Mi Casa Es Tu Casa

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Mi Casa Es Tu Casa

I’m doing my meditation at the chapel when a Latina mom arrives with her little boy. The kid is draped over mom’s shoulder and is fast asleep.  Any parent who has carried a child when he is completely zonked out can identify; the 25 pound kid has gone to 125 pounds in an instant.

The mother needs to unload her kid somewhere so she can say her prayers but doesn’t want to wake her child.

Not to worry. The mother makes room on the carpet and gently lays her little guy down. Whoops! He wakes up. Knowing full well that the only one crankier in the morning than an adult without her coffee, is a sleepy little kid awakened from his nap. Mom takes quick action.

She kneels down on the floor next to her boy and starts to rub his tummy. The little guy’s eyes flutter, half open and half closed. Mom lifts his t-shirt and puts her warm hand on the child’s belly. Little by little, the kid returns to his deep sleep, perfectly at home sprawled out on the chapel floor. His mom sits herself down and takes out a prayer book.

There is a blessed stillness’ in the chapel. When I was a little kid, we used to call our church “God’s House.” In the silence there is something sacred about it now. Candles burn on the altar; I hear only the soft hum of the fan.

A little boy sleeps peacefully on the floor while his mom prays.  It’s only one moment in time but I want to hold on to it and make it last. It’s only then that it comes to me. It’s Mother’s Day. Of course it is.

 

A Dying Man, a Boy. a Legacy

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                              A Dying Man, a Boy, A Legacy

      I was thinking recently about President George Bush and the legacy he left the nation in his memorial museum in Dallas. Presidents and former presidents get to do that sort of thing. I guess it’s okay.  Not a damn thing I could d do about it anyway.

     But as I sat by the bedside of an ordinary kind of guy dying of cancer, I

begin to think of the legacy this man left to literally hundreds of foster kids he worked with through the years. The kids who experienced the love and caring attitude of Jim were blessed.

 

     I wonder if many of us can relate to the traumas, the neglect, and the abuse that has been the lot of many kids in foster care. Abandoned by their parents, they troop from foster homes to group homes, never quite understanding what is happening to them.

 

     Then, for the fortunate ones, a man called Jim shows up as a house parent at a group home. He understands them. He respects them. He sees their possibilities. He does not give up on them. Wow! A seed is planted in the soul of a kid who, until then, thinks that he is a failure. Someone believes in him.

     As Jim lay dying in a board and care home, I recalled one of Jim’s proudest moments in his work at the Children’s Village (a home for abused and neglected kids in Santa Rosa.) A fourteen-year-old boy was in the throes of a major melt down. I don’t know what caused it, parents not showing up to visit him? Maybe being blamed for something he did not do? Being bullied by one of the other kids? Who knows what can set off the ticking time bomb that sets off a kid already traumatized by rejection and abandonment.

      The boy was out of control. He was cursing to heaven, blaming God, his parents, the village with all the energy of his fourteen years. He kicked garbage cans; he threw rocks; he cursed God. It was scary. 

     One of the other group home staff, fearful of the boys own safety and that of other kids, was about to call the police, to take him to mental health services for observation.

     Then I saw Jim quietly approaching the boy. He didn’t say a word. Words were of no use now. Instead he took him in his arms and hugged him. Just hugged him. Gently, this caring man led the trembling boy to a place on the edge of the village grounds. They sat together arm in arm for maybe ten minutes while the boy magically calmed down. In his despair, the young boy had found someone he trusted, someone who cared for him.

      Legacies come in different forms. For the rich and famous, it is wonderful that they can leave libraries and papers and all the things that make people sit up and notice them for all they have done.

      I have no quarrel with that but I am in awe of a man who showed up in the life of a kid who was starved for affection and respect and love and gave him all three. Now there’s a legacy.

      PS. Jim died two days ago, surrounded by a small cadre of friends who knew him and who will always hold him in their hearts. And the desperate kid who got his hug from Jim? He graduated from high school last year and is now attending college. Somewhere up there I am betting there is an ordinary guy named Jim who is rooting for him.

