Frank, the Boy Genius, and Beauty

Yesterday was Easter.   It is all about the Resurrection and how that changed the lives of all Jesus' followers in an instant - and how, if we take it seriously, it changes our life in each instant.   So it brought my thoughts to my dear friend Frank Treviso - an artist in every aspect of his life - who died far too young.

Here is a photo of Frank in his beautiful coop apartment on "Central Park North" as we called it when he and his partner Craig bought it and moved to Harlem from their place on Thompson Square Park.   The photo is part of a cover story in Better Homes and Gardens Home Ideas publication (Fall/Winter 1998).  It featured Frank and his "High Style in Harlem:   Decorating with flea-market finds".

 

Frank made the beautiful window treatments and the throw pillow from raw silk that he hand painted before sewing them into treasures.   I met him in 1984 when my partner Alan gifted me with a half day "make over" at Elizabeth Arden on 5th Avenue -- Frank was the make-up artist and from the moment I sat in his chair we became heart friends and although he died over ten years ago, he remains one of my heart friends still.

So what does this have to do with Easter and Resurrection and Beauty?   I was ordained an Interfaith Minister at St. John the Divine in June of 1995 and I sent Frank and Craig an invitation to the ceremony.  I thought it odd that I didn't hear from Frank and couldn't reach him by phone.   And then 4 months later he called and asked me to meet him for dinner in the West Village.   I did and he told me an amazing story of where he was, why he couldn't respond, and how his life had changed.   In the early spring of the year he was hospitalized with advanced AIDS and Hepatitis and was told he would never come out of the hospital.   He let go of his hold on his life and began what many describe as a near death experience - a soothing voice telling him to let go and move to the light.   He described moving to the light in the imagery of our shared Italian heritage -- the sacred heart of Jesus and it's crown of thorns -- when he arrived there he felt he was home - in the light and love of the loving heart of Jesus who shared and redeemed Frank's suffering.  Yet the voice persisted, urging him beyond the crown of thorns and the broken heart and so he continued to follow the light and entered into the glorious blazing light of the Resurrection.   He realized the reality of life was that light and beauty, not the suffering and the crown of thorns.  He understood that to be a disciple of Jesus was to move beyond the suffering and into abundant life.

He returned to his body - he needed to test out what he had experienced.  He had an amazing recovery (he is written up in textbooks for the fact that over the next 6 months his liver regenerated) and in the following 3-1/2 years of his life he built up a successful, creative window treatment and accessory company called MU/H  (short for make-up and hair!).   He returned to this life and demonstrated his faith in beauty as the center of his life.   I had so many wonderful days with him - especially Saturdays when I would help him fill orders - I would cut and press and he would sew his magic.   These days together helped sooth my own heart after Alan died.   And I was blessed to live in the light of his enormous creativity.   When we went to trade shows designers from all over the country would exclaim over his incredible color sense and he was dubbed "the boy genius".   At one trade show his mother made cappucinos for the designers and served them Italian cookies that she and Frank had baked.  And I would hear her say to the designers, "I am the mother of the Boy Genius".   Here's another photo from the "spread" that will give you a sense of why they gave him that nickname.

Frank moved beyond the macabre fascination with the crucified Jesus and his sacred heart wrapped in his crown of thorns that had permeated the imagery of our immigrant parents and grandparents.  He found the truth -- the power of the Resurection is in the eternal LIFE - the eternal abundant and creative life in which we are born and in which we move and live.   His memory lives on deep in my own heart - and in the beautiful hand painted silk pillows, comforter covers and table accessories he made for me.

The power of his witness urges me on when I feel it is all too hard.   I remember what Alan always said about my friendship with Frank -- he would tell people "Donna could be stranded on a desert island and come back with a friend.  I sent her to Elizabeth Arden and she came home with the make-up artist!".   I came home with more than a friend that day.   I came home with a soul mate who I came to love dearly - who loved me dearly.    One Saturday when we were working together on an order in his loft - Alan gone a year or so - Frank wondered out loud if we both would have been happier choosing each other instead of our partners, in spite of his homo-sexuality.   Wondering if we would have had happier lives together because of the ways in which we were so similar.    The answer both of us came up with that day was "Probably".

Although I carry Frank in my heart all the time, I think of him with particular fondness each year during Holy Week as we move through the Passion and especially on the glorious morning of Easter.

Blessings,

Donna

Greater Love Than This

It is Holy Week - tonight is Easter Vigil and tomorrow we celebrate the Resurrection.   It is two months exactly since my last post.   I have been in a deep period of reflection and it is a time of encouragement and hope.

