The Easter Egg

God is Dead

It snowed on God’s tomb 

this blustery April evening

as we carried it around our

church in a swirl of snowflakes.

“What?” you say, “God is dead?!”

Well, it was necessary as we are

all dead and He has come

to show us the way back to life.

***

Somewhere West of Here

The man and woman who came together to

give me life are dying somewhere west of here.

Maybe not today or tomorrow, but sooner 

than I can even imagine, living as I am so far 

away from them. Gone are the days of village 

life with multigenerational families living

in the same small hamlet, maybe on the 

same street or even in the same house.

We have reached even further back in

time to a nomadic existence, a pitching

of our metaphorical tents on the sandy

wastes of a barren and lifeless culture.

I wouldn’t even know who to blame for 

such a thing but somewhere west of here

my parents are living out their last days 

and I am just waiting for the awful news.

***

An American in Paris

I saw An American in Paris this weekend and was wowed by the music, the dancing, and the incredible stage effects, but the story itself clanged in a way that might not have been the case even a year or two ago, prior to the current social upheaval surrounding how women have been  treated in our culture.  In the story an American GI named Jerry falls for a local French girl who is already engaged.  He is head over heals “in love” with her.  He has two friends, Adam and Henry, one of whom is also smitten with the girl and the other who is French and happens to be the girl’s fiancé unbeknownst to the other two.

So, the “American in Paris” (Jerry) starts trying to woo her away from this unknown fiancé by pressuring her to secretly meet him every day near the Seine River just as “friends.”  But instead, he uses the time to try and hound her into becoming involved with him romantically.  He shows little regard for her feelings, obligations, or cultural context even insisting that he be able to call her by the name he finds most comfortable.  “Your name is Lise?  I’ll call you Eliza.  No, Liza!”  She firmly rejects this attempt to americanize her name though he obnoxiously persists.  He doesn’t care.  He’s in love!  

At some point when Jerry learns that Henry is Lise’s fiancé he secretly arranges a scenario that is guaranteed to humiliate his friend and put a barrier between Henry, his parents, and Lise.  That is to say he continues to show how shallow, self-centered, and insensitive he is and how incapable he is of a love that is true as opposed to “true love” as he imagines it to be in his fevered romantic imagination and spiritual myopia.  As Adam astutely points out, “You don’t even really know anything about her.”  

But then (inexplicably) Lise finds some cathartic release in dancing a ballet performance created for her with the help of these three men and afterwards she excitedly tells Jerry she danced so well because she imagined him as the lead male dancer (the scene is one of poetic license where Jerry is actually dancing with her but dressed in black to signify it is her imagining him, but not really him).  They embrace and when he calls her “Lise” she exuberantly exclaims, “Call me Liza!”  

What?!  Are you kidding me?  I think this musical would be more accurately entitled “The Ugly American,” but did I mention how much I enjoyed the music, dancing, and amazing stage designs?

***

One Punch Kid

I was four years old and trapped in a land of giants.  They lumbered about jostling my small frame while speaking to each other at an elevation that made their words distant and mostly indecipherable.  I did my best to stay out of their way, but confrontation was inevitable.  All the more so because they constantly felt the need to impose their will on us smaller creatures.

Being small had its advantages in regards to staying off their radar.  I could insert myself into places that they could not access or would not think to check if they were looking for me.  It was a matter of size, but also of imagination.  I had hidey-holes and escape routes to protect both my physical and mental integrity from these sometimes unscrupulous beings.  Some of these places were only in my mind, created of a necessity when the giants raged and forgot themselves.

But the day came when there was nowhere to hide.  It was during Sunday School at the church where my father was the pastor.  My teacher was a pillar of the community and a regular leader of the congregational singing.  Her name was Opal and she was not someone to be trifled with.  She asked me to say a prayer to start the class.  I ignored her and tried to disappear into the corner of the pew where I sat but the wood was too hard and repelled my efforts, leaving me vulnerable and exposed.  

I did not want to pray in front of everyone.  I’d never done it before and had no idea what even to say, Lord have mercy.  I believe the correct word for what I was feeling would be “mortified” which is derived from the Latin word for death.  Opal did not pick up on my distress, or if she did, pressed on anyway.  Her large frame stood towering over me and her request (demand) was repeated.  When compliance was not forthcoming she crouched down on her haunches with a hand on either side of me grasping the pew so there was no chance of escape.

I was a cornered animal (literally) and instinct took over as my little fist found her nose and she rocked back on her heels and then onto her rump.  I remember her grabbing her nose and exiting the room as quickly as she could get to her feet to find my mother.

