Reading “Everyday Saints”

 

I found two bookmarks in the one book which for me is a rare phenomenon.  Like movies, there are precious few books that I’ve revisited in my lifetime.  Something about those initial reactions that I prize maybe a little too highly.  God knows repeated readings of particular books can yield up varied treasures.

But there it is, maybe a hang up but also not an ironclad principle.  “Everyday Saints” by Archimandrite Tikhon is an exception to this rule.  I read it when it was first published in 2011 over a 3 day period when I was bed bound from a particularly nasty flu.  It was the perfect companion because it made the time flow by with little notice.

The stories are vignettes of varying lengths that claim the Pskov Caves Holy Dormition Monastery in Pechory, Russia as their home base and heart, but spread out over nearly the entirety of that vast country as the author travels hither, thither, and yon.  Each story focuses in on a particular person bringing to light their quirks and foibles in the context of the oftentimes inscrutable workings of Divine grace.  It is cliche, but I don’t know of a book that had me literally LOL’ing, becoming tearful at some particularly poignant moment, or gasping in surprise to the extent this one did.

In my twenties I read an inordinate number of books that explored the impact of Communism on Russia, Eastern Europe, and China.  Many of them were nonfiction like Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago”, Pu Ning’s “Red in Tooth and Claw”, and “The Private Life of Chairman Mao” written by his personal physician.   But there was also fiction in the novels of Milan Kundera and Boris Pasternak.  I seemingly could not get enough of this type of thing, but with “Everyday Saints” I found something even more intriguing.  Instead of unredeemed melancholy (an addiction of mine) I found something healing and life affirming.  

Like the Bible it is a book that can be read for spiritual nourishment, but is also a collection of simply human stories that could be enjoyed by anyone who shares that humanity regardless of their beliefs. 

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware has sagely said: "It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder."  And this is Everyday Saints in a nutshell.

***

Apple Ladder

 

Beauty’s an apple ladder

beholden to red spheres 

of ascending sweetness.

***

Doors of Insanity

Since when did life become 

so fragmented

so pixelated

so prone 

to open the doors of insanity?

***

The Trolley

His body lay slumped across the tracks forming the cross bar of a very long H.  Lucky for him the trams had stopped running hours before.  He’d been drinking for much of the day but now it was the middle of the night and he was on a reluctant journey back to consciousness.  His head felt stuffed with cotton buzzing like high voltage wires when the light appeared over the hill.

Somewhere deep inside his brain some synapses began firing to sound the alarm.  He grunted with pain trying to reanimate his cold and stiff body.  The light appeared to be a ways off but headed in his direction.  His arms refused to obey his commands, only his right leg responded by cocking as if to push off.  The light remained small and steady moving down the center of the tram tracks and he thought he heard a small bell, “da-ling, da-ling.”

It seemed almost upon him even though the light was much too small to be anywhere near, but there it was nonetheless rolling to a stop a few feet away, the size of a shoe box.  It was a red trolley that whistled and rolled back and forth to approximate speech.  As his mind continued to find purchase in reality he tried to remember where he’d seen such a thing before. 

“Da-ling, da-ling” *whistle-whistle* “da-ling” *whistle*.  It was imploring him to come along which he could understand though he didn’t understand how he understood.  

“You want me to come with you?”  It quivered in acknowledgement.  “OK.”  His vision blurred out and things went dark.

***

When he opened his eyes again he was lying in front of a castle that loomed above him in miniature proportions.  “Who is this lying in front of my castle?” bellowed a small frozen-faced figure leaning over the castle wall above him.

“It appears to be a ragamuffin, Your Majesty,” answered a smaller version of the crowned figure.

“A ragamuffin?  Who has allowed such a thing in my kingdom?”  Trolley dinged and whistled a confession to make it clear he was the guilty party.  “What is the meaning of this, Trolley?”

At this a woman appeared and knelt down to check on the bewildered man lying there.  “Are you alright, dear sir?”  Looking up she addressed the small man with the crown, “Uncle Friday, he looks like someone who needs our help.  Might I take responsibility for him while he is in your kingdom?”

“Very well, but please find him some more presentable attire, Lady Aberlin.  I don’t want others to get the idea that being unpresentable is appropriate.  I will have no ragamuffins in my kingdom.”

