Imbolc 2017 - Penance

(This is an essay related to the poem Penance posted on the fiction side of this blog).

My 82 year-old aunt is one of perhaps a handful of people who could get me to watch a church sermon. In fact, she may be the only person right now. She does not use that power lightly or frivolously. She may not know she has it.

Several days ago, for the first time in more than a decade, I sat in a virtual church and listened. Because she wanted me to. Because she thought it was important. She was right.

What I heard was a story of someone's personal family history. An affirmation of the things I've been thinking and feeling since the election, discussions we've had and half-joking plans we've laid.

The minister wasn't joking. I heard talk of refuges, networks and vigilance. Not radical talk, measured discourse based on his deeply personal experience. Discussions I never thought I’d hear outside of a fantasy role-playing game.

I'm not sure whether watching it more heartened me or scared me. The congregation was sober. These were thoughtful, upstanding, rational people, not reactionaries, pundits or demagogues. It's not that his ideas were new. It's that they touched some of my deepest fears. Fears I actively try to hold at bay because, although I've learned to trust my instincts, I am wary of giving in to them too far.

I suppose at its heart, it confirmed what a church is supposed to be about, a community looking out for one another. My aunt’s denomination in particular is much more focused on the here and now than what comes after. They are progressive and proud, and have a longstanding tradition of standing up for their beliefs, beliefs in others and their potentialities, not just themselves, even when those beliefs are unpopular.

Watching brought back some memories of going to church as a child. Good memories. Memories of the church I was raised in rather the churches that soured me to the tradition based on their radical interpretations that I just couldn't sync up with either my own experience or the world. 

It's not that I see myself going back to that. When so many of my friends and relations renewed their church affiliations after 9/11, I found that I'd already tread a different path. One that works for me. One that's seen me through some hard times. Not always comfortably but successfully.

The crux of the sermon, without getting into detail, was a quote by Faulkner. “History is not what was, but is.”

The minister spoke on two levels, one being his family’s personal experience in the Holocaust, the other being our related current situation. I think that is the point of Faulkner’s quote, that history is not what happened in the past. It’s what’s happening right now. As each moment slips by, the decisions we make become history, ours and someone else’s.

So how does that relate to either Imbolc or the poem I posted. Well, perhaps that explanation is a bit more roundabout. Though perhaps they are also intertwined.

I can’t tell you why I wrote Penance but I can tell you exactly when. It was the first poem I ever wrote. I started it on scraps of paper over one summer while I was third shift in a convenience store. I have no idea what inspired me other than wanting to play around with a sense of irony, and for it to have a particular feel. I do remember that was the summer after a good friend’s mother died and he came up to see me once in the middle of the night to talk, I think because he was awake and he knew I would be too. I can’t say whether my listening helped him. I can only hope it did.

I kept poking around at that poem for another three years, transferring it from one page to the next. Adjusting a word here, a bit of formatting there whenever I ran across it. Mostly absently, more like a meditation or a distraction than a purpose. The only thing that mattered was that I kept it and kept it in my mind.

My senior year in college, I took a course in creative writing as one of my electives. I forget if it got designated as my one and only free elective or whether it was one of several necessary humanities electives. Either way, I think I was the only electrical engineer in my class who sought out various humanities and literature courses because I enjoyed them and still couldn’t get enough. Since there were only fifteen of us who graduated (out of 60-100 who started my freshmen year), I’m almost certain of it.

At the beginning of the course, we had to submit a piece of writing, a short story, the chapter of a novel, or a poem. Something we wanted to work on and improve. Something that would be read and reviewed by the class, then revised and resubmitted at the end.

Instead of writing something new, I dug out Penance. I still liked it and wanted to see where it stood. Time probably played a factor. By then, I was deep into engineering courses and a senior project that demanded a fair piece of my attention. Or I was just skating.

Either way, my draft got trashed pretty hard, from formatting to phraseology. Though even as I was getting crushed in a very public forum of about twenty other students, some of whom were quite talented, I was noting ideas on what I could improve. I continued working on it through the spring.

When I resubmitted it at the end of the quarter, the instructor seemed happy enough with the revisions. Of course, he still didn’t like it, which he told me right after the final reading as he assigned his grade. He said it sounded “too D&D.” Fair enough, though I suspect some of his personal feelings leaked through.

