Vermont III - FAMILY

     Once again this morning, I walked the half mile up to the monastery, this time by myself. My retreat brothers and sisters, perhaps saner than me, opted for warm beds. It was a cold pre-dawn darkness, but once again there was a soft light from the half-moon still risen in the southern sky. Sounds just out of recognition filled the woods on either side of the gravel road and I added the sound of my breath and my boots crunching with each step. And just as the two mornings before, the priory bell rang through the darkness to announce that day's prayer.

     I arrived at the chapel with the skin on my face refreshed by the cold air of the walk. The only other people in the chapel were two  women up from Massachusetts we had met the evening before. The brothers came in randomly over the next few minutes. This morning the Sunday service of morning prayer began with Brother Alvaro lighting a taper in the rear of the chapel and bringing the light forward to several candles -- it was reminiscent of the Easter Vigil light ritual. This morning, we sang to Christ, light of our hearts and sign of God's love. The psalms flowed back and forth in easy chant.

     The Gospel for this Sunday was the familiar, awful parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25). "When did we see you hungry, naked......." the people ask and Jesus gives that most touching of responses: "Whatsoever you do to the least (the weakest and most "unimportant") of my brothers and sisters, you do to me." In a world of 99% and 1% class and economic divides, here's a reminder that God is not about effete abstraction, but about standing for the poorest and most undefended among us. And that makes us family with each human being.

     These brothers of Saint Benedict are an intentional community of commitment and choice, an alternative kind of family. If "friends are the family we choose," this particular family has chosen to live a life up in these woods that is steady, modest and full of meaning. They are "perfectly imperfect" men whose witness to the gospel call is genuine and compelling enough to bring visitors and fellow pilgrims like us to share, very briefly, in their lives of faith and worship. They remind us all of what's important in a way that's not fussy or so strange that we can't see ourselves in them. I return to my own family blessed and strengthened by theirs. And I'm grateful.

History Lost & Found: Reflections on the Death of a Favorite Aunt

     My aunt Edna Finnerty Kelliher died last week at the age of 93. She was bright, funny, smart and outspoken, but almost never unkind. She was a wife (widowed from her beloved Neil). She was a mother to three children, the youngest of whom, Paul, died all too young. She was a sister, cousin, aunt (I want to add the word "favorite" almost automatically) and, by all accounts at the wake and funeral, a very great friend to many. She had that quality of ordinary courage that really is extraordinary. Years ago, whenever my sister and I heard she and Uncle Neil at the front door of our flat in Brookline, we were delighted because we knew we were going to laugh. Edna was a mighty presence on the earth and she will be greatly missed.

     My wife, Nancy, observed that in Edna's passing, I was losing a significant part of my history, and that's true, I thought, as far as it goes. . What's also true, I found over the past few days, is that one can connect with that history in some powerful ways.  Let me explain.

     We stayed as we usually do in the apartment of my sister Betsey. She just moved into a new apartment in Weymouth with a great view and very comfortable layout. Her apartment sits on a peninsula that includes Webb State Park, with many wonderful view of greater Boston and the many islands of Boston Harbor. Thousands of years ago, various indigenous groups fished and gardened and hunted on the shores and islands of this harbor. When the Europeans came, followed soon by Africans and other citizens of the world, they displaced those people with great force and terrible things like infectious diseases against which they had little defense. Africans brought to these shores were mostly brought in servitude and slavery in the early years. Wave upon wave of immigrants made and remade Boston at least a little in their own image. Boston is a very American city and region, with "here comes everybody" an apt regional slogan, with millions of stories of hope and heartbreak, courage, venality, resounding success for many and grinding injustice for some. In other words, life. 

     All that history pushed in on my consciousness as I walked Webb Park in the mornings. Later in the weekend, as I drove through Milton and Brookline, the towns of my childhood, a more personal set of memories intruded, clamoring inside my head for attention and respect. The streets and fields where  I played as a kid were mostly still there, and I flashed back on walking and bicycle riding, the latter an amazing experience of freedom and competence once I mastered my J.C.Higgins Special. The funeral home was directly across the street from the Brookline Public Library, a shrine and a refuge for me when I was young. Edna was buried from the church, St. Mary's of the Assumption, in which I was baptized and received First Communion. Part of my spiritual consciousness was shaped by that building and its leaders -- including my eight year old rebellion against them telling me that our Presbyterian neighbors across the street weren't going to go to heaven: didn't buy it then, don't buy it now.

     As we made our way in the funeral procession to St. Joseph's Cemetary, we passed by so many of the spots that defined my childhood, Everett Morgan's drug store, the reservoir, St. Lawrence's Church, Chesnut Hill. Thousands of headstones with mainly Irish surnames dominated the cemetary, with Edna laid to rest just a little ways from my maternal grandparents' graves, not far from my paternal grandparents and the grave of my father. All that history on a sunny fall morning. Finally, we ended up at a golf course clubhouse for the funeral luncheon -- back in my day a municipal course I had caddied when I was 10 years old.

     Blessed Yogi Berra supposedly said "nostalgia ain't what it used to be." I don't know -- it felt pretty good reliving at least many of those times in those familiar Boston settings. Some day, hopefully not for a great while, my poor remains will go on a similar journey, perhaps on the very same streets. Until that day, I celebrate the ancestors and forebears, related by family and related by common humanity. And I celebrate the current generations working hard to make a living and to make life. We're all of us in a mighty flow.