“As you wish, Your Majesty.”  She helped the bewildered man to his feet and led him weaving past a tree and around a bend so as to be outside of the view of the castle.  “Here’s a good spot.  Let’s sit you down.  You look a little unsteady.”  She assisted him with a kind of controlled fall to a seated position at the base of a stone wall.  

“Now you stay here and I will find Robert Troll.  He should have some clothes that might fit you.  I’ll be right back, OK?”  He looked at her with a kind of bleary-eyed affection and nodded with an exaggerated bobbing of his head. 

Lady Aberlin disappeared further along the path and he sat there taking in his surroundings as best he could, his head clearing by the minute.  There was a tree and a grandfather clock nearby and it was all starting to look strangely familiar.  It was the image of the trolley that wove its way through the decades of accumulated fog that was his memories.  He had somehow been transported to the Neighborhood of Make Believe.  

***

“My, my, what *is* that smell?”  Above him a ruddy cheeked puppet was whipping her large nose back and forth sniffing the air in an exaggerated manner.  Her fixed eyes eventually found the man, “It looks like someone left a large pile of reeking rags below my museum.”

“Excuse me?” The man said as he looked upward.  “Are you referring to me?”

The puppet pulled back in surprise.  “Well, Toots, you’ve picked an interesting spot to deposit yourself.  Why are you here?”

The man struggled to his feet and steadied himself with the wall in order to look at the puppet more on the level.  “I was banished here by King Friday until I can find more presentable clothes.”

“King Friday sent you packing?  I think I’m starting to like you, Toots.”

At this Lady Aberlin returned with some clothes and handed them to the man.  “I see you’ve met Lady Elaine.  Has she been nice to you?”

“In a manner of speaking” replied the man as he began taking his clothes off to change but then paused, “Is this an OK place to change?”

“Well, I guess it is as good a place as any.  Let’s turn our backs, Lady Elaine, and allow him some privacy.”  

“If it helps him smell better quicker I will gladly do so,” and the ruddy puppet disappeared behind her wall.

***

The man felt ridiculous in the baggy clothes and he refused to put on the hat.  Lady Elaine reappeared at the top of the wall to see if he was still there.  “Well, aren’t you a vision!  Would you like to visit my Museum-Go-Round now that you’re more presentable?”  

The building she was referring to was too small even for her to enter and the man thought she was making fun of him.  She sensed his skepticism.  “Come on, Toots.  I’ll show you how it’s done.”  At this she offered her hand.  As soon as he touched her he felt himself reverse telescoping through the colorful pillars and into the darkness of the open double doors.

He found himself in the middle of a large circular room, a spotlight fixing him in a small circle of light.  Even stranger still he was no longer a man, but a boy.  

“Hello?” He snapped his head around to see where the high-pitched voice was coming from before realizing it was coming from his own mouth.  “Hello?  Is anyone there?”

The curved wall of the room was divided into illumined alcoves of uniform size encircling the boy.  In each alcove was a large framed photo.  He walked towards the one directly in front of him and shuddered as he recognized it as an upraised arm wielding a looped leather belt.  Moving to his right he stood in front of the next photo which was the same arm and belt but slightly lower.  The next one was lower still and the next one lower still until he got to one where the belt had disappeared off the bottom of the frame.  He heard if not felt a loud slap and suddenly burst into tears.  He was halfway around the room and in the next photo the belt reappeared at the bottom of the frame and the pattern repeated, but moving upwards instead of down.

The boy half ran, half stumbled back to the center of the room under the spotlight.  As he watched in bewilderment the wall began to rotate around him like a carousel while he stood stock still in the center.  The images became a single moving image of the arm wielding the belt coming down swiftly and returning up and then back down, over and over again.

  

***

It’s a church basement, light filtering through a high screened window.  His thin wrist is being held firmly above his head as he spins like a ball on a tether trying to avoid getting hit by the belt, his pants around his ankles.

“I’m sorry Mom, I’m sorry Mom, please stop, I’ll never do it again” jumping... panting... sobbing... “I promise, I promise, PLEASE, I promise!”

The slapping sound of leather meeting flesh bounces off cinderblock walls and echoes down a darkened hallway, but not loud enough for anyone else to hear.  There will be no rescue.  It is unbearable, but he must bear it.

