"Inscribed in the Book of Life"

Walking the Labyrinth-September 25, 2009-The Russian Orthodox today celebrate the feast of the Venerable Dosithea of Kiev, a female recluse who spent most of her life living in a monastery, her fellow monks believing her to be a man. As daughter of a Russian noble family, she was educated in a convent where her grandmother lived as a nun. When she returned home, her parents told her they had arranged her marriage; the young woman promptly ran away from home. They searched for her in numerous convents but it never occurred to them to look for her in a monastery. She lived as a recluse for more than thirty years in the famous Monastery of the Kievan Caves. Her spiritual counsel came to be valued by Russians, peasant and noble alike; from 1744 the Empress Elizabeth chose Dosithea (thinking she was the monk “Dositheus”) as her confessor and spiritual director. When she died in 1776, her brethren discovered “Dositheus” was actually “Dosithea.” From that time they began venerating her as a saint, undoubtedly for her piety—but perhaps also because they figured only a woman of great holiness could live cooped up with a bunch of men. 1066 was a difficult year in England from the get-go. On January 5, the holy but incompetent King Edward (called "the Confessor") died childless, leaving three men, all ambitious and each with an army at his disposal, claiming the throne. One, Harald Sigurdsson, nicknamed Harald Hardrada (“Harald the Stern”), was King of the Vikings in Norway. The second, Harold Godwinson, a powerful English nobleman who the dying Edward appointed protector of the throne, pushed his claim and bullied his way to the crown before Edward's body was cold. He was proclaimed King of England late in January. The third was William of Normandy (known to history as William “the Conqueror”—a hint as to how this whole thing ends). When word of Harold’s coronation spread, both Harald and William began assembling invasion fleets and armies. Hardrada was the first to sail for England, with more than 300 ships; he arrived in mid-September. The Vikings defeated a local militia shortly after coming to ground and Harald thought the country would be easy pickings; on the morning of September 25, though, his sleeping army was attacked by Harold Godwinson’s force, which had marched--fully armored--185 miles in less than four days. They attacked across Stamford Bridge as soon as they came on the scene. Most of the Vikings were unarmored and in the ensuing slaughter Hardrada and many of his nobles were killed. After the remainder surrendered, Harold allowed them to leave on their promise they would never again attack England. So great was the number of the dead that less than 20 of the original 300 ships returned to Norway. Harold’s victory was short-lived. While his men were recovering from the fight, word came that William of Normandy had landed in Pevensey with 7000 men. Marching 241 miles, the English met the Norman force on October 14. The Battle of Hastings, fought on what is now called Senlac (“Blood-lake”) Hill, saw the complete defeat of the English army (Harold died, shot through the eye with an arrow). It marks the end of “Anglo-Saxon” England and the beginning of a new language—which would give rise to Chaucer, Shakespeare and the King James Bible (and, in its distant future, episodes of “South Park”). Vasco Nunez de Balboa was the sort of conquistador who gave other conquistadors a bad name; the worst of a sorry lot. He was an unusually cruel man in an age of casual cruelty. We remember his name, to the extent we do, because history tells us he was the first white man to see the Pacific Ocean (it’s hard to say someone “discovered” the Pacific, but we can accurately say he went looking and found it). While pillaging and murdering the Indians of eastern Panama, Balboa heard of “the Other Sea” on the far side of the country, with beaches covered with golden sands (this story came to him, I have no doubt, from Indians who wanted him to do his “exploring” elsewhere). In search of gold, not the Pacific, Balboa with 190 Spaniards, a few native guides, and a pack of dogs began his journey across Panama. On September 25, from the top of a ridge of the Tumaco Mountains, they saw the ocean (they called it “the South Sea”). Hastening to the beach, they made the unhappy discovery the sands weren’t gold. Undeterred, Balboa waded out into the water, drew his sword and claimed “these waters and all adjacent lands” for the King of Spain. That’s a lot of water and a lot of land, too. Besides the King of Spain, few others were willing to accept the claim. When Balboa returned to the Atlantic side of Panama, he became embroiled in political disputes with authorities sent from Madrid. Balboa was more successful as conquistador than politician; he was found guilty of treason—one of a few crimes he hadn’t committed—and beheaded in 1519. His inept executioner had to strike three times before finally severing Balboa’s head. In 1690, the first newspaper was published in the American colonies. On September 25, Benjamin Harris of Boston issued Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick with the announcement it would be published once a month or oftener “if any glut of occurrences happen.” The Royal Governor of Massachusetts didn’t like what he read and four days later Harris was arrested, his press confiscated and copies of the Publick Occurrences were consigned to the flames—all, it seems, but one. It was sent to England, put in a royal archive and forgotten. In 1840 a clerk found it in a stack of old colonial documents. The only surviving copy of Publick Occurrences is now in the British Museum. Melville Bissell was born on September 25, 1843 (his last name is the giveaway). In the mid-1870’s, Melville and his wife Anna owned a crockery shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan. One evening an irritated Anna sat her husband down for a family discussion. She was tired of spending a couple of hours every day cleaning the clay powder and sawdust from the shop floor. He liked to tinker with things mechanical—couldn’t he come up with something to help her? Within a few days, he did—and today’s Bissell sweeper is almost unchanged from his original design. Anna thought the sweeper was fantastic. She not only used it herself, but began telling other people about it. Melville patented the Bissell Sweeper in 1876 and Anna insisted on taking charge of marketing it. She was a natural. They opened their first manufacturing plant in 1883 and Anna took the Bissell on the road, America’s first traveling saleswoman (Bissells in those days were $1.50). When Melville died unexpectedly a few years later, Anna stepped in as the first female CEO in America. Under her guidance, the company became a national brand, then an international one. When she died, her obituary was titled: “The Lady Who Swept the World.” On September 25, 1890, two events of note: Sequoia National Park was founded, and the Mormon Church reversed its teaching on polygamy. Fortunately for the Mormons, the President of the Church received a revelation that it was time for things to change shortly after Congress made plain Utah would not be admitted into the Union as long as the Church held its polygamous tenets. God evidently changed His mind and so did the Congress: Utah became the 45th State in 1896 (and, incidentally, the first State to grant women the right to vote). William Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897. He lived most of his life in Oxford, Mississippi, the setting (under the fictionalized name of “Jefferson”) for many of his novels and short stories. In his thirties, money lured Faulkner to Hollywood to crank out screenplays—he worked on twenty during his twelve years there (“To Have and To Have Not,” “The Big Sleep,” and “Drums Along the Mohawk” among them). As his reputation grew, he began to feel restive. While working on “The Big Sleep” with director Howard Hawks, Faukner complained he would write better at home than at the studio. Hawks told him that was fine, go write at home. A couple of days later, having heard nothing from Faulkner, Hawks went to his Hollywood home to find it empty. Faulkner had flown back “home” to Mississippi, where he finished the screenplay. On this day in 1956, Bobby Darrin topped America’s music charts with Mack the Knife. It won him a Grammy. Today is the 268th day of the year; 97 days remain till 2010. The ancient Roman calendar reckons today as ante diem VII Kalendas Octobri; devotees of the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece counted this as the third day of the celebration of the annual rites, when the sacred wheat was gathered. It is the seventh day of the Jewish High Holy Days—the Ten Days of Awe. The Congress of the United States has declared September National Prime Beef Month (I knew I could find something they’d done worthwhile in the last 200 years), while the Tolkien Society celebrates this week as Tolkien Week (September 22 was “Hobbit Day”) and the American Vegetarian Association has instituted Hug-a-Vegetarian Day—no doubt to counter the month-long, Congressionally-mandated celebration of meat-eating.

