12/11/24

 Wednesday, December 11, 2024

D+36

1925 Pope Pius XI published the encyclical Quas Primas

1961 President John F. Kennedy provided US helicopters and crews to South Vietnam

1983 1st visit to a Lutheran church by a pope (John Paul II in Rome)

In bed at 9:15, awake at 5 from dreaming about being with the old and dying Pope Francis, massaging his feet and comforting him😕, up at 5:10.    

Prednisone, day 211, 7,5, day 26.   Prednisone at 5:35. Meds later.

It's like the curtain going up on a great show.  That's how I often feel when I open the venetian blinds on my window to the world, i.e., the window next to my recliner.  This morning I didn't open the blinds until 7:40, long after sunrise, and I saw a trifecta of woodpeckers: a male downy on the sunflower tube, a female hairy on one suet cake, and a red-bellied on the other.  On the ground below, snowbirds and a squirrel were busy foraging for seeds, many of which I put there yesterday afternoon while filling the niger and sunflower tubes and watching the whitetail deer watching me from our front lawn. . . . Around noon, we were visited by an eastern bluebird!

Dead Poets Society.  I read Caitlin Flanagan's long essay in the January 2023 The Atlantic "Seamus Heaney, My Father, and Me."  I have never read anything written by Seamus Heaney.  I watched a report on Nikki Giovanni on the PBS Newshour last.  I have never read anything written by her.  The older and more ferkrimpter I get, the more aware I am of how much learning, wisdom, and pleasure I have missed and of how much beauty and wonder in the world I have ignored.  I am reminded of my friend John Boyan, a classmate at MU, fellow midshipman, and fellow Marine and Vietnam vet.  Sitting in the old student union one day, I or one of our friends made some sort of grousing remark about the education or educational opportunities at Marquette.  John, who came to Marquette from enlisted service in the Marines, was a bit older and a lot wiser than the rest of us.  He pointed to the Memorial Library across the street from the Union and reminded us of the tremendous treasure house of knowledge and wisdom freely available to us every day, more books and other resources than we could ever hope to take advantage of, to 'milk.'  The world around us is our treasure trove and most of us, or at least many of us, like me, ignore the bounty all around us.  Shame on us.  Shame on me.  I need to go to the library and check out some Heaney and some Giovanni.  On the way, I need to admire and enjoy the sky and the trees and be thankful that I can make my way from home to the library warm and dry in a car that I own to take my pick of thousands of treasures.   I'm reminded too of returning to Iwakuni, Japan, after a month or two in Vietnam and experiencing how great it was to walk on a sidewalk in shoes.  We take so much for granted.  I need Our Town's Emily to wake me up.  ("Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me.”)

I'll light a candle for . . .  In Caitlin Flanagan's essay about Seamus Heaney, she wrote: "I’ve been a Catholic since my baptism, but the only Catholic tradition I remember my father handing down to me was lighting a candle “for the dead of the family.” Catholicism provides you with something no rational approach to the world ever will: a cosmology of intercessors and saints. It’s a religion that acknowledges, openly and from the very beginning, that faith itself is a mystery. Walking out of that graveyard left me with a bleakness, but I didn’t have time to confront it, because I was already entering the church so that I could light a candle for the dead of my family.

 During Kitty's last years, she suffered from insomnia, or perhaps I should say she experienced insomnia.  She never complained about it or let on that it bothered her even though he beloved doctor kept her from napping during the day.  She would wake up in the middle of each night and move from her bedroom to the guest bedroom and read a book or watch Rachel Maddow or another program on the TV.  Each day after I woke up, always early, I would start texting her for our daily conversation, knowing that she was already awake.  Though she never complained, I felt bad that she was up alone every night.  I sent her a red votive candle holder and a box of 12 (or perhaps 36) votive candles, the kind that we were both very familiar with because of our years as Catholics.  I asked her to keep the candle in her guest room and to light it when she was up in the middle of each night as a sign that I was with her in spirit.  Later I purchased a candle holder of my own and a supply of votive candles.  I would light a candle each morning in the predawn hours when I was awake.  I called it my "Kitty candle"  and I suppose it is indeed my way of lighting a candle for my beloved sister.  I tried to find some history on this "I'll light a candle for you (or for a deceased, or someone who is ill, whoever or whatever) tradition among Catholics, but couldn't find anything.  What I did find was lyrics sung by the Welsh soprano Natasha Marsh to the theme for Schindler's List, "I Won't Light a Candle."