It is Holy Week and the Pope makes a stern and fairly angry public address chastizing priests who are challenging decisions by the Vatican that they feel jeopardize the Church and the people of God.   The Pope urges them to "Radical Obedience".   I find myself grateful that Jesus did not heed what must have been many calls for him to "Radical Obedience" - by the Roman occupiers and by some of the religious leadership that found obedience to the religious laws the most important thing.

In fact the witness of the life of Jesus of Nazareth was one of radical disobedience to man-made laws that create suffering and injustice.   It is a witness to the power of radical love and radical communion, placing God - the father, abba - at the very center of all life.  He taught us that love, peace, friendship, abundance and non-violence are what God wills for his creation.

In my mid-twenties I found myself in the midst of a deep reflective time - very similar to the one I find myself in now.    I spent many hours in prayer and meditation in the chapel at the College of New Rochelle.   In one of those times, gazing up at a familiar image, I had a radical new understanding of a familiar line of scripture.   Here is what I saw looking up above the altar

I don't know if you can read the words along the horizontal cross bar - they say "Greater Love Than This No Man Hath".   I was reminded often by some of the nuns at CNR that the line finishes "than to lay down his life for his friends".   But the radical new understanding that flooded my heart and mind that day was not Jesus crucified on the cross.   It was the love and radical friendship of those women who stood with him even unto death and continued to stand with him after his death and who were the first to witness his resurrection.   It was the radical love in which Jesus trusted so that even when threatened with death for his ministry to the people he was able to lay down his life rather than retreat into violence, or compromise his conscience and engage Radical Obedience to save his life.  He was able to trust God and eternal life and to continue to love unconditionally and to forgive, even his most fearful enemies.

In this most holy time in the Catholic liturgical year - when we recognize and celebrate the great love of God and Jesus - when we are called to be faithful to God first and foremost - our Pope preaches Radical Obedience to the "Law".   It is a powerful and painful contradiction.

So over the past days as I have reflected on this contradiction an amazing thing has happened to me, or maybe for me.    I have found compassion for  Pope Benedict - for this man for whom I have had nothing but contempt for over 40 years.   I cannot imagine the fear of change, the radical change that the Holy Spirit continually brings to us, that must be motivating is actions to turn back the spirit of Vatican II, and that must be motivating him to preach Radical Obedience at the very time we engage the gifts we are given by the Radical Disobedience of Jesus in his own time. 

I can tell you this morning that it is so much better to feel compassion than contempt.   Something has loosened in my own heart and mind and I feel more free than I can ever remember.   Maybe I am beginning to understand the life and witness of Jesus in a more concrete way than ever before.

Easter Blessings

Donna

Time Flies

Hard to believe that my last post was on January 25th . . . .if you've been reading the blog you know I have been immersed in a kind of reading that I haven't done for over 25 years.   I am circling around, at a deeper level given the life experience I've gained over the years, to reading in some of the same areas of my graduate work at NYU.

Mary Daly and Nelle Morton, who along with Maria Harris and Rosemary Reuther inspired an  inclusive and radical feminist theological point of view at the center of my heart and life.   Now I am adding James Carrol and Hans Kung to the mix and I am totally engaged body and soul in reflecting again on silence, language, prophetic voice, truth and courage.

I'm so immersed in all of this that I have hardly noticed the passage of time -- every spare moment I have been reading and for the first time in 30 years, reading with a dictionary at my side.   Because these authors and prophets use such exquisite and precise language -- that I want to be sure I understand in great depth what they are conveying.   So I have to admit I have been using the early morning hours I have set aside for writing, to keep reading what others have written!

I want to give special thanks to Rosemary and Jim Tarkes for gathering an amazing group of "Concerned Catholics" together to share plenary sessions from the American Catholic Council's important gathering in Detroit in June 2011 -- to reflect together on our commitments to our catholic faith and tradition, to provide nourishing worship opportunities in the face of a new mass imposed by Rome on Roman Catholic parishes, and to push forward with our commitments to the letter and spirit of Vatican II.

Watching the interview with Hans Kung and the plenary session address by James Carroll spurred the reading of Carroll's "Practicing Catholic" and now the two volumes of Kung's autobiography.   Kelley Brown and I are sharing books and the experience and that is great fun!

So what I want to say in closing this morning, is how grateful I am to those who have come before me -- for centuries -- in this church that I love in spite of her institutional sins and faults -- those who have had the trust and the courage to move forward in keeping with the call of the Gospel and the power of their conscience.   In all instances during their lifetimes these brave souls have been battered to some extent or another, by the institutional church's desire to hold and preserve temporal power.   Yet their love of God, their commitment to truth and to the Gospel, moved them forward, and so move all of us forward with a deeper understanding of Love and community.   I am in awe of their gifts and filled with gratitude for their witness.

