Tacloban, Part VI

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You know, people are beautiful, crazy things. When I went back to camp to catch some sleep the night that we finally got the airfield moving at night, a Filipino man called out to me as I walked by. “Hey, Sir!”

He was squatting on the concrete, with his wife and their littlest baby squatting next to him, and six or eight little dark eyed chitlins squatting all in a row behind him, along with some aunties or big sisters or some such relative.

“Hey Sir,” he said again and gestured to the line behind him. He was hopelessly at the back of the crowd, and there was no way he was getting on an airplane tonight. But he had seen lines of people being moved to the airplanes, and he had figured out what we were doing and had separated his family and lined them all up in a row, ready to go.

“Wow,” I said, “All lined up?”

He nodded and smiled hopefully and his wife and babies all looked up at me with big, dark, hopeful eyes that just made me feel like the biggest ogre on the planet for not getting them out right away. (Okay, so I am a sucker for little brown babies with big brown eyes. So sue me.)

What a leader! What a man! I could see that he truly cared about his family, and keeping them together and making sure they were safe was the most important thing to him. They trusted him. They squatted in line behind him, one behind the other, keeping quiet and still and cheerful among the chaos all around them.

What I would not have given to move them right to the front of the line, right then! But I could not. That would have caused a riot, in all likelihood, and that would have shut down loading operations. I had to smile and say, “Good for you. Hang in there,” and walk away.

When I went back again the next day, they were still squatting there, all lined up, and he smiled at me hopefully again. He was still cheerful, but he looked worn out. Other people were still in line ahead of him. I had to get Marilee’s people out, because I had promised, and I owed her. He watched that plane leave sadly, and moved his family into the next spot.

After that I was no longer running the airfield. The Marines had taken over now and I had to go do other things. As I left for the last time, he smiled at me, still hopefully, but with a bit more fear in his eyes. All I could do was point to the only seven rows of people still in front of him, count them out and smile encouragingly, and then walk away.

He was able to get his family out later that afternoon, I think, because there were several planes in later that day, and I didn’t see him again.

Blessings upon him and his family.

Desert Evening

Over the last week I was doing a training event in New Mexico. Since I was not one of the primary players being trained, I got to spend most of that time pulling security, which involves sitting in the turret of a gun truck and watching the desert for hours on end. With temperatures topping out in more than the usual number of digits, and sun that hot on me pate, I felt a lot like a piece of meat in a broiler. In a strange way, though, I enjoyed it. The desert is so huge. It is open and arid and inhospitable, and that makes it beautiful. (It wasn’t designed with white people in mind, I can tell you that.) There is something about the emptiness that encourages emptiness of soul, or at least some emptying of the soul, which is a step in the right direction.

The silence is good for me. The heat is good for me. The discomfort is good for me. SPF-50 sunscreen is also good for me. My Irish/German heritage is highly evidenced by the fact that after three weeks out here I am only a half a shade darker than I was in rainy Washington.

The last night in the desert God put on a bit of a show for us. The sky started clouding over around six, and then right about sunset it started to get cool and windy. I could see the thunder storms raging miles away around the mountains. The clouds seemed to be bigger than the mountains themselves, and underneath the clouds were great gray sheets of rain. And then, the wind changed direction, and started sweeping the storm clouds away from the mountains to the north, driving them south across the desert. The next thing I knew I was being pelted with raindrops the size of Chihuahuas, and as thick as thieves. If you can imagine a crowd of soaking wet thieving Chihuahuas freefalling on your head, you will get the idea.

The first thing to do, obviously, was save the gear. So I jumped out, ran around to the cargo area on the back and grabbed out my med bag and our three-day bags (nope, not waterproofed. I mean, this is the desert, right?) Then I ripped the tarp out from behind the radios and bungee cords from the back and quick as a flash rigged up a little cover over the turret. It was large enough to cover the whole turret, tight enough so that it didn’t flap in the gale force winds, and still allowed me to see out over the gun and rotate the turret 360 degrees or more. And there I stood, a little damp and chilly, but none the worse for wear. I turned the truck on, turned on the heater (never thought I’d use that on this trip) and listened to the drumming of the rain on a synthetic canvas roof.

