Author: prayerfullife7

Blessed Sister Hunger why should I thank you for the ache within me?  Oh, but I do thank you, for clearing the way for me.  You mow down the weeds of passion that block my way and impede my steps, as I strive in search of Father God.  You knock down the brush and make a clearing for me to pray, beneath the trees of aspiration, wherein Brother Jesus dwells with me.  Holy Sister Hunger, I bless you, for your sufferings are simple and pure, and they goad me forward on the path.  Sweet Sister, you carry me when I am lazy, you put your arm in mine and walk with me when I would stop and take a seat.  Much maligned and misunderstood, Sister Hunger, I am sorry that I have scorned you, when in my desires I have rushed to cover you quickly by other means of satisfaction.  I promise now that I will not rush to fill you with worldly food, but rather, let you fill me with spiritual bread.  With you, dear sister, I feel a lightness in my being, so that my prayers and I are carried like feathers upon the wind more speedily to God.

~FS

How wise was your silence, Lord Jesus, when Pilate was ready to lead you down a rabbit hole of arguments and contentions. What is Truth? But you spoke just enough to teach us so many things. Masterful silence, beautiful silence. Quiet in speech and in soul. I see your example in this and follow you. Unprovoked, allowing insults and blows to assail you, you didn’t argue or cast words into the cauldron of debate, you didn’t add fuel to the fire of foolishness which the mind wants to kindle to protect its position, nor did you add pressure to the vents of vanity which rush up like so much hot steam from a turbulent mind intent on argument and justification. You showed us the way of tranquility; still waters in reply to ripples and waves. May we be like you, wellspring of silent waters, rising clear and holy within us, washing through our hearts and minds, leaving traces of divinity to lead us in your way.

Thank you.

 

 

(continued)

I also considered myself something of an advocate and spokesperson for those without a voice. However, in reality I was mostly advocating for myself in these cases. My advocacy in actuality bordered on vigilantism. My last year in high school I determined to defend the rights of my poor fellow students, the ones who drove to school and parked in the school parking lot. In my opinion they were being abused in two ways.

The first was a severe shortage of parking spaces in the lot which made students have to find parking far away and walk to the school. This seemed very inefficient to me and irrational because there were many potential additional spaces in the lot if the curbs weren’t painted red. Of course, there was a good reason they were painted red, for firetruck access. However, the way I figured it the driving lanes through the lot were plenty wide for truck access even if cars were parked along the curbs. So I convinced a friend to join me one night in repainting all of the curbs white to increase parking. The next day was a success, all the curbs were filled with parked cars and it was much more pleasant for my friends and me. I had stuck it to the bourgeoisie on behalf of the workers. It wasn’t long before the curbs were repainted red; but then it wasn’t long after that we had repainted them white again. And then they were painted red again. This time I thought to have a little fun, so we painted them purple to see what would happen. That next morning the announcement over the loudspeaker made it clear that “regardless of what color the curbs are in the student parking lot, parking is not allowed along the curbs.”

The second way my fellow student drivers were being maligned, was in that the parking lot was locked during school hours, so students couldn’t leave. This was a safety risk in my opinion for “what if a student had to leave quickly for a family emergency?” Fortunately it was only locked with a simple chain across the entrance which was simple to cut. Then it was replaced; then it was cut again. Then it was replaced again; and cut once more. Then they installed heavy steel gates with 2″ square bars top and bottom and framed like a large rectangular truss, connected to very strong posts, embedded in concrete. So one night I convinced a different friend to join me with hacksaws and we cut our way through all of the bar and threw the gates into the nearby ivy. My cohorts were liberated once more! Vive la revolution!

At the time I viewed these activities as jokes, in part, and as good deeds. I suppose I knew, in the back of my mind, they would be considered by others as crimes, not as gags. But I certainly didn’t see myself as a criminal, and if I was, it would be of the Robin Hood variety; justified and more than a little endearing. I said earlier that I was very prideful at this age. In addition, I was more than a little arrogant and self-satisfied as well.