I LOVE CALENDARS AND what they tell us. I don’t mean what date it is, but what a calendar says about the people who use it. Our civil calendar, the Gregorian, has been around for more than 400 years, though it was adopted by Great Britain and her colonies (that means us) only in 1752; the Russians didn’t begin using it until the Tsar abdicated in 1917. Most cultures and religions have other calendars they continue to use, even if just for nostalgia’s sake (like Chinese New Year), alongside the Gregorian. Religious calendars point back to earlier times—the Christian Church, indicative of its unhappy division, has two Church years—the Western Church begins its new year on the first Sunday of Advent (4 Sundays before Christmas) while Eastern Christians mark the year from September 1st, following the use of the long-vanished Byzantine Empire. For those interested, the Orthodox Churches have a further—uh—difficulty—because some refuse to accept the Gregorian calendar as the “Pope’s calendar” and cling to the old calendar instituted by Julius Caesar, the so-called “Julian calendar.” It is confusing—and I’ve left a lot out—but fascinating, too. Lest that be not confusing enough, though, Jews and Muslims each have their own religious calendars, based not on the sun but on the cycles of the moon. That means, unlike Christmas which falls predictably every year, the dates of major Jewish and Islamic holidays vary from year to year. Today, while Christians—well, some Christians—celebrate the Feast of St Dosithea (she’s one of 24 saints on the Church’s calendar today), Jews are in the midst of the most sacred season on their calendar, those days commonly called the High Holy Days. This is the seventh of the Ten Days. These ten days, which begin with Rosh Hashanah and end with Yom Kippur, are days of feasting and fasting. Rosh Hashanah (which literally means “head of the year”) is a two-day New Year celebration. According to some Talmudic scholars, God created Man on this day. But if Rosh Hashanah is celebrated by eating sweets and going to parties, the Ten Days focus on what is now a far less popular aspect of the holidays—repentance: sorrow for sin and a determination to turn from it.

