My faith has been restored IN HUMANITY
Part of my hiatus away from Exposing My Thorns was spent in New York City on a vacation with my mom. We were in the city for about four days and then visited family in New Jersey. I have forgotten as much as I'll tell. This has been a crazy busy 30 days and if it's possible the next will be busier. There were three moments I need to share that have stuck out in the three weeks and couple days since my return.
Over the brink of it
Picture it--think of it,
Dissolute man.
Live in it--drink of it
Then, if you can.
- Thomas Hood, Bridge of Sighs
First, my mom and I got drunk with some sailors! It was fleet week in NYC while we were there and we ended each night at the pub in the basement of the hotel we stayed in. The first night it was pretty packed and so we wound up sitting at a table with three Navy boys on shore leave. I was struck with how young they seemed to me, even the one I knew was older. Their lives were much simpler than mine. My life seemed so focused on such a large thing-God and faith and heliping others in their journey, while they seemed focused on their one task, conciously removed from their chain of thinking its larger implication. Perhaps that is neccessary, you tell yourself, "I am the target coordinator" so as not to remind yourself you're the one aiming at another vessel full of young men or a target on shore. It must be a heavy thing and they must simplify the large thing down to a graspable specific. And so while I was in the city to see its sites and take in its culture, their primary objective was to get drunk and if possible sleep with a girl they could brag about sleeping with. This may seem immoral and my mom certainly was sad that the one married kid who she really liked was after a lady, but I was strangely cool with it. I guess I rationalized that if I were to give of my life for others, take the better part of my youth on a ship with other guys ready to go to war and give my life at any minute for my country, a small price to be paid would be a meaningless port night with a willing hopefully pretty woman.
About 3 a.m., after an officer in the British Royal Navy exposed his 'dingy' to us, I flirted with a girl from Mississippi, it came out that 'Debbie' was my mom and not my girlfriend, and we watched as one of their shipmates dove into a pack of wild boot wearing overweight dog-ladies who were too willing even for sailors and laughed, mom and I decided to call it a night. As were saying goodbye, the young sailor that my mom especially liked shooked my hand and looked me square in the eye and said, 'Thanks for hanging out with us.' I knew he meant it. I knew it meant a lot.
I don't know what posesses a kid to give up the first few years of adulthood or the last few of childhood to military service. I was either never that patriotic, that trusting, or that poor. I can't say that seeing the drunken willing promiscuers in uniform made me feel safer or more confident in the military. I wasn't blown away with their courage or mettle. They seemed like scared lonely kids to me. What it did help me realize is that sometimes the part we play requires our anonymity. Later in the week I would hear of the man my grandfather was after his Navy years. What would I thought of him if I'd met him in uniform in some far away port from his home? I was struck with how much the part I play, the parts most of us play requires our personalities and our lack of anonymity. I am J.D. Rose, the youth leader, camp director, singer, preacher, and occasional blogger. All of my roles arrive with my personage and end when I leave it. Even sitting in a bar and talking is born of who I am and sustained by what I bring to it. There are certainly others who can do what I do. I am not indispensable. But I am what I am and I alone am responsible for my actions. This is probably why I would have made a bad soldier or sailor. I'd have wated to know what that target was. I had no cheesy epiphany about what I could do to help the servicemen of this country, by writing letters or whatever so they aren't lonely. I had no delusions of entering public office to ensure they were never placed in harm's way. Those ideas were too big at the time. I was washed over with contentment that I am living this life. I was consumed with contentment for who I am and prayed that night that those sailors, my mom, and all people just came to terms with the choices they had to make.
I kept on thinking that they were indeed making a sacrifice, and as much as anything else, they sacrificed their identity.
The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics. - Albert Schweitzer
Perhaps one day gave way to the next thematically. Our second day in NYC we decided to be as touristy as possible and climbed aboard a double decker bus and took around touring the city. The first time we got out was at St. Paul's Chapel, a block from where the World Trade Center buildings stood. The chapel has survided and has become a place fo prayer and therapy for the survivors and mourners of 9/11.
The area where the World Trade Center buildings stood is no longer accessible, they have the subway built already and they have begun work on the new Trade Center. St. Paul's though is an extremely powerful place. It has a fenced in cemetery out back and that fence was once covered with well wishes and prayers. The chapel has an almost museum display of what its been through in the last few years. And it has an amazing past as well. St. Paul's Chapel was the church where George Washington and his new givernment came and prayed the day of his inauguration. There is a boxed in pew that is plaqued as the pew he sat in that day. What I found most remarkable, was that during the days following 9/11 as the relief workers came to the aid of survivors and crews began cleaning up, St. Paul's was used as a medic station and George Washington's pew was used as a booth for physical therapists to work on people's aching feet.Here is a symbol of the amazing history of our country and what did we use it for, one of the most basic human maladies-sore feet.
This time I was washed over with how small I was in the grand scheme of things and how little I could really do, or rather that all the things I could do were little things. I could drink and talk to lonely sailors. I could massage the feet of those who were serving. I could not stop planes in midair, evil from striking, or pain from affecting those in tragedies wake.
For a few moments I stood alone wishing there were a leader I could count on, someone trustworthy but powerful enough to reach a position of power. There are none. You can't name me a single unstached hand steering this ship. There are some that seem noble and maybe their time will come, but what I needed in that moment was someone to follow who would remind me that I wasn't alone in this life and would challenge me to remind others.
We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.
- Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) The Great Cham of Literature
We went out alot. We saw a Boradway musical (though it was Avenue Q, as my mom put it X-rated Sesame Street), we went to a comedy club, heard some live Blues, visited a couple bars, ate some great food, did touristy stuff during the daytime. Then on Sunday we went and saw Faith Healer starring Ralph Feinnes with Ian McDiarmand and Cherry Jones. It was heady and intense, just four monologues. But I was enthralled.
If my ego ever tells me I can be an actor, please let it remind me of Ralph Feinnes in that play. Wow!
The play is about a faith healer, his wife, and manager and their lives together. He is a gifted tortured man who can never quite pass his reality off as his life or decide if their is indeed a God endowing him with this gift and everything happens for a reason or simple randomness to all and therefore what significance has truth. His wife is loyal to him above all, enduring his make believe and viscuousness until his death when she loses her own grip on reality. Their manager is an old inept British swindler who falls in love with them both and serves them each to their final breaths. The tension in the play is that someting happens when the faith healer can't heal the friend of some rough young Irish farmers. We're told early that he meets his demise and see how that changes the lives of the others.
The last flourish of monologue the faith healer realizes what has been echoed; that we must simply be in the end, what we are. He was a gifted tortured faith healer. In the last moments he realizes that everything does indeed happen for a reason and he utters his final words, "I that moment I stood before God and my future and renounced chance."
This time I was overwhelmed by how simply and beautifully the phrase was created and delivered, yet how all encompassing it was. I renounce chance. In the midst of days of worry and anticipation it helps me to know that everything truly does happen for a reason.