In addition to acts like these, of liberation and freedom-fighting; I also used the pen as my weapon. One summer I wrote a letter on behalf of my fellow workers at our summer job arguing that we should all be given the afternoon off for an educational opportunity of a lifetime, and since our employer was all about success in the world, they should afford us this opportunity to contribute to our future success and feel good about themselves for doing so. My employer was The Bohemian Club of San Francisco and I was working at the fabled Bohemian Grove during the summer encampment. Our educational opportunity was to listen to Ronald Reagan give the keynote address. He was one year out of office, and coming to The Grove, and I wanted to hear him speak.

For two summers I worked at The Grove and it was eye opening, and a great job for a kid. The first summer I got to work valet parking at the entrance gate. As a seventeen year old driving Maseratis, Ferraris, Porches and an occasional Bentley it was a pretty good gig. Of course, we couldn’t drive them very fast and we only took them a few hundred feet into the dirt parking area to the right of the gatehouse, but it was still a lot of fun.

Before I go on with the story, perhaps I should backtrack for anyone unfamiliar with The Bohemian Grove, and explain a little bit about it. The Club is very exclusive and difficult to become a member, reserved for the political and financial elite. If you are of the political variety you must be out of office in order to attend The Grove but other than that I don’t remember many rules. The camp runs for two weeks every summer, only men can attend, and the grounds are rustic but really incredible.

My first summer was fairly uneventful since I worked at the main gate and didn’t get in to see very much of the grounds. It was exciting though when a motorcade would approach and helicopters would hover overhead. I remember former Secretary of State George Schultz coming in this manner.

My second summer was much more interesting, as I moved up to be a chauffeur on one of several open-topped shuttle buses that crisscross the entire grounds, carrying members from the front gate to the common areas and on up a myriad of small dirt roads to the individual encampments. These encampments are like camps within the camp, clubs within the club, or like fraternities, with their own rules of membership and exclusivity. Set amidst the redwoods these camps were designed in many styles, there were: clusters of teepees, wooden forts, castles, primitive hut villages, and many other types of structures, all magnificently and colorfully lit at night. Imagine it a little like Disneyland under the redwood trees. They had a rustic veneer but they had many of the comforts of a luxury hotel. Some of the camps were for political leaders, some for certain financial magnates, and others for lesser businessmen or entertainers. I never learned all the details but one learned from hearsay who was a member of which encampment. There were many stories and fables at The Grove.

For all of the crassness, juvenile foolishness and drunken stupidity that occurred at the camp, and there was quite a bit of this, (I can’t recall how many times that first year I saw men urinating on each other’s cars and finding it somehow hilarious, but it was many more times than I wish I had seen) there were also elements of sublime beauty.  My favorite part of the camp was every evening at about 6pm, in the middle of a small grove of redwoods near the commons building, just up from the main gate, a man in full Scottish regalia would stand and play the bagpipes, while the golden sunlight filtered down through the trees and filled the grove with radiant light. The air above him, lightly misted with sunlit dust stirred up from the tires of our shuttle buses, would come alive with the sound of “Amazing Grace” and I would stop my bus and sit and watch him as he played and listen to the sound of the pipes as they echoed among the trees, and lilted up through their canopies.

One such evening I had just finished listening to his serenade, which lasted about twenty minutes or so, and I drove around to the front gate just as Henry Kissinger was getting out of a vehicle. Several men around him hailed me and I waited. The group came to me, spoke a few things just out of earshot and then the rest of the men walked on up to the commons while Mr Kissinger got on my shuttle. Earlier that year I had studied his involvement in opening China, and many other exploits. I’m generally not a political person but I admired his achievements and here we were, just he and I, driving together through The Grove. He was polite, but didn’t say much after our initial greetings and after he had told me where he wanted to go. I generally can start up a conversation but found myself tongue-tied this time. So I just savored the warm summer air, the beauty of the trees, my simple life and the strange incongruity of my little life with driving our former Secretary of State to his destination.