Was I a juvenile delinquent?  No, I was a four year old boy.  In retrospect it seems that it was a time when kids were expected to be unwaveringly compliant, like diminutive automatons, with no consideration for their thoughts or feelings.  There would have been no asking of the teacher what had led up to her being punched in the nose or why, only that it had happened.  There would have been no thought to try and understand the situation or its context.  The giant was the giant and the little person was the little person, and that was all there was to it.

***

The Bitter Arrow

He’s nine, maybe ten.  I can see him below in the yard.  I am standing on the second story back deck of my childhood home, like God looking down.  I am forty nine now.  I am losing my hair and my beard is graying by the day.  The forty year span between us obscures the scene a bit, but the feelings are still sharp.  

***

That Christmas Aaron had asked for a bow and arrow.  In his immature way of thinking he imagined he needed a weapon to embolden himself.  He longed to have the power of death at his fingertips with a pull and a twang, like in his books and on TV.  The wrapped box was long and narrow and as he ripped it open he felt the excitement ballooning in his chest to see the top of a bow!  But as he unwrapped it further, what should have been the feathered end of an arrow became visible as thin plastic strips in the shape of feathers.  His eyes moved down the shaft as he continued to tear the paper until he discovered the tips to be topped not by a metal point, but by rubber suction cups.  It was a kid’s toy.  His chest dropped, deflated, as the last piece of wrapping paper fell from his fingers and the realization hit that his parents did not trust him to have a real bow and arrow.  They still considered him a child.

***

Summer came and he learned his friend down the street not only had a real fiberglass bow, but two!  He was somehow able to buy or barter for the smaller of the two and he found himself in the possession of a real honest-to-goodness bow.  His parents had been bypassed but, alas, he had no arrows.  

In a serendipitous series of events his mother took him and his younger sister to a hardware store across town to have professional pictures taken.  The photographer had set up a makeshift studio by laying down a carpet on the worn wooden floorboards and hung a backdrop.  Aaron was suffocating in a plaid wool suit and turtle neck while sitting on a box with his sister in his lap.  His little sister was painfully cute and all smiles, but he had to be coaxed by the photographer to squeeze out even a pained grin.  And just when all hope seemed lost for the perfect shot, he spied a box of arrows for sale in the store behind the photographer.  His freckled face morphed into a magnificent smile and the camera clicked.

A few days later he had some money in his pocket and made his way back to that hardware store.  The arrows were sitting loose in a cardboard box with the price written in marker on the side.  Of all the colors he chose blue to match the color of his bow.  The weapon was now complete and he was eager to use it.

***

What is a weapon for?  To kill, plain and simple.  To bleed the lifeblood out of a creature.  Aaron thinks he understands this and I can see him foraging in the cornfield behind our house from my perch on the deck.  He has found a corncob with only a few hard kernels left on it that he quickly removes.  He has surmised that if he wants to kill a bird he will need a larger end to his arrow.  The metal point is too small and he is not Robin Hood after all.  He breaks the corncob so that it is only a few inches long and pierces its core.  It reminds him of those movies where the archers dip a similar looking arrow in oil and set it aflame to send over the castle walls.  He could do the same, but it would be a bit overkill, even for him.

This modified arrow is now a blunt instrument for stunning a bird if he is lucky.  He is creeping around the side of the barn with his bow and arrow at the ready.  I watch him intently as he peeks around the corner.  A robin is looking for worms about ten feet from him and has its back to the little assassin.  Aaron swings the bow around the corner ever so slowly so as to not startle the bird into flight.  There is a pause as he lines up his shot and then a sudden release of the string.

The corncob-ended arrow finds its target and crashes into the robin.  Aaron cannot believe his luck!  He is immediately upon the vulnerable bird who is now unable to fly.  I watch him pull the corncob from his arrow and re-nock it as he stands over the wounded bird.  The bow is drawn again and the arrow pierces the bird pinning it to the ground.  He expects an instant death as he picks up the arrow with the bird impaled on it, but the creature continues to struggle to escape.  The sparkle in his eye disappears and I can see his exhilaration extinguished like a snuffed candle.  The bird is not dead.  It is dying and it is this reality that he did not anticipate.

***

From my elevated vantage point I see him come back around the side of the barn with tears welling up in his eyes.  The bird continues to struggle at the end of the arrow in his hand.  I feel his fear, a panicky feeling that he has made a big mistake that cannot be unmade.  He disappears into the barn and when he comes back out he has a ball peen hammer in his hand.  He awkwardly wipes some tears with his t-shirt sleeve as he lays the bird on the concrete pad outside the barn.  He is almost directly below me now and I feel myself falling, merging with my younger self.  There is a feeling of nausea in the pit of my stomach.  There is the feeling in my arm of the hammerhead bouncing off the soft body of the bird, then the crunching sound of its head collapsing.  And it is finally still.