Classic Judaism depicts God during these Ten Days, pondering the life of each person, the Book of Life open before Him. He examines each one of us and decides whether or not our name will be written for the upcoming year in His Book. Ten days of repentance, ten days to examine ourselves and turn from our sins. Yom Kippur, the last of the High Holy Days, is set aside for fasting and prayer. This is the day God writes in His Book so Jews greet each other on Yom Kippur with “Good Signing (in the Book of Life).”

Some Jews today are uncomfortable with the idea of sin (they aren’t the only ones!) and the Ten Days are sometimes diluted down to a time of reflection not on sin (which so many people, Jewish or not, don’t really believe in, anyway) but on self-improvement. One prominent rabbi says “We all have character flaws and bad habits we can turn from on Yom Kippur.” I won't digress on how 'sin’ has disappeared from our religious vocabulary (and even more from our religious consciousness) in only a few short decades, but without sin, there is no evil and without evil, no need of redemption. Now many today (including my good friend Andrew) will jump in here and say “Exactly! I don’t need redemption! I don’t want it. I didn’t ask for it and I can live quite happily without it!” (I think that’s an exact quote, isn’t it, Herr A?)

I would believe what my friend says if he knew everything. Problem is, none of us do. Saying “I don’t need redemption,” doesn’t make it true. If I have cancer and don’t know it, it’s gonna kill me just as dead. How many of our fellow citizens annually are shocked to learn they have incurable diseases? Ignorance of a fact is immaterial to the reality of its impact.

Forgive me if I draw on my experience. As a priest I have waited by the bedsides of at least a couple of hundred dying people. Forgive, too, this unseemly but apt metaphor. I often sit as a vulture, waiting for the right time to move in. Even after people have been told they’re dying, it usually takes time for the grim message to “sink in,” to move from the mind to the heart. It can be weeks or days or hours but the time will come. I’ve been with people who reacted stoically to the news of their impending death, only to have them later break down. I can usually pinpoint the moment it happens. There is often a physical change on a person’s face and in their carriage the second they realize “I’m going to die this afternoon.” For most of our lives we know the last day is coming, but when it arrives, when the distant fact becomes today’s reality, things change. People who think “I might die today” have a different mindset and (forgive me again) “heartset” than someone who knows “I will die today.” Perspectives change “in the twinkling of an eye” when we hear the trumpet sounding.

When I was a boy in Confirmation Class, one of the games the priest would play with us was “Stump the Priest.” We were encouraged to come up with questions that called into question what we’d been told in class. One day, we were sure we had him. Several of us talked about it beforehand, and agreed our question was unanswerable and we could pile objections on top of our unanswerable question when we forced the priest to admit he was indeed stumped. When the time came, the innocent little girl we’d chosen raised her hand. “Father, how about when a bad person—a really bad person, say, Hitler—is dying and they call a priest and confess their sins and get absolution. Does God let them into heaven even if they’re the world’s worst person?” The priest paused and I jumped in. “That's not fair.”