***

He felt himself shaking or being shaken.  “Hey, wake up!  You can’t sleep in the middle of the street.”  Through the blur of tears it appeared there was a policeman standing over him and for a moment he thought it might be Officer Clemmons.  

“Wuh?  Sorry, I... I...” head pounding he rubbed his eyes and temples vigorously.  When the flashing spots of light resolved the man was gone.  He found his feet with some difficulty and made his way to the sidewalk just as a tram trundled past at his back.  He turned to watch it disappear into a swirl of fog leaving him alone in the diffuse glow of early morning... “da-ling”.


***

The Fog Settles

The fog settles on the city

like a down filled blanket

softening the edges of a 

hard and indifferent place.

***

2000 Souls

Orleans, Indiana is a town of 2000 souls and from 1975 to 1985 I was one of those souls, albeit a small one.  There were pockets of darkness hidden in neighborhoods that I mostly avoided but sometimes brushed up against for the briefest of moments.  

My Dad was a pastor and it was expected I would not hang out with the “bad” kids, but that was OK because I was mostly a loner anyway.  I had friends, but none that wouldn’t turn on me in a heartbeat if expedient to do so.  Maybe it was something about me?  

I spent much of my time roaming the streets of this town on my bike.  There were no helmets, no cell phones, and no sense that something could go terribly wrong.  And if it did, it passed me over and found some other kid or family to haunt for years to come.

There was the town square with the drug store and its comic book rack, the movie theater showing “First Blood”, a ceramics store where my Mom painted things to decorate our house, and the variety store with three levels of secondhand treasures.

There was the high school with its palatial basketball gym but primitive cinder track, the elementary school with Patton Field for Little League games, and the nearby airstrip with ultralights waiting to take to the sky like giant mechanical dragonflies.  

There was melancholy by the rick load though I didn’t really know what that was back then.  It was the air I breathed and a persistent heaviness in my chest.  It drew me at times to the massive cemetery to brood, the quietest of quiet places.

And it is the town that most thoroughly put its stamp on me, a decade of growth and development from 1st to 10th grade in the heart of Southern Indiana.  I love it in the way someone would love a good-enough parent because that’s who raised you.

***

The Fog Monster

  

The fog monster

devours the city

in forgetfulness.

*

Alas, Poor Aaroneous...

Alas, poor Aaroneous.  I knew him well.

Pitiful impulsive man-boy, lost in a world and situation outside of his control, proud in his ignorance with illusions of invulnerability.  It was March of 1991 when he found himself almost two months into a 16 week Basic Training cycle on Sand Hill at Ft. Benning, Georgia.  

***

He’d been a senior at Indiana Wesleyan Univeristy just two months prior and due to a premature midlife crisis he’d made the seemingly inexplicable decision to join the Army after GHWB declared war on Iraq.  Something burned in his patriotic breast.  It may have been reflux.

Or maybe it was depression that drove him to this madness, but whatever it was he found a way to turn it into an adventure of sorts.  BFF Tibor was brought along for the ride to a mystery location off campus.  When they pulled up catty-cornered to the recruiting station the Hungarian looked at the coffee shop next door to it and exclaimed, “Buddy!  We’re going to have coffee.  How nice!”  

“We’re not here for coffee, Tibor.”  He followed Aaroneous out of the car and into the Army recruiting office where the wayward college senior announced he wanted to join the infantry.  Within an hour it was a done deal, the papers signed, and his parents didn’t even know yet.

***

So here he was on Sand Hill where the days are like weeks, the weeks are like months, and the months are like years.  Sleep was scarce and highly regimented with a regular fireguard duty rotating trainees through an allnight roster one hour at a time patrolling the barracks with a flashlight.  Days were spent strenuously from before sun-up to after sun-down.

There was complete deprivation of contact with the outside world apart from the precious few times allotted to call home which could just as easily be taken away if someone in your platoon screwed up.  Most were rule-followers to minimize any extra misery doled out by the Drill Sergeants, but Aaroneous was different in that way.  He was quiet, unassuming, boyishly naïve, but a lot went on behind those hazel green eyes of his.

