Father Athanasius has Passed

 

My younger sister let me know yesterday (October 11^th, 2026) that Fr. Athanasius Wilson had passed in his sleep… at 94 years of age!

My mind rewinds 31 years and I am a university student commuting to Bloomington, IN to finish pre-med requirements.  I’d already spent 2 years overseas in the Army and then finished my degree at Indiana Wesleyan upon my return, but when I decided I wanted to try to go to medical school I had academic gaps to fill.  IU was the place to make that happen.

That summer of ‘95 I visited a friend who was still attending Indiana Wesleyan and we hung out at the house he shared with some other students.  One of his former roommates had transferred to Wheaton College where a group of them had started looking into the Orthodox Church as a little known (to them) but ancient expression of the Christian Faith.  Apparently it generated some negative buzz in the administration/staff considering Wheaton is a premiere Evangelical institution of higher education.  As a result, there was an Orthodox periodical on the kitchen table that I thumbed through and then started reading.  The more I read, the more intrigued I became.

Back home I looked in the Bloomington phonebook for an Orthodox Church and found “All Saints” with a name and number there: Fr. Athanasius Wilson.  I called the number and his wife picked up.  I asked to speak with “Father Wilson”.  I heard her lower the phone and call out in a kind of sing-songy tone “Father Wilson, there is someone to speak with you.”  Having never talked to an Orthodox person before I was unaware that you address a priest with his saint’s name and not his family name and Loretta was being playful with it.  I told him about my recent discovery and desire to learn more and he invited me to come to the church where we could talk some more.  He also encouraged me to “come and see” by attending a service.

In the next few months I met with him in his church office to ask questions which is where I first met Subdeacon Dan who sometimes joined us.  At some point I met Father at a Thai Restaurant for lunch near campus where we had the buffet.  At our next meeting he chuckled about it and said the Thai food had not agreed with him and Loretta had forbade him from ever returning there.  I attended my first service on a Saturday evening (Vespers) because on Sunday morning I was still attending our local Wesleyan Church.  Entering that sacred space with flickering candles, the smell of incense, and the mysterious images of Christ and the saints surrounding me was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.  I was hooked.

After 2 years I moved to Indianapolis to attend medical school and when I got married we invited Father Athanasius to participate in the ceremony at Ss. Constantine & Elena.  I only saw him a handful of times after that due to moving out of state, but whenever we saw each other there was always a feeling of deep joy and love.

An interesting aside, when I met him in 1995 he appeared to me to be an “old man”.  I would have never guessed that 30 years later in my own “old age” he would still be with us.  He labored long in his role as a priest and spiritual father.  May his memory be eternal.

***

Have No Doubt - We’re in the Twilight Zone

 

Did you know we are in a Twilight Zone episode?  It’s from season 3 episode 8, “It’s a Good Life” (1961).

I loved the Twilight Zone as a kid.  I remember when I first saw this episode in rerun and was terrified by the premise and how it played out.  It seemed then and now (especially now) that this was the most disturbing and disquieting story I’d seen in that series.  And considering the tone of the show, that is saying a lot!

It’s a small town isolated from the wider world due to the fact there is a 6 year old boy who has god-like powers to control and warp reality to his whim.  The adults are terrified of him but try to hide that so as to not upset him.  They must think “happy thoughts” because he can read their minds and sense their intentions.  They are constantly second-guessing themselves about what he may want and how they can avoid running afoul of him.  Whatever he says is immediately acknowledged by them as “a very good thing!”  

When someone says or thinks something he doesn’t like he chides them with “You’re a bad man.  A VERY bad man!” and banishes them to a mysterious place he calls “the cornfield” from which they do not return or turns them into something horrifying which strips them of their humanity.

Does all of this sound strangely familiar?  A situation where a mean-spirited and self-absorbed child demands full acquiescence otherwise he will use his power to punish?  Where otherwise previously sane adults bend and contort themselves to kowtow to his will?  A person that never had to fully mature into an adult due to the distortions of his upbringing where the supreme attribute was to not be said “no” to?

We passed that “sign post up ahead” 10 years ago.

***

A Warm Room in Winter

 

I want to be 

a warm room in winter

with a comfy couch

(though bodily present

outside the confines

of metaphor)

non-judgmentally nodding

to the sad songs 

of someone’s struggles.

