Meeting myself in St. Louis
Downpours, desserts, depth: Franciscans of all denominations deliberate.
For a second straight year, I attended the Chapter/ Convocation of the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans. While the requirement for admission to full status expects one might do so for two years ahead, my older son was married the same weekend in 2023, so I had the best excuse possible. (I began writing this entry on his anniversary; his brother will be hitched in Portland to a rare native daughter in about five weeks. The day before my elder son’s would have been my 34th, now on a bittersweet date...)
Well, seems when I head East (although compromised Missouri's famously vague, neither Southern nor Northern, Western let alone that opposite direction), that viral threats pursue. In 2022, past Halloween, I'd been dreading a family visit to New York City, hearing that at the tail end of Covid, there'd been a germ-laden outbreak of that and related nasties in Gotham City. Wound up catching it, as did my wife, and the then-92-year-old relative. Luckily we all recovered, but last Saturday night, we heard that the C-word had hit among those gathered in a/c (a tad short of 100) Wednesday through Sunday. I'd felt weary by that night at the St L airport (with its two very dispersed terminals, which both lifts left me dumped off at the wrong one) but chalked it up to six nights on the road, time lag, 24 hours elapsed sitting on flights or waiting for them, and the giddy decline in diet to Midwestern caloric overload. I wound up gaining about a pound a day; chocolate chip cookies, cheesecake, trail mix, and apple crumble may all be credited or castigated respectively. Anyway, the food at the PRC "renewal center" fka "retreat house" isn't bad at all for chow from a steam table "institution;” I enjoyed a salad (if no lettuce for me) as well as a dessert bar for lunch (usually I skip as I wake up late) and dinner. I confess my sugar intake soared.
There's over eighty “siblings” in the OEF, among the sanctioned family of vowed “lay” Franciscans, descendants of everyday folks who in medieval Italy banded together for mutual aid, peacemaking, and proverbial good works in quiet, steadfast fashion. This year, our conference had three-dozen participants in person and up to a two dozen on Zoom. I set no land speed record for my itinerary; poor H clocked 31 hours from Denmark; K from New Zealand was likely going on 2/3 that. My bony back still aches.
Myself, a comrade from upstate NY, another from Vermont, and the Dane joined me in advancing to professed inclusion. A boast for the very DEI and as H told us, "proud to be 'woke'" contingent. Which sometimes imposes upon me with the "custody of the tongue" imperative, a necessary stricture for Franciscan and for mature, hard-won humility. Much of the gathering took up (after an initial day of discerning in silent Quaker style who was chosen for the new Council; I found it intriguing that on the first "conclave" ballot 4/5 of my choices were selected, and the same fraction were elected, out of three-dozen names) how to respond as "witnesses to hope" in light, or shadow, of the recent shifts in public policy and in our government, which of course darkened the prospects of all around me. Who aimed to resist, if some sans hashtag. I've no affection for "performative outrage," but I accept “minoritas.” Listen and learn.
When Francis of Assisi began his congregation around 1209, those in the laity asked if they might join. Living as husbands, wives, widows, or those without any traditional vocation to a cloistered regimen. For while Poor Clares by the restrictions of the violent era couldn't minister in the streets, the “minor” or “lesser” brethren did, so partnering with ordinary people worked. This innovation birthed the Brothers and Sisters of Penance, which endured as the “Third” alongside the First of friars (not monks, this medievalist reminds you louts) and Second of Clare’s enclosed, convent companions. Eventually, lay “tertiaries” evolved as congregations of “regular” clergy or worldly “Secular” fraternities, of which my Irish grandmother was part, in what they nicknamed “The Happy Death Society,” for she was buried in a earth-toned shroud, hearkening back to an original reason for their incorporation, to assist with funeral costs. Anglican and Lutheran Third Orders also thrive. (OEF might redefine soonish as interfaith, but it may mean creedal Christian affirmations may not weather such looser revision. I hear we count pagans and a Buddhist in and in the past, a Jew…)
In small groups about how to respond mindfully to “current events” in grassroots, accommodating, yet firmly principled fashion according to the personal Rule we each craft and revise, applying the OEF's seventeen statutes to daily decisions and long-term relationships, spiritual experience and professional activities, I joined the Civil Discourse circle, led by the Upstate Empire State of Mind gentleman, who's involved in the estimable Braver Angels initiative. It brings together blue-state 4/5 of its ranks with red-state neighbors. Why the lack of balance? Those on the right fear far more rejection, ostracism, and rejection from their supposedly “co-exist” purportedly open-minded partisans. (The chart graphs how “we” feel “talking about politics” on the Braver Angels' site.) So, engineering a space encouraging dialogue, courage, noshing, understanding, and collaboration becomes imperative to increase U.S. commonsense.