Presently, the rain ceased. The cloud ceiling stayed, but it wasn’t dropping more than the occasional sprinkle. The wind was soft, now. Not just soft as in no longer ripping the hat off my head and trying to snap bungee cords. It felt not simply gentle, but soft like a woman’s hand. There was a tangible quality of softness, like velvet, or felt, or mullein leaves, brushing across my face as if that was its sole reason for existence. There is an intention in the wind, a purpose. It has meaning, and the meaning of that wind was a caress. The sun was behind the clouds, but I could see the rays of light stabbing through to the earth. “God’s Eyelashes,” I used to call them when I was younger, because to the ten-year old me they looked like the eyelashes of a half-closed eye. I don’t see the resemblance that much anymore, but I still call them that, because I haven’t thought of a better name.

As the sun sank lower and lower behind the clouds and the sky grew darker and darker, those rays of light slanted wider, and their fingers reached closer to me. Someone rolled up on the dirt bike asking if I wanted to be relieved, but I said no, I would prefer to stay and watch the sunset.

The sky at this point was almost completely clouded over. It looked, for all the world, like a gray bowl overturned on top of the earth. I imagine if you lived inside a snow globe and had really bad breath it would look much the same. There were still storms carrying on in the distance on all sides, except to the west, hanging down in gray, amorphous sheets like a curtain from the edge of the cloud bowl. On the west side, though, just where the sun was going to set, there was an opening. As the sun began to dip below the edge of the bowl it was as if the whole world was transformed right before my eyes. The underside of all the clouds nearest to the sun was shot through with red. Pinks and lavenders stretched around the edges of the bowl, almost meeting in the back, fading into the deep blue slate of the clouds. The rain storms flushed and then glowed bright rose red. From twenty to fifty miles away I could see them embraced by the light and shifting with the wind, like a slow, graceful love dance. Behind me, on the eastern side there was a pair of rainbows arching off the scrubby pastureland below the mountains to the northeast, disappearing into the clouds, and then descending in parallel curve to the ground to the southeast. Two rainbows, one inside the other, perfectly parallel with each other, forming a double arch exactly over that point on the eastern horizon where the sun would rise the next day.

The whole brilliant display lasted only three minutes, and then faded to purple, and then deep, bluish black, and for the few minutes I was trapped inside that glorious ceiling of cloud, I felt as if the whole thing was for me; I felt very small, and very young, as if the clouds were the arms of God, wrapping around me for a brief moment in a gesture of love. Not simply love, but specifically affection, the humble, earthy, human feeling of familiarity and comfortableness. Like when you are a little kid and your Dad hugs you and says, “It’ll be okay.”

That is fatherhood. The love that I do not deserve, and could not exist without.

Ask Thugfang: A Tight Spot

His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness, Master Thugfang, is a demon of great infamy among academic circles. He is a frequent columnist for “Tempter’s Times”, an assistant editor for “Wickedness Weekly” and current chair of Tempter’s Training College’s Department of Defense Against the White Arts, after the sudden disappearance of the most recent head under mysterious circumstances. Now, His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness takes your questions. Having problems with a particularly troublesome patient? Meddlesome enemy agents stymieing you at every turn? Don’t wait, write immediately to “Ask Thugfang” C/O “Underworld Magazine.”

Dear Master Thugfang, my patient is 10 years old. He is in absolutely the worst home situation you can imagine. His parents are monogamous and even happy. They actively catechize their children. He and his siblings are homeschooled, he is an altar boy, a choir boy, a straight-A student, a natural athlete, he willingly gives his money to the missions, and he even voluntarily goes to Mass on weekdays to serve. I am afraid he might be thinking of the priesthood. The little rat positively makes me wish I had a stomach so I could vomit. I ask you, haven’t I been put in a false position? I have been given the worst possible scenario, and the Lowerarchy keeps denying my requests for transfer. They tell me I had better turn this around or face the consequences. It is not fair.

