Journeying Into Mystery

THE PERFECT STORM

The Perfect Storm,
a confluence of
contributing events,
meteorological in origin,
creations of monumental chaos
swathing through human lives,
human cultures,
property and commerce,
metaphorically as devastating
as the failed human relationships
of the meteorologists who
named them spitefully
after the former lovers
who, categorically five,
broke their hearts:
Andrew and Maria,
David and Sandy,
Mitch and Irma.
Why my sudden obsession
with horrific, destructive storms?
Philosophically, Perfect Storms
are a part of the human condition
which drastically shape our lives
growing and revealing themselves
like the confluence of lasix
I washed down with
twenty ounces of coffee
making its presence known
in a most frightening way
as I am stuck in gridlock traffic.

(c) 2019, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

On September 24, 1994, I, along with 8 other men, were ordained to the permanent diaconate of the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis by Archbishop John Roach at the Cathedral of St Paul. I composed piano music for each one of my classmates as an ordination present (heard on this blog from time to time). For the ordination Mass, I composed the hymn, “Abba, Yeshua, Ruah” (Abba is Aramaic for Father, Yeshua is Aramaic for Jesus, and Ruah, Hebrew for Spirit). The text I wrote for the hymn describes the life of being a servant/disciple of Jesus. As Jesus says many times in the Gospels, discipleship is not easy, but it is to be the destiny of all Christians. The Roman Catholic deacon is to personify Jesus as “Servant of God.”

When a deacon is ordained, in many ways his whole family is ordained as well. His ordination impacts their lives. This is why before a man is ordained to the diaconate, his family MUST approve his ordination. I have always maintained, that of the two of us, Ruthie would be the better deacon. It is with this lived knowledge that I urge the Pope to restore the ordination of women to the diaconate. The Church would be so very well served in so doing.

Here is the text of the hymn:

Abba, Abba.
May we be dwellings of your Holy Love,
the love which You grace all below, above.
May we be dwellings of your Holy Peace,
the peace for which all souls search and seek.
You loved so much that you sent your Son.
Only in You can we live as one,
Dwell in us Father, so that all may feel,
the touch of your love and your peace-filled will.

Yeshua, Yeshua,
May we be servants of You, Eternal Word,
Servants of You, compassionate Lord.
O may we seek you among the very least,
Inviting all to the Father’s feast.
You loved so much that You gave Your life.
You conquered our death so that we may rise.
O loving Jesus, may our bodies be
Your living Body for all to see.

Ruah, Ruah.
O Holy Spirit, come and make us whole,
enflame our hearts, our minds, our souls.
Inspire our actions, our fears relieved
so we may give to others what we’ve received.
Vessel of hope on our world outpour,
Your healing breath our lives restore.
Infuse our lives now with Your holy gifts
so in You, source of love, we may always live.
Abba, Yeshua, Ruah.

The recording that is presented here is that which we heard at the ordination Mass on September 24, 1994. You can hear the wonderful live acoustics of the Cathedral of St Paul (the acoustics are wonderful for music, horrible for the spoken word). The choir is made up of the choirs of all the churches of the ordinands (those to be ordained), including the church choirs of St Hubert, St Wenceslaus, Immaculate Heart of Mary, St Agnes, Transfiguration, St Bartholomew, St Odilia, St Richard, and Sacred Heart (if I remember them all correctly). The choir was under the very skilled direction of my good friend, Dan Westmoreland. My class was given permission to videotape the ordination Mass (as long as the videographers didn’t impose themselves on the liturgy). It is audio from the videotape that you hear.

After nearly 25 years of diaconal ministry, I watch the video tape of my ordination to the diaconate to recapture my initial enthusiasm. Years of ministry can bring on a bit of cynicism as one encounters the very human part of the institutional Church with all its politics and need for conversion. The video tape is a good reminder, especially when I am feeling particularly jaded about the Church, as to why I was ordained.

Now as I get closer to retiring from full-time ministry, I look back and marvel on how I have grown in ministry and how, in spite of the hardships ministry on myself and my family, I have grown as a deacon, as Servant of Christ.