***

Death and Memory in Moscow

I’d been in Russia a month 

when Alfred Schnittke died.

Well before the motorcade had

wound its way alongside the

Moscow River to Novodevichy

I’d seen the crossless cupolas

proclaiming some portent.

Gale force winds had swept the city

a fortnight prior and stripped

the magnificent onion domes 

of their Christian significance,

like time traveling back to 

the days of the Soviet Union

when stars rose as crosses fell.

I sat at the base of a statue, bronze

Gogol brooding over my shoulder, 

my nose buried in the Moscow Times.

Maybe  he was curious as to who 

would be joining him at this famous

cemetery for authors, musicians,

playwrights and poets.  Yes, poets.

***

The Bully

My son has recently been experiencing a right of passage reserved for many a middle school student, ie,  “The Bully.”  In his case it has been more annoying than alarming, but something we are working through to help him navigate the rough waters of transitioning from being a child to being an adult.  In human development terms middle school is an incredibly dynamic time both physically and mentally with changes occurring at a bewildering rate.  In a strictly physical sense, there are simultaneously boys and men mingling in classrooms and locker rooms with an imbalance of power that is a set up for the larger boys-cum-men to use their size in inappropriate ways.

Which takes me back to this time period in my own life in a small town in Southern Indiana.  I experienced the traditional bully in a boy who I’ll call “K.”  We were on the junior high basketball team together and he had it out for me for God-knows-what reason.  I was one of the shortest kids in my class until mid-high school and also exceedingly skinny.  K would probe at times with his figurative jabs, but there were factors that mitigated his ability to do any real harm.  It never devolved into a full on physical altercation, but he did what he could to make my life as unpleasant as possible. 

One example of the many little offenses was during a basketball practice.  Our small school had a disproportionately large basketball gymnasium with concrete tiers and wooden bleachers encircling the court, a space that was difficult to heat.  As a result, we oftentimes wore sweats during practice in the winter.  That particular day I was sporting a new Adidas-type athletic outfit  that I had found at K-mart and convinced my parents to get me for my birthday despite the expense.  It was our school colors and comprised of a shiny black zip-up jacket and pants with red stripes running down the arms and legs.  In my mind it looked a lot like what NBA teams wore for their pre-game warm ups.

We were in a scrimmage and K and I had been split up as we were the two main guards on our team to handle the ball.  At some point I got a break away lay up, but K caught up to me when I thought I was all alone.  I went up for the shot a little lackadaisically and he came down hard on my back sending me crashing down to the wooden floor with his full weight on my back.  Ostensibly it was a defensive maneuver to swat the ball, but obviously it was so much more than that.  In today’s rules it would have been a flagrant foul and gotten him ejected from a game due to its malicious intent.   I remember being down on all fours feeling shook up and hearing him laugh.  My knees were throbbing in pain and I expected the coach to do or say something to K, but he didn’t.  When I finally got up there was a hole in the knee of my suit which hurt so much more than the actual physical pain or even my pride at having had my shot blocked.  In one fell swoop he had completely deflated any joy I might of had at having something so cool.

But these encounters with K were not what came to mind when I heard about a boy putting my son in a headlock.  What came to mind was an incident that involved a different boy who would better be described as a boy-man.  I’ll call him “T.”  He was a relatively new addition to our class and was built like a linebacker.  He had curly blonde hair and loved to go shirtless during gym to show off his muscular and well-developed body.  He towered over me and I had little reason to be around him unless forced to do so in gym class.  Needless to say we did not run in the same circles.

The day in question we were all out in the field next to the gym playing organized Two Hand Touch football.  An upperclassman from my sister’s grade was in charge of us and, like the coach, did not seem to be looking out for our safety.  I imagine he didn’t think it was part of his responsibilities or he was too intimidated by T to do anything.  What shirtless T was doing was whenever someone on our team had the football he would run us down and knock us violently to the ground by slamming his two hands down on our backs.  So much for Two Hand “Touch.”  

The first time he did it to me I ate some grass and it made me so mad that the next time he had the ball on a play I closed in quickly and two hand touched him so hard on his bare back that the slapping sound echoed off the school walls.  I walked away without looking at him but then suddenly something hit my hand so hard that my whole arm jerked forward.  My hand was stinging and I saw the football rolling on the ground.  I turned to see T huffing and puffing in anger.  He’d thrown the football at my back as hard as he could and it had simply clipped my hand.  If it had hit my head or back it could have done some more serious harm to include a concussion.  He loudly complained about the hit to the upperclassman in charge and I told him he couldn’t just go around knocking everyone to the ground in Two Hand Touch football.  The upperclassman, who had not intervened when T was knocking the snot out of everyone, told me not to do it again.  As far as I was concerned he was a ball-less chicken.