In that first week when the scrutiny was at its highest intensity and trainees were afraid to breathe wrong, Aaroneous slipped out at an opportune moment and cut through an adjacent forest to the back of the base PX.  When the sidewalk next to it was empty he stepped out from the shadow of the trees to walk casually into the PX and buy some Skittles.  Back at the barracks lights-out was drawing near but there was some time to relax just a bit before the on duty Drill Sergeant came to do the last headcount of the day.

Aaroneous laid on his side and casually spilled out his Skittles onto the bunk where only the trainee next to him could see them.  The young man’s eyes widened considerably before breaking into a perplexed grin. “Holy shit Haney!  Where did you get Skittles?”  At that point early in the cycle there were frequent inspections to make sure we did not possess any contraband and the borders of the barracks were considered sacrosanct and off limits on pain of mental and physical torture.  He shared them with this bemused fellow and a few others who treated it like some exotic food from a faraway land.  “I’ve totally guessed you wrong, Haney.  Goddam!”

***

So, we are back again to almost two months into Basic Training.  In retrospect it was the be-all end-all of quarantine and shelter-at-home type scenarios.  Aaroneous felt his personhood was beginning to erode under the dehumanizing conditions and isolation.  He needed a break of some kind.  A few days earlier they’d marched past the base movie theater and he noticed the marquee was featuring Mel Gibson in Hamlet.  Maybe not his first choice but almost anything would do.  

Once again he found a time that he could slip off unobtrusively and hightail it the half-mile or so to the theater without being seen.  It was glorious!  He luxuriated in the soft theater seats and took in the Shakespearean spectacle of Mad Max emoting.  It is impossible to describe the pleasure of such a thing after so many weeks of being made to feel one is not a human being.  He laughed.  He cried.  And right as it was getting to its most powerful moment with his emotions at a fevered pitch he glanced down at his watch... 5 minutes until lights-out.

He literally jumped up from his seat and ran out of the theater.  He ran across the parking lot.  He ran across a grassy field or two.  He didn’t stop all out running until hitting the border of the barracks area and then quick-stepped to his barracks in order to not look too obvious to any casual observer.  He laid in his bunk with his BDU’s and boots still on and pulled the covers up to his chin just as the Drill Sergeant came barreling through the doors for headcount.  

Poor Aaroneous.  A fellow of infinite jest.  Caught in the spider’s web but avoiding the spider.  


***

Korea

Are there Little Boys on Jupiter?

Are there little boys on Jupiter

giggling when you say “poopiter”?

It’s fun to think about it, to 

bounce and fly and shout it.

Where colors mix and swirl 

while spinning in a tilt-a-whirl.

But are there little boys on Jupiter?

Well, I’ve heard things much stupider!

***

Murderer of Murder Hornets

With all of the talk about so-called “murder hornets” on Facebook this past week it didn’t take long for me to recollect that I had a history with these fascinating insects.

I had to rewind to the summer of 1991 to find this pertinent scrap of memory.  I was new to the Army as a young infantryman fresh out of Basic Training and assigned to “Delta Death,” a company  on the north end of Camp Casey, 2^nd Infantry Division, Republic of Korea.  When I arrived to the company area it was eerily quiet as the entire battalion was on its 3 month rotation to live and patrol inside the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea.  I was issued my weapon and necessary equipment before being sent north on a bus.

On the DMZ I was assigned a cot in my squad’s tent and then taken to be introduced to the First Sergeant, 1SGT Glasgow.  I was in a tight parade-rest position which seemed to amuse him.  He told me I could take it easy and have a seat.  Things were a bit more relaxed “in the field” as they say in the military, but I had no experience of the Army apart from the insular and high stress world of Basic Training where trainees cowered before the NCO’s, especially around one as high ranking as a First Sergeant.

He asked me some questions about myself and learned I had finished three years of college before dropping out to join the Army at the start of the Gulf War.  He then asked what I knew of the political situation in this part of the world.  I was a History and Political Science major so I gave some history of the region and dropped a few names so that he raised his eyebrows and looked at my escort and guffawed, “That’s the most intelligent thing I’ve heard since we’ve been up here!”   

So what about those murder hornets, you ask.  I’m getting to that part.