One of my favorite movies is the William Goldman penned, Rob Reiner directed masterpiece, “The Princess Bride”. The kernel of the movie revolves around the human pursuit of “true love.” In close to 45 years of marriage, I have found discovered the meaning of true love. It is not the advertised images of young, nubile couples frolicking at some resort along the Caribbean coastline, nor romantic liaisons in exotic places of our world. True love is found not in melodramatic romance novels. True love is only truly found in the everyday mundanity of life. Hence, the origin of this poem.

My feet suspended
from the end of the
foot rest of my recliner.
Socks gently removed,
your hands warm the oil,
softly, tenderly massaging its
mysterious healing properties
into my dry heels,
my weary arches,
my sore soles and toes.
Your reflexology of love
simultaneously, lovingly
massaging my soul.

(c) 2019, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

We began,
arms linked together,
a metaphor of souls
as closely joined.
Processing, our destiny
wrapped in mystery,
our dreams and goals
loosely defined to
building a life,
a family,
yet to be revealed.

Folksong beginnings,
“Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” lives,
our children,
surprise adventures,
forays into adolescent angst,
parent and child
blindly, mutually
seeking our destiny,
together, apart, together
touching, testing, peering
ever so carefully
our existential place
within metaphysical timelessness,
the wrested restlessness
of the finite present in mystery.

Marriage is at best
a paradoxical sacrament.
The sought after
life of unity
only to be attained,
not at the time
of witnessed vows,
but at the end of life.
“What God has joined”
pulled apart by children,
by work, by survival,
it is only now
we begin to learn
the experience of
living and sleeping together.

My love,
though our bodies
may be battered,
beaten by genetics,
by illness, accident,
and neglect,
our souls remain united,
joined together
on the ontological
journey into eternity.
Beautiful as ever,
you remain the center
of my being, the
greatest experience
and expression of
Eternal Love.

(c) 2019, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

My sister, Mary Ruth, was born on this day in 1955. She squeezed a lot of living within the short span of her life. She traveled throughout Europe and the South Pacific. She camped in the Boundary Waters. She received her degree from St. Catherine’s College as an Occupational Therapist, specializing as an O.T for cardiac patients, and received and M.A. in Education from the University of St Thomas. At the time of her death in 1997, she was working on a Doctorate.

She did all of this even though she suffered greatly from Crohn’s disease. While we can’t pinpoint when her illness began, it was misdiagnosed for a number of years, she began to get sick around the age of 15 years. Over the next 25 years, she had one to two surgeries a year cutting out the diseased part of her small intestine and resectioning her small intestine. At the time of her death, she had three feet of small intestine left. She would spend an average of six to eight weeks in the hospital a year.

The last ten years of her life she was on medical disability. While she could eat, the disease prevented her small intestine from passing on the nutrients of the food to her body. She got her nourishment through hyperalimentation, in which the nutrients were intravenously passed into her body. The downside to hyperalimentation is that it sucks the calcium out of the bones. At the time of Mary Ruth’s death, her bones were brittle from advanced osteoporosis. She would cough and break a rib.

Mary had an indomitable spirit and refused to let her illness define who she was and what she could do. With the help of her two best friends, both doctors, she did a lot of world travel. To this very day, they will gather at her grave and sing all their favorite songs. Since Mary Ruth was born on Flag Day, inevitably, “Your A Grand Old Flag” and other similar songs will be sung at her gravesite.

Because Mary Ruth was a trained medical person, she knew far more about Crohn’s and her Crohn disease than did her internist. Over all the years of her being treated for the illness, she developed numerous allergies to the medications she received. When she would go down to surgery, her medical history files would travel down with her, twelve inches of medical files stacked on top of each other.

As difficult as her life was, she loved life and to quote Dylan Thomas, was not willing to go “gently into that dark night.” She was on medical disability the last ten years of her life. She researched everything she could about her illness and was ready to try all sorts of new treatments to extend her life.