A steaming cup of tea

and sugar cubes

for the softening of sorrows.

Please, have a seat.

***

This Beautiful Now

Driving with the windows down

and a popsicle in my hand. 

It is the cool of the evening
after a muggy day.

The cicadas are singing
over the drone of the engine.

I am going to pickup my daughter
at field hockey practice.

There are maybe twenty girls
on the turf field lining up
to take shots on goal.

The sky above them is filled
with massive clouds
that are gradations
of pale blues and grays
with a few glowy pink spots.

Memories try to push into my
conscious awareness but
I push them back.

I want to be in this beautiful now
where time is arrested by the senses.

***

“Chernobus”

July 17th, 2026 - widespread fires from Canada have engulfed our city in dense smoke and barely breathable air.

My son just sent me this photo he took this morning while driving to his summer internship on the other side of Columbus.  He, my daughter, and I are watching “Chernobyl” on HBO and they are captivated by the whole phenomenon that played out at the end of my junior year of high school in the Ukraine.  We’re only two episodes in and they have been asking me a ton of questions about the time period and its cultural context.  

I am thoroughly enjoying it because I was a History and Political Science major at a conservative college where the Soviet Union was their favorite whipping boy and its dissolution was still a few years in the future.  And when I say “thoroughly enjoying it” I am well aware of the contradiction that that poses considering the horror of the situation and the potential it had for making a large swath of that region, to include western European countries, uninhabitable.

So my son sends me “Chernobus” and I can’t help but LOL at the creative spin he has put on this dark series we are watching together, tying it to our current pollution calamity where heavy smoke from Canadian fires has descended on our city.  He shared it in the chat that includes my daughter and so she added to the surreality of it by posting her own photo of a lifeguard getting ready to go out to the pool where she works.  These are strange times we live in…

***

Waffle House at Night

 

I walked through the door from the garage after a typical day’s work at the hospital, took off my shoes, and set my keys on the desk in the den.  Standing in the opposite doorway with the front door behind her stood my wife, a large box at her feet.  She had a curious smile on her face that threw me off.  It is a particular expression that I am not used to getting from her.  She gestured at the box and asked me what it was.

I had no idea what it was.  She and my daughter are the ones who get packages through the mail, not me.  I acted nonchalant about it but was intrigued.  When she left to pick up our daughter at school I double checked the label to make sure it was for me.  The sender was a friend and fellow psychiatrist which dialed up the intrigue for me even further.  We share common interests in writing and art (clues perhaps?).

I picked up the sizable box and took it to the dining room to begin the unboxing process.  It was securely taped and took some doing to get it open.  Inside was bubble wrap surrounding another box, also securely taped.  The suspense was building as I broke taped edge after taped edge.  Inside the inside box was more bubble wrap.   Was it something made of glass?  The wrapping materials were all over the table.

After what seemed like several minutes of careful work I found a 12x12 black square that turned out to be the back of a frame.  I gingerly flipped it over and found an image of my friend’s Waffle House painting that I’d admired from afar on Instagram.  My first thought was that he’d framed a print as a thoughtful gesture, but then the light glinted off it’s uneven surface and I realized it was the painting itself.  No way!

I let out a loud bark-like laugh and then just took it in: the brush strokes, the lit interior details, the glowing effect of street lights at night.  I took me back to days spent with Kevin McCarty, my friend and godson, in his studio apartment that was literally an art studio with paintings stacked against the walls and his easel in the middle of the room.  I would breathe in the smell of turpentine and walk over his paint-speckled floorboards.

The Waffle House holds special meaning for me.  My daughter and I flew to Florida a few years back for a field hockey tournament and we arrived at the hotel some time after midnight.  It was unseasonably cold; we were hungry and tired.  Across the parking lot was a Waffle House.  Inside was an elderly man at the cash register who peeked over his newspaper and pointed at a booth.  A waiter came 30 minutes later.

It was an odd slice of life that she was not familiar with at her young age considering the late hour, the dingy booths, the greasy food, and the paucity of employees.  Kevin liked visiting these kinds of places and befriending whoever might be there.  He even convinced a local greasy-spoon owner to let him set up his easel and paint some patrons who volunteered to sit for it.  So much caught up in so little a painting.  

***

Today is My Day to Escape

 

Today is my day to escape.

I will rise up through the ceiling

in search of elusive healing.

