Soulful Muse

I spent three hours with a thousand of my good friends at the Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson Airport. Although they don’t know me; I am among, between and bumping into them for three hours. The layover seems like an eternity when you know what the end time is.

What does one do for three hours? Alcohol sounds like a good idea at 1:30 p.m. in the afternoon.   (Technically you’re still on vacation until you re-enter your home.) I order a Manhattan and the waiter tells me how his grandparents enjoyed them which made me think twice about my age and place in life.   Seated across from me is a couple from Florida returning from a Packer game in Wisconsin. Since I’m from Wisconsin I could not let the moment pass by. Everything about her attire is “Packer” mania from two sets of Packer earrings, pajama Packer pants (it was not a fancy airport restaurant), a Packer jersey and a Packer bag. “Oh, you follow the Packers?” I astutely ask them. (I’m good at stuff like that.) They proceed to tell me more details than I care to know or understand but I guess the Packers won so their Green Bay trip was worthwhile. The straight-haired lady in front of me never smiled or acknowledged my existence. (I find that to be a common airport behavior. If you look bored and self-involved then everyone will think that you’re above the fray, must travel a lot and are important.)

I refuse to take on that behavior because I have three hours to spend here and I’d like to use it to absorb what is surrounding me in this maze of breathing humans with nothing in common except for the “wait”. (And yet we have everything in common because we are all human and are “waiting” for the next plane.) Passing by my table is a father carrying a child on his shoulders until he realizes that the kid may fall and the child will sue the airport so the dad places him back into the stroller. There is a tattoo lady with more scripture passages on her arm than I’ve memorized, next to her is serious-business-lady-with- cellphone and Air Mac acting like she’s solving the world’s problems, or so she thinks. There are a lot of those types in the airport with their cellphones at the ready; I guess you never know when that important call will arrive. When they are talking, it sounds very important but soon I hear it’s only about life’s tidbits and stuff they’re missing out on at home. I see a beautiful woman with a ring in her nose. (I guess she believed whoever told her that she was not attractive. How sad.) There are military guys roaming around in their camouflage outfits and I wonder what war they’re off to.

Even the smoking room (which I’m glad this airport still maintains) contains aloof and “looking-right-through-you” people. A woman is gabbing on her cellphone while holding an unlit cigarette. I light it for her and you’d think I gave her a $20.00 bill. She laughs showing me the lighter in her hand but thanks me nonetheless and proceeds to tell her friend about the spontaneous light.

I’ve found in my travels that these distant-posturing people who seem to assume this behavior while in large numbers of like people is easily broken with a quick smile, a sincere “good afternoon,” or a comment about the weather either where they’ve been or going to. An ice breaker also works with a comment about shoes or jacket. “Hey, that’s a cool jacket,” I’ll say. People then seem to warm up. At first they think you’re a robber or crook but slowly realize that you’re just another guy who needs to wait three non-flying hours in a crowded airport on a Monday afternoon.

It’s just one little flame from a short wick.  One puff or a wind’s puff and it’s gone with a short aftermath of smoke.  Fragile but appearing strong it finds its strength from its fluid- soaked stem.  So it burns and we find comfort in its small light but barely enough to keep us warm.

We light one candle, just for the heck of it, allowing our thoughts to wander from the known yesterdays to our predicted tomorrows while sometimes glancing at that one small flame in front of us.

Our parents told us that this flame of however they named it would be ours throughout life forever guiding and lighting our ways.  Clothes dryers call it a “pilot light” and you wait until you hear the click before going back upstairs.  No click, no dry clothes.  You hear a few circular motions of clothes and the hopeful click and you are comforted for the next load.

Life then happens with all of its circular motions and you patiently wait for the pilot light’s click.  Alas, silence and emptiness surround you because there is too much noise to hear that hopeful, promising click.  If despair could be defined it would colloquially be said to be the click that was not heard.  It is that pilot light or single flame that either ennobles hope or prepares you for the unwanted result.  All the while it remains just one simple flame that can either light life’s path or warm its cold heart.  The flame seems to move from one soft wind to the next, winds we cannot often feel.

Winter approaches again in Wisconsin and I wonder why I remain here.  Does one flame do it for me?  Tragedy strikes and the pilot light seems to have been extinguished but has it?  A midlife malaise settles in and you question your parent’s wisdom about this ever supposed single light.

One simple, firm flame.  It looks strong and secure but you know that one blow and it’s out cold.  You are unable to make it bigger because it is only one flame.   So, what keeps it going?  What makes this flame last a lifetime and even longer?  Is it the stem, the fluid or the end result; the simple, firm flame?  I’m not sure but I am sure glad that my clothes are finally dry now.