Mary Ruth would take my kids out for movies, to Dayton’s Downtown Minneapolis at Christmas to see all the decorations on the fourth floor of the department store. There were the numerous family formal portraits at Como Park in St Paul and other locations. The picnics she would plan at which the bees and the ants had the most fun and food. She was the one that kept our family connected to our greater family in Pittsburgh and Virginia. When mom and dad celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, two years after Mary Ruth’s death, I missed Mary Ruth’s ability to organize big family gatherings. She really knew how to throw a party.

Finally, Mary Ruth’s illness prevailed. The doctors were unable to stop the internal bleeding caused by the illness and Mary was transferred from ICU to the hospice wing of St Joseph’s Hospital. After the nurses had settled Mary in her room, Mary looked around the room and greeted all our dead relatives present. She turned to my mother and I and said, “They are playing my song, but I am not ready to hear it yet.” My mom said to me, “It must be the morphine.” I replied to mom, “It’s morphine, mom, not LSD. She is beginning to see beyond our world to the next. Your mom and dad, your sister, Greta are all there to welcome her.” Mary Ruth was not ready to her their song. She still had two days of life left. Those two days were tough for her. I remember Mary Ruth’s last words. She woke up, looked at me and asked for some Seven-up and ice chips. Then she said to me, “You know this really sucks don’t you?” I replied, “Yeah, I know.” She took a sip of the Seven-up, ate a couple of ice chips, and slipped off into a coma from which she never woke up.

This is a song I composed as a birthday present for my sister in 1988. Happy birthday Mary!!!

The Trinity. It is a mystery that people, especially theologians, always want to solve, but in so doing, always fail. Quite simply our finite minds just can’t wrap themselves around infinity. The Holy Trinity is far too vast a mystery for our feeble minds to handle. Hence, we have Jesus, the Incarnation of God in human form. Jesus is the human translation of who God truly is. In the person of Jesus, our minds are able to glimpse and grasp the mystery of the God who created us. Sadly, we often fail, as Christians, to listen and to follow what he taught us and modeled for us.

I think the only thing we need to grasp about the Holy Trinity is the word, relationship. The Jewish theologian and rabbi, Hans Buber’s first sentence in his magnificent book, I and Thou, is, “In the beginning was relation.” The Holy Trinity is God in relation to God’s self. As Human Beings, made in the image and likeness of God, we carry within ourselves this Divine relationship. It is a natural part of who we are. Just as we don’t have to mentally think to breathe in and breathe out, this Divine relationship is a natural part of our lives without us noticing it or acknowledging it.

We hear this expressed in our prayer. In most Catholic prayer, all prayer is directed to the “Father”, through “Jesus” the Son, in the “Holy Spirit” (For Catholics, note that with the exception of two prayers, namely, the Penitential Rite, e.g. “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy”, and the Fraction Rite, e.g. “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us,” all prayer at Mass is directed to the Father.). Notice the end of most prayers at Mass. “We pray this to you (the Father), through Jesus Christ your Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.”

This Divine Relationship is operative in our lives all the time. When we hear the birds sing in the morning, bask in the sunlight on a warm Summer day, when we breathe in fresh air on a Spring day, we, unknowingly are giving thanks to God, through Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. When we hold our significant loved ones in a warm embrace, calm a crying child, or cradle a baby in our arms, we, unknowingly, give thanks to God, through Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. When we savor the flavor of food or a good drink, listen to music that inspires, enthralls us, or warms our spirits, we, unknowingly, are giving thanks to God, through Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. When we encounter physical, emotional, or spiritual pain in our lives and cry to God for succor, healing, and peace, our cries for help are directed to God, through Jesus, in the Holy Spirit.

Just as we don’t have to understand the mechanics of breathing in order to breathe, so we do not have to understand the Holy Trinity in order to have the Holy Trinity work within our lives. The Holy Trinity is always moving within us, largely unnoticed by us. On this Feast of the Holy Trinity, let us give thanks for this wondrous Mystery which moves just as mysteriously in our lives, and with whom we are so intimately connected.

This past June 11th was the 70th wedding anniversary of my mother and father. Dad died in 2004, and mom died this past June 30th, 2018. I believe that death never separates two people who love each other. Their love keeps them united. I am sure that mom, who was a bit OCD, has tidied up Heaven to her specifications. Heaven has never seen such cleaner clouds!

