Paperbacks & Prayers

Paperback books are like prayer, 

you can take them wherever you go.  

There is never an excuse to be bored 

when worlds are at your fingertips 

and God himself leans in to listen.

It’s like St. Augustine hearing the

child’s voice, “take up and read.”

***

A Beatles Remnant

I grow old 

because Lennon can’t.

I carry on

with a bit of his slant.

Watching the wheels

Prescribing the pills

An aging shrink

and Beatles remnant.

***

The Waking Ones

In the evening hours

when others 

have found a bed

I have found a book,

gladly trading 

my sleeping dreams

for waking ones.

***

The Vine & the Trellis

Icon of the Root of Jesse - 16^th c. Michael Damaskinos

This past Sunday the prescribed Gospel reading was the Parable of the Sower.  In it the sower (God) scatters the seeds of His grace liberally onto the ground of our hearts and it is the condition of our heart which determines whether the resulting plant will grow, sputter, or die.  The underlying question is “What are you doing to prepare healthy soil for the reception of God’s grace?”  It is a synergy, not a one-sided affair.  Love is reciprocal and requires cooperation, does it not?

As I think about my recent posting of “The McCarty Trinity” another metaphor comes to mind that dovetails with the one found in holy scripture.  I mentioned that Kevin’s journey into the Orthodox Church “grounded him and provided a structure for him to grow in and through.”  This morning I added the words “like a trellis” because that is the image that comes to mind.

I like this metaphor.  In my mind the seed has found the good (or at least adequate) soil but it is the structure of the church as a trellis that allows the vine to find purchase and grow upwards towards the sun instead of spreading out over the ground to be trampled in the dirt of one’s ego.  In this elevated and supported position it flowers and fruits optimally to the benefit of everyone.

The church-as-trellis provides the tools and opportunities to grow to include things like corporate prayer (liturgy), almsgiving, confession, and the Eucharist, among other things.  And as I write this I’m reminded that Jesus talked about the “vinedresser.”  A quick Google search brings me this:

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.  Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit... I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”   John 15:1-2 and 5

So the metaphor is complete and cross-referenced.  Grow, be healthy, extend your branches with the help of the church to capture the sun, give shade to those who suffer, food for their sustenance, and even provide kindling from God’s prunings b/c nothing is wasted... and on it goes.

Hide & Seek

I love to play hide and seek with the world

where I hide so well that I cannot be found.

I hunch down between my two ears and

peer mischievously through the eye holes

as others circle and look, calling my name. 

There is a stream of words and thoughts

that occupy my time while I wait to be 

discovered and doors that open and close

like a subconscious escape hatch leading 

to a dizzying number of destinations.

On very rare occasions someone finds me

by asking the right questions and recognizes

the boy sitting in the dark waiting to be 

birthed into a world that has seldom under-

stood him and his peculiar unfulfilled needs. 


***

The McCarty Trinity

After Kevin passed away I was gifted a trove of his sketches as well as pictures of some of his paintings to include a casual portrait of yours truly.  I thought I’d gone through it all several years ago and knew the contents of the box to include his manually typed “Who Am I?” that he’d written for a college class in 1987 (a good 2-3 years before I’d met him).  What I discovered yesterday when going through the box was a picture of a painting he’d done of a trio of men that I’d never seen before.  

I seem to recollect him telling me of an opportunity to stay with friends in a small town in Kentucky where he could hang out and paint “the locals” as it were.  He was excited for the opportunity and he described some of the settings to include a pool hall where he could set up his easel and talk to the people there.

Because of his near-blindness he was always dependent on the good will and charity of others to include things like transportation, room & board.  But what he paid back in love and his capacity for limitless conversation is hard to put a price on.  He was also not beneath bartering his paintings when need’s be.  And there was the enthusiasm of the work itself and the possibilities that we as his friends knew lay dormant in his artistic gift waiting to find the right opportunity to express itself.

His apartment was full of canvas’s in various stages of development. This was in part due to the fact that he was not one to paint from imagination, but needed the thing to be present.  It was most often a person which required someone to be available for multiple sittings.  Many if not most of those people could not supply the requisite time he needed to finish a full canvas.  And even this was not the only limiting factor.  His ability to focus the time and energy required with his poor eye sight was not always possible and he would reach his limits.  

This was most clearly seen in a painting he started in his apartment of a still life.  He’d gotten enough money together to buy a certain type of purple paint that was very expensive and he was excited to use it.  In his small apartment kitchen he set up an elaborate multi-tiered scene of a white antique-looking ceramic pitcher with matching bowls on waves of cloth and surrounded by draperies that hung about it.  Interspersed throughout were clusters of grapes and grapefruit in what was a truly beautiful combination of color and form (I wish I’d taken a picture of it!).  He started it but when I returned to visit him another time it was not finished, the fruit was wilted, and the scene soon disappeared as did the canvas with its ample traces of purple paint.

But here in my hand was a picture of three elderly men that looked to be complete.  It is a trinity of sorts with the possibility of theological meaning in their grouping, posture, and colors like in a bonafide Orthodox icon.  Orthodoxy was the Faith that he embraced over a ten year period that included a protracted struggle with cancer that eventually took him but not before it claimed his eyesight completely.  This faith grounded him and provided a structure for him to grow in and through, like a trellis; growth that I would have never thought possible in the “old” Kevin I’d met all those years ago struggling with his ego and held fast in a kind of insecure arrogance.  

And what remains are the memories he left us: a box of sketches and pictures as well as paintings scattered throughout the Midwest, one of which hangs over my fireplace and beautifies my home.

***