1
Memoir, if it's not too late
for a backward documentary, a journal reconstructed on whims and maybes making up for years of forgetting to take notes: whims for what and how much I choose to remember, maybes for all that cannot be said with certainty, which is nothing (whims) and everything (maybes).
Certainly there is purpose in whims and maybes. But it's not for me to say.
There will be, anyway,
an attempt at order and veracity, as there is, after all, a desire to be read and remembered. Chapter one: I was born. And in the end, I will simply stop writing. Which is what we all progress towards. Inkless we are born, and inkless we shall be in our final moment, but what stories there are to be tols, what whims and maybes to be written inbetween!
So let me begin.
2
The big chapters are daunting: love, faith, health, pride, humility,
so let me start with tamer subjects: diversions, distractions, digressions. You can skip this section if you want, but this is what defines me:
old fashioned poetry,
watching birds in their natural state,
listening to human music;
joys of discovery,
paddling down a slow river,
taking time for an arthouse movie;
aerobic meditation,
finding rhythm in routine,
sometimes changing the pace.
Noticing the rul of threes.
The big chapters, love and God and healing, the ups and the downs,
will be more important I suppose, or as important as story for posterity should be. But this is me, and this is my proper introduction. Chapter Two, then: I am alive. Maybe, whimsically, this will be the whole story.
3
And it is your story, too:
you, to whom I have turned, are in these pages, every one of you.
Sister Anne, who prompted me this summer with a passing what if. Brother Dan, who has inspired and reinspired the ink to flow. Brother Josh, who shows beyond scribbles what it means to live.
Son Andrew and daughter Kirsten, my flesh and blood, my dreams and hopes, wonderfully determined to be more than a reflection.
Mother Marilyn, and father Joe too, whose own faces I sometimes see in the mirror, and there you are in my smile too.
And more of you: friends, associates, neighbors, fellow congregants. Ghosts from the past, strangers I have yet to know, and many more whose names I'll never learn: thank you all the same, for being the faces I see in front of me and within me, the very mirrors to my soul.
4
As I write this I am sitting on the edge of a river.
I have found myself here many times, perched pretentiously where the Fisher King wept, where Sidharta attained peace, where many before me have waited and drawn pictures in the sand. There is a river in every big city, it seems, and streams across every page of history, throughout the world and even into the realms of mythology and legend.
I like a big river, an important river that connects with all others, a river with a famous name and a powerful flow. Give me Mark Twain's river, but let me find it as Huck did, a few miles out of town; let me sit along its rich banks with nothing but time, away from instructions and factories, unconcerned with obligations and inheritances. Let this be my Stillwater, full of life and purpose, with destiny beneath its gentle surface,
and tomorrow I may weep and seek and wait along these banks, but for today,
let me know this river's simple serenity.
5
Serenity: now there's a prayer!
A wish and a word: I might as well fly to the top of the world or trudge across vast deserts. I could just as easily become one with this big river.
"Calm down," says the ferryman. Yeah, sure, easier said than down.
If peace were as easy as pausing I would stop everything and let this water flow.
To know serenity, santi, salaam, shalom, I should not trouble you, or myself, with these opening chapters or the easier pages of this story, Let me skip right to the faith adn love and healing; let me sit down, close my eyes and surrender.
A wish and a word, to accept the things around me, just as they are, to not be afraid of the world I'm in, to find my perch a few miles out of town. A prayer, even before I confess my faith, before I know what to believe.
Here, at the beginning of my story: serenity.
6
The serenity prayer continues, seeking courage and wisdom,
but these too I'll save for the later chapters: perhaps I'll be bolder and smarter with experience and age, somewhere down the river a ways, past 50, 60, 70...
for now, though, it is enough to accept the things I cannot change, to let my fears be taken by the quiet current ---to simply be!
Existing, persisting, maintaining, remaining:
keeping my place in time, or the space, in any case, that I've been given for the moment. Here I stand.
And if, for the moment, I let intellect distract me, to exist somewhere between Kierkegaard and Nietsche, surely I would falter; likewise, if I let my blood boil within me, like a fanatic or a patriot, I might lose my place, this moment in which I find myself.
It is not too deep to pray this prayer though, a singular pray in need of being prayed:
Grant me, God, serenity.
7
So now I have the groundwork, the riverbank work, for the first several chapters of my story:
I was born, I am alive.
I have an audience who shares my moment and a studio that gives me peace.
And I have an opening prayer to accept what I've been given.
After this may come those chapters on love and faith and health and pride and humility ---maybe,
if I am drawn to write that far and if there is still ink in my pen.
And if, of course, I am whimsically stirred to remember those big daunting subjects when the time comes and the blank pages are before me. Or maybe, on that whim, I will simply set the pen down then and there, and let the opening chapters speak for themselves, being the heart and soul of what I remember.
Let it be, one way or the other.
But let me begin.