He used to party with the guys in the apartment below mine. Theirs was a Bohemian frat house while ours was more of a geek enclave. Every now and then when they got out of hand after too much alcohol, I took to pounding on the floor with giant duct tape wrapped PVC and insulation foam hammer left to me by a former roommate. That usually settled things down, but only into conspiratorial, gin-soaked whispers. I suspect they were plotting our demise. Thankfully, they had all the motivation and planning skills of alcoholic artists.

As well, at one point he’d taken a good portion of class session to rail against the university administration, his department chair (who was a friend of mine and a wonderful teacher) and the Secretary of Education. I called him out on it in private after class. He was not amused and opted to give me an impromptu lecture on satire. Which might have been ok if that’s what it had been. It was more of a personal rant against the unfairness of it all and how much he was disliked by the department. And how they were plotting to get rid of him.

So we had history. Or he was right and my poem was what it was which wasn’t fine literature or a postmodern examination of a personal existential crisis. Either way, I was happy with the result of my effort and didn’t care about the grade.

I’ve always felt a bit funny about this poem. Because it went through a public reading and summary execution, and because I took notes and suggestions as I cleaned up the corpse, I never felt it was completely mine. So I’ve always been a bit reluctant to claim it and share it.

But as I reread it as I came up with the idea for this set of Celtic holiday messages, it still sent a little chill up my spine. I can picture this individual, the choices he’s made in the past and how they affect him in his present. That, like Sisyphus, he is doomed to revive a garden that his previous actions ensure will die again. His personal boulder pushed up his personal hill as penance for what he’s done. It’s a story as much as a poem. It’s not my story but it is one I can empathize with even if I’m not quite sure where it came from.

History is not what was, but is.

So why share it now? Why today? Why at Imbolc?

Well, Imbolc should be obvious if you’ve read these messages before. Imbolc is also known as Candlemas. Early Christians poached it from the festival of Brigit (who got co-opted into St. Brigid), the Celtic goddess of fire and poetry among other things. So it’s a poem to share on a day of poetry, one that seems to fit with the winter and its discontents.

As to why I’m posting it at this very moment, that, too, should be obvious. We, as a nation, have made a choice. We have turned in a particular direction. Not in a measured, thoughtful way where reasonable people can disagree. In a divisive, potentially disastrous way. I see already deep rifts deepening. Both sides seem tamped and primed for revolution. Their positions are entrenched along the River Somme or a Maginot Line. Or the outskirts of Petersburg.

People all over the world are facing that same choice, whether to turn toward or turn away. Many are scared. Or frustrated. Or feel neglected. Some justifiably so, others perhaps not. With the latter, there are men well gifted in exploiting their fears.

I cannot say where this choice will lead. My hope is that it, like many things, ends up being better than we think, better than we fear. That it provides a measure of good along with the perceived bad. A measure of balance. A measure of progress as we stumble forward through this life, hopefully wiser than we began.

But that outcome is far from certain based on the early portents and cycles of history. I was reminded of that as I sat and listened to the sermon. The time of storms is near again. Watchfires burn the northern sky.

History is not what was, but is.

In an instant, the choices you make become irrevocable, at least for that particular moment in time. You can’t go back to undo those decisions, you can only move forward from that point. Only if you are extremely fortunate will you get to choose again and discover a portion of the road not taken. More often not.

There are consequences to our actions. So in the seasons ahead, be sure to choose wisely.

© 2017 Edward P. Morgan III

Territory

Twelve years ago, one of our cats contracted cancer. During the course of her treatment, we took her to a specialist for various tests and therapies. Some days, we dropped her off at the clinic in the morning and returned to pick her up again later that afternoon. Other days she had to stay the night.

When we arrived at the clinic one evening to bring her home, a vet tech greeted us and said he would bring her right out, then disappeared through a door into the back. Five minutes went by, then ten. The clinic was always busy, so at first we didn't think much about it. After fifteen minutes we began to wonder. About that time, the same tech came out and asked me if I would come with him. "We're having trouble coaxing her out." I followed, wondering how that could be. This wasn't the first time she'd had to stay with them. Over the progression of her illness, we'd had to leave her more than once. On those occasions we had visited her each evening, much to her enjoyment and relief. She seemed to derive a great deal of reassurance from our presence even if she only sat on one of our laps while we petted her for an hour or two and read our books. During those visits, the techs had never had any trouble bringing her out.

For those who don't know, this cat's name was Felicia. I gave her that name after she didn't stop purring for the first two days she was with us, even while she slept. We took her in as a foundling, a stray kitten with four burned paws and infected bite wounds on her belly and tail crying on our doorstep. Once inside, she seemed happy and grateful to have found a sanctuary from the trials of her first three months of life.