At the time of my mother’s death, I composed this song and this meditation in memory of my mother and father.

Psalm 71

For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you. I have been like a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all day long. I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, O my God; I will sing praises to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel. My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have rescued. (Psalm 71: 5-8, 22-23, NRSV)

There are certain psalms that have a great deal of meaning for people. Psalm 71 is one of those psalms for me. This song is based on the verses above. As I reflect on this psalm, I find myself a child so very much loved by my God, who is both mother and father to me. God is the parent who never abandons me but is always looking after me.

As a young child, I remember going to the big Chicago department store, Marshall Fields, with my mother. It was right before Christmas and the store was crowded with people. My mother was shopping for clothes, a very tedious task for a four year old child. Marshall Fields’ toy store was a veritable treasure trove of toys, something more akin to my interest then women’s undergarments and the like. The toy section of the store called to me like the song of the Greek Sirens luring Greek mariners to their destruction. Tempted by the thought of all the toys beckoning to me in the toy section of the store, I wandered away from my mother. My mother knew me all too well and let me wander, keeping a watchful eye on me. After tiring of looking at the toys I suddenly realized that I was lost and alone in this vast store filled with people, my mother nowhere in sight. Little did I know that she was keeping an eye on me, just an aisle over from me. I became frightened to the point of panic! Suddenly, there she was in front of me, simultaneously comforting me and gently scolding me for having wandered away from her.

This is the God, the gentle loving parent that this psalm portrays so vividly to me. I dedicate this to my mom and my dad, who cared for me, protected me, allowed me to make mistakes all the while loving me so very greatly. Their death has not separated them from me. As they did, when I was a child, they keep a watchful, loving eye on me, just as my mother did at Marshall Fields in Chicago so very long ago.

Ruthie has had a very tough year. It has been approximately 8 months since she was first run over by a pickup truck, suffered two broken ankles, one which healed on its own, and one which later needed surgery. She was cleared to go back to work in February and lasted only one night. It hurt her to walk. An MRI discovered that the top of her right foot (the surgery ankle) was broken. Another long period of healing and finally cleared to go back to work in May, only to last 4 days when it became too painful to walk. Another MRI revealed that she has osteoporosis in her lower back and multiple fractures in her lower spine and cracked vertebrae. It has been one setback after another and she is quite depressed about it. She has finally made the decision to retire at the beginning of August. Hopefully, her back will be more healed than broken by that time.

This poem is about God incarnate within others. So often when we are in the midst of crises in our lives, whether it be health, or work related, or relationship, we wonder, “Where are you God?” We are not alone in this. In both Mark’s and Matthew’s Passion accounts, Jesus in Gethsemane calls on God to assist him and God remains silent. Jesus’ last words in both of those Passion accounts, “My God, my God why have you forsaken (or abandoned) me?” is a cry of one who feels abandoned by God and is perplexed by God’s seeming absence. Jesus was no stranger to the human condition.

Well I know these feelings of abandonment. A simple hip replacement turned into a medical nightmare when a MRSA infection set in that would not be cured. After 8 weeks the artificial hip would have to be removed. The normal antibiotic for MRSA came close to killing me. I went 5 1/2 months without a left hip as infectious disease doctors tried to find antibiotics in combination that would kill the MRSA but not kill me. It would take 3 more surgeries on the same area (it got to the point where surgical staples were no longer effective. The surgeon used 50 lb weight fish line as sutures toward the end.) before finally I would receive a second hip, 8 months after I had received the first artificial hip and begin to walk again.

It is from out of this dark and frightening time that I address this poem to my beloved, Ruth.

FINDING GOD

Eight months.
Has it been that long?
Chair bound, waiting,
bones knit slowly,
far slower than
the many sweaters
you have crocheted.
Healing and wholeness
seemingly, just out of reach.

I remember my crucible.
Eleven weary, hapless months,
six of which hopping around
like Long John Silver
cutting deals with God,
groping blindly for
God’s presence, wondering,
asking, “Where are you?”
as the infectious disease
doctors groped for
a cure for my MRSA.