While he gave us a correct answer (you’ll have to ask me if you want to know what he said), it’s a good question. The answer that ultimately satisfies me, though, isn’t the one he gave. It’s one that unfolded before me, sitting at the bedsides of the dying, hearing not only their final confessions but also their deepest regrets. The physical change that comes over us when we really “know” we’re dying in the next half-hour or so is the dropping of our masks, the falling away of the persona we present to the world. It’s only then, when we have nothing to gain or hide, nothing to hope for or fear, that many of us are honest with ourselves for the first time in many years. Then our lives present themselves not merely as “character flaws and bad habits,” not as regrets for the road untaken, but as profound sorrows for the pain we’ve caused, the hopes we’ve squandered and the sins we’ve committed. It’s then that we become aware for our desperate need for redemption.

On the evening of the first day of Rosh Hashanah, there is a touching ceremony of “doing Taschlich.” The word in Hebrew means to “cast off,” or “throw away.” Participants take pieces of broken bread and throw them into a stream or some other rushing water, so they are carried away. The broken bread is symbolic of our sins. Some rabbis encourage their congregants to say their sins aloud as they throw them away. When I hear confessions, I encourage people to write their sins down so they’ll remember them when the time comes. While I didn’t know about Taschlich when I served as a parish priest, I did encourage something similar to it, less beautiful but still pointedly practical. I would tell people their sins are now forgiven, they no longer exist; and I’d encourage them to shred their list of sins and flush it down the toilet.

When we acknowledge the reality of sin, we can begin to grasp the meaning of redemption. Redemption doesn’t simply make things “okay” again. Redemption genuinely changes and transfigures us. It doesn’t restore, it lifts us to where we have not yet been. Having your name in the Book of Life doesn’t mean “Thank God I’ll live another year.”It’s a promise your life will have meaning, it will be enriching for you and those who share your life. That’s why we’re walking the Labyrinth. So to you, my fellow walkers, I say during these Ten Days of Awe: “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life."

FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I pulled a book I’ve meant to read for four or five years, but put it off because I was judging it by its cover! Members of the Franciscan Order are supposed to read a biography of St Francis of Assisi every year—and so a note to my writing friends—there’s a steady market for you—and in a similar way, Texans are required—it’s in the genes, I think—to read a certain number of books about the Alamo during their lifetimes. It’s been a couple of years since I added to my quota, so this week I read The Alamo, by Lon Tinkle. He wrote this back in 1959, and my tattered paperback copy had a particularly amateurish illustration on the cover. A couple of years ago, when I was looking for a book to read on this topic, I chose a more respectable-looking hardback, The Alamo and the Texas War of Independence, September 30, 1835 to April 21, 1836. It was an uninteresting re-telling of well-known events and stories; it didn’t even have much to offer about the controversies surrounding Alamo mythology. Unlike many earlier Texas historians, Tinkle draws his account from the eyes of Mexican eyewitnesses—not the familiar accounts of Santa Ana’s generals but as much as possible from records of the Mexican foot soldiers and Mexicans living in San Antonio at the time of the battle (I was unaware, for example, that Santa Ana ordered the alcalde and citizens of San Antonio to collect and destroy the bodies of the defenders when the battle ended). It is impressively researched and documented but so well-written the research simply slips in unnoticed as part of the story. The greatest of Texas historians, J Frank Dobie (on whose histories I cut my teeth), concluded his review of Tinkle’s book: “I had to hold back my tears.” So did I. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:

“I beg your Majesty to send us no lawyers here (in the New World); they are bad in themselves and a source only of trouble for others.”—Vasco Nunez de Balboa in a letter to King Ferdinand of Spain

“I don't want to be able to see the audience.”—Bobby Darrin

“Without blood, without tears, there is no glory.”—General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

“A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.”—William Faulkner