Yours Truly, Much Put Upon

My Dear Much Put Upon,

You should have signed yourself “Much Melodrama!” I see nothing in your case that would warrant a transfer. I see a good deal that sounds like an appeal to justice, which is heavily frowned upon in these circles. I should curb that if I were you. No, results are what we want, not fairness.

On the whole, I cannot understand what you are carrying on about, as if this were an aberration. From the Enemy’s point of view, this situation is the norm, and it is only our constant work which makes it less common than it otherwise would be.

Even granted his unfortunate situation, the picture is nothing like so black as you paint it. Of course you are not a Master of Defense Against the White Arts, but you have had the sense to ask one for help. Here, then, is the situation as I see it. Your patient has been given advantages. We try to keep these advantages from the humans, but sometimes they slip through. So we have to think what use we can make of them. There are numerous methods for tempting at the foot of the altar, but at present your patient is immune to most of them because he is ten years old. His character is not fully formed. Therefore he hasn’t fully chosen his faith yet. You say he “voluntarily” goes to serve Masses on weekdays? I would bet that a good deal of that is because the grown-ups applaud him when he does. It sounds like there might be a bit of vanity, perhaps the flare for acting holy, a touch? This is not to undermine the seriousness of these habits. Right now, there is certainly much real childlike faith and you can bet the Enemy’s agent is working on that. But also (very likely) there is at least some acting going on. In the natural scheme of things, that is simply how the humans learn, but we make it unnatural. You must subtly encourage the actor. Get him to concentrate more and more on what he thinks his parents want, so that later on, in his teen years, none of his “faith” will be his at all.

And of course, he is ten. Very shortly puberty will be coming to your aid. Let’s get a head start on that, shall we? I assume his parents don’t have any pornography lying around the house, (then again, you might want to check the father’s computer. That would be a gold mine. Your work would be almost done for you.) Still even if you can’t get any porn into his hands from the outside, you can still start him off with those lingerie ads in the back of the Sears catalogs. But just getting him to look at women is not enough. That’s amateur work. He would do that without your input. The real master’s touch is to turn the natural sex drive away from relationship, and in on itself. To that end you want it insulated behind layers and layers of shame, and that begins as early as possible. Get the father’s handler working now to make him so embarrassed about the whole subject that instead of sitting the boy down and talking about it with him, the parents will simply cover his eyes and hustle him away from even the slightest hint of sexuality. No explanation, no moral guidance, and certainly no teaching about the beauty and truth of the Enemy’s plan. Just a hush-hush, “That’s bad! Don’t look.” Their refusal to speak will heighten the “forbidden fruit” feel of it. How we use that depends upon his personality. If he is stubborn and independent, this will guarantee he will find out on his own from outside sources, and we control most of those sources. If he is pliant and sweet natured, he will remain ignorant and fearful. Either way this will ensure that the parents will be the last people he will come to for help when he figures out he needs it. His natural curiosity will be shoved into the shadows just when a little light would be the really healthy thing, and a nasty little habit can grow in the background of our fellow’s otherwise picture perfect life. Don’t expect it to bear fruit right away, but keep harping away at the shame and secrecy. You’ll see results sooner or later.

And keep him away from the damned confessional! No light! Everything must remain in darkness. If he must go, make sure he goes to a priest of your choosing.

As for him “thinking about the priesthood!” What the Heaven do you mean by that? Of course he is thinking about the priesthood. Next week he’ll be thinking about being a doctor. The week after that he’ll want to be a dinosaur. He is ten years old! I suppose you’ve been listening to his dear old Aunt Tilly (why do they always have one?), who thinks her nephew is so saintly looking in his cassock and surplice, and is just certain that The Enemy is going to “call him” to be a priest. Blast those Pia Donna’s with their rosaries and their masses and their blockheaded sweetness. I hate them all.  I want to smash all of them to oblivion.