Having the luxury of a Catholic education – complete with nuns in complete habits and the privilege of cleaning the blackboard at the end of the day, it strikes me now how liberal the Catholic Church’s teaching is on many social issues.  (It’s the personal stuff that skews conservative.)

First and foremost is care of the poor in all ways and means and in all shapes and forms.  Nothing is more important than a constant awareness of those who have less than ourselves and our duty in not only providing assistance but helping to solve how life’s ladder for them stopped at that particular rung.  Buying African “pagan babies,” for .25 each, as a young person, led to a grateful consciousness for Catholic Social Services and the St. Vincent de Paul Society as an adult.

The dignity of work is second only to the sanctity of life is in every Catholic social teaching.  Its definition hasn’t changed over the centuries:  a fair wage, a competitive opportunity for everyone and a balanced balance between employer and employee.  The creation of unions ensured a dignified opportunity for every employee and its Catholic grounding is as equal as ham is to cheese.

The family as that beginning stone which becomes the rock of your life is indisputable.  Ensuring its stability strengthens both the family as a child and society as an adult.

The value of education would make any Catholic’s top ten list.  Its concentration on discipline, routine and memorization may be mocked today but its seeds have taken root in this person’s small mind.  Although begun as a protection of its beliefs as a minority religion, Catholic education is still the “foot to the pedal” for future success and satisfaction.

The Church’s welcoming stance toward all people of all countries still stands tall with its “Sanctuary” protection practice that is still upheld in courts.

Peace must always be sought, even at the cost of impulsive anger or trigger-happy retaliation.  I smiled to myself when I read that every “war” since World War II has been a “president’s war.”  We may wish that life was like our quickening technology but the solidly peaceful road is always methodical and slow in coming.

At the top of each homework assignment three letters needed to be assigned.  “JMJ.”  The nun would not accept the work unless those letters were clearly printed.  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”  These three people were to influence our lives, direct our deliberations and be our guide like their exodus to Egypt.  Although it’s fanciful whether they ever made that journey or not, the idea remained in young, formative minds and told us that important stuff lies before us even before we graduated from eighth grade.

Liberal?  By today’s standards perhaps but always the SOP of the Catholic Church.

Jesus tells us that he is the vine and we are the branches.  Our unity is only found in him.  It it a unity and oneness that can never be rescinded or destroyed.

I gotta stop here.  I can’t go on.

Do you really believe this stuff?  All this vine and unity stuff that we’re supposed to believe?

We may feel it while sitting inside church’s safe walls and enjoying the music and Mass but just wait until the proverbial parking lot scenario and somebody cuts you off.  Then we’ll see who prunes whom!

My simple 20 minute drive to work on a Milwaukee city street has three  –  count them  –  three near misses both coming from and going home.  People will risk their lives for an additional car length in front of me.  I have vowed to myself that I will not die on that stupid city street.  (“Fr. Joe died today when I driver cut him off to gain a car length at 50 miles an hour in a 35 mile an hour zone.  Details and film at 10.”)

We just can’t seem to get along.  We can’t seem to find one path to walk together.  Tragedy is probably the best time when I’ve witnessed people dropping whatever stands in our paths to find one way.  But, sadly, it does not endure.  September 11 was a few months of harmony until our divisions were once again lifted high and have remained there.

I was trying to think of one image that we could hook into to illustrate a unity of some kind.  I’ve mentioned “path” but that’s kind of vague.  Jesus uses “vine and branches” but I couldn’t tell a vine from a bush so don’t trust me with that image.

The image that we all have in common is this one, the family kitchen table.  It is the one place in the house where people comfortably gather because we are both hungry and it is the one gathering place in the house.  Here you could argue with each other while you’re still passing the gravy.  Here you could see each other face to face and attempt to be civil, cordial, cooperative.  (Three “C’s” we’re in need of these days.)

I can still picture our Manitowoc, Wisconsin family kitchen table vividly.  It was folded back against the wall when not in use.  It usually collected five people for a typical meal but could be easily be extended to 12.  Parents often served as referees, as best they could.  We each had opportunities to posture ourselves or sit and eat quietly.

What happens in family conversations is a slow “pruning” as Jesus would call it.  The hurts of a child could be softened, the bad grade could be redeemed the next time around and a sibling’s upcoming event could be anticipated together.  Our family was reminded through the exchange of food what unity and oneness could look like.  Just like our present society, it did not always work but the image of what it could be was staring at us each time we entered the kitchen.  That family kitchen table.

If kitchen table doesn’t work for you then find your own image, a visible image that clings to your heart, respects your beliefs but also the beliefs of those who disagree with you.

If the communion host that we receive means anything, the “body of Christ,” then it means for us to have a constant and vigilant awareness of what can bring us together whether in religion or politics.

What we need to cherish our beliefs and also what needs to be pruned in order to be a community of people or even a community of faith.