The Who” blare away.  (“Won’t Get Fooled Again” is a perfect example and don’t think I haven’t considered suing the group for “overt enjoyment at a young age.”   Legal precedent, anyone?)  The audiologist ten years ago asked me if I was in the military since right was weaker than left; where the gun is pressed against the shoulder.  I wanted to tell her my third grade BB gun story and the dead bird but just said, “No.”  Her next feeble attempt was my role in construction.  This is her question after shaking my smooth hand? Just ask, “What do you do?”  “I’m a priest in a retirement community,” I say finding kindred spirits among others whose appendages have aged faster than their bodies.

When seeing the hearing aids on me for the first time, a friend asked why I had them.  I said that I was going blind.  (Sarcasm is a truly learned gift.)  This begins the self conscious part.  Seen or unseen.  Grow my hair a little longer around the ears?  Another friend says, “I can’t see them!” as though they are made to be seen in their small and even smaller sizes.  Why seen?  So that they can comment on my two additions placed on my body each morning?  Still another chides me to “turn them up” when I ask a statement to be repeated.  Somehow, calling attention to my need for hearing aids doesn’t help me hear better.  Anyway, it’s three buttons depending on my environment but why should hearing people know that.  I joked a former employee that my buttons read, “Linda,” “Where’s Linda” and “Who’s Linda.”  I told her I mostly keep it on button three.

The phone is ringing but it’s not the phone but a song I heard two days ago replaying in my ears.  Or perhaps it’s the refrigerator making its nightly sounds to keep things fresh.  Yes, bathroom visits are now clearly heard, being male and the sound and taste of potato chips is now complete.

“Why don’t you have them checked?” after I ask for a repeat as though he’s now an audiologist.  5:00 a.m. each morning I hear more Lamentations than the Bible Book and I look down and there is my female cat with lingering meowings as though death is moments away.  Next to her I see the little cloth mouse she plays with as she presents her prey to me hoping for applause at 5:00 a.m.

I hear my mother speaking to me loudly and clearly with or without the aids but, I guess, that’s another story.  I hear the rap music from the car next to mine so I just turn up Rosemary Clooney’s croonings.  Batteries need to be changed every four days unless you forget you have them on and jump into a pool while on vacation, thrice.

Mine came with Bluetooth for TV and along with closed captions, I’m a happy camper.  If there a gift to this loss then it is the silence.  I arrive home and the silence fills the room with only that lingering song from 48 hours before.  This “silence is golden” as the old song sang fills me up with more sounds that any Bose system could provide.  This stillness penetrates, illuminates and tosses all the day’s words completely out the window and tranquility or something close to it settles in.

Of all the senses this is the one I didn’t want to lose because of the music.  I will keep asking this four word question whether you like it not.  I’ve spend thousands of dollars to do my part.  Repeating your statement for me is not the end of the world.  From headphones to hearing aids, I still enjoy “The Who” as loudly as I can hear them.

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Flying Free

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

imagesIt’s the freedom and fluidity that I marvel.  Breezing through the wind as though it’s being led yet not knowing where it will land.  The backs and forths, the ups and downs pauses me to simply watch.  There is no way to stop its freedom but just observe where it will end without prediction, because I could surely be wrong.

Wilbur and Orville must have seen what I see but saw it technically when I just smile to myself wondering how this can be happening.  “Oh, there it goes sliding along the ground, now it’s over there instead of over there,” I say but then I say again, “Wow, up, up and away and now it’s way over my head.”

I wonder if I should run after it or perhaps wait for its return.  Or possible return?  The wind may guide it to a new place, a different place unknown to me but familiar to others.  I don’t want to see it leave me but the wind seems to have a mind all its own with quads and even four more between them.  Funny how we try to measure and weigh wind when it will wind and wind anywhere and everywhere it chooses.  It’s as if the wind says to us, “Go ahead and try to colorfill me on your television screens for your evening news for I will just fool you and move direction and I will not call the ‘Hot Tips Line'”.  So much for your TV’s “complete coverage” of covering what God controls.

We fly through the clouds in our travels to warm places or a grandmother’s funeral using the same wind as my friend.  We look out the safe airplane window and simply wonder at the majesty of that cloud that looks like our boss or that morning sun beginning to peek out new day.  We envy the freedom of flight, we envy the everything supposedly left behind and the nothing which lays ahead of us.  We are envious of my little friend that the wind has decided to return to my sight.

It slides again across the ground in a restless state.  I am not sure the wind is even in control now, it’s just too hard to tell.  Is it my friend of is it the nervous wind?  It seems to not know what will come next or where its next direction will take it but it continues to follow, perhaps without a will but still follows.  It opens itself up and the wind fills it once again and carries it to my far right and near left quicker than I can glance in either direction.

I smile and look at it wondering what the wind has in mind, if it even has a one.  I wonder what the end will be only because it soars so freely and openly throughout my vision.  Where will it land?  How can it land without hurting itself with this enveloping wind?

“There it is,” I say to myself.  The plastic bag is caught in a branch in this tree.  But is it caught or resting or residing?  It remains there every day I return to work.  Will it be there tomorrow?

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Abraham Lincoln 150 Years Later: Despite Ourselves, We must think anew and act anew

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

imagesby Todd Robert Murphy

It was a gorgeous spring day in Washington D.C. The streets were bustling with people as Charles Leale strolled among them. It was unseasonably warm. Spring had arrived, and he noticed freshness to the air as he inhaled and exhaled. There was a scent of flowers, and the buds were becoming fuller on the trees.