Incidentally, there you can see an example of the first spiritual maxim. We can turn Aunt Tilly’s voice to serve our ends. She herself may (or may not) be completely lost in The Enemy’s camp, but we can still use her. Again, if the boy is an independent, stubborn soul we teach the adorable young acolyte to hate and despise every flutter of gushing affection, and by extension, hate every vocational hint she throws at him. We can do the same with vocational directors, youth ministers, pre-seminary recruiters (Oh the success stories we’ve had with those!) They may be lost to us (or maybe not) but we can still use them. Raw material, my dear Put Upon. Get it through your dull wits.

On the other claw, if the boy is the sweet, people-pleasing child I guess him to be, we can build up in his pre-adolescent mind the subtle awareness that everyone around him expects him to be a priest. The weight of those expectations can then be used later on, either to force him into the priesthood with three bags full of hidden resentment, or to rebel and run a hundred miles an hour in the opposite direction. It doesn’t matter which. You’ll be able to improvise at that point.

Incidentally, have you contacted the parents’ handlers at all? If I were you, I should have a conference with them and get your strategy well sorted out. You don’t want any humility or forbearance on the parent’s parts making your job any more difficult. Better they be hell-driven by fear of their precious little angel ever making the slightest mistake in his life. They ought to think that his every choice reflects directly upon them as parents, and to seek to direct those choices accordingly. Right now, of course, that is natural, but what you really want their handlers doing is setting up a habit of increasing rather than lessening supervision. Then in the teen years and early twenties you’ll see the fruit of your labors. Exactly when they should be learning detachment, let them be ravenously enforcing attachment. Do not let them simply sit back and watch and pray. Whatever you do, do not let them entrust him to The Enemy’s care. You want them on his back.

No doubt about it, your patient is snugly entrenched within the enemy’s territory. He will be defended. Rescuing him is tricky and dangerous, but worth it in the end. You simply must never rest for a moment. There is no rest in Hell. Did you think you were there for a vacation? Get to it, and if the parents’ handlers are not doing their jobs, send me their numbers and I shall see to them.

Cheers,

Thugfang.

Generations

Generations


For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:5-6

The phrase “Jealous God,” is one of those knee jerk phrases, and this is one of those knee jerk verses. Automatically it puts a sour taste in the mouth of modern Americans. We have a problem with God being jealous, and we have a problem with God punishing children for the sins of the parents. How can a loving, merciful God punish an innocent child for an infraction of His cosmic preferences that he did not even commit? How can this be the action even of a just God? And yet, the people who hate this verse tend to hate it on face value without considering the context, and in this instance I am not talking of the context within Scriptures. I am talking about the context of real life. People who hate this verse (myself included, since I wrestled with it a bit at one point in my life) hate it without pausing to think about what this would look like in the world we live in.

In life, actions have consequences. This is how God designed the universe. When I act, that act ripples outward and outward, both in the results I expect and in the unintended consequences. There is no way human wisdom and foresight can predict all the consequences of an action, or a series of actions, or a life.

So what does that verse look like in real life?

A week ago, my maternal Grandfather died. He was 74 years old. He was born in 1937 in a state mental institution. His maternal grandfather was committed to the violent ward of a state mental institution following a head injury that left him with a complete and dangerous personality change. His mother had suffered a mental breakdown following some months after her divorce and was also committed to a state mental institution. There is no way of knowing at this point who his biological father was, but Grandpa was born in that institution about eight months after her commitment, and immediately turned over to state custody. Before he was 18 months old he had been scalded with boiling water and struck by a car. He never knew his biological parents, and was never adopted, though he eventually spent his childhood and youth with a single foster family. On face value it would seem that Grandpa was dealt a bad hand right from the get-go. The choices of his parents and their parents had consequences in his life, real consequences that really hurt him. That is real life. Our bad choices hurt people who come after us.