While living isolated on the DMZ life was pretty much consumed with training exercises that could run around the clock, depending on which phase you were in.  Much like the quarantine situation now, there was not much to do with your “free time” after work because you were living in a small town of tents surrounded by a high fence crowned with concertina wire in the absolute middle of nowhere known as “Warrior Base.”  It was during one of our field training excursions that I ran into this notorious insect that has so captured our imaginations this past week and spawned a veritable swarm of memes.

I remember being out in the woods somewhere miles from Warrior Base around midday and I had to go #2.  I broke off from the others in my squad and went deeper into the trees to have some privacy.  I pulled out my entrenching tool (a small folding shovel) and started digging a “cat hole” at the base of a tree to do my business.  That’s when I heard what sounded like a stealth helicopter skimming the treetops.  I stopped digging and looked around.  The sound came again, but this time closer.  It buzzed by me so loudly that it produced the doppler effect!  

At first I thought it might be a small bird because it was too big and loud to be an insect.  When it finally landed on a tree and I could see it more clearly I knew there was no way I was dropping my pants anywhere near that thing!  It was either me or him, but one of us had to go (I had to go! stupid murder hornet).  I pulled my knife and circled around the tree where I knew it had landed.  It was remarkably tolerant of me as I ever-so-slowly peered around the tree and lifted my knife.  In a kind of spasm I flicked the blade with my wrist and severed the hornet in two pieces.  That’s how big it was!

I see myself now in a 30 year retrospective: PFC Haney, Murderer of Murder Hornets.

***

Lost in the Hoffa Maze

The stormtrooper patrol was winding its way through the frozen Hoffa Maze when the storm hit.  

Goji heard the speaker in his helmet buzz to life, “This is Leader Echo, stay in close formation.  This storm looks treacherous.”

He quickened his pace as he had fallen behind the column winding its way through the surrounding snow-covered hills.  Ice bits mixed with snow were beginning to whip around in the wind reducing visibility to only a few meters and pinging off his suit creating a disorienting racket inside his helmet.  After only a few moments he could no longer see the trooper in front of him.  

He felt his heart begin to pound and his breathing quicken as he sped up to a trot into the strong head winds.  Even without the weather conditions this was a perennial problem for him.  He was shorter than most stormtroopers and was often the butt of jokes in his platoon.  “Part of the Stormkinder program Goji?”  He’d laughed to make it seem like it didn’t bother him, but conscription had been a painful and heartbreaking process separating him from hearth and home, and now to be in this frigid place was almost too much.

An unexpected *bump* and “Blast you!” heard crackling through his speaker.  He had run into the trooper in front of him who promptly butted him to the ground with his blaster.  “Watch where you’re going blurrg bait!”

Goji felt the sting of tears in his eyes and he was slow to get up despite the real danger of getting left behind.  The storm was intensifying and he at least had the good sense to check in with the platoon leader.

“Leader Echo, this is Trooper-12.  I’m falling behind, over.”  No answer.  Only static.  He smacked the side of his helmet to see if that would help but the line went completely dead.  Goji scrambled up and sprinted forward only to find the trail cold as the path branched and then branched again with no one in sight.

***

Goji knew he was in some serious banta doo-doo.  The patrol was lost to him and he had no idea which direction the base was.  That was the problem with not being in charge.  They had the information and it was not handed out willy-nilly to grunts like him.  His job was to simply follow orders and drop into a tactical fighting crouch when necessary and fire his blaster down range.  If he hit an enemy that was a bonus; if not, well, that was just par for the course.

A dark opening loomed in a hillside to his right and he identified it as the entrance to a cave.  He needed to find shelter knowing he would likely perish if he continued to wander lost in this storm.  The infrared sensors in his helmet lenses were glitchy but he thought it was picking up a slight heat differential that told him he would be better off in there and so he reluctantly entered, his blaster at the ready.

Rootlets hanging from the ceiling brushed his helmet and shoulders insect-like as he pushed deeper into the cave.  His sense of time had become distorted since the storm had swept in depriving him of references to place or even time.  It could have been hours ago but maybe even just minutes since he’d lost his way.  His infrared sensors flashed bright red as he rounded a bend and then died leaving him stumbling forward with no visibility.  He lost contact with the cave wall as the space suddenly opened up.  He stood still in the darkness and let silence envelop him.  His situation seemed hopeless and he felt his thoughts flee homeward to the warmth of a fire, his mother singing while stirring a pot suspended over the coals.  