I'm not delving deep into details, for privacy, but if you as do I wonder among a “pro-Gaza” and Muslim-friendly crowd (given the “special consideration” granted custodial Franciscans by the Sultan since the Fifth Crusade in 1219 over the Holy Land shrines) "what about the Jews," suffice to say I've been blundering a Franciscan path seven summers--which my departed spouse regarded with mingled bemusement and disdain, fearing the damage it could inflict on my psyche—and, after four derailed with the previous “Roman” entity due to intransigence, canon law, and the refusal of my wife and me to "have our marriage blessed by a priest," I entered this clan: default Christian if eclectic, earth-centered, heartland, gender-non-conforming, and/or genial misfits disenchanted by evangelical, Catholic, or megachurch settings; primarily a flyover, restive, yearning lot. Necessary for my self-discipline reducing Blarney'd ego. We’re deluded if honesty= unfiltered snark. Or candor= ”straight-talk no b.s.- express.”
As the group was founded in 1983 in North Dakota by three UCC ministers, it's always been, long before our digital community connections, a dispersed and soon international Order, at first by correspondence and phone, now online. We had a spirited discussion about advancing an aspirant who technically had not fulfilled all statutes for candidacy, and this embodied the vexed question of how well those in an organization can get to know some folks from afar as a thumbnail, vs. chatting with them face to face, given that 70% as non-verbal communication we process from our savanna, over hundreds of millennia in our “Dunbar’s number” 150-limit networks.
Due to reticence and Covid combined, I eschew revealing chitchat let alone profound statements. Let's simply sum up that being immersed in a countercultural Gospel-based faction, attracting diverse and intelligent seekers from around the world, it's a necessary model for consensus building, peace, patience, tinkering of rules to bend for circumstances (as Francis the Founder 900 years-plus ago had to do as scrappy hirsute “fratelli” expanded exponentially beyond a romanticized band of Umbria brethren), and the promotion of compassion (a characteristic always in my short supply, one reason I felt drawn to OEF though I'm no joiner). A loner’s leap into Kierkegaard's faith (my void)? Daodejing’s cautionary tale of our inarticulate heart’s vain speech?
For as I testified before my promotion in full, I've lacked precisely that gift, recalling my parochial schoolteacher in seventh grade warning we could lose it. I did, teen early onset radio silence. I witness around me those who hear that Voice, but as I wrote, I accept that aridity, a desert(ed) quest, persists to be my preset "present." I explained to fellow Franciscans that it's as if I unwrapped grace's offering, wondered 1) why'd so-and-so give me this 2) who'd've thunk I'd ever have wanted that…Moses’ hineni. “הִנֵּֽנִי.”
While reconnecting was salutary before it neared a hundred degrees in a swampy confluence of Two Mighty Rivers (very close to these coordinates, but fenced off and beyond reconnaissance) or well after dusk, day one caught me by thunderstorm in the pioneer (1804?-) Coldwater Cemetery—-where a mapped straight white dead (fe)male road ends (video)— at twilight. So drenched my clothes took over a day to dry. Had to don warm gear hauled up from Andes for my Northwest passage ahead.
An example of the mindset of the Franciscan charism cleansed of warm fuzzies: late Saturday evening we’re informed, immediately prior to the profession ritual, of the U.S. bombing of Iraq. Then of a viral outbreak among us. (Thus many masks sprouted immediately prior although not me: figured too late…down in the dumps, due to isolation and being back “housing insecure” for my final month in my birthplace where I’ve spent all but two of my sixty-odd spins around the sun at this solstice.) Simple service convened by myself and Italian-proud confrere (I opted for listening to birdsong in lieu of a hymn: never knew an app can identify avian trills, and seventeen reported on a trail around the grave meadows) Sunday morning evokes an intercession for Sister Coronavirus’ mutating will to power. I ponder Dylan Thomas’ force driving a flower; Francis’ welcomed blindness, ashes; stealing our faces; sly Schopenhauerian survival; diminishing OEF grey, dun-clad stamina. A lucky 13/35 got tapped “you're it.”
I tested negative the dawn after landing in Southern California but positive at noon yesterday; celebrating my birthday solo as I draft this entry. Dog sitting and couch surfing in hipster Silver Lake. As my older son averred, if I have to be taken ill, from this my third literal L.A. Basement on a Hill, a panorama to see out my recuperation: the June Gloom haziness diffuses the Griffith Observatory on the ridge and the iconic sign of Hollywood to the left, faintly framed at center, between those triple palms. I’d anticipated distance from this fervent milieu due to my ongoing (not for the first time) estrangement with rickety cradle Church, and my leaning towards my wife's Jewish tradition as better compatible with my skewed agnostic outlook (always a wanderer, never arriving) of liminal inquiry. As I decided in 2018, again 2022, to peer at why I lean-in towards this oblique Franciscan search which has colored my entire life, I aver whatever faint "calling,” however my "vocation" transforms outside denominational or confessional definitions, that affiliation marks insight. Share your wisdom or wish.