Her arrival for me was one of those magical moments of synchronicity that we cherish for a lifetime. Days before she found us, I had been thinking of all the things I would want in a cat if I ever had one. Her disposition perfectly matched my desires, as though someone had gone down a list and checked off each item one by one. Affectionate, check. Curious, check. Playful, check. Tolerant, check. Smart, definite check. Female, check. They even threw in tactics for free, a skill she needed nearly constantly in her first few weeks with us as she defended herself and her territory against Karen's socially-challenged, resident cat. The only thing I hadn't thought about was her coloration. She was a black and tan tortoiseshell calico, a muddled mix of color I still find striking, though perhaps I may be biased. Indeed, love is often blind, or at least needs a strong, vision-correcting prescription.

Very quickly, Felicia became like a familiar to me, greeting me every morning, rubbing my leg goodbye before I left for work. She met me at the door when I returned each evening and always came to say good night before I went to sleep. She would follow me from room to room for days after I returned home from a business trip as if trying to make sure I wasn't going to abandon her again. She would come to find me anytime I made a greeting noise, a kind of high-pitched, reverse whistle. When Karen and I argued, she would sit between us, looking from one of us to the other, purring, taking neither side. She got along with all her feline companions, even the ones who didn't get along with each other. She was cautious around strangers but warmed to most people. She was never trouble at the vet. In short, she was the sweetest cat I could ever ask to share my life with.

So when I went back to the bank of cages where the clinic kept their patients while they waited to be retrieved, I was surprised to see three vet techs standing in front of an open door, all with very concerned looks on their faces. "We can't get her out," one of them said. They watched horror as I approached the cage and peered inside. Felicia was huddled as far back as she could get, crouching defensively, ready to strike out at anything or anyone who came near. Without thinking, I made my greeting call, stuck my hand inside and let her sniff it, then scooped her out without a struggle. No problem. I didn't need a leash or a carrier, I just held her in my arms as she purred. She still had the catheter strapped to her front leg from treatment, a kind of temporary kitten chemo port.

When I turned back, the techs were aghast and amazed. One of them said, "I've done this for years, and I NEVER would have stuck my hand in that cage." Talking to them, I found out she had been hissing and spitting and clawing each time they approached her cage, like she was wild or rabid. They had tried calming her, then coaxing her, and then had broken out the heavy leather gloves. They were about to resort to a neck loop when they called me in. She was completely unwilling to emerge. She was guarding her food and water bowls possessively, defending them from atop the padded sleeping mat inside her cage like Custer on his final hill. That steel enclosure had become her territory, her new home, even if cramped, cold and uncomfortable, her place of greater safety in a suddenly confusing and uncertain world.

In college, I took a course on the Holocaust. Reading the accounts of survivors, it struck me that no matter how long people endured sub-human conditions, they tended to cling to two things. The first was the people that they knew, their family, their friends, even relative strangers they recognized from their village or town. The other was the scant possessions they retained. With people they knew they shared what they had to the extent that they could, at times even when it might endanger their own survival. But if a stranger tried to take something from them, a rag, a cup, a spoon, even a space on a bunk could become worth a life or death struggle. When the camps were liberated, a few people refused to leave the setting with which they had become so intimately familiar over years of tortured existence, choosing an impoverished present over a completely unknown future. That I live in a world where such things still happen tears my heart apart.

But humans, like all mammals, like all members of the animal kingdom, fight to survive no matter how desperate their situation becomes. Survival situations change us all in unpredictable ways. Sometimes we struggle against events we perceive as threatening simply because they are unknown. There are days I have to strive to remember that when strangers act in a particular or peculiar way, as I am sure some people try to remember with me, even some who know me, or at least think that they might.

There are few instincts greater than that of defending a territory we consider to be our own. Perhaps only the imperatives to find food and water and a mate are more strongly embedded in our psyche. And there are few more touching moments than realizing that someone trusts you enough to abandon a defensible position and expose themselves to danger because they know you will keep them safe. It's a solemn trust that can be difficult to uphold, and one that I treasure being granted if only once a dozen years ago.

I hope you have someone with whom you share such a bond at least once in your life. If you are so privileged, remember to cling to them as you see each other through these increasingly unsettled times. As you do, remember to purr, to comfort one another, to remind each other that no matter what the territory in which you find yourselves that everything will be all right as long as you share that trust.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III