Knowing too well I’m a broken body

whose soul is sad and shoddy.

I need to stay and do the work

where sins and sighings darkly lurk.

My feet forced to the flaming fire.

Truth comes out, no surprise, a liar.

Sometimes it is too much to bear,

I look to flee from pain, despair.

Today is my day to escape.

But I’ll be back to try again.

Making a loss a win?

***

Play-doh

 

When you are sitting across from someone 

try hard to hear what they are saying to you. 

Take it in, work with it, suppress any emotions

that attempt to well up and seize your mind.

They have handed you a piece of play-doh.

Move it around in your hand, look at it from

different angles, imagine what it could be 

from a shared perspective of love & respect.

Your response can make it ugly or beautiful.

Your patience & humility can bring disparate

elements together to change you and the

person you are desperate to understand.

***

I Dreamt I was a Child Again

 

I dreamt I was a child again,

when fun wasn’t a wasteful sin.

I circled the sky in a ferris wheel,

accepting what was and wasn’t real.

Senses filled with smells and sights, 

heavenly thrills with earthly frights.

It was a place I longed to be, 

where hatred costs but love is free.

***

There Will Come Soft Rains

"Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is..."

This is the final line of “There Will Come Soft Rains”, a short story by Ray Bradbury written in 1950 under the dark pall of *mutually assured destruction*, a concept that created a chilling impasse between the US and the Soviet Union known as “The Cold War”.  It came down to: if you nuke us, we will nuke you, so don’t nuke us.  

The fear of a nuclear holocaust was felt acutely even up through the 70’s and early 80’s which encompassed my formative years.  It was a popular subject in books, movies, and TV.  I was reading things like On the Beach, Swan Song, and Damnation Alley.  Years later I picked up A Canticle for Leibowitz and The Postman.  I specifically remember watching a TV mini-series called “The Day After” with trepidation.  According to the internet it was watched by 100 million Americans on ABC in 1983.  I was 14 years old and perhaps all of this explains my melancholy nature, at least in part.  

In this short story a nuclear war has finally happened and a fully automated house remains intact amongst the death and destruction surrounding it.  People are dead and gone but their routines live on briefly through this house.  The link below is the story in its entirety.  And yes, today is August 5, 2026.

There Will Come Soft Rains

Glen Hansard has Passed

 

What sad and shocking news to hear Glen Hansard left us this morning for the world to come.

He came onto my radar back in 2007 with the indie film “Once” where I found him and his music partner Markéta Irglová acting opposite each other despite the fact neither were actors.  That movie had an undeniable charm and the music was amazing.  My wife and I became instant fans and bought the soundtrack to the film and their two albums together as The Swell Season as they came out.

We watched the budding of their romance and bought the documentary about it on CD which is somewhere in the basement on a shelf last I saw it.  At that time I was just back from my deployment to Iraq and under the stress of transitioning to becoming the commander of our Combat Stress Control unit.  Glen and Markéta’s music was such a consolation and a soothing presence in my life at that time.

In 2008 we watched the Academy Awards because they were up for Best Original Song - the oh so lovely “Falling Slowly”.  It was up against three songs from “Enchanted” - quite the David & Goliath situation with the Disney juggernaut on one side and their quiet duet on the other.  We sat through the Disney numbers with the stage full of people dancing and spinning about to fully orchestrated music.  It was quite the spectacle.  But when it was time for the performance of “Falling Slowly” the massive stage was empty except for Markéta at a piano and Glen on a stool with his guitar.  The contrast was stunning.  The moment was magical and unforgettable.

And miracle upon miracle it won the award!  Markéta gave a quiet yet rousing speech about the importance of art coming from the little people (my summation from poor memory but the feeling of it I think).  It was split in two because her first go at it was interrupted by the music swelling in to signal the end when she wasn’t nearly finished.  She looked unsure of what to do, stammered, and then stopped.  It was awkward.  When the commercials were over and it cut back to the show the MC (Jon Stewart) walked Markéta back to the mic and allowed her to finish her comments in full.  It was such a gracious and kind-hearted gesture.

She and Glen only made two albums as The Swell Season and then their relationship, both personal and professional, came to an end at some point.  Almost 20 years later in 2025 they reunited for another album, but now Glen is no longer with us.  His sweet and melancholy spirit will be missed but remembered in his music.

***