Charles Leale had just graduated from medical school. He joined the army, and his future was radiant with hope and promise. Everything was perfect, including this day. It was Good Friday. Easter was late in this calendar year. The shops were at full tilt as they sold their wares to those celebrating the upcoming Easter holiday. Most would close briefly in the afternoon out of respect to the death of the crucified Christ.

Leale heard the voices of children’s laughter and momentarily watched a couple of adventurous boys crossing the Potomac in a rowboat. The large oars that would build their muscles seemed unwieldy for their young age. The soldiers were coming home from a dreadful war, and he would be tasked to attend to those wounded in the bitter conflict. However that was for another day. Tonight he would attend the theater and enjoy the evening with friends and perhaps a libation or two.

As Dr. Leale prepared for his evening outing he decided to wear his dress blues. It was rumored the president and the first lady would be in attendance at the evening’s performance. As a newly commissioned officer, and surgeon in the U.S. Army, he felt it was the appropriate attire. He was an admirer of the president and had been impressed with a speech he attended only a few days earlier.

Deciding to walk to the theater, he pulled his jacket collar up as the warm spring day gave way to a chill in the air. A curtain of haze was beginning to rise on the Potomac. The moon appeared full but, in stopping, he noticed it was a gibbous moon, not quite full. The unmistakable smell of a renewed season lingered in the cool night air. It was, however, this day, this perfect spring day that 23-year-old Dr. Charles Leale scarcely six weeks out of medical school life would be changed forever.

Two police officers were shot in Ferguson,Missouri and two cops were shot at a point-blank range while seated in their squad car in New York City.  In Madison, Wisconsin yet another unarmed young man of color was killed during an altercation with an officer. In every major urban area in the country protesters chant, “Black lives Matter.” Cops are afraid to do their job because of the insecurity they have about their responsibilities in enforcing the law. 

Just about everyone feels besieged; the crisis in confidence that further erodes American temperament is the subjectivity of media reporting. The crazies on all sides get the lion’s share of exposure because reckless comments draw viewership and  sell papers.  The shallow TV journalists appear more concerned with the right makeup, clothing or fashionable eye wear than with the news they report. 

The divide in America feels like a new Civil War. We are all secessionists.  We separate along race, politics, religion, heritage, schools, neighborhoods, words, and wealth.  We call the protests civil unrest. Why not just substitute the word war?  It is difficult to use the predicate word civil with the word society. God help you if you’re among the majority of centrists Americans; yours is the voice most commonly disparaged by those on the extreme ends of the political bell curve. Most of us fume in silent frustration. The union isn’t quite broken, but severely stressed. 

Shortly after intermission there was a commotion in the theater. Dr. Leale was summoned to the president’s box. As he scurried to the box he felt a rolling thunder of audience hysteria chasing him down the hallway. What must have he imagined he would be coming upon? He entered the box and the president was slumped in his chair. The first lady pleaded with him to help.  Initially, he thought the president had been stabbed.  He felt a light pulse and asked onlookers to help move the president to a recumbent position. Dr. Leale held his head and shoulders and, in caressing the back of the president’s head, came across a clot of blood with the little finger of his left hand.  It slid away.

He felt the gunshot hole. He turned and said solemnly, “This wound is mortal,” as the president’s blood streamed through the loving, cradling grasp of his left hand.

Do you remember the TV show “The Dukes of Hazzard” from the 80s? It was a series about two brothers living in a fictional town in rural Georgia. Harmless themes about the glory of the Confederacy were implicit during its five-year run.  A regular character named “Cooter” in the show was, in real life, Ben  Jones. He served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Well, he and a bunch of his good old boys have a case pending in the United States Supreme Court.  They want the right to display the Confederate flag on their vanity license plates.  It was turned down by the Texas Dept. of Transportation. Ben, aka Cooter, and the boys argue they have a First Amendment right to display the flag.

The Texas DOT asserts the government issues license plates, thus it should be considered government speech. Therefore, their position is Cooter’s confederate flag plate is not constitutionally protected free speech. Does it really matter? People do have a constitutional right to be ignorant, hurtful, and boorish reprobates. Doesn’t this speak to a larger  issue about all of us?

April 14, 2015 will commemorate 150 years since the death of Abraham Lincoln.  Dr. Leale, who was holding Lincoln’s right hand when he passed, would later write that, by happenstance, he attended the slain presidents last address. In recalling him he would describe Lincoln’s “divine appearance as he stood in the rays of light, which penetrated the windows of the White House.”

Dr. Charles Leale

Dr. Charles Leale

Dr. Charles Leale’s mind must have been cluttered with thoughts, even decades after President Lincoln’s death. Nothing ever could, or would, be perfect again. Oh, sure,there would be other splendid spring days where he would pause and fill his lungs with fresh air but with each exhale his thoughts would drift back to that fateful night in April 1865.

Leale married, fathered six children and practiced medicine until 1928; he died 67 years after President Lincoln’s assassination. His was a good life. Dr. Leale, like all of us, had those periods of time when he was alone with his thoughts. Did he ever wonder what President Lincoln, whose hand he held in death, would have thought about how the country was evolving?

What would President Abraham Lincoln think of his beloved country 150 years after his passing?

I think he would weep.

Mise le Meas

Todd Robert Murphy pays attention.  You can contact him at at toddrobertmurphy@gmail.com

 

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