The period ended and we all jogged back to the locker room to change back into our clothes.  As I sat on the bench in front of my locker and rubbed my hand, my fellow classmates filed past behind me, but one of them stopped briefly and leaned over my shoulder and said in a low voice, “Don’t back down to T.  If he tries anything we’ve got your back.”  I never had to utilize that help, but it was nice to know it was there.


***

Consolations

I hate being on call
on the weekends, but
if I keep my eyes peeled
and my heart is open
there are consolations.


***

Particular as Pathway

The faces wash past on the city street

infinitely varied but somehow all the same

in the blinking blur of an indifferent eye.

I am looking for that one familiar face that

will give all the others meaning as well,

the particular as pathway to the whole.

When I see it coalesce from the swirl

of humanity a bright spot forms in my 

otherwise dreary and dead existence.

It’s a focus that longs for connection, to be 

tethered to someone that keeps me from

floating off into the isolation of space.


***

A Bag of Bullets

Deployment becomes a reality.

The plastic case houses an M-16 rifle and I am checking it in with my duffle bags at the Nashville International Airport.  The sergeant who brought me down from Ft. Campbell wishes me luck and returns to our base on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.  I have to catch up with my new unit which has been deployed for six months of a 12 month rotation in Iraq.  I tell the airline employee checking my bags what is in the case and he asks me to open it and show him that the weapon is empty.  

He is visibly curious about the weapon and asks questions about the type of bullet it uses and other technical aspects as to its functioning.  This information is unknown to most medical officers such as myself, but I’d served a few years as an infantryman in my early twenties and that kind of information had been drilled into me.  I politely answer his questions and grab the charging handle to lock the bolt to the rear so he can see that the chamber is empty.  When he is satisfied I hit the release and the weapon jerks in my hand as the bolt slams home.

***

There is a two hour layover in Amsterdam where I am free to roam the airport.  I have a friend who lives in the Netherlands and has been a great source of support in my conflicted existence as a physician, soldier, and (poor) Christian.  He is unable to meet me at the airport for this brief window of time, but then I see someone at a departure gate talking to an airline employee that I can almost swear is him.  It is like a mirage in the desert where my mind creates features that may or may not be there.  He is an older gentleman with a ruddy complexion and graying hair that is thinning but with a full beard.  I stare at him intently, willing it to be true.  Is it him?  Is he looking for me?  I move in closer and he turns in my direction.  I see he is similar to my friend, but not the same and I feel a return of the heaviness that affects me both in body and spirit.

***

I step off the flight at Kuwait’s main airport wearing civvies and sporting a light beard.  I’m greeted by a sergeant on this end of the trip who drives me through the city at night and then out into the desert for a few hours.  He feigns curiosity, “What’s with the beard?” a bit of a smirk detectable in his voice.  I explain I have been traversing international airports and did not want to stand out as a target.  That shuts him up.  

We arrive at the transition base sometime after midnight and I am dropped off at an empty troop hanger that can house hundreds but it’s just me and a single forlorn cot set up in a corner.  It is cold, but that will change when the sun comes up.

Sleep is fitful.  Dreams are hard to quantify.

Morning finds me disoriented and still alone.  I take a “combat shower” (get wet, shut off water, soap up, quick rinse, get out) and reluctantly shave my beard.  I am not Special Forces after all.  It is stifling hot and I can barely breathe as I walk the base and check in with the appropriate personnel, my M-16 like an albatross around my neck.

The time is off by several hours from what I am used to but there is little separation between night and day here with incessant activity around the clock.  It is sometime around 2am now and I can’t sleep, so I put on my PT uniform and shoot hoops on an outside court that sits in the middle of a cluster of buildings that, as it turns out, are filled with carrels for watching movies or playing video games.  Entertainment in limbo is essential for survival, apparently, though I tend to enjoy passing the time by reading.  A few sleepless soldiers show up and a game of 21 gets started in the cool night’s breeze.

***

Places like this in the Army are interminable.  They are holding tanks to transition soldiers to their particular units where they may have to stay for hours, days, or even weeks while an unseen hand moves up and down the system to figure out when and where to send them.  Time becomes meaningless as typical reference points simply cease to exist and the brain is fatigued as a result.  The sleep-wake cycle becomes like a wheel that has become disengaged from your car and disappeared into a ditch.  