Following this encounter, I also saw George HW Bush, Casper Weinberger, George Schultz again and Ronald Reagan; the place was hopping! But I didn’t get to drive any of them. I did in the end however, get to hear Mr Reagan’s speech. My written request had been denied but it so happened that I had to drive by the meadow where the speech was being given, since practically everyone attending wanted to hear him, and during the course of my business was able to stop and listen to him. My letter hadn’t gone over as planned with my higher ups; in fact, my direct supervisor was very angry towards me, because I had undermined him by going over his head to the top of the club at the offices in San Francisco. The folks at the main offices also didn’t see things my way and I wasn’t invited to work there again the following year. I was disappointed but had moved on as well myself and was ready for different challenges.

(to be continued)

(continued)

A few years earlier, after my parents divorced, my mom went back to school for job training and then back to work to support the two of us throughout my junior high and senior high school years. In addition to her work, we rented a room or two in our home to help supplement our income. A wide range of interesting characters made their way through our home over these years and one of them was a self-proclaimed ski bum who had spent most of his life on the slopes. In the off-season he practiced and taught Yoga, and he moved in with us for a year or so while I was in high school. He gave me a very interesting book on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar which was filled with fantastic photos of this elderly yogi in masterfully contorted positions. I was very intrigued and I studied this book, working at imitating the positions and memorizing one routine in particular known as “The Sun Salutation”, which combines breathing techniques coordinated with the progression of various poses. Over time I became quite adept at this routine, and it helped me to stay limber in both mind and body. I believe there was a philosophical component to Iyengar Yoga but I wasn’t interested in that, I was mainly inspired and challenged by the contorted positions he could work himself into and that was my focus; to learn and practice some bodily self-control.

The book also had a whole section on body cleansing techniques which were amusing, baffling and unlike anything I’d ever seen before. One was called the Vastra Dauti and for this Mr Iyengar showed himself in a series of photos feeding a long strip of moist cloth down his throat and into his stomach; he was sure to keep a firm grip on one end so that he could then pull it back up and out again. As a high school student growing up in northern California, I had never seen anyone attempt something like this. I couldn’t understand how it would cleanse any better than merely drinking a few glasses of water but nothing is better than experience, I decided, if you want to understand something better, so I cut up an old sheet and made myself a long strip, moistened it, and tried to swallow it. This was a bad idea. I didn’t hurt myself but I gagged an awful lot as I tried to swallow it down.

I gave this up and moved on to the next cleansing technique in his book called the Sutra Neti. This one looked equally gross and unbelievable to me, but I had to give it a try. In this series of old photos BKS Iyengar showed me the proper technique for feeding a cotton string up one nostril, through the sinuses, and down the throat where you proceed to grab the end and pull it out through your mouth; then you work both ends back and forth like dental floss, to clean the sinuses. I gave it a go, but it is a lot more difficult than it looked in his photos. Feeding it through the sinuses and down the throat isn’t so hard but reaching in and pulling it back out your mouth is really tricky. And why would you want to anyway? After a few failed attempts and further gagging, I asked myself this question; and I couldn’t come up with a good, or satisfying answer, so I gave this one up too.

But I stuck with the “Salutation to the Sun”. I really liked doing this stretching in the morning every day after I woke up so I made it a regular routine for many years, far into my adulthood. In fact, I still do it on occasion even now. It is great for the back and with the addition of the breathing techniques it is also supposed to help the lymphatic system and assist in the elimination of toxins from the body.

As I mentioned earlier I did not know God. I had my own ideas of God: a collection of ideas pieced together from what I had read from this religion and that one, a little that I had been taught in Sunday school, and fragments one hears here and there. From these I cobbled together my own God, made in my own image.

I also didn’t know real Love, which from a Christian perspective, in a deep and true sense, is God. I devised my own ideas on love as well, not grounded in the reality of scripture or tradition; but in effect, it was self-love with many variations and permutations. It was my own sense of right and wrong that amounted to self-righteousness or a defense of my rights, that when trampled, would amount to a wrong.  My love amounted to feeding my need to be loved, gratifying myself in various ways and expressing anger at anything that seemed to me unfair about the world.