 

   

 

Words To Parents From Troubled Kids

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Parents Might Learn from the Words of Troubled Kids

Every year, the Juvenile Justice Commission of Sonoma County sponsors an essay contest for youth caught up in the Juvenile Justice System, whether residing at Juvenile Hall or in one of the group homes or alternative schools scattered throughout the county, The contest gives these kids an opportunity to share their thoughts on what went wrong for them and how they would like to change their lives. It also gives parents a chance to listen and learn from what these teenage kids have to say about the kind of parents they would like to become.

“I would like to be the parent I never had. My friends said “Your parents are cool.” What they didn’t know was how I hated the way my parents did not care what I did or where I was or how late I got home. I wanted more protection but I never got that and I felt abandoned.”

15 year-old girl.

“Being a parent to me means you step up to the plate and make your child’s living environment stable as well as healthy. I want to be the kind of parent my kids will look up to and can go to for anything.”

15 year-old boy

“One of the biggest mistakes parents make is getting a divorce. In my experience my parent’s divorce kept my own father distant. When I needed a male role model, I had no one to look up to. I vowed to myself to never divorce because I know the damage that it does to your kids.”

17 yea-old boy

“As a young father, I want to give all the support I can give to my daughter and to be there for everything she needs from her first fall to the days of motherhood.”

17 yea-old boy

“Parents need to step up and lay down rules. They especially need to follow the # 1 rule, be a parent; not a friend.”

15-year-old girl

“I want to be the kind of parent who likes to hang out with his kid, teach him or her how to ride a bike and help him with his schoolwork. I will never spank my kid. That just teaches him to be mean.”

“I was told that drugs are bad but I was never confronted about my problem. My father didn’t know I did drugs until I was 16. He wasn’t a bad parent; he just worked too much.”

17 yea-old boy

The essays spoke of other teenage issues like bullying, teen suicide, gangs and other problems but most of the youth spoke of that universal yearning they had for parents who would be there for them, parents and other adults who would give them the gift of time and attention and understanding.

Just as important was their longing for a certain amount of structure and discipline in their lives. We do our kids no favor when in our striving to be “cool”, we lose sight of our role as parents.

 

 

Gershwin in the Monastery

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Gershwin In the Monastery

Gershwin In the Monastery

It was quiet as the Trappist monks lay to rest the body of Brother John.

But then, it’s always quiet at a monastery. The monks thrive on silence as much as our modern world hungers for noise.

I was making a private retreat at the New Clairvaux Monastery a few miles from Chico when I had the unexpected opportunity to experience the funeral of a monk.

At the service inside the monastery church, the Abbot told us about the life of this man of God who had spent close to fifty years of his life at New Clairvaux. Brother John took on flesh and blood as the Abbot painted a picture for us of a young man growing up in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Brother John fit right in with the lively and lusty Irish Catholic atmosphere of early and mid 20th. Century San Francisco. He loved music and the theater, a gregarious man with a passion for song and life. His last request was to have Michael Feinstein’s version of Gershwin’s “Our Love is Here To Stay” sung at his funeral Mass.

As we listened to Brother John’s eulogy, I could not help but wonder how this very outgoing man had been drawn to enter perhaps the strictest religious order of the Catholic Church and to live out his life in silence. The Trappists vow to spend their lives in silence. Even their meals are taken in silence. When they open their mouths, it is to praise God and to pray for the rest of us.

What made this man who loved jazz and the music of Gershwin devote his life to the prayer and work and silence of a monastery?  When I put this question to one of the monks after the service, he just smiled. “You would be surprised at the variety of personalities that God calls to this life. We number kids fresh out of college or military service, former businessmen, widowers, people from all walks of life. Each in his own way and for his own reasons is seeking peace of mind and closeness to God.”

I mulled this over in my mind as I joined the procession of monks to the gravesite on the grounds of the monastery. Brother John’s body, dressed in his religious habit, was set down gently and respectfully in the grave dug for him by his fellow monks. There was no casket. Prayers of farewell were said and all of us guests were invited to put our shovelful of dirt over his body.