Fifteen years prior in Korea as a young soldier in the 2^nd Infantry Division it was an enclosed area known as the “Turtle Farm” used to corral and house the new soldiers arriving in country.  It was next to the main drag on base and soldiers driving or walking by would see us gazing out forlornly through the chain link fence and taunt us with “Turtles!” (a Vietnam era term for replacements who were perceived to be slow in coming).

***

I eventually find myself on a fumey cargo plane headed to a base just outside of Tikrit on a former Iraqi airbase.  One of the buildings there functions as our clinic.  I arrive late at night and am offered water pulled from a massive pallet of shrink-wrapped plastic bottles of it.

Over the coming weeks and months I explore this desolate landscape.  It is a flat expanse of dirt and sand that stretches in all directions.  On the way to the chow hall I pass a stand of trees planted in rows that are dead or dying.  Rusted pipes connected to defunct pumps can be seen poking up through the friable ground no longer functioning to water this manmade grove.  A little farther down is an outdoor soccer stadium surrounded by a muddy track, the stands pocked with shrapnel scars and crumbling in the desert. 

***

Once again I am thinking about my weapon.

Officers are issued a 9mm pistol that can be carried unobtrusively in a shoulder harness, but I was late to the game and so all the 9mm’s were accounted for.  As a result, I was given an M-16.  Once you are issued a weapon it must be kept in your possession at all times.  No one thought to issue me bullets when I arrived in Iraq and I did not ask for any.

The thought of carrying a weapon designed to kill people is appalling to me on so many levels.  A sea change of ideas and priorities separates me from my time as a young infantryman now that I am in my thirties, a physician and father.   As far as I am concerned it is simply an elongated piece of metal meant to remind me of decisions made by my younger self who I have become estranged from.  I have learned to find other uses for it, though.  

The Colonel and I are walking the road to the chow hall for dinner.  The sun is sinking below the distant desert floor and painting lovely swaths of orange and pink in the sky behind the stadium.  I step off of the road and tell him I want to take some pictures of this silhouetted scene.  He seems a little irritated, but humors me.  The light is too low for a clear shot with my little camera and I cannot stand still enough to keep it from coming out blurry.  That’s when I experience an epiphany.  I shove the barrel of the rifle into the dirt to stabilize it and sit the camera on the flat butt that would normally fit into my shoulder.  I am now able to get some clear shots.  The Colonel sighs and softly grumbles, but this is a unique opportunity to capture something beautiful in this godforsaken place.  It is unfortunate his stomach is obscuring his view.                           

***

It is half way through my deployment and I have been tasked to transfer to our headquarters on the outskirts of Mosul.  The Combat Support Hospital unit there is returning to the States with its attached psychiatrist and the new one needs a fill-in.  Have shrink, will travel.

The Black Hawk helicopter sweeps us up over the perimeter fence and I feel my stomach flip flop into the territory of Iraq proper.  The landscape continues on as a flat and washed-out beige for quite some time, spotted only with the occasional village whose buildings and houses look like something from Biblical times.  I see a solitary robed shepherd moving across open land with what appear to be goats in tow.  Mountains appear under us an hour or so into the flight.  They are full of rounded peaks, ridges, and ravines.  My eyes rove to find a single flat spot for an emergency landing if needed.  There are none.  Mosul appears soon after the mountains and I feel the helicopter begin to bank over the Tigris River.

Our unit commander is a stickler for details which helps her fit into the Army nicely.  It is an essential skill in an organization with such a high turnover of personnel.  At some point she realizes what others have overlooked.  I do not have any bullets in my possession.  She is pissed about this.  She is pissed I wasn’t issued any in Tikrit.  She is pissed I did not seek them out when they were not forthcoming.  She tasks her armorer to issue me the prescribed amount of ammunition and I soon find myself in possession of a plastic bag filled with at least ten pounds of loose bullets.

I carry them to my hooch, clear out a space in the back of the cabinet where my gear is stored, and cover them with a flak jacket.  Not a single one will make its way into my rifle to be fired and find purchase inside another human being.  That is not my role here and I will not be forced into it.  RIP bullets.

The Church is a Hospital

It is a hospital for the spirit

where the Great Physician

works tirelessly to heal and

nourish the sick and dying.

The priest is his assistant

and helps give the medicines

and prescriptions for change:

Holy wine, oil, and water,

read the Holy Scriptures, pray 

without ceasing, confess and 

forgive, always and everywhere.

The “medicine of immortality”

is there spooned from a chalice
says St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch
his voice echoing down from

the 1st century to comfort us

in our modern malaise. 

***