When reading the famous passage on love from First Corinthians I am struck by the difference between the definition of love it gives us from a Christian perspective, and my own definition and how I practiced it on my own. My love didn’t know how to suffer or how to remain unprovoked when someone wronged me. It didn’t refrain from evil thoughts, or endure all things. No, I was easily provoked and if I felt wronged I was quick to defend myself or those I loved. In many way there wasn’t anything overtly wrong with my behavior and by the ethical standards of my society I acted rather well, but I don’t think that standard is very good. Jesus commands us to ‘be perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect’; we can’t be satisfied comparing ourselves only with those we know to be ‘worse’ than us. We should compare ourselves with He whom we are to be like, and measure ourselves against His standard. Then we can begin to see things as they really are, including who we really are.

I had empathy towards whatever or whoever I perceived to be the underdog; homeless people, small animals, the hills behind my house or streets of my town, both strewn with litter. I spent some of my free time picking up trash from various empty lots in town, hoping to make a difference. At the very least it made me feel a little better about life, and I enjoyed seeing a small area clean of debris. I especially made it my business to clean the hillside up the street from my home because it was such a special place to me, where I had climbed to escape the world and find adventure and peace ever since I was a little boy of around five. This slope was an extension of my home and it hurt me personally to see people leave trash on it.

Hitchhikers and homeless people also really touched my heart. I wasn’t too concerned for my personal safety, feeling the invincibility of youth, so there was seldom a time I wouldn’t stop for whoever was on the side of the street looking for a ride. I met many interesting people this way. One man claimed to be a prisoner of war who had been lost in Vietnam for over a decade before escaping. I took him to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant and heard his tragic story while he sat cautiously in a corner, with his back safely against a wall to prevent attack from behind. He story seemed plausible and I was surprised to hear that men were still held over there even so many years after the war. Another hitchhiker was a self-taught tattoo artist who convinced two of my friends to let him give them tattoos. So we all spent an evening in a hotel room while he gave them tattoos, until he began to act erratically and we had to leave him before somebody got hurt. The real cautionary tale regarding picking up hitchhikers came for me late one night when I picked up a young guy near our local jail. It turns out he had just been released and needed a ride south towards San Francisco. I was heading that way and could take him as far as San Rafael. Things started out fine, he discussed his time in jail, we had some light conversation and then around the midpoint of our journey he pulled out a rather large knife and began cleaning it in a haphazard sort of way. I tried to ignore this and keep him engaged in whatever we were talking about while I began to form a plan to drop him off someplace safe. We were approaching San Rafael so I asked him where he’d like to be let off to catch his next ride. He said he preferred to have me take him to San Francisco. I reminded him that I was only going to San Rafael and then he replied that he thought it would be better if I took him all the way into the city.

“I really can’t take you. I have to stop here in San Rafael,” I said.

“No, I think you’d better take me to San Francisco,” he said while turning the knife over in his hands.

Thankfully I noticed that my gas tank was almost empty and I pointed this out to him and said we had to stop to get more. I pulled into a well-lit and busy station and drove right up to the front door of the mini-market and quickly got out of my truck.

“This is where you get out. Now. I’m not taking you to San Francisco.”

He looked very surprised, scanned the gas station, looked menacingly at me and reluctantly slouched off of his seat and out of my truck. After that incident I resolved to be a little more judicious about the hitchhikers I picked up.

(to be continued)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(continued, first part in archives from last week)

This same summer I volunteered as an intern for a neurologist at a rehabilitation center in town which specialized in work with people who had suffered traumatic brain injuries. How the mind works fascinated me and I thought this would be a great way to learn more about the mind first-hand. Actually the idea to volunteer came to me from a relatively new friend and mentor who I had met the previous fall named Professor Reynolds.