The lyrics of Brother John’s favorite song played in my head.

“In time the Rockies may crumble

Gibraltar may tumble

There’re only made of clay

But, our love is here to stay.”

 

 

 

“Thank Heaven for Little Girls”

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Thank Heaven For Little Girls

Song from the Broadway Musical, “Gigi”

A Latina mom comes into the meditation chapel with her little girl. The girl, who looks to be about ten-years-old, kneels with her mother. Mom brings out a prayer book and mother and daughter kneel close together reading from the same book.

It’s quiet, oh so quiet. In the distance, I hear the faint hum of traffic on Montgomery Drive but within, there is nothing but the sound of silence.
In the quiet, a little girl rests her head on her mothers shoulder and whispers her prayers.

As I ponder the peaceful scene, my out-of-control mind takes a nosedive down, down, down, it wanders. Somewhere, a little girl that age is being teased or bullied by a gang of schoolmates. Somewhere, little girls are being imprisoned as sex slaves by lustful men or made to work 14-hour days in a factory in Central America. Somewhere, little girls like this can not read from a prayer book or any book because they are not taught to read. I shake my head and try to dismiss the negativity.

I re-focus my attention on the little girl kneeling with her mama in church. She is safe and loved and praying to the God of love. I never met this little girl but I know her. I have seen her in my own daughter and grand daughters, protected kids who have their own room, play with American Girl dolls and eat nourishing food.

I see her, too in the children I lived with at the Children’s Village and in the kids I visited in an elementary school in Guatemala, and the little kids I see playing in the homeless shelter here in Santa Rosa. This little kid is all kids who have filled my life and I pray to God that her mom may continue to love and protect her in her journey.

I am sick at heart about the suffering that girls have to endure in this world of ours. The parent in me cries; the dad in me is angry at what we allow to happen to all the little girls (and little boys) who are our responsibility. It’s not okay; it never was okay that our children be made to suffer because we have allowed our dark side free reign. No! Dammit, No!

In the chapel, mom puts her arm around her child and they say a final prayer together before they leave. I send my own prayer and my dreams winging their way.

The words from “Gigi” run through my mind. The jaunty Maurice Chevalier is singing “Thank Heaven for little girls. They grow up in such a delightful way.” Please God, may we work together to make it happen.

Invisible Children

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Invisible Kids

“Yesterday upon a stair, I saw a man who wasn’t there
I saw him there again today.
I wish to God, he’d go away.”

Ogden Nash

I’m reading a book called “The Invisible Children,” about the hundreds of thousands of kids who wend their way through the Juvenile Justice System in our country. Call them “wards of the court.” Or foster kids or, more harshly, “throw away kids.” They are all around us but we don’t “see” them.

I have had quite a bit of experience with kids in this situation. Many of them, finding themselves rejected by the only parents they have ever known, are in shock. They yearn to be re-united with the very parents who abused them; they can’t help it. Their very identity is at stake.

For some reason, when I think of these invisible kids, I find the comical little verse of Ogden Nash going through my head. “Yesterday upon a stair, I saw a man who wasn’t there. I saw him there again today. I wish to God, he’d go away.”

We see our throwaway kids too, but we turn our heads away and pretend they are not there. Then we see them again “on the stair” and to be honest, we are irritated. We wish they would go away. For some of us, their very presence makes us feel guilty. We get defensive and tell ourselves that we are doing our best. These kids are fed and clothed. A mattress company gives them shoes or coats, the local civic organization gives them Christmas gifts. What’s the problem?

The problem is, and deep down we all know it, is that providing food and clothes and a basic education for kids traumatized by parental abuse and neglect is not enough.

The mental health issues faced by traumatized kids are not that dissimilar to the problems faced by our military men and women returning from the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. We can choose to put a label like PTSD on them or no. The fact remains; many of the abandoned kids who live among us have been profoundly scarred. They think that is their fault that they have been taken from their abusive or neglectful parents. They blame themselves for becoming foster kids.