He no doubt was hallucinating but he thought he could actually see burning coals or at least a faint red glow on the ground further ahead.  That’s when a high pitched gargling bark shattered the silence and he felt something big hit him in the back and knock him violently to the ground.  His helmet popped free and rolled away from him.  There was something heavy making a panting sound pressing him to the ground and smelling like a musty rug.  His blaster was lost somewhere in the darkness and there was nothing he could do as the creature aggressively sniffed his head.  Terrified as he was, still, the air from it tickled his ear.

***

In the darkness in front of his face two small circles lit up and a polite voice spoke, “Oh my, are you all right?  My friend can be a bit rough.”  At that the creature on his back gave him a wet lick with its tongue and Goji recognized the glowing circles as the eyes of a droid, or at least the head of a droid.  It appeared that its body was missing.  

“Who are you?” Goji asked while flinching from another lick to the side of his face.

“I am a protocol droid or at least what’s left of one.  My friend and I have had a run of bad luck it would seem, as have you.”

The creature on top of him let out a low warbling noise.  “He says he likes you but you can’t have your blaster back.”  At this he felt the weight lift off his back and he rolled over to see a huge furry creature towering over him with the blaster in his hand looking like a small toy gun.

“I call that lovable beast Chewbiscuit.  Our ship made an emergency landing in these hills which was a bit bumpy and my head became separated from my body.  The other crew members suffered a similar fate but they cannot live in two parts.”

Goji did not know what to make of this droid and whether or not he was trying to use humor.  “Well, I am Goji the Stormkinder and I came to this planet reluctantly but now I am happy to be here and on my own.”

The droid’s eyes appeared to pulse a bit brighter, “Wonderful!  Will you join us then?”

Chewbiscuit was stoking the coals and adding some sticks so that light began to creep back into the room.  “Rararrrawarrrr!”

“Chewie agrees.  You should join us!”  At this the dog-like creature began gallivanting around the room, first on all fours and then upright, making happy noises and waving his arms.  He then batted the droid’s head towards Goji and crouched in anticipation of a game.  Goji rolled it back and laughed as the droid exclaimed, “Oh my, the room is spinning!”

Memory of Leaves

How is it that Winter can steal one’s memory of leaves?

It is a long period of time no doubt: cold, desolate, and

lonely. But not so long that memory should be affected 

to any great degree. Yet here I am looking out my back 

window seeing buds and green shoots proliferating on 

branches and still I can’t remember what leaves looked 

like before they fell to the ground to rot & die, forgotten.

***

A Divine Wink

It’s a subtle thing, like a Divine wink, 

when white flowers on the tree outside 

my window are suddenly speckled with

a pale glowing orange of the Golden Hour 

lasting for the briefest of moments, then gone.

***

The Step Between

It was there. I could feel it.

The step between.  

I had sensed its presence before 

in moments of great fear or anxiety, 

but had not known what to do about it.  

I was not even sure what "it" was, 

but I knew it was 

the step between 

and I knew I needed to access it now.  

The hit was coming at high velocity 

to knock loose my soul.  

Time downshifted and 

put reality into a tailspin.  

That was when my foot found 

the step between 

and became a pivot point.  

I did not disappear so much 

as become inaccessible 

to the laws of cause and effect.  

I stepped into his anger 

and found a world of hurt 

coursing down through his extending arm, 

emanating from a fevered brain.  

What had we done to be in this situation

(what had been done to us)?

I felt time telescoping back 

to the very moment 

of sinking our teeth 

into that hard cold apple 

of knowing instead of loving.


***

Spring of the Quarantine

We have been buried, immobilized, 

lying dormant in our homes

waiting to sprout, to sprig, 

reaching upward to find the light, 

but also sending down roots 

to nourish us in whatever future-state 

we may find ourselves, more fully alive, 

a stronger organism in this web of life 

when we finally break the surface 

of our egocentric self-isolation

and feel the sun on our collective faces.

***

Planets are Sleeping

Planets are sleeping 

in my basement.

(silent spheres sorrowfully suspended)

Their grandeur reduced to

a humble quietude.

***