Within the silence
was the answer I sought.
God was present
all the time.
God present
in your touch.
God’s comfort
in your words.
The last face I beheld
before slipping into
surgical sleep
was yours.
The first face I beheld
as I awakened
into the haze of post-op
was yours.

It was always you,
God present to me.
At home, in the waiting,
those sterile rooms
of hospitals and
doctors offices,
the long car rides
to appointments.
Always God present
to me in you, in
your smile, in the
changing of many
surgical dressings,
God in you for me.

Now it is my turn
to be God for you.

(c) 2019, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

In a Confirmation at St Wenceslaus in the early 80’s, the confirmandi stood as Archbishop Roach prayed, invoking the Holy Spirit to come down upon them. As he prayed, what appeared to be a bird soared over the heads of the confirmandi. Upon closer examination, it wasn’t a dove flying over their heads. It was a bat. Apparently, the Archbishop’s prayer awakened a bat up in the choir loft, and the bat decided to check out all the activity below in the church. It was all rather amusing as ushers grabbed the collection baskets and chased the bat up and down the aisles eventually into one of the bell towers.

The most ancient Hebrew symbol of God’s Spirit in Hebrew scriptures is not a dove (nor a bat). It is the breath of God. God breathed upon the waters in Genesis, and life came forth. Ruah, is the Hebrew word for God’s breath. It is the Wind from all 4 directions that restored a valley of bones to life in the book of Ezechial. It is God’s Wind roaring through the streets of Jerusalem that fills the upper room on Pentecost day. The dove as a symbol, heavily influenced by Greek mythology, came much later.

As I finished up my studies to be a spiritual director, I spent five days at a hermitage located on a lake. It was early May, and nature was blossoming everywhere. I spent most of my solitude on the shore of that lake, meditating. I observed how the wind moved the clouds in the sky and the waters on the lake. Remembering how God breathed upon the waters in Genesis, I marveled that the Holy Spirit is God’s life force in the world. It is God’s breath that moves the clouds and causes the waves upon the lake. God’s Spirit is above us, below us, and to the sides of us. As I took a deep breath, I became aware that it is God’s breath that I was breathing. We are never isolated from God’s Holy Spirit. Rather, we move, live, and have our being within the Spirit of God.

God’s Spirit is not trapped in some church building. The Holy Spirit is all around us. On this Pentecost, walk outside. Listen to nature. Feel the breeze on your skin. Take a deep breath and become aware of God’s Spirit around and within you.

My mom, aka “Jean”, “Regina”, “Queenie” (Regina is Latin for Queen), would be 98 years old on June 4th. She died last year on June 30th, shortly after her 97th birthday. Susceptible to pneumonia over the last year of her life, she was being treated for pneumonia when osteoporosis caused a spontaneous break of her left femur. At 97 years, bones so brittle that they could break easily, there was no way she would have gotten a femur nailing to fix the break. She would have died either in surgery or following shortly afterward. The hospice nurse and I sat down and I told her that the only thing we could do for mom was keep her comfortable and allow her to die. I suffered a very high femur break in 2002, and knew how hard it is to recover from a femur break. As I as recovering, I overheard my surgeon talking to another surgeon, that initially he was not too sure I was going to survive the break. The shock of a high femur break can kill you. (Note: it’s nice to prove doctors wrong from time to time. I am still alive and sinning, as they sing in an Irish song.).

My mom was a great woman of faith. It was her faith that helped her at the age of 12 years, when her mother died, and the death of her little sister, Mary Greta on Christmas Day, two weeks following her mother’s death. My mom’s faith supported her when at 25 years of age, her dad died. My mom received her degree in Home Economics and taught in the Pittsburgh school system. Religious prejudice still abounded then, and though she was a very good educator, she was fired for being a Catholic. She went on to work for the Union Gas Company in Pennsylvania and taught cooking schools all over the State of Pennsylvania. She met my father and was not too sure about him at first. But he eventually charmed her, and her pastor, Father Coglin (who at the death of her dad kind of became her surrogate father … not just anyone was going to marry Queenie, according Fr Coglin).