But, fast forward 74 years to the day of his death. Grandpa died, beloved of his family, a faithful member of the church, wise, at peace, ready. He served in the Air Force during the Cold War, he remained a faithful Catholic, married in the Church, raised his children in the faith, designed and built electronics, made furniture, fixed cars, followed the fortunes of our nation through good and bad, with prayer and work right up to the end. His 8 children, 42 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren are all souls that would not have existed otherwise. The life of faith, family and country are our life blood. We have soldiers and sailors, artists and business men, actors and students, movie makers, activists, entrepreneurs, farmers, mechanics, designers, husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, teenagers, children, and babies.

Think about that for a second. In some ways he was dealt a bad hand. In fact, if Grandpa were conceived under similar circumstances today, there is a large segment of the population who would consider it an act of mercy to abort him. He was reaping the consequences of the choices of those who came before him, but God was also working. Grandpa was put in good foster homes, and allowed to grow up in one home for his whole childhood. He took what he was given, and he made his own choices, and now we reap the benefits of those choices.

That is what I see when I read that verse from Exodus. God is not sitting up in heaven trying to keep bad things going for three or four generations. He doesn’t need to. Bad things keep going by themselves. That is not a threat of vengeance, but a promise of mercy. It is only because of God’s intervention that the consequences are limited to those few generations. On the other hand, no one can know, no one can even begin to imagine the good that will come from one life lived well. God longs to pour out blessings, good things, life to the full, if only we would cooperate. A life lived with faith is an open door. Through that door God is allowed into the world, and runs riot with good things for everyone, until other doors, closed and shut by selfishness or ignorance or fear, stop Him.

Mercy is the fundamental reality, or to put it another way, Love is all there is. Live that reality, and let God into the world. You have no idea what will come of it, but it will be good. It will be greater than you can possibly imagine.

Hey Dad, can I help?

This is a very old photo. I think it is actually a digital picture of an old film photo my mom took before they invented digital cameras.


The muscular gentleman with the ax is my dad. The slightly less muscular gentleman on the stump is my littlest brother. Or rather, he was my littlest brother at the time. Now he is only the youngest. At nineteen he's actually the tallest of us five boys nowadays, and a good deal more muscular than he was then.


What can I say, he wanted to help cut wood. He was too little to swing the ax, really, but you'll note he has his "working man" boots on; and cast your eye, if you will, over the casual competence of his pose, carefully copied from his older brothers who learned it from our father. We wanted to help cut wood too.

I don't know how many times we got in the way, slowed down the work, messed up the projects, and just plain made a nuisance of ourselves in our eagerness to help Daddy outside. For the first few years we weren't much earthly use out there. He could have gotten things done ten times faster without us, most of the time, but he let us help out.

I was reminded of this because of a conversation I had. We had been talking about the difference between merely accepting God's will, since He is going to get His way no matter what we do, and positively embracing it. I said that we should try to go beyond merely doing what He wants because we really have to, and try to be eager about it. We should ask Him, "Hey, can I help? Is there anything I can do? Please." She said to me, "I'm afraid to want to help God because I'm sure I'll mess it up." I've felt that many times myself. It was good for me to hear someone else say it, because it's always easier to see the truth when someone else is missing it than when I am the one missing it.

I don't think God cares whether we mess up the work in our eagerness to help him, anymore than my father did. Sometimes it might have gotten a little annoying, and the work might have taken a lot longer, but my father didn't work to get the job done. He worked to raise us. We were the final cause and end of his work, so he could deal with a little chaos and delay from us. It was all about what was best for us, from beginning to end. That's what fatherhood is all about. He learned it from God. God's fatherhood is for our sake. The work He does is for our sake, and He is more than capable of doing it without us, but it would be for nothing without us. Just as my father might have gotten the work done faster without us, and it would have been a waste if we had never learned to work ourselves, so with Jesus we must "Be about our Father's business." He doesn't need us to do it. But He wants us.