Blessings for the day
Donna

Nelle Morton - Silence and Speech

My dear friend Cathie reminded me this morning that Nelle Morton's essays in "The Journey is Home" started us out in a deep reflection of silence and speech many, many years ago.   In one of the essays she reflects on her experience in feminist support groups during the 1970's and talks about the way in which the women would "hear each other into speech" that was truthful and life giving.   That pregnant, attentive silence and deep hearing among the women.   She then says that if "In the beginning was the Word", what preceeded the Word was the Great Listening Ear at the Center of the Universe.   I still love that image and am soothed by it.   The importance of real community - the patience to be with each other in silence - the real interest in knowing each other deeply.

This morning, in the last chapter of "Practicing Catholic" I am reading James Carroll's reflections on the power of language and how it is that language connects us to God - or to the larger creative life if God is an alienating word - which it often is to people.

As an Interfaith Minister I have learned to communicate without the specific religious language of my own tradition -- but in these most recent reflections since I am reading and reflecting within my tradition it is so much easier to use that specific language.

I could probably write everyday for at least a year about silence and speech - maybe I will take that on at some point.   It is like breathing . . . .inhale and exhale both critical to sustaining life, both inextricably linked to each other as breath.

I have been in an exhale mode for most of the past 10 years and it has been exhausting.   It reminds me of a network chiropractor that told me over 30 years ago that my breathing was so shallow it was hardly enough to sustain life!   So I learned to breath more deeply and fully and it was an amazing turn around for me.   I still breath deeply and fully -- and I also realize that as important is the breathing of "action-inaction".   My commitment to myself this year is to have that balance restored to my life regardless of my external circumstances.

Again, dear Cathie gave me a wonderful Christmas present this year.   "The Paper Garden:   Mrs. Delaney (begins her life's work) at 72" by Molly Peacock.   Precognition?   Or just the knowledge of a life long friend?   It is a perfect gift in every way.   The book design is beautiful -- and the content inspiring.   I come into January of  2012 hoping that I will have the health and longevity to begin my life's work now --

Blessings to everyone this morning!

Donna

The Narrative Form

I am immersed in the book Practicing Catholic by James Carroll.   And in a process of deep inner reflection questioning if I really "know" what it is I have believed for so long now.   I mean this in its largest sense, not only in a religious sense.   Can I, at this late date in my life, engage a certain freedom to make my life new?   To leave behind some central experiences that have framed and limited my life to move into the life I have been generously given by grace.

When I started this blog after Christmas mass at Fr. Jim's house, I wasn't sure what it is, what it means, what it will "become" -- I only knew that I felt called to write again and this seems a good way to do it.

This morning, in the last chapter of this book that I will now buy for my library (I'm reading a Missoula Library copy right now), he opens the chapter by saying "I left the priesthood to be a writer.   This is the very definition of my life."   In order to really write, he needed intellectual and moral freedom to go where the writing would and could take him.

And following very quickly he writes something that rings true for me about why, now, I choose to write again -- and maybe even why I choose to write in a way that is shared for the first time in my life . . .

"The redemptive shape of narrative form, the unquenchable thirst for meaning, THE IMPLICATION-LADEN TENSION BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND WHAT REMAINS FOREVER UNSPOKEN, the contemplative habit of absorbedness, the dark night of the soul as a source of illumination, God as the author of creation, why we call Jesus "Word," the final inadequacy of all expression, which is the first value of it . . . "

The emphasis above is mine -- all of this spoke to me and the highlighted section above spoke to me at the level of an almost deafening roar.

I have learned so much about the need to speak and to share from my dearest friend Cathie.   She and her Campus Ministry group at the College of New Rochelle were central to moving me from a soul crushing silence that kept me unspeakably lonely to a way of sharing myself in meaningful ways with others.

It was the beginning of a life long journey to create some balance between the deep introspection that comes so naturally to me and the call to be part of the community that the Gospel demands of me.

And now, in this blog, I am a bit stymied or maybe challenged is a better word, by what to put into language and what is rightly left forever unspoken . . .

Donna

Obedience

James Carroll is one of my favorite authors -- both his fiction and his non-fiction.  I am now reading "Practicing Catholic" which he published in 2009 and I am finding it as deeply moving as his autobiographical "An American Requiem:  God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us".   We are "almost" contemporaries -- he is seven years my senior.   The seven years are not enough to change the dramatic effect of the Kennedy era, the Second Vatican Council and the Vietnam War era on our lives.   His was a more privileged life than mine -- his father a high ranking military officer, mine a Private First Class in the Marine Corps.   And that changed some things -- a sense that he has been more at the center of the institutions than I ever was.    But when I read these two books I am moved from the center of my very being at how he captures these formative aspects of my own life.   And I am grateful to hear him come to some of the same conclusions to which I have arrived myself along these "highways and byways" of a deep catholic spirituality, a deep sense of patriotism, and a call to live out the Gospel to the best of my ability.