Sometimes when I close my eyes, I hear you call my name
Even though I watched you go, I know I'll see you once again
The day will come when all my prayers come true
So I won't light a candle yet for you
No, I won't light a candle yet for you

In my heart, I still believe I'll kiss your face once more
Since the day you went away, I've kept your memory by my door
Knowing that you'll soon come walking through
So I won't light a candle yet for you
No, I won't light a candle yet for you

Every tear I will not cry
I would save till I need you
Every hope that will not die
Keep me strong till I see you

Yesterday I swore I saw you reaching for my hand
Then you begged me 'please, forget me'
But how could you understand
That letting go is the last thing I could do?
So I won't light a candle yet for you
No, I won't light a candle yet for you
I won't light a candle yet for you

I'm a big fan of candles of all kinds, but especially of church-y candles that remind me of my childhood and attendance at St. Leo church for masses, confessions, benedictions, 40 hours of adorations, and private prayer.  I'm not sure of how much of a believer I was in those days, but I was surely a member of the Irish Catholic tribe and, like my confreres, I was "tattooed in the cradle with the beliefs of [my] tribe."  To light one of the candles in the sturdy wrought iron candle rack, we were expected to drop a dime or more into the offering slot to cover the cost of the candle and some profit for St. Leo (or Msgr. Malloy, our pastor.)  Candles can symbolize so much. The transience of life, remembrance, celebrations, light in dark times and in dark spaces, unity and community as when crowds all 'light up' together, mental and spiritual enlightenment, and transformation as a candle's wax changes from solid to liquid to gas.  I light a votive candle nightly as my night light.  I often light another one in the early hours when I'm up and alone before daybreak, my "Kitty candle."  I have my goyishe Yahrzeit candle that I light on the anniversaries of the death of people close to me, my parents, Kitty, Tom St. John, and Ed Felsenthal.  Now I need to add Aunt Monica and cousin Christine.  If I knew my Uncle Jim's date of death, I would light the candle for him, too,  He was so good and nurturing to me when my father couldn't or wouldn't be. I would also light the yahrzeit candle for my friend David Branch, but I can't find his date of death on the internet.  It's a disappointment.  He was a good friend who died much too young, a candle in the wind.  I miss him and would like to honor him with my yahrzeit candle.  Is that silly? Ridiculous?  I don't think so.  It is those who remember who are blessed with the memories of the one in whose honor the candle is burned.  Burning the yahrzeit candle can stir up all sorts of memories and emotions - love, gratitude, loss, and regret.  Those memories and emotions are important guides to identity, character, and self-understanding.

Anniversaries thoughts.  Is there something really silly about religion, including the one that claims to be  One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, i.e., the Roman Catholic Church?  Pius XI's encyclical Quas Primas was an exhortation to the Fathful to recognize "the Kingship of Jesus" since the Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman empires had been dispatched by the Great War, which we call World War I.   It is, like so many, perhaps most or all of the papal encyclicals, otherworldly and utopian, based on a make-believe conception of human nature and reality.  And then there is the anniversary of JPII's first papal visit to a Lutheran church in 1983.  It reminds me of my youth when we Catholics, or at least we Irish Catholics in Chicago, believed it was sinful to go into a Protestant church, especially to attend a Protestant service, like the wedding or funeral of a friend.  We weren't allowed to sing 'Protestant' hmns at Catholic services, leaving us only the dreary Catholic standards like "Holy God We Praise Thy Name," O Salustaris Hostia,  and Tantum Ergo" which we mocked as 'Tantum ergo makes your hair grow.  Catholic church music was to music what military music was to music - dreadful.  One of the main reasons I was a member of St. Francis of Assisi parish so long was my love of the Black and Protestant Gospel music that the choir and parishioners sang.  Loved it!

JFK's sending U.S. helicopters and American crews to South Vietnam - another step on the road to disaster.