Everyone called him Monti. He was a retired professor of microbiology who had taught at Harvard and then chaired the department at UC Davis for many years; he also held a patent on a common antibiotic. He was one of the first larger than life kind of people I’ve been fortunate to meet in my life and he used his charismatic skills and personality to serve others in ways that inspired me.  Following my trip to South Africa the local paper had done an article on my time there and through this article Monti found me and called my home one evening. He introduced himself to my mom and asked to speak with me. He said he had been impressed with the article and by my motivation, empathy and courage to learn and build bridges with others. He asked that I come meet him, that he intended to help me in my education, and if I intended to pursue international relations of some kind he would pull strings for me to get into a good program, preferably at Harvard he suggested. This obviously intrigued me, so with my mom, I went to visit him.

I was completely unprepared for what he was doing at his home in his retirement. He lived not far from us, in a modest one-story home in an older development on a quiet residential street. However, as my mom and I approached there was a steady stream of USPS trucks coming and going from his home, and his driveway was lined on both sides with pallets of boxes. As we walked up the driveway, this opened onto a large parking area and backyard also practically filled with pallets of boxes. His garage doors were opened and we could see that his garage was also filled with boxes of all sizes, many opened, and books were strewn all over the garage, on every possible surface. This didn’t look like a home, but rather, it looked like a distribution center of some kind. From the dark of the garage came a bellowing welcome and a moment later Professor Reynolds emerged. He was probably in his late-sixties or early-seventies, a little overweight but in good and vigorous health, fairly tall but slightly hunched over. He wore very thick glasses and his head was covered in very short gray stubble.

He introduced himself with the charm and manners of a diplomat and had us sit down with him in the garage amongst the books and packing materials. We exchanged pleasantries and then he got to business, reiterating his offer to help me. He gave us his full attention and responded appropriately to everything we said. I could clearly see that his mind was able to do this while simultaneously doing quite a lot else as well. While we conversed he continued to sort books, and open letters, of which he had a table full as well as bags filled with more letters at his feet near the small table that seemed to serve as his mission control center. He clearly had some grand mission going on here but I couldn’t tell yet what exactly the mission was. If I believed in Santa I guess I would have to say he must be Santa Claus, since this seemed to fit with the observable data.

It turned out he wasn’t Santa but something even better. Rather than giving toys to good little boys and girls around the globe, he was packing and sending braille books to blind people in nearly every nation throughout the world. The US postal service will deliver braille books and equipment for the blind free of charge anywhere in the world. So Monti started what he called, The World Blind Foundation, and became the distribution point for used braille materials to one hundred forty eight countries at that time by his count. He created relationships with schools for the blind throughout the United States and arranged to have all of their old books, braille machines, canes etc that they would otherwise discard, sent for free to his home, where he would repackage and send, again for free, all over the world to schools and individuals who needed them. This is what all the letters were; requests for braille books, hundreds, perhaps thousands of requests flooding in asking him to please send them this particular book, or that series, or a braille making machine, or canes or a set of encyclopedias. Often he couldn’t find the exact book requested and would have to send whatever he could, but in a surprising number of instances, after reading a letter, often addressed to “Uncle Monti” or some other endearing epithet, he would recall seeing that specific book in some area of the garage, or out in the yard someplace, so he would amble off to find it, eventually returning with it in his hands and a big smile on his face.

This enterprise of his was a great deal of work and he worked tirelessly at it, putting in very long hours, working almost entirely alone, with some help from volunteers. I became one of his volunteers and over the next couple years I would often drop by his house after school or over vacations, to help box books, sort newly dropped off pallets, and read or organize request letters with him. During our time together I learned a great deal from him, about almost any topic, which his mind seemed to have a full grasp of and could explain in detail and accurately, but mainly I saw how he used his gifts, his talents and abilities almost exclusively in service to others and I took this as vital inspiration. He embodied selflessness to a large degree, using a lot of his own money for things the USPS didn’t provide, he lived very frugally, and dedicated nearly all of his time to this venture. It was inspiring but it was also a lot of fun to be with him, he told funny and interesting stories about all sorts of things including his classmate George HW Bush, who happened to be president at the time and who attended Phillips Academy with Monti as a youth. He said George wasn’t a very good student and would try to copy Monti’s homework.