Mom’s faith sustained her through the ups and the downs of family life. All those 25 years of my sister, Mary Ruth’s Crohn’s disease were tough on all of us, but especially my mom and dad who walked with Mary Ruth through those days and numerous surgeries that were apart of their lives. When Crohn’s disease finally took Mary Ruth’s life in 1997, at the age of 42 years, it was their Catholic faith that sustained both of my parents.

Mom told me that a month or so after Mary’s death, she had a very vivid dream. Mom found her self at a house and knocked on the door. A very beautiful woman answered the door and invited my mom inside. Mom told the woman she was looking for Mary Ruth. The woman smiled and led mom to a room with a two way mirror. Mom, undetected, looked into the room and saw my sister sitting on the floor playing with some little children. My sister was no longer gaunt and broken by her illness, but looked very much alive, healthy and happy. Also, in the room, there was a very handsome young man with a brown beard smiling at my sister. Mom noticed that the beautiful woman, who had invited her in and led her to this observation room, was no longer with her. She then saw that woman enter the room my sister was in, and walk up to her and whisper some words to my sister. Mary Ruth got up and left with the woman. Mom turned around and saw that my sister and the beautiful woman enter the room my mom was in. Mary Ruth hugged my mom and said, “Don’t worry mom, I am okay and am very, very happy.” The dream then ended. Mom said to me, “I know that that beautiful woman was the Blessed Mother, and the young man with the beard was Jesus. I am at peace knowing that your sister is very happy and at peace.”

After Mary Ruth’s death, mom got gravely ill and was in the hospital from Thanksgiving through Christmas. The doctors were puzzled as to why she was so sick. They finally decided shortly before Christmas to do an exploratory surgery on her. My dad, stalwart as he was, was very worried. My mom was a wee bit OCD (her dirt was always the cleanest of dirt), and as we walked her down to the surgical ward, she looked at my dad and said, “Walt, you’ve been wearing the same shirt for the last week. You’ve got to change that shirt. People will think you haven’t any other clothes.” We both gave her a kiss as she went into preop and then went to the surgery waiting room. Dad looked amused. He said to me, “She thinks I have been wearing the same shirt for the last two weeks. She forgets I have more than one of these shirts.”

I think that this heavenly visit in a dream helped mom greatly when my dad died from congested heart failure in 2004. Mom and dad had only been living in New Prague one year before his death. Mom, made friends easily, something not always done in this small town of large, closely knit Czechoslovakian families. She was always entertaining guests. She had her falls and surgeries, but she was always determined to return home and managed to continue to live at home until her dementia grew to the point that she had to move into Mala Strana nursing home. Once she adjusted, she made a point of welcoming all new residents coming to Mala Strana, and letting them know that someone cared for them.

She would be at all the activities, be present at whatever religious services were being held. The home economics teacher in her was always present with mom giving nutritional advice to the other women at her table, especially one woman of 95 years that announced that she was pregnant. The woman received, much to her dismay, a lot of nutritional advice from mom e.g. “You can’t have two ice creams for dessert! That’s not good for the baby!” (I did ask mom how she thought the woman got pregnant. Mom said, “The nuns (mom’s label for the nursing home staff) caught her drinking beer in the basement with the boys.” I replied that just might produce an occasion in which pregnancy could happen.). Mom loved it when children from the elementary school would come to the nursing home and read to her.

Of course, mom’s OCD never went away. She would wheel herself into residents’ rooms and announce that she was there to clean the room. When the residents would object, mom would say that’s okay. I will cross your name off the list for cleaning today, at which point, the residents would agree to mom cleaning their room. To keep mom from watering plants (to prevent mom from falling from her wheel chair), Ruthie bought her some really beautiful artificial flowers and put them in a decorative vase. Mom would say, “people pass by and want to smell them they look so real. They touch them and then ask me, “where did you get them?” And I say to them, “My husband’s wife got them for me.” I looked at Ruthie and quietly said, “Not only am I a bigamist, I have a Oedipal complex.”

On her birthday in 1970, I composed this piano music for her as a gift.

Happy 98th birthday, mom!

Love,

Bob