This morning I am reading the chapter "The Scandal" which follows fairly closely to chapter 6 "Sex and Power".   He speaks of the nature of "obedience" in terms of the vows Roman Catholic priests take and he says, "In the hierarchical order there is obedience upward, but there is obedience downward too."    It is all too clear to me that the Roman power structure of our church has long since forgotten about their obedience "downward" to the people they are there to serve and I am grateful to him for this sentence that clarifies things for me.   I am reminded of one of Rabbi Abraham Heschel's books where he speaks about the Commandment to "Honor Thy Mother and Father".  He tells us that intrinsic to this commandment is the requirement of mothers and fathers to behave in ways that are themselves honorable.   These are reciprocal vows and commandments.   There is no way to separate them and be in truth.   All life is at the beginning and end interwoven and relational.

So this was on my mind when I made my way to my office several hours ago to write this reflection.  

One of the things I did before sitting to write, was to check in on Facebook.  Last week was a hard, busy week and I haven't even looked at it in many days.   I read a "Truth Out" op-ed by Chris Hedges (see http://www.truth-out.org/ if you are interested in the entire article) and was struck by how similar his reflection on the corrupt nature of electoral politics in this time is to what I read this morning relative to my beloved church.   He says, "Turn off your televisions.  Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick-Barack Reality Show.  It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on "Jersey Shore." 

Those who "lead" our polity use the powers of distraction from the real issues in the same ways that the Pope and the Bishops have used distraction from the real issues within our church.    Both sets of actions by those who are supposed to "lead" and have obedience "downward" have covered up deep and outrageous lies that have resulted in so much damage to the dignity and quality of people's lives.   So much damage to the integrity of our country and to my church.

And yet, as James Carroll says relative to the sex abuse scandal of our church, it is not only those who lead that have culpability.   It is also all of us who have chosen to be distracted rather than to demand truthfulness and obedience downward from our leaders.  Again, my dear Rabbi Abraham Heschel comes to mind.   When speaking out against the Vietnam War he was clear that in a Democracy few are to blame and all are responsible.

Although our present days seem filled with conflict and difficulty, when I stop being distracted by all the easy distractions, I am encouraged that it is almost impossible to cover up any lie today.   That truth is breaking through all of the institutional and personal lies.   And that ordinary people, who are filled with the dignity of their very creation, are finding the courage to tell the truth and to refuse distractions.   To assert our common human dignity and our inescapable relationship to the eco-systems in which we live.

It is painful and also encouraging.   I believe from personal experience that truth, no matter how painful, actually does set us free and heal us.

I think that is all for today.

With love to all!

Donna

Aunt Helen and Baklava

This morning I am inspired by lots of things including the sparkling diamonds the moon created from last night's snow.   But Aunt Helen and baklava won out.



Tonight we will be serving our homemade baklava along with Greek dinner entrees while we listen to the wonderful music of Baba Ganoush Snyder Duo at the Hangin Art Gallery here in Arlee Montana.

I thought it was funny that I was making the baklava while I watching Julie Julia for the 2nd or 3rd time.   At least I wasn't trying to make it in one of those Queens kitchens (you should excuse the expression, as my Jewish friends' mothers would say).

Whenever I cook Greek food or make baklava I have these amazing and lovely thoughts of my Aunt Helen.   Her parents were from Greece and she married my grandmother's brother so we had the great good fortune of eating amazing dinners and wonderful baked treats at Aunt Helen and Uncle Julie's house.   Their son Vincent taught me to dance Greek dances in their living room while enticing aromas drifted in from the kitchen on the main floor and sometimes from the downstairs kitchen as well.

Vincent was my favorite cousin and I was always sad that he lived in Syracuse instead of Brooklyn because it meant I didn't see him enough to suit me in those growing up years.   In fact all three of Aunt Helen and Uncle Julie's sons were cousins that brought me lots of joy.

When my father was transferred to a Xerox plant in Rochester, it meant lots more time with my Aunt Helen and Uncle Julie.   By that time I was a grown woman living in New York City and then Montana - but whenever I visited my parents we would make the short trip to Syracuse to be with Aunt Helen, Uncle Julie and those great Syracuse cousins and their families too.

So this morning I am happy thinking about them and all of our good times.   And I am feeling very fortunate to have these wonderful memories as part of my life.

Blessings,

Donna