I enjoyed these stories but I also was fascinated to watch Monti in action; he seemed to be able to talk anyone into helping his cause, he was very persuasive. One afternoon he called a businessman in Texas, a very wealthy man who owned businesses around the country. Monti was in need of a new forklift to help load and unload pallets and he had done some research and found a business in New York that had bought several new forklifts and were getting rid of their old ones. This business was owned by the man in Texas so Monti called him up to ask him to donate the old forklifts. He was having difficulty getting through to actually talk with the man since he had multiple levels of security and assistants protecting his time.

Monti finally traced his location to the country club where the man was playing golf. He called the club and asked to speak with this businessman and as you would suspect the club staff weren’t going to bother his golf game.

So Monti told the person on the other line, “Now you tell so and so that his parole officer is fed up with all this monkey business and I’m not going to wait any longer. You get him on the line right now or you let him know I will be sending a squad car out this minute to bring him in, and I don’t think he is going to want a scene.”

Within a few minutes a very irate Texan was on the other line, swearing and demanding to know who the … was calling and why the … are they saying they are his parole officer

Immediately Monti struck a conciliatory tone and humbly asked his forgiveness; on a dime Monti was able to change tone and play the part needed to calm the man down, and then actually make him laugh, and finally ask how he could be of help.

Monti told him about the company in New York, which the man owned, that was giving away the old forklifts, and could he find it in his heart to donate them to help the blind children of the world, he would be doing such a great service to help others in need, and it would help so much. Within a few minutes the Texan had called his company in New York and made the arrangements to ship the forklifts to Monti. A week or so later they arrived at Monti’s house and were immediately put to use helping the blind children of the world, just as Monti had said.

Over the course of our time together I explained to Monti that my career interests weren’t really in international relations but more along the lines of neurology or writing. It turned out he still had quite a few friends and connections at Harvard and he could get me into the neurology program if that is what I wanted. I didn’t doubt it, after seeing how masterfully he could manipulate people and pull strings, but as our talk turned more serious about the matter and the plan began to take shape, with action items and tasks to make it happen, I grew nervous. I couldn’t imagine leaving home, leaving my mom, to go to school on the east coast. The idea was wonderful, but frightening, and I felt lonely again just thinking about it.

One of the action items was to intern with a neurologist over the summer after high school and this is what I began doing, as planned. Mainly I did filing, and flirted a bit with his cute assistant. But I did also get to join him on his rounds with patients and get a feeling for the work. I really enjoyed the people in the rehab center, particularly one young man, my own age, who had a serious motorcycle accident the previous year which left him with some lasting and likely permanent brain damage. By the time we met he had recovered most of his motor skills and also was able to walk again and use his hands, but he had difficulty with speech and, as he told me, his mental processes in some ways were like those of a young child. He had to relearn many things and it was difficult and frustrating sometimes but he said that he was so happy that he had his accident and it changed his life entirely for the better.

I was so surprised to hear that and asked him why, and in what way did he mean this; because he had lost so much mentally and may never recover much of it, and he knew this was a fact. He explained that before his accident he was an angry person, and he couldn’t control his anger; he would explode at people and act in a mean way and hurt people that he cared about. But after the accident all of that went away, he wasn’t angry anymore and he felt happy most of the time. He loved life now whereas before he hated life. Now he loved people and could share that with them whereas before he couldn’t express love much at all. He had been given a new life in the accident and while he couldn’t do or understand things the way he had before, he had a much better life and was much happier in it now.

If I learned nothing else from that summer internship, this conversation with the young man was everything I needed to gain from my time there. Knowing things doesn’t necessarily make us happy; being smart is helpful, and being intelligent can help us get ahead in the world, but more important than this, is knowing ourselves and finding the way to inner peace, joy and love. I determined at that time that my goal in life wouldn’t be to be smart, or to get ahead in the world, but would be to find how to be joyful, to live with peace inside and to do it intentionally; and to understand myself so I wouldn’t require an accident to bring me to this state of mind.

~FS