We need to really SEE these kids; put ourselves in their tennis shoes. It is not their fault that they find themselves in foster care. And, like the man on the stair, wishing they would go away will not make it happen.

God’s Other Name

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God’s Other Name

The God I believe in has another name. The name is both simple and profound. Everybody knows what it means, because like the air we breathe, it is everywhere. God’s other name is love.

God is love. He is the energy that gives life to our world, the spirit that warms us, and the fire that stirs our hearts. God is the magic of springtime, the miracle of birth, the power of the wind and waves.

God is the old man who comes to the nursing home every day without fail to visit his ailing wife, the kid who carries his little brother on his back, the cop who puts his own life at risk to save a person he does not even know.

God is the God of small things, too.

I dropped my foster grandson off at school today and said to him “Have a good one, sweetheart.” Whoops! I caught myself. Did I really just call my strapping 18 year old kid…SWEETHEART?” Hurriedly, I opened the window and yelled after him, “Hey, sorry I called you sweetheart. He just smiled back at me. “It’s okay. It’s all good.” And it was. That God, whose other name is love, makes you do sappy things and they turn out okay.

But love can go deep, too.

I heard a story recently about a young dad whose wife was killed in an auto accident. The man went into a deep depression. He wondered how he could possibly carry on being both dad and mom to his seven-year-old little boy. In despair, he locked himself in the bathroom and was holding a gun to his head when he heard his son’s voice. “Hey dad, where are you? I need help with my homework.”

Call it God or call it God’s other name. Something, Someone penetrated the young dad’s soul. He put the gun away. “No way, I can do this to my boy.” He said, “I’ll be right there, son.” And he was. That’s the kind of stuff we do when we love. Love is just another name for God.

I am I and you are you and we both are one another

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“ I am I, and you are you
and we’re each other, too.”

From the Cowboy and the Cossack

The words in the title are taken from an excellent book by Clair Huffaker,called the Cowboy and the Cossack. Set in the period of history when the Tsar ruled Russia with an iron fist, the story is about a cattle-trading outfit from Montana who sold a herd of 500 long horn cattle to a group of anti-Tsarist rebels in Russia.

The deal called for a small group of Montana cowboys, boarding a ship with the long horns in the hold and, upon disembarking at Vladivostok, driving them across 1,000 miles of Siberia tundra to where the rebels would receive them.

Accompanying them on their journey was a small band of Cossacks whose job was to keep the cowboys and the cattle safe in their long trek. Both the Cossacks and the cowboys were independent-minded, ornery kind of hombres and well, they didn’t hit it off very well. In fact, they irritated the hell out of one another.

A cowboy by the name of Keith and a Cossack named Krug were among those down right hostile to each other during the first part of the long journey. But as the weeks wore on, despite the fact that neither man spoke a word of the other’s language, a friendship grew between them.

When an accident took Kruk’s life, Keith was devastated. He insisted on digging the grave for his friend and appending to the grave marker the short poem he himself wrote; the poem reads, “I am I and you are you and we’re each other, too.”

To me, the poem cuts deep. It reminds me that with all our cultural and ethnic and religious differences, we are very much the same. “We’re each other.”

Racially we are a rainbow of colors but we all bleed red. Religiously, we worship in different temples and churches but reverence the same higher power. When a baby cries, we pay attention, whether the infant is born in Brooklyn or Guatemala. We know what it is to lose a loved one. Our hearts are touched at weddings or graduations.

The most important thing in the world for us is to see our children succeed in life. We yearn to live in peace with our brothers and sisters. In the deepest recesses of our hearts we long to love and be loved.

“ I am I, and you are you and we are both each other.”

The Old Man and the Boy

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The Old Man and the Boy

“The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him”

Ernest Hemmingway, “The Old Man and the Sea”

I re-read Hemmingway’s, “The Old Man and the Sea” and see it now with new eyes. This is more than a story of an old man’s quest to catch the monster fist that had eluded him for many seasons. It is also the story of a relationship between the old man and a young boy.

It is hardly surprising that I should tune in to this part of the story. For the past nearly two years, this old guy has taken in a teenage boy as his foster son.

When I read in the book “The boy took an old army blanket off the bed and spread it over the old man’s shoulders…. You must keep warm old man.” I think of my boy’s solicitude towards me never allowing me to take out the garbage, being patient with me in my struggles to text with my cell and always adjusting the volume on the TV so I can hear it.

When the old man dreamed about the cats playing on the beach in the dusk, he said “I loved those cats as I love the boy,” I find myself acknowledging that I too love my boy as though he were my own son.

I am constantly surprised that a teenaged boy and an old guy sixty years his senior have formed a bond of friendship. Maybe we connect because we recognize in one another the impermanence of our respective stages of life.

I’m very aware that he is only a boy for a short time. Life has taught me that, all too soon, he will be a man and will put aside the things of his boyhood. That makes him precious to me and allows me to delight in his innocence and spontaneity. His very youth and energy makes me smile.

The boy, in his turn, sees in this old man a different kind of impermanence. It is, after all, the nature of old age to pass on to another life, to a different form of existence. A youth understands that and accepts it. At some spiritual level he understands that the old man is already in touch with his coming death.

There is a kind of symphony in their relationship. The old man revels in the wonder of a boy’s youthfulness. He is drawn to it and loves the boy. And the boy is drawn towards the mystery of life, played out before him in the life of the old man. He loves the old man’s stories because he gets from them the sweet sadness and the comedy of a life he is yet to experience.

Don’t think for a moment that the relationship between this kid and this old guy is the stuff of dreams. Heck no. Realities like homework, radically different tastes in music, contrary views on things like tattoos, staying out late at night, and age appropriate movies challenge us almost daily. At times we both question God’s wisdom in letting this unlikely match happen. But we have never questioned God’s sense of humor. We are having a hoot.

Songs Unsung

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Songs Unsung

My dad was a “do it now” kind of guy. He was fond of quoting the German poet, Goethe. Whenever one of us kids would be late with homework or be guilty of putting off a household task, dad would fix us with those dark brown eyes and in his deepest voice, would impale us with the words of Goethe.

“What you can do or dream you can, BEGIN IT. Courage hath genius, power, magic in it. Only engage and the mind grows heated. BEGIN IT and the work will be completed.”

The words were a verbal kick in the butt for us. My dad loathed procrastination with a passion. There was no way he would allow us to put off till tomorrow what we could do today.

Procrastination is one of our most common flaws as human beings. Who has not put off that appointment for dental cleaning? What student hasn’t delayed doing his homework until the last minute?

But procrastination can go way beyond putting off fixing the leaky faucet or the gate that squeaks. I read a line from a Bengali poet the other day that haunts me. He wrote, “The song I wanted to sing never happened because I spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument.”

Wow! His words reminded me of a deeper meaning to procrastination. There is waiting within each of us, deep within our souls, a song waiting to be sung, a song that only we can sing. I’m not talking about the spectacular talents of an Einstein but the humble gifts, unique to us, that we possess. To allow these “songs” to remain unsung is a tragedy. Our reluctance to use our God-given gifts is a loss, both for us and for the people with whom we share our moment of time.

In the “songs unsung” category, we need to think about the unique opportunities we have to make a difference in the lives of the people we meet on our journey.

Missing a chance to “catch” your kid doing something right is a song unsung.
Forgetting to say, “I love you” to your spouse or kid before going to bed at night… is a song unsung.

Putting off telling a friend you are sorry for the harm you did to him .is a song unsung.

Being so wrapped up in yourself that you don’t even pay attention to the words or actions of others ….is a song unsung.

To close your heart to someone in need…is a song unsung.

In that larger sense, we are all potential songwriters. Our time is way too short to afford the luxury of stringing and restringing our instruments. The music lies within us, waiting